Google Image search for Weekend brings up this.

I remember way back when I was in college how glorious Saturdays seemed. They were the day after Friday, which was an awesome day in and of itself because it meant that tomorrow was Saturday, which meant there was nothing to do but sleep in and eat and nap and watch TV and eat some more. (Unless it was the spring, when we had games every weekend, or the fall, when we had practice every weekend.)

Well, here’s basically what my day’s been like today.

(Be warned, it’s boring, so don’t read it.)

This Saturday technically started yesterday, when Dan, the excellent sports editor for the Wilmington Star-News, called and emailed asking if I could cover something today. I didn’t really want to, but then, I’d bailed out of covering a UNCW soccer game Friday night, which cost me some cash, and in all good economic sense I couldn’t turn down two assignments on one weekend. Plus this one paid extra because I got to take the picture to run with the story, too.

The Saturday started fairly normal. We slept until 11, which was awesome. And really, really lazy, but it was still awesome. Then I woke up and transcribed part of an interview I really shouldn’t have spent so much time transcribing. I won’t tell you what story it was for, but it was one of the more boring interviews I can recall ever having done.

I did that for 20 minutes or so, then I got hungry so I woke Katie up and we ordered Andy’s. It probably wasn’t really in that order, but I’m hungry now, too, so I’m starting to rush through this so I can go eat leftover Andy’s.

On the way to and from Andy’s I got to talk to best friend Brandon, with whom I haven’t talked in too long. Then Katie called and needed brownie mix from the grocery store, so I stopped to pick that up. No, wait, that’s not right. That’s not until later.

Anyway, I got home and we ate our Andy’s — I had the Andy’s cheeseburger, she the chicken philly or whatever it’s called and however it’s spelled, plus fries and Mountain Dews for both of us — while watching Family Guy.

I swear, every time I watch that show I lose brain cells, and every time, I wonder why in the world I put myself through that.

Anyway, then I called this guy who wanted to buy that surfboard I blogged about a couple weeks ago. I lost some money on it but it’s finally out of the house, which automatically made this day a 9. On the way home, Katie called, needing brownie mix for her small group dinner thing tonight.

Then I got home and showered because I had to go cover this thing, which would actually be kinda cool. It was an autograph session for the Willie Stargell Foundation charity golf tournament. There were about two dozen celebrities there and I recognized like, half of them. The story will be in Sunday’s StarNews.

I was at that thing for about an hour and a half, interviewing people and taking pictures. I met some characters, there, let me tell you. It was very saddening, seeing guys walk through there with backpacks stuffed with memorabilia and no wedding rings on their fingers. Good thing there were a bunch of kids there too. I remember meeting BJ Surhoff at a thing once. I don’t remember what the thing was or how old I was, but I was young enough to be completely wowed by the guy and I didn’t even know quite who he was, except that he was sometimes a catcher and sometimes an outfielder and I really liked playing catcher in our backyard baseball games. Thus, I made him my hero for an hour.

I saw that look on plenty of those kids, that lo

Gator Rivers. A long time ago.

ok that I must have had. They’re frozen, getting hit in the face by no-look passes from “Gator” Rivers, a former Harlem Globetrotter. It was great.

Anyway, then I came home around 4, but on the way Katie calls again, needing eggs to make the brownies. She thought she was being a horrible wife but I just thought she was being cute and whatnot, especially how she kept promising to make it up to me. I didn’t argue with that.

Thus far the day’s about an 8, knocked down a notch by the knowledge that I’m going to spend the next hour or two figuring out how to make the guys with the backpacks and the celebrities and the kids all mesh into one interesting story.

Then I get home and give Katie the eggs, then spend the next couple of hours — give or take a few minutes here or there for various reasons ! — languishing over this story. I think that anguish came in part because of the recent comments I’ve been getting on the blog by people informing me of how bad I am at writing about proving God’s existence based on writing about demons or something like that. Which is weird because that’s not what I was really after, anyway, but I let things get under my skin sometimes that I shouldn’t.

Man this post is getting long.

OK, so eventually I’m like, dude, it’s a recap of an autograph session, not an epic story that will ring through the ages. An autograph session, with ringless guys developing scoliosis because of their camping sized backpacks filled with baseball cards and pictures. (OK, that’s a slight exaggeration….it was just a normal backpack filled with cards and pictures. And bats.)

So I crank it out, read over it, send it along, then edit a couple pictures I took and send those along too. Mostly of Gator Rivers playing with the kids since he was the only guy there who actually moved around. Cool guy.

Then I finished transcribing the long, boring interview. Somewhere during that time Katie left. I don’t really remember when.

Then I finished the interview and came here to blog about my day instead of studying more for the GRE, because I am a loser. Although now I need to go do that studying thing. And some pushups. Kramer — my older younger brother — was punching me last night while we were at Logan’s — the younger younger brother — first game with Greenfield. Kramer called me flabby. I am getting flabby.

Hence, I’m off to do pushups.

Many times Christians pride themselves on going through life as pure and holy despite suffering and “trials.”

Lately, I feel like I’ve been putting myself through a lot of that in my intense study and analyzation of atheist and skeptic mindsets. Not only have I been analyzing; I’ve been arguing with them. It’s been getting me down. Now, I’m saying to heck with that.

This arguing is something I’ve never really meant to get into. I’m a happy guy by nature; such intense thinking and writing about such deep and dark things like whether or not God or demons exist has been exhausting. It’s been dampening to my mood. Not because it’s made me question God’s existence. That it has, but there’s been a joy in realizing how real he is.

It’s just unbelievable to me the amount of hatred some people have for him. Others don’t hate him, they just hate the Christians. To them, I raise my glass; with them, I some days agree.

But the basic tenets of Christianity are admirable ones. They are things that any good person would strive to live by; they’re just laid out by a man who was also God.

Speaking of this Trinity thing, we need to clear some things up very quickly and simply: Jesus was completely God but he was not all God as he completely exists. He was a separate entity, a separate being, from God. God was not killing himself when Jesus died. In fact, God did not kill Jesus at all. Don’t you remember the stories?

Jesus was killed by people. He was killed by religion.

Which is why I find the religiosity that’s permeated Christianity so sickening, so gut-wrenching.

Alas, I digress.

The point of this post is to simply say to the skeptics and atheists, God be with you. He’s there, and some day you’ll realize that. Until that day, I say good luck in this life, I hope you live it for all you can imagine it being worth, because it truly is all you’ll have.

This post is also to say to the Christians and my friends and others who read this blog who aren’t skeptics: I’m sorry. I’ve spent far too much time dwelling on negativity that I’ve forgotten to write about things that really  make me what I am. Stupid things like hanging out playing Halo until 3 in the morning with my bride of four months because we’re trying to live like poor people to save money instead of blowing thirty bucks a week at the movies or on dinner and such.

Stupid things like calling IHOP to ask if they deliver and then when they don’t, demanding to know why. Also at 3 in the morning.

Stupid things like having to study for the GRE.

Life’s short. Maybe God has some grand plan for me in the next, but as for this one, I believe he just wants us to be exhilaratingly ecstatic through the struggles and the fights and the tears and the plights this life brings. It’s a beautiful life, this one lived with God. If you atheists and skeptics don’t want it, great, but know that anyone who truly loves God really doesn’t care what you have to say, anyway.

Now, I’m going back to my wife, and while I probably should, I’m not proofreading this. Consider this a live telecast, one in which I’m quitting my arguing with the boring people of this world who want nothing more than evidence. Maybe it should have been censored but to heck with it, it’s a blog and nobody’s making you read this anyway.

What’s wrong with a little faith, anyway? Don’t you have faith that the people in your lives love you when they say they do?

What’s wrong with basing some belief off emotion? Isn’t that why you like a fun girl or guy? Even if you’re gay or whatever, you pick who you’re with because you like your emotional state when you’re with them. Yet when people do this with God, you call them idiots.

What’s wrong with believing in something bigger? That someone else does? Or that you can’t?

Yeah, there’s some psychos out there who hunt witches and kill babies in the name of religion, but then, there’s people who do it in the name of completely godless motives as well. It’s stupid how you don’t decry them. You say you just want truth; what so many of you really want so deep down you don’t even realize it, is for nobody to believe in God just because you can’t.

God is love. This is the entire reason the Bible and Christianity was ever formed. And I plan to live and write with that in mind from here on out.

[inspired by this, which was inspired by this]

Are aliens real? How about what they could be…demons? Are they real?

In one of unreasonablefaith.com’s latest posts, authored by guest blogger and atheist Jesse

Galef from friendlyatheist.com, Galef takes on the issues of aliens and their abducting of humans.

It’s all in your head

Galef writes:

…while reports of alien abductions are a relatively new phenomenon, the psychological reasons behind such hallucinations are not.  However, instead of blaming aliens, people used to blame the bad boys of the supernatural world: Demons.

In “alien abductions”, people tend to report waking up, feeling pinned down and unable to move, seeing visions of visitors, and often experiencing sexual stimulation. These are the familiar symptoms of sleep paralysis and hypnopompic hallucinations.

During sleep, the brain stops controlling the muscles – that’s why we don’t flail around in our sleep as we act out our dreams. Sometimes when woken from a deep sleep, the brain doesn’t immediately retake control, leaving the poor person both awake and unable to move (This has happened to me, and I was lucid enough to recognize what was happening.  It was a fascinating experience.)   It can be particularly difficult to breathe.   When woken up from a deep sleep, a person is also prone to vivid hallucinations. This combination explains the commonly heard reports of alien abductions.

I’ve had similar experiences. In all honesty, I didn’t know if it was demonic activity or aliens or whatever, and I really didn’t care. What I do know is that all I really had to do was breathe a quick prayer – “Jesus” – and everything left.

(Also interesting: while I talk in my sleep ALL THE TIME – I literally had a camp counselor once check to make sure I wasn’t on my cell phone after hours –  when I have “demon dreams,” I can’t get a word out.)

But let’s go with Galef’s analysis. I can roll with that. It’s all just my mind and body operating as wired. My crediting such phenomena to demonic tomfoolery is just a result of my personal beliefs and is thusly irrational. That’s a logical psychological argument.

Galef concludes with:

John Henry Fuseli’s painting “The Nightmare” shows an evil-looking imp sitting on a woman’s chest while she lies in bed. Psychologists now believe it to be an early representation of sleep paralysis.  It’s telling that the same evidence can fit seamlessly into countless supernatural  theories.

How cool is it that we can look at ancient experiences people thought were supernatural and explain them in scientific ways?  Epilepsy, schizophrenia, sleep paralysis, oxygen/sensory/nutritional deprivation… The gaps keep getting smaller and there’s less and less room for God.

Again, I can agree. What else did people have to lean on in the late 1700s – when Fuseli’s painting came out – than explaining such things by way of the supernatural?

But to what do we attribute the experiencing of demons when fully awake and coherent?

‘In Real Life’

While I’ve never seen demons while fully awake, I’ve felt…something. Sometimes it’s while I’m alone, sometimes while around other people. It’s a sense I get, then my skin runs ice-cold and covered by gooseflesh.

But then, I get goosebumps watching movie trailers with epic music, so let’s do away with my own personal experience.

In his book Beyond Belief, Josh Hamilton tells of seeing a demon once while on the baseball field, then again in his hotel room. But then, Hamilton may have been coked out of his mind, as his book is entirely about his struggle to overcome cocaine and myriad other drugs through the power of Jesus Christ. Rubbish, the skeptics say.

Well, that leaves me with another personal account, I suppose. But this one is based off a friend of mine to whom lying and exaggeration are more foreign than China.

Now, his name’s Brandon, but it’s the Brandon from this story, not my imaginary friend Brandon I made up for myself with my same name.

It was a group of us, maybe six or seven, and we were praying after youth group. While we were praying, Brandon opened his eyes to see, by his own recollection, the figure of what could be best described as a ghostly woman, all white, hovering over someone else in the room, her hands clenched around the girl’s head. The woman-thing turned, looked directly at Brandon.

As most of us probably would in such a situation, Brandon snapped his eyes shut and tried not to cry.

What’s the point?

Now, what I’m about to say will likely make me sound like a crazy person to the skeptical of you reading this. (If what I’ve been writing already hasn’t.)

But assuming the existence of Satan, let’s imagine what his purpose is. If he’s at war with God, and God created the earth and the people who live on it, what are they fighting for? More than anything else, they want God’s most precious creation: they whom Jesus Christ lived and died for.

Now, if Satan exists, then he doesn’t care if people love him or follow him. Some do, and it’s weird and a little bit scary. But that’s not what Satan needs.

All Satan needs is for the world to forget what God looks like. To forget he’s real. All he needs is for people to find something else to believe in.

The skeptics and atheists believe in science. Others believe in other religions. Others believe in other people.

I’m all for science. It’s allowed for some tremendous discoveries and enabled us to live longer and healthier lives. And it even explains away things like demon dreams as nothing more than one’s mind and brain short-circuiting slightly as they disconnect or reconnect in between sleep.

But if Satan’s real, then he wouldn’t want it to be obvious. He’d do little things like scare us in our sleep then use science to explain it away. He’d operate within the boundaries of what we know as “science” so we can explain it and thus prove our own superior intelligence and how exquisitely powerful our own minds are.

God? Fah. Forget God. If my nightmares aren’t demons then there are no demons, thus there is no god against which they fight.

Science is to some their god and religion unto itself, worshipped by many as savior.

It was Wednesday, April 16, 2003. I’d turned 16 years old two days before. Since I had baseball practice Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays — if we didn’t have a game — Wednesdays were the only days I could get to the DMV and take my license test.

The drive went great. I talked with my DMV officer the whole time. He seemed like a somewhat nice guy, albeit a bit on the brusque side. Had a couple of kids, if I recall correctly. Red hair, cropped in a tight, nearly-military style haircut.

We pulled back into the parking lot. There’d been literally zero problems. I didn’t run any red lights. I’d skillfully avoided a pair of daredevil squirrels. I’d even remembered not to cut across the parking lot, recalling a conversation with a friend of mine from school who’d told me that when she did that her instructor cautioned her to never do that in real life or you could get a ticket.

I turned, grinning huge, to get his approval.

“You did not pass.”

What!? I thought. My face felt like it caught fire.

“What!?” I half-yelled, half-yelped.

“You did not pass. You failed to come to a complete stop at the stop sign on Thomas Langston Road.”

The cruel irony of this was that I lived literally one minute away from that exact stop sign. I didn’t remember not completely stopping….but then I couldn’t remember completely stopping, either. Still….I hadn’t come close to getting in a wreck. I’d had my hands at 10-and-2. I’d gone maybe two miles per hour over the speed limit. (Something else ironic considering the tickets I’d accrue over the next few years.)

But I’d done the impossible. I’d failed my driver’s license test. I’d return to school driven by my parents tomorrow. No, worse — I’d have to call my friend to pick me up for church this afternoon!

It was, to say the least, traumatic.

But I bring all of that up to set up this video. Maybe I failed my first test, but I really, really want to know how this chick ever got her license, parking like this.

Lil’ bro Logan, a junior at Greenfield School in Wilson, N.C., plays his first game of the basketball season tonight.

The first game of any season’s always a somewhat big deal, but tonight’s a bit more so for us Sneeds.

See, Logan loves basketball. Let me rephrase that. Logan and basketball are like Cooper, our dog, and his ball. If playing at a Gonzaga or a North Carolina — Logan’s two favorite schools — are the tennis ball, then Logan’s Cooper. He will do and does everything he knows to do to get the thing.

Also, Logan is the first Sneed child (there are five of us) to ever leave the school from which I graduated. And he was supposed to be their stud this year. And the coach was not happy when he found out Logan was leaving.

He left because Greenfield is a great basketball school with a great coach in Rob Salter, and he’s like Cooper chasing a ball. Plus, the people at Greenfield are awesome people. I interviewed a number of them for my book about Anthony Atkinson. Quality, quality human beings.

Lil’ bro got written up yesterday in the Wilson local paper, which is kinda cool, too. Some highlights of the article:

Head coach Rob Salter will have an assortment of weapons as the Knights, 31-6 last year, embark on one of their most ambitious seasons in his 12-year tenure.

“This is the most talented team I’ve ever had,” Salter said. “I’ve got the most seniors. We’ve got the chance to be very, very good.”

…

[Logan] Sneed, who comes from Greenville Christian, earns praise for his heady play.

“He understands the game so well and is an extremely good passer and a good shooter,” Salter said. “He’s come in and been one of our hardest workers all year.”

[full article if you want to read it]

I’m probably overreacting, but a great white freakin’ shark was spotted off the coast of Wrightsville Beach. And I’m probably a moron, but I thought great whites only lived over in the Pacific Ocean or somewhere else very far — and thus, safe — distance away from here.

Whatever good I’d done conquering my fear of the ocean just got obliterated. I’m never surfing again.

Steve Boehling said he was in awe when he came across the largest ocean creature he had ever seen while fishing about a mile off the coast of Wrightsville Beach. Apparently that large creature lurking off the coast of New Hanover County was a great white shark.

“First I saw a fin, and the first thing I thought was it was another dolphin,” he said. But then he and his fishing partner Mike Ross pulled their boat alongside the object and noticed it was just a foot or two shorter than their 18-foot boat. He said the shark had no markings and had a white underbelly and very large teeth.

“I’ve never seen a shark that size anywhere,” said Boehling…

[via, full article]

The past few weeks, I’ve been reading a few blogs by atheists and skeptics and listening to others. I’ve been watching The Atheism Tapes (2004) by Jonathon Miller. This interest in the other side of belief in God began my junior year of college, when I initially stumbled across Daniel Florien’s blog, unreasonablefaith.com. The past few days, I’ve been wrestling hardcore with my faith. Why in the world do I believe what I do when there’s so much logic against it?

I’m a highly logical person, always up for a good debate, and many atheists/skeptics/agnostics are efficiently intelligent when it comes to formulating and articulating logical arguments against the improbable.

Some, like Daniel Florien, “just need evidence.”

Verbatim from an email Daniel* wrote me:

I’ll believe anything happily as long as there is evidence to support it.

*Daniel, just for the record, is a super nice guy.

Other skeptics focus on the inconsistencies throughout the Bible. Some focus on the Bible’s fallibility as an historical record. And the list continues, long and rich and frighteningly accurate.

The most mind-bending aspect of these skeptics is how many followers they had. How many comments fall under each blog post. How many daily views (tens and hundreds of thousands) their blogs have.

These arguments, these demands for evidence, and the logical reasons behind those arguments and demands, have done a number on my mind and soul the past week or two. My faith has dissipated. I’ll share more of these arguments at another time, but they were enough to have me very seriously questioning the legitimacy of believing God’s existence.

But as I studied their arguments and contrasted them with what I believed, and as I realized the origins of their distaste and disdain for Christianity, I felt hope. I also had something of a vision last Sunday afternoon that has greatly contributed, a vision I’ll also possibly share in a later post.

Someone once said, “Choose you this day whom you will serve.” I’d never had a specific moment in which I’d said, “I choose God.” But yesterday morning, that’s what I said. I said, I decide to believe in God.

The relationship between us and God is far different than a relationship between us and another human being. We sit down to dinner with and can see, smell, touch, hear another human being without any question that it was them to whom we spoke. We can’t do that with God. We can have feelings and emotional experiences that may or may not be God.*

*That, too, is another blog for another day, however.

In exploring a relationship with God, it’s not only okay to have periods of unbelief – it’s healthy. For me, it was even necessary. It’s unhealthy to live life based off emotional experiences. At some point there must be something concrete beneath emotional experiences. My concrete is my decision.

Since our relationship with God is going to be so difficult to believe – difficult for us, personally, to believe about ourselves – it’s going to go through times in which we don’t believe. I didn’t believe in God for about an hour yesterday. I know, how heretical does that sound? But someone else said that if we seek, we’ll find.*

*That’s also a psychological fact: you’re going to find what you’re looking for. But it’s also exactly what a lot of skeptics have done, too. They find fallibility in something they don’t want to believe in.

I don’t know exactly why I want to believe. I know that to most skeptics this makes me sounds disillusioned. Colin McGinn, an English philosopher whom Jonathon Miller interviewed for The Atheism Tapes, implied that many who believe in God need him as a crutch. He implies that we’re lonely by nature, and believing in a loving god who genuinely cares about us and interacts with our lives, fills a void. He doesn’t say God fills a void; he says the belief does.

That’s not why I want to believe.

Honestly, I don’t have a great profound reason for making that decision. The “best” thought I had was simply, Life’s more beautiful with God. Such a flowery thing for a macho, manly-man writer to say, I know, but that’s really what I thought.

I choose to believe because I believe that there is truth to be found about God.

I believe many within Christianity have gotten much of it all wrong. I believe that some days, I want no part of being a Christian.*

*Also another blog for another day.

But I love God. I love Jesus Christ. And that’s all that really matters to me right now.

I’m going to end this here, but it will be continued. I challenge everyone to challenge your faith and your beliefs. I’m going to continue to do so. It’s a little scary, yeah. But it’s healthy for you. You need to know why you believe what you believe.

 

U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement about the shootings in Fort Hood, Texas... REUTERS/Jason Reed

“No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice — in this world and the next.”

 

President Barack Obama, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009, in his speech at Fort Hood, Texas, where 13 people were slain by Maj. Nidal Hasan, the military psychiatrist accused of the killings. Reportedly, Hasan, a Muslim, went on his shooting rampage last week in the name of Allah.

[quote and picture via]

Jeff Pearlman captures the bane of sportswriters’ existence in his latest blog. You can visit that link or read the part that inspired this post of mine below.

Growing up, I loved two things more than anything else: writing and sports. As my younger brother Kramer (yes, Kramer) will tell you, I sucked at sports until around junior high, so when I was at my youngest, writing was my escape. I’ll never forget creating the Super Dude series while grounded for a week for some sin I don’t even remember now.

As it came time to decide where to go for college and what to get a degree in while I was there, we decided on Division II Barton College because Coach Wilkinson offered me a walk-on role and the school had a mass communications department with a concentration in print/electronic journalism. Having read Sports Illustrated all those years, I decided that’s what I’d become. A writer for Sports Illustrated.

While in college, I got some awesome breaks via my adviser, Rick Stewart, who still teaches there today. He hired me, at 20 years old, as the sports editor for his four newspapers. Everything was lining up; I was getting all the training I could ask for; the path to my future couldn’t have been more clear.

Then the print industry went from around average to floundering with the Internet revolution and the Hurricane Katrina of economic storms.  And I began realized that I loved writing, not just sports writing.

So what I’m trying to do with my life is put myself in a position to write real stories, not game stories. I’ll cover games when I cover athletes, sure. My goal in life, though, is to become a full-time author and freelancer. I would love to do what Pearlman does for a living. I have a different writing style from his, and I’m writing some fiction, but as far as life tracks, his and my goal* aren’t too different.

*Speaking of which, part of that goal includes becoming a college professor so I can have a steady economic foundation from which to pursue my writing. This means I must take the GRE on November 17, as I’m applying to UNC-Chapel Hill’s mass communications masters program in December. The GRE looks a lot harder than I originally thought. If you’re the praying type, please pray for me? Thanks.

Part of Pearlman’s blog:

Sports locker rooms suck. They truly, truly, truly, truly suck. First off, they smell worse than you can imagine. Second, 99 percent of the athletes don’t want to talk to you and, even if they did want to talk to you, have nothing interesting to say. And, lastly, the whole thing is bulls•••, and anyone who has done this long enough knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s the dumbest ritual I’ve ever seen, and it goes exactly—exactly—like this:

(We’ll use a losing locker room as an example here)

Step One: The media members charge into the locker room. Half-naked players pretend they’re very upset after a loss, so they speak in hushed tones, don’t make much eye contact, etc. When a needed player looks up, all the media folk charge over. This generally included anywhere from three to seven cameramen (with their perfectly coiffed reporters), a couple of web geeks, three or four radio guys, the, oh, four beat writers, four more columnists and a couple of out-of-town writers. The TV guys usually go first, followed by radio, and their questions always—always—suck. Sometimes, they’re not even questions.

• “Tough game out there. Talk about the fourth quarter …”

• “That throw in the first quarter looked like a miscue between you and Bobby …”

• “Was this a statement game?”

After approximately 10 minutes of that mind-numbing inanity, the TV and radio boobs seek out, as a group, the next brain-dead player to accost with stupid questions they hear week after week. The print guys stick around, hoping to get so-and-so player to open up a bit now that it’s just them, a pad, a pen and a small little recorder. Back in the 1990s, this worked. Now, thanks to media training and warnings not to trust the press, it rarely does.

Step Two: After 20 minutes of nonsense, a team media representative hollars, “Time to wrap it up guys!” At this point, we scramble to any lingering players, hoping to snag one last goodie. A tight end might tell you he thinks things will turn around next week. A quarterback will suggest the offense can only improve. A linebacker farts in your direction, then laughs.

Step Three: I leap from a bridge.

Not my story, but I can’t find where I’ve read it before, so this is my best attempt at telling it from memory:

One night a baby was crying as babies always do, and his parents, groaning, awoke, debating about if they should go quiet him and which should be the one to do so.

Then the baby stopped, suddenly, as he’d never done before. Concerned, the father walked to the bedroom, stopping when he saw his three-year-old daughter standing beside her brother’s crib, cooing at him and stroking his head.

Then she asked a question: “Baby brother, can you tell me again what God is like? I’m already starting to forget.”

Many of my thoughts on Christianity are inspired by reading atheist/agnostic/skeptic blogs, such as unreasonablefaith.com by Daniel Florien.

I’ve had many sleep-deprived nights wrestling with questions to which such writing gives rise, but it’s very healthy for us to read outside of our traditional sources of information. It’s healthy for us to be challenged, to doubt, to question, to even fear that we may be wrong.

I’ve been there. Had those doubts. Felt that fear.

But I haven’t left. And it wasn’t until just recently I realized why.

The only real problem many people have is how insanely difficult it is to believe in the supernatural. That is it.

I only know a few things, and sort of know a few others, in regard to the evidence for and against Jesus Christ. But I know that there does exist historical evidence beyond the Bible for his existence, that he claimed to be God, that he led a revolution of his own kind, that he was killed for that revolution, and that he came back to life by his own power three days after being as brutally slaughtered as a human being can be.

In the words of Andy Stanley, I’ll go with the guy who raised himself from the dead.

But why? Am I just crazy?

Maybe a little bit. But I began to find my evidence also in the lives of others, in the lives of people I’ve met over the past few months and people I’ve known for more than a decade. The evidence of Jesus Christ is stacked high in the changed lives of individuals who don’t “follow him” for obligations’ sake or for peace’s sake. They follow him because they’ve found what is nigh impossible for many others to see: they’ve discovered his love.

I will begin writing about those people on this blog. Some wish to remain anonymous, so I’ll give them pseudonyms. But I’ll tell all their stories as I’d write a profile for a magazine.

[inspired by]

I somehow rediscovered my old MySpace page today and on it, some old blogs I’d written like, two years ago. Finding old thoughts like these are one of the reasons why I blog.

It’s really cool to look at what I wrote then, how I lived between then and now, and how it all ties in together. I lived the way I wrote about wanting to live in this blog. Not every day, and not perfectly, but I’ve lived it. And that’s really cool to look back on.

This is why I recommend journaling, too. It’s good to look back and relive your thoughts, so that you can see how you’ve grown.

The blog:

Ever wonder why you believe what you believe?

Why you feel what you feel towards certain types of people, about certain subjects, for people that experience certain things?

Do you ever wonder what is real in yourself?  What is really you down there in your soul, where nobody else can touch you?  Who you really are beneath everything?

I know not everybody thinks about all these things to the extent some of the rest of us do. I’ll be honest, there are days when I envy those of you that can go without analyzing every aspect of your life.  It seems as though it would keep life very simple, and I am happy for you for having that. For real.

So I’m writing this for those of us who feel like we have the inability to simplify, who find a need to analyze 98% of our lives.  Do we drink, or not drink.  Have sex, not have sex.  Party, not party.  Do drugs, don’t do drugs.  Play sports, don’t play sports.  Eat healthy, eat like crap.  Etcetera, etcetera.

If I were to be completely honest, 98% of the 98% that I analyze about myself, I am not sure why I believe it most days.  I don’t know why I think things are wrong that I think are wrong.  I don’t know how I have become the way I am today.  I don’t know why I question every decision I make, every thought I have, every action I do.

What do I know, then?

Very little.

I know I love to love people, but have been doing a really crappy job of it since I got to college.

I know I love to play baseball, and that is the main reason I came to Barton, but I don’t always believe it is what I am supposed to be doing.

I know I question what I am supposed to be doing way too much.

And I know that I love to write, to let out my thoughts.

What’s my point in writing this out, much less publishing it for you to read?

To help, if there is help needed.  To relate to you, if you relate to me.

To do something with these thoughts other than let them roam around my brain.  My brain is tired of them.

It is not a bad thing to question my personal beliefs.  It gets unhealthy when I let my questioning and doubts stress me out, when I let them change my personality and my attitude, which I have way too much these past couple of years.

But questioning is what brings growth, brings realization.

I am a writer.  I was born to question things.  To analyze.  To think.

Something I read recently in the Bible basically said that if something is sin to you, and you do it, it is a sin, but if it is not sin in your mind, and you do it, then you are not sinning.  That is an extremely cut-and-dry version of that passage, and I need to study it a little more.  I think it was talking about a few specific matters of that day and age that people were wondering about.  But that obviously makes me question what I have been taught growing up and question what I believe now.

I believe in Jesus Christ.  I believe in everything that he came for.

I believe many Christians don’t have a clue what that was.

And I believe that many non-Christians can’t stand Christians or the idea of Jesus they have presented because of that.

I believe he came for love.  Friendship.  Strength.  Grace.  Humble confidence.

Jesus Christ came to show us how to live in the best way possible.  Not to show us how to not do everything wrong.

It’s so pointless to try to live without making mistakes.  To try to be perfect.

Instead, try to live perfectly – perfectly free to be who you are, and learn from what mistakes you might make.

That’s who I am trying to be.

Not saying you are supposed to be me.  Just sharing my thoughts that I think might help you.

And writing them out to get them out of my brain.

I believe I will be imperfect throughout this life.

But I believe I know a perfect Savior, and he is helping me live my life perfectly the way it was meant to be lived.

Free.

Imagine with me this sequence of scenes, if you will….

A man’s driving. It’s dark. 11:17 shows on his car clock. Green light from the stoplight in the intersection he’s driving through glints off his wedding band, silver, on his left ring fingers. He parks. A bar’s across the street.

The man looks at his ring, takes a deep breath. Pulls it off, puts it in his pocket. Goes into the bar.

He spends roughly an hour and a half there with his friends. They keep calling him Mac or McKenzie and buying drinks for flirty girls. The girls take a liking to Mac, for he’s a good-looking man.

What’s our perception thus far? He’s crap, right? Apologies for the vulgarity, but some of us, were we to witness this from 11:17 until now, would be thinking, What a piece of s***.

Then Mac says his good-evenings and drives home, no women joining him in his car. Gets in bed. The ring’s back on now. He sleeps.

Still not a great perception. Great, he didn’t cheat on his wife, the sorry bastard. Man, this guy needs Jesus, others are probably thinking.

In our next scene it’s the next morning and Mac’s driving. It’s 6:17, according to the car clock. Bags under Mac’s eyes indicate he didn’t sleep well. The light from the rising sun glints off his ring.

He stops the car, steps out. Ring’s still on. He walks through a cemetery’s gates, sits on the ground in front of a tombstone. The name: Sarah McKenzie. Date: 1983-2009.

Mac pulls out a picture. It’s worn, clearly having been pulled out and looked at many times before. It’s Mac, wearing a tux, and he’s getting kissed by a girl wearing a bridal gown.

Mac weeps, then whimpers, “God, I miss her.”

Pastor James T. Johnson of The Olive Branch Church in Leland, about twenty minutes or so from Wilmington, where I’ve been living the past four months (and which feels incredibly like where I’d like to call “home” for good some day), was arrested today on sex offense charges. Specifically: two counts of first-degree sex offense with a child and one count of attempted first-degree rape of a child, according to the Wilmington StarNews, which obtained its information from the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office.

The full story is below, after the break.

Stories like these rip my heart from my chest. Not because I’m angry at the pastor in question. Because there’s no telling what’s really going on. I’m hesitant to speak out on this because of that fact, but it’s a no-win situation for everyone involved now. If he’s guilty, the ramifications will be horrible for him and his family, and what he’s done is horrid and despicable.

But even if he’s innocent, and been set up or framed for reasons only heaven and hell could know right now, his family’s life and his reputation are wrecked. People never forget allegations like this, true or false. His family now lives a nightmare.

It’s such a heartbreakingly broken world, this world in which we live.

I would love an opportunity to sit down and speak with Pastor Johnson and see what he has to say. I might try. Such insidious accusations against men in such leadership positions always astound me.

Leland | A 46-year-old pastor from Leland has been charged with felony sex crimes against a child, officials said.

Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested James T. Johnson of Leland on Tuesday, according to a detective with the office. Johnson is the pastor of The Olive Branch church on Mt. Misery Road in Leland.

The detective declined to further discuss the case. Johnson faces three counts of indecent liberties with a child, two counts of first-degree sex offense with a child and one count of attempted first-degree rape of a child, according to the sheriff’s office.

Johnson was taken to the Brunswick County jail and held on a $250,000 secured bond.

On Wednesday night about 20 cars were parked outside the church – a white building with a temporary red-and-white-striped canopy out front.

Bobby McKnight, The Olive Branch’s assistant pastor, said those inside were holding a prayer meeting in support of Johnson and his family.

Much of the church’s congregation has known Johnson faced an allegation of sexual misconduct since it surfaced four months ago, McKnight said. But they didn’t think anything was going to come of it and were surprised when criminal charges were filed this week.

McKnight said he didn’t know the details of the allegation, but that he doesn’t think it involves anyone at the church. If sheriff’s deputies had come to the church they would have found people who defended Johnson, McKnight said, but they have not interviewed people at the church.

Johnson founded The Olive Branch church, which moved into its current facility two years ago, McKnight said. He also said Johnson helps out in the community, especially through the church’s food pantry and occasional yard-sale-style giveaways.

“If he’s in the wrong, then he’s in the wrong,” McKnight said. “We’re not hiding anything. But nobody here believes it.”

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I know, it’s mean to make fun of anyone, especially semi-pro football players because they’re just playing for the passion of the game and all that good stuff.

All that aside, it’s not often you see a guy tackle a teammate as said teammate is appearing headed for a touchdown off a punt return.

Here’s the clip:

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As for pictures....it wasn't my job for the day, but while I was waiting for everyone to file out of the access road I was ordered -- by Marines -- to pull over to the side of the road. Getting bored, I pulled out my camera and snapped a few pictures just for practice. This guy was my favorite.

I was covering the 2009 Carolina Sports Medicine Battleship Half-Marathon (and Bay Six 5K) at the USS North Carolina on Sunday. I just needed a standard 450-word story about the event, some of the more interesting people running in it. I never am quite sure how to go about handling such assignments, in all honesty. There’s loads and loads of people. There were literally thousands of runners. Who the heck do I talk to?

Well, of course I talked to the overall winner and the first female finisher, and I got to talk to another girl who ran and the race director. (Ed Fore’s a quality human being, by the way, he was a fantastic help in the week leading up to my covering the event.) So then I’m wandering around, getting mad that I wore jeans because it was really hot and really swampy because for some reason Battleship Park always floods a little bit in certain areas, and I was all up in those certain areas.

But then I see this guy coming down the home stretch. Everyone’s been cheering a bit for the runners as they finish, and Mr. Fore’s been chatting them up on his megaphone, but this guy struck the crowd silent. He appeared in his sixties, and he was hobbling a bit….and he was covered head to shins in his own blood.

He’d fallen down about two miles from the finish. (A half-marathon is 13.1 miles.) He’d tried to pass someone, gotten cut off — an accident — and tripped on the roadside tread that makes your car rumble if you drift too far. He spilt, horribly, gashing open his forehead and taking about twelve layers of skin off his knees.

After he finished, he was immediately swarmed by race officials asking questions and checking on him, then directed to the medic’s tent. I kind of eased my way over there….how do you talk to someone who’s busted open their head?

After the doctors worked on him for a minute and I’d eavesdropped enough to know he was in an OK mood, I walked into the tent. “Man,” I said. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he replied. He sounded fine, too, if not just a bit embarrassed. “I’m alright.”

“What happened?”

And he told me what I just told you. Then I told him who I was and asked if I could write about him for the paper. When I found out he’d been bleeding for two miles of his run, I knew I had a great guy to talk to. What he told me ran today with the race story.* I would have loved a chance to write 1,000 words about him.

* I hate having to write just 450 words to be honest. I mean, the story came out fine. It wasn’t supposed to be anything especially compelling or even riveting, just your standard gamer, really. But I hate how cramped such stories feel. I love getting to know people, getting into their stories, finding entertaining ways to write those stories. I love letting a story sprawl out a little bit, get some room to breathe.

Writing is just fun, and reporting is where I get all my material for these stories. I always report more than I’ll ever have room to write about in a newspaper in this day and age, which is why I’m doing all I can to break into magazines.

Anyway, as I was leaving O’Connor said, “Glad your photographer’s not with you.”

“Actually, I’ve got my camera in the car,” I said with a huge grin. “Want me to — “

“No, no, no. Get out of here!”

(He was nice, though. For real. Real quality human being, David O’Connor. Liked talking with him a lot.)

Planned Parenthood has been a part of Abby Johnson’s life for the past eight years; that is until last month, when Abby resigned. Johnson said she realized she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure.

“I just thought I can’t do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that’s it,” said Jonhson.

She handed in her resignation October 6. Johnson worked as the Bryan Planned Parenthood Director for two years.

According to Johnson, the non-profit was struggling under the weight of a tough economy, and changing it’s business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion.

“It seemed like maybe that’s not what a lot of people were believing any more because that’s not where the money was. The money wasn’t in family planning, the money wasn’t in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that,” said Johnson.

Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian church goer recently became convicted about.

“I feel so pure in heart (since leaving). I don’t have this guilt, I don’t have this burden on me anymore that’s how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion.”

Johnson now supports the Coalition For Life, the pro-life group with a building down the street from Planned Parenthood. Coalition volunteers can regularly be seen praying on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. Johnson has been meeting with the coalition’s executive director, Shawn Carney, and has prayed with volunteers outside Planned Parenthood.

On Friday both Johnson and the Coalition For Life were issued temporary restraining orders filed by Planned Parenthood.

Rochelle Tafolla, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson issued the following statement: “We regret being forced to turn to the courts to protect the safety and confidentiality of our clients and staff, however, in this instance it is absolutely necessary.”

The temporary restraining order contends that Planned Parenthood would be irreparably harmed by the disclosure of certain information, but does not bar Johnson or Coalition For Life volunteers from the premises.

As of Sunday evening, neither Johnson nor Carney had seen the complaint filed against them that prompted the restraining order.

A hearing about the order has been set for November 10.

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OK. We’re beyond the point in society where we expect product placement in our TV programs and movies. But in news programs? Seriously? There are so many ethical issues around this that it’s dizzying.

Basically, some news program sold out, advertising for McDonald’s in the middle of the newscast. It’s just….well, just watch.

I always knew soft drinks were horrible for you. (I also know that Mountain Dew is, to borrow from an old friend, the nectar of heaven.) But I didn’t realize exactly the extent to which their horribleness reached.

Many thanks to Dr. Mao with Yahoo! Health for laying it all out there. Read, but with caution: you’ll probably never want another soda again.

Soda, pop, cola, soft drink — whatever you call it, it is one of the worst beverages that you could be drinking for your health. As the debate for whether to put a tax on the sale of soft drinks continues, you should know how they affect your body so that you can make an informed choice on your own.
Soft drinks are hard on your health
Soft drinks contain little to no vitamins or other essential nutrients. However, it is what they do contain that is the problem: caffeine, carbonation, simple sugars — or worse, sugar substitutes — and often food additives such as artificial coloring, flavoring, and preservatives.

A lot of research has found that consumption of soft drinks in high quantity, especially by children, is responsible for many health problems that includetooth decay, nutritional depletion, obesity, type-2 diabetes, and heart disease.

Why the sugar in soft drinks isn’t so sweet
Most soft drinks contain a high amount of simple sugars. The USDA recommendation of sugar consumption for a 2,000-calorie diet is a daily allotment of 10 teaspoons of added sugars. Many soft drinks contain more than this amount!

Just why is too much sugar so unhealthy? Well, to start, let’s talk about what happens to you as sugar enters your body. When you drink sodas that are packed with simple sugars, the pancreas is called upon to produce and release insulin, a hormone that empties the sugar in your blood stream into all the tissues and cells for usage. The result of overindulging in simple sugar is raised insulin levels. Raised blood insulin levels beyond the norm can lead to depression of the immune system, which in turn weakens your ability to fight disease.

Something else to consider is that most of the excess sugar ends up being stored as fat in your body, which results in weight gain and elevates risk forheart disease and cancer. One study found that when subjects were given refined sugar, their white blood cell count decreased significantly for several hours afterwards. Another study discovered that rats fed a high-sugar diet had a substantially elevated rate ofbreast cancer when compared to rats on a regular diet.

The health effects of diet soda
You may come to the conclusion that diet or sugar-free soda is a better choice. However, one study discovered that drinking one or more soft drinks a day — and it didn’t matter whether it was diet or regular — led to a 30% greater chance of weight gain around the belly.

Diet soda is filled with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, sucralose, or saccharin. These artificial sweeteners pose a threat to your health. Saccharin, for instance, has been found to be carcinogenic, and studies have found that it produced bladder cancer in rats.

Aspartame, commonly known as nutrasweet, is a chemical that stimulates the brain to think the food is sweet. It breaks down into acpartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol at a temperature of 86 degrees. (Remember, your stomach is somewhere around 98 degrees.) An article put out by the University of Texas found that aspartame has been linked to obesity. The process of stimulating the brain causes more cravings for sweets and leads to carbohydrate loading.

Carbonation depletes calcium
Beverages with bubbles contain phosphoric acid, which can severely deplete the blood calcium levels; calcium is a key component of the bone matrix. With less concentration of calcium over a long time, it can lower deposition rates so that bone mass and density suffer. This means that drinking sodas and carbonated water increases your risk of osteoporosis.

Add in the caffeine usually present in soft drinks, and you are in for even more trouble. Caffeine can deplete the body’s calcium, in addition to stimulating your central nervous system and contributing to stress, a racing mind, and insomnia.

Skip the soda and go for:

• Fresh water
Water is a vital beverage for good health. Each and every cell needs water to perform its essential functions. Since studies show that tap water is filled with contaminants, antibiotics, and a number of other unhealthy substances, consider investing in a quality carbon-based filter for your tap water. To find out more about a high-performance filtration system, click here.

On the go? Try using a stainless steel thermos or glass bottle, filled with filtered water. Enhance the flavor of your water with a refreshing infusion of basil, mint leaves, and a drop of honey.

• Fruit Juice
If you are a juice drinker, try watering down your juice to cut back on the sugar content. Buy a jar of organic 100% juice, especially cranberry, acai, pomegranate, and then dilute three parts filtered water to one part juice. You will get a subtle sweet taste and the benefit of antioxidants. After a couple of weeks, you will no longer miss the sweetness of sugary concentrated juices.

• Tea
Tea gently lifts your energy and has numerous health benefits. Black, green, white, and oolong teas all contain antioxidant polyphenols. In fact, tea ranks as high or higher than many fruits and vegetables on the ORAC scale, the score that measures antioxidant potential of plant-based foods.

Herbal tea does not have the same antioxidant properties, though it is still a great beverage choice with other health benefits, such as inducing calming and relaxing effects.

If tea doesn’t satisfy your sweet tooth, try adding cinnamon or a little honey, which has important health benefits that refined sugar lacks. For a selection of healthy teas that promote total body wellness, click here. Drink up!

I hope you find the ways and means to avoid soft drinks. I invite you to visit often and share your own personal health and longevity tips with me.

May you live long, live strong, and live happy!

–Dr. Mao

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Meant to post this the other day, but got distracted by shiny objects.

My theory? Kid had serious buyer’s remorse. But oh well. No big deal.

Man’s best friend? Not when he runs up your credit card.

Meet Oscar, faithful companion of Greg, a reader of top gaming blog Kotaku. As a one year-old Lab/Hound, Oscar has a bit of a chewing problem. Shoes, underwear, blinds, and pillows have all been targets for his gnashers, but when he turned his attention to Greg’s Xbox 360 controller one night, an expensive (and immensely unlikely) sequence of events ensued.

As Oscar chomped down on the wireless controller, he successfully turned on the machine, navigated to the Xbox’s online store and purchased 5,000 Microsoft Points, at a cost of over $60. That was charged directly to Greg’s credit card, as Greg discovered when he woke up.

“What are the odds that he chews on the right buttons, in the right order and moves the stick in the right directions to navigate and purchase points?” asks Greg. “1 in a billion? More?”

Perhaps, Greg, perhaps. Maybe Oscar just wanted to pimp out his avatar, rent a movie or two, and play some Shadow Complex. We’ll probably never know.

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You know, I’ve never really even tried to write short stories — as in, fiction — until recently. I always thought whatever fiction I’d write would just be books. I’m not sure why I thought that. Maybe I thought it was too much work to make up a bunch of stuff if it wasn’t going to be a book-length piece of literary heaven. Because, you know, I am the best writer in the history of writing.

But I’ve had a few ideas for fiction lately and just started writing them out and you know, it’s fun. It’s almost like a release, kind of like how you feel after a good workout. And it’s easier to work towards their completion because you know it’s not going to be this year-long project. You get it written, maybe over a week or two, then revise, revise, revise until it’s amazing.

Of course, I have like, three or four half-finished right now. I don’t know if I’ll pursue getting them published anywhere or anything, but at the worst I’ll just throw them up here and maybe put them up for sale on Amazon. Can you even do that? I dunno. But it could be fun.

Alright, that’s all.

Mark Sanchez, the 22-year-old former USC QB who signed with the New York Jets and has played superbly for them most of the season thus far, was caught by CBS’s camera putting down a hot dog — with mustard at that — during a timeout in the midst of New York’s blowout of the Oakland Raiders this past weekend.

To apologize for….I’m not exactly sure what….Sanchez donated 500 dogs and 500 burgers to a homeless shelter.

It’s an amusing and kind gesture on Sanchez’s part. It’s sad, really, that it’s come to ill quarterbacks not being allowed to eat on the sidelines. Our society’s weird.

But I like the kid. Has a great head on his shoulders, interviews well, has tremendous potential. I’m looking forward to seeing how he turns out a few years from now.

The postgame interview:

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(An offshoot from my previous blog. Thoughts I’ve had for a long time.)

To make this post extra epic, start playing this video (after clicking Keep Reading) and listen to the song while you read.

(Click Keep Reading to read this blog.)

One day Jesus Christ was debating some of the intellectuals of his day when one asked, “What is the most important commandment?”

(See the whole passage here.)

There were written over 600 laws in the Torah. (The Torah is the first five Old Testament books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. No. the TV show wasn’t based off the book. I don’t think.)

There are also The Ten Commandments, recorded in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.

Over the years, Christianity has long come under fire for its citation and following of many of these commandments, namely The Ten. Lately, the most famous quoted laws from the Torah are those condemning homosexuality, as mentioned in my earlier blog.

As I mentioned in that blog, Jesus Christ’s answers to the intellectuals’ question was, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” What I failed to mention in that blog, though I’ve corrected it now (thank you Matthew Lilley!) is that Jesus was quoting one of the laws from the Torah. That law is in Deut. 5, which says, verbatim:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

Upon studying the passage surrounding that statement, I have developed more thoughts.

It immediately follows the chapter in which are given The Ten Commandments.*

*The Ten Commandments (Deut. 5.7-21):

1. Don’t have gods before the Lord God.
2. Don’t worship idols.
3. Don’t misuse God’s name.
4. Have a Sabbath.
5. Honor your parents.
6. Don’t murder.
7. Don’t commit adultery.
8. Don’t steal.
9. Don’t lie.
10. Don’t covet anyone else’s wife or property.

God later in the chapter, in verse 28, says, “Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!” He then tells Moses to stay longer with him, so that Moses can learn the next hundreds of commands God says for Moses’ followers – God’s people – to follow. “Be careful,” God says in verses 32-33, “to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or the left. Walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days…”

(For context, see all of Deut. 5)

Thus, The Ten remain pertinent to today. As Matthew Lilley says, Jesus repeatedly quotes the Torah throughout his life on earth thousands of years later. Said Matthew: (I added the links.)

If you read the New Testament in a version with cross-references you’ll see that Jesus was constantly quoting the Torah. He didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fullfill it (Matthew 5:17). We are freed from the curse of the law, and are righteous by faith, not works. However, to love God is to obey His commands. And His law is good (read Psalm 119), and his commands are rooting in law and mercy. God didn’t mess up with the OT and have to recover with the NT. He has been setting the stage for Jesus throughout history. The law and prophets all point to Him

I’ll confess that I don’t study the Old Testament as much as I do the New, but I do have a Bible with references and should have at least done that cross-referencing. If I’m going to be writing about this, I should get better about doing a little background checking.

Rules are not a bad thing. I know, I can’t believe I’m writing that sentence. It’s just that, coming from the background I have with some of the Christianity I’ve witnessed, I’m driven to ensure that people focus on the love portion of what it means to be a Christian. I think too often Christians – from all denominations, from all walks of life, from all stages of growth – at one point or another get hung up on doing things just right. I’ve definitely been there. It’s natural. It’s just important, though, to remember that failing doesn’t equal failure. Failing is an instance; failure is a condition. None of us are failures.

Rules make us better. There are rules of writing that make my writing better than it would be without them. It would be horrible to try to read something without grammar rules and punctuation. Even if we don’t always realize it, we still experience the effects of writing’s rules. Emails, instant messaging, blogs and texting aside, writing sustains the English language. It sustains our ability to communicate. Our ability to experience. Without good writing, we wouldn’t have good stories or informative books or even good movies and television. Such entertainment and knowledge is impossible without rules of writing as followed by writers – real writers, or at least editors.

In like fashion to Christians – heck, to humans as a whole – writers will never be perfect. Their style can improve and their stories can become more vivid, but there will always be typos and awkward grammar and misspelled wurdz.

It’s exactly the same in Christianity. In life.

But those who truly love writing strive to follow those rules, to master those rules, to become disciplined in their practice. The best writers, though, are also engaging, fun, informative and beneficial all at once. And they are so naturally. I’ve still got a long, long ways to go, I feel like, with my writing, to become the writer I want to be.

Again, it’s the same in Christianity. The following of rules arises out of a passion for God. Not for being perfect; for God, for living how Jesus Christ lived. Think about the most important rules. Loving God with everything you have. Loving your neighbors. If you love God, and God is love, and you love love, then you’ll do what love wants you to do.

Jesus followed all the laws, but that’s not what he was known for. He was known for being a phenomenal person. He was known for how much people loved to listen to him speak. He was known for how much people loved just being around him. Who hated him the most? The religious types. The “intellectuals.” Those who focused all their energy on knowing things and loving works rather than knowing God and loving God.

Jesus came to simplify all that. He was able to do everything he did, to be perfect as he was, solely because he typified the greatest commandment. He loved his Father with everything he was. And he was here because of the second greatest commandment. He loved us just as powerfully as he loved God.

What I’m about to say goes for you if you’re a Christian, or if you’re not a Christian and hate Christians, or if you’re not a Christian but kinda might want to be: First, it’s not about “being a Christian.” Second, it’s just about falling in love with God and everything he is. I’ll write more about love later, because to say someone can fall in love with God, who is perennially considered a father figure, sounds strange. (Basically, it comes down to our distorted ideas about love.) But life’s just all about loving God. So ask God for love above all. Everything else, as you gain that love, will come along under it.

When things are done out of obligation and religious practice, they thud as though hitting a wall. When things are done out of love, they echo.

I have a couple of thoughts about this chap’s sign:

1. By “Leviticus” he means Leviticus 18.22, which reads: “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.” Or, also, Leviticus 20.13: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own hands.”
2. By “no hair cuts,” he likely means Leviticus 19.27: “Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.”
3. That sign’s quite artistically done. Quite impressive, actually.

Now a few thoughts on this whole homosexual issue. Rather, issue of homosexuality. I wasn’t inferring that the issue was gay. Except that it kind of is, but not in the derogatory joking way that could be inferred….oh never mind. Onward.

Thought 1: You don’t really need the Bible to know how unnatural homosexual sex is. I feel no need to get graphic here, but my goodness. The bodies were clearly designed for relations of only the heterosexual variety. Homosexuality is no more natural than having sex with animals.

Thought 2: I’ve never been a fan of Christians referencing Leviticus when it comes to the homosexual debate. I’ve never been much of a fan of debating it, either, but here I am. That said, if we’re going to be playing with the logic of Leviticus, homosexuals — only by this logic, remember — should be grateful! Christians aren’t calling for their heads, after all. They’re just saying they shouldn’t get married. Or be doing the dirty with dudes. Or women with women. But they’re not saying gay folks should die. Well, some probably are, but they’re crazy.

Thought 3: While we’re playing with the logic of Leviticus, shouldn’t we look at all the other things also considered detestable that for some reason aren’t a problem for people?

• Leviticus 18.7. Don’t have sex with your mom.
• Leviticus 18.8: Don’t have sex with your dad’s wife if he’s remarried.
• Leviticus 18.9: Don’t have sex with your sister.
• Leviticus 18.10: Don’t have sex with your grandchildren.
• Leviticus 18.11: Don’t have sex with your step-siblings.
• Leviticus 18.12: Don’t have sex with dad’s sister.
• Leviticus 18.13: Don’t have sex with mom’s sister.
• Leviticus 18.14: Don’t have sex with your dad’s brother’s wife.
• Leviticus 18.15: Don’t have sex with your children-in-law.
• Leviticus 18.16: Don’t have sex with your siblings-in-law.
• Leviticus 18.17: Don’t have a threesome with a woman and her daughter.
• Leviticus 18.21: Don’t sacrifice your kids to Molech.
• Leviticus 18.23: Don’t have sex with animals.

Leviticus 20 goes on to lay on punishments for such actions, like all manner of death, namely being burned. Fun.

Now, obviously the laws of Leviticus have become archaic. We cut our hair now. We shave our faces. We wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

I just felt like throwing all of those up there to prove a point. The Bible can be taken to mean anything by anybody. It can be twisted to mean whatever you want it to mean. This is dangerous. This is deadly. This is what creates so many problems today.

And this is why Jesus Christ himself superseded every single commandment with one, as recorded in Mark 12. He was debating ancient laws with the intellectuals of his day. They asked him, “What is the most important commandment?”

And Jesus says one that’s never before been said: Love God with everything you have. Of all the 600+ laws named throughout the Torah, this one Jesus Christ says is the most important. To quote the NIV: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

That is it. Love God. That is what we’re on this earth to do, guidance as imparted by Jesus Christ himself. It’s really so simple. People have a way of complicating things. But that is it. No door-knocking. No condemning of the homosexuals. No burning of Bibles. Simply: Love God.

If we just try to love God, and we eventually fall in love with God, we’ll learn to do what he loves us doing and hate what he hates us doing. But it takes time. In the meanwhile, there’s no worries about being imperfect. Even the most perfect people in the world are imperfect, so don’t listen to them when they tell you that you need to be perfect. Should we try to be perfect? Sure. It makes us better people. And it’s even OK for it to bother us if we’re not perfect.

This is all based solely on my experience, so don’t take it as the perfect answer. But when it comes to life as a Christian, it’s all about falling in love with God. I figured that out about halfway through my senior year. I asked God to help me do exactly that. I asked him not to let it be some emotional experience. I’ve never had the “come to Jesus” moment in my life. I prayed with my dad with I was four, and went on a journey from there. Today, my journey’s left me convinced that it’s as simple as getting on your knees and asking God for love. Because immediately following that commandment, Jesus mentioned the second greatest commandment, just as a bonus.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

If more people — Christian or not, and a lot of times it’s the non-Christians and even the homosexuals who are better at this than anyone else — bought into this, the world would be a much greater place.

This is one of those historical mysteries that I’ve long been enraptured by. Amelia Erhart, the most famous missing person in the history of the world, it seems, tried breaking an aviation record by flying around the world in 1937. She disappeared; nobody knew where or how. It was presumed that she crashed in the Pacific, her and her plane’s remains never to be found again.

Until now.

Oct. 23, 2009 — Legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart mostly likely died on an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, according to researchers at The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR).

Tall, slender, blonde and brave, Earhart disappeared while flying over the Pacific Oceanon July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator. Her final resting place has long been a mystery.

For years, Richard Gillespie, TIGHAR’s executive director and author of the book “Finding Amelia,” and his crew have been searching the Nikumaroro island for evidence of Earhart. A tiny coral atoll, Nikumaroro was some 300 miles southeast of Earhart’s target destination, Howland Island.

A number of artifacts recovered by TIGHAR would suggest that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the island’s smooth, flat coral reef.

According to Gillespie, who is set to embark on a new $500,000 Nikumaroro expedition next summer, the two became castaways and eventually died there.

“We know that in 1940 British Colonial Service officer Gerald Gallagher recovered a partial skeleton of a castaway on Nikumaroro. Unfortunately, those bones have now been lost,” Gillespie said.

The archival record by Gallagher suggests that the bones were found in a remote area of the island, in a place that was unlikely to have been seen during an aerial search.

“Propagation analysis of nearly 200 radio signals heard for several days after the disappearance make it virtually indisputable that the airplane was on land,” Gillespie said.

Eventually, Earhart’s twin-engine plane, the Electra, was ripped apart by Nikumaroro’s strong waves and swept out into deep water, leaving no visible trace.

“The evidence is plentiful — but not conclusive yet — to support the hypothesis that Amelia landed and died on the island of Nikumaroro,” forensic anthropologist Karen Ramey Burns told Discovery News.

The author of a book on Earhart, Burns believes that the strongest of the amassed evidence comes from the report related to the partial skeleton found by Gallagher.

“The skeleton was found to be consistent in appearance with females of European descent in the United States today, and the stature was consistent with that of Amelia Earhart,” said Burns.

According to Burns, another piece of documentary evidence comes from the accounts of Lt. John O. Lambrecht, a U.S. Naval aviator participating in the search for Earhart’s plane. Lambrecht reported “signs of recent habitation” on what was an officially uninhabited atoll.

Lambrechet’s report begs the question: Why did no one follow up?

“I have stood in plain sight on Nikumaroro in a white shirt waving wildly as a helicopter flew over me and was not noticed until the video tape of the flight was examined,” Burns said.

“I find it very easy to believe that Amelia and Fred would not have been seen by the pilot. If the Electra was not visible at the time, their last chance of rescue was lost in Lambrecht’s notes,” she added.

Abandoned on a desert island where temperatures often exceed 100 degrees, even in the shade, Earhart and Noonan likely eventually succumbed to any number of causes, including injury and infection, food poisoning from toxic fish, or simply dehydration.

The coconut crabs’ great pincers would have done the rest, likely removing some of the last physical traces of this pioneering aviatrix.

(via)

]]> http://brandonsneed.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/researchers-discover-what-happened-to-amelia-erhart/feed/ 0 B.Sneed Amelia Erhart http://brandonsneed.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/port-city-community-church-where-god-brings-many/ http://brandonsneed.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/port-city-community-church-where-god-brings-many/#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:14:16 +0000 Brandon Sneed http://brandonsneed.wordpress.com/?p=1683 ]]>

I’ve long thought about writing an article about Port City Community Church for the StarNews. Really, since I started attending about three months ago. I had the outline in my head, I had the various sections broken down, I knew who I’d talk to and what I’d say and how I’d write it. I’ve already talked with its pastor, Mike Ashcraft, once before. (While floating half a mile down Wrightsville Beach on surfboards, at that.)

PC3 is, in my humble opinion, the first church I’ve ever been in that does everything exactly how I’ve long imagined churches should be done. I went through an incredibly bitter (and, I might as well add, immature) phase with Christianity largely because of the various churches I’d attended. I’m a happy guy by nature, but the flaws I saw with so many churches I found intolerable. There were good ones along the way, but even in those I saw vast room for improvement. The world is badly starved for church done right. PC3 nails it.

I remember being recommended PC3 by Aaron Kennedy, one of my pastors from my home church, Open Door Ministries, in Greenville. He told me it was pretty much a megachurch, so I, naturally, dismissed it, passing it off as flawed simply because it was huge. I didn’t like what I’d seen of any other megachurches out there. Not that I’ve seen all or even many, but the idea of a church of 5000-plus said to me that somebody was in it for more than just helping folks live right.

I remembering hearing Mike speak and (1) thinking he was some guest speaker from some college ministry or something filling in for the day, he was so laid back, in his jeans and short-sleeved shirt and slip-on shoes and spiked-up hair; and (2) being amazed at how authentic he seemed. He spoke as though without pretension, even hidden ones, and he carried no metaphorical shields. Did he pass out lists of his sins? Of course not. But you knew you were hearing from a broken, humble, honest man who genuinely experienced God and simply wanted to help others do the same.

That word – authenticity – captures the essence of Port City.  I’ve never heard someone I more enjoyed hearing. I told Mike this: I’m one of the most critical people I know. Not of people, but of false Christianity. The Christianity as lived and defined by the people who tell you that the way you wear your hair and your clothes determines your righteousness. Christians who obsess over convincing their congregations that one version of the Bible is more holy than another; that certain music is the devil’s music; that we must convert the world.

I remember telling Katie so often how I just wished I could do something to convince the world and Christians like those that it wasn’t about conversions or perfection, that it was just about getting to know and fall in love with Jesus Christ.

Then I heard Mike. I felt like he’d already done what I didn’t know I wanted to do. It was pretty relieving, actually. Later, one of my cousins-in-law told me the entire staff is all paid virtually the same, meaning that nobody’s really getting rich off running the place.

I told Katie, “I gotta talk to this guy. I gotta know if he’s for real.”

Two weeks later I nearly hit him in the Target parking lot. Didn’t speak to him then, but his reaction was awesome. He just laughed, put his shopping cart in the racks, and walked back to his car. Three weeks after that, Katie and I hit the beach, trying to surf for the first time together.

You gotta understand the circumstances surrounding this venture. We’d just bought two surfboards. One was really good, a 7’3” BIC that by all accounts on the Internet was great for beginners. The other was that piece I can’t sell off. That we were even out there was completely spontaneous that day. I didn’t even have fins in the crappy board.

I walked right past Mike on the way to the beach. “Dude,” I told Katie after we passed him. “I think that was our pastor.”

A few minutes later, as I was failing miserably on the board, it shot out from under my feet and, as it was sans leash, flew practically onto the beach. Mike came up. “Dude, I don’t want to be one of those guys,” he said, “but you can get fined $150 for that.”

That would have sucked, getting fined $150 for using a $40 surfboard.

We ended up asking advice, Katie and I, about surfing and surfboards. He answered everything, joked about the crappy board, was totally cool.

Then, later, when he drifted back our way he and I started talking about the church and its growth and our own stories and backgrounds, which were, though with differences, strangely similar. I’m actually going to write out my story, the full story, sometime in the next week or two and post it on here as a focal foundation for the blog.

Mike talked with me for about thirty minutes. We drifted about half a mile down the beach. Eventually he realized that and said, “Whoa, how long have we been talking? I’m supposed to be watching my kids!” With that we said take it easy, see you around, and he was off, paddling away, back to his kids.

Yesterday afternoon, PC3 (as it’s commonly called) celebrated its 10^th birthday. (Check out the intro video here: http://vimeo.com/7229759 In the words of Millie Holloman, EPIC!) I heard the story of the Kenyan pastor who emailed Mike a few years ago, literally out of nowhere. Sold his car to fly to the United States just for a chance to meet Mike. Today, the two are great friends. I’ll be writing that story for the StarNews, so keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for it.

However, I won’t be writing the story about PC3’s meteoric rise since 1999, when it was 80 college students meeting at Mike’s house. Burke Speaker at the StarNews already did in May 2009. Some reporter I am. Just discovered that a few minutes ago at starnewsonline.com in the archives. Burke did a fantastic job capturing the essence of Mike, who is as real speaking to thousands as he is floating on a surfboard. Burke’s story is an awesome read. I just sat here and read the whole thing, which I’ve pasted below for you if you want to check it out. Enjoy.

Growing a few college students into a megachurch

In the moments before he’s scheduled to take the stage in front of a sanctuary overflowing with devoted followers, a noticeably anxious Mike Ashcraft moves in fast-forward in the offices of Port City Community Church. While people pool into the 1,500-seat auditorium, drop children off in the youth areas or congregate with coffee and friends in the church hall, Ashcraft moves with bundled tension. He brushes his teeth a second time this morning (“Coffee breath,” he says), touches base with his mother-in-law/scheduler Brenda and chats briefly with staff.

Though he’s a mass of energy now, about an hour ago Ashcraft sat in the empty auditorium, just as he does every Sunday before the 8:30 service. He breathed deeply and thought, “Today, there may be someone sitting here who’s lost a job. Or someone who’s lost a spouse. There will be people in these seats hurting, and they’re looking for answers.”

Ashcraft does this to remind himself that although the church has experienced a near meteoric rise from a handful of college students at its first service in 1999, when he was only 28 years old himself, to an astounding 4,800 (and still growing) congregation, these are people, not numbers.

“I try to remember there’s not much of a difference between 1,000 people and 1,005 people – unless you’re one of those five,” he says. After this alone time, he may pray with the band and production team in the Green Room, where those who are gathered look more like a college study group than the staff of a prominent church. He often takes 7-year-old daughter Michaela to Treasure Island, the children’s ministry. Today, though, he moves to the back of the auditorium as the band begins. The production values are flawless, with staff on cameras, lighting, video displays and soundboards and in a control room, where a team produces the day’s service.

The atmosphere is half worship, half rock concert, with people swaying to the music or raising their hands in praise. Ashcraft sings along.

Once the opening music ends, Ashcraft starts down the aisle. He’s given thousands of sermons, but this one is particularly tough for him. His message is on tithing. With the economy in a slump, Ashcraft will speak about the trappings of money. Give, he plans to say, give something. It’s a hard message to deliver any day, let alone when the unemployment rate in the area has nearly doubled in the past year. It’s an even harder message to give when delivered from within a new 90,000-square-foot, $18 million building.

“Money’s a difficult situation for him to talk about,” says Ryan Horn, who serves as a body man to Ashcraft, keeping him moving to meet with those who request his attention after services. “I’ve been going here five years, and he’s probably talked about it twice.”

Ask anyone who knows Mike, as most call him, and they’ll tell you this is a role God created just for him. Still, it’s also a role he’s fretted over and even doubted – doubted that he was the man God was calling to this, doubted people would come, doubted money would be there. But God has no doubts.

As he jogs onto the stage, the 38-year-old Ashcraft lfaces a crowd that includes an overwhelmed woman whose husband has cancer. There’s a man in an addiction recovery program. There’s a homeless man, brought here to see for himself if God really does save. And yes, there are those recently unemployed. These people are looking for answers. Looking at him. Mike smiles.

“Hey guys … .”

PLAN IN ACTION

Either God or Chick-Fil-A brought Mike Ashcraft to North Carolina. God’s master plan, certainly, but Chick-Fil-A literally showed him the door.

He was born in Geneva, Ala., the son of a Southern Baptist music minister father and an elementary school librarian mother, the second of three sons. Southern Baptists request you ask to be baptized into the faith. Ashcraft wanted in early.

“My parents actually said, ‘We think you’re too young,’ ” he recalls. “My mom tells me when I was 5, I was asking, or even earlier. When I was 7, they felt I understood, at least as much as a 7-year-old could, that I was ready, so I asked for Christ in my life.” Like many kids growing up in the faith, the time came when he started having questions. But in everything he was taught, you don’t question God. He also began seeing flaws in the church. “You see a lot of good things about the church, but you also see, because you have inside information, the bad things,” he says. In-fighting. Staff turnover. Sometimes it seemed like “Love your neighbors, but you don’t have to like them.”

Ashcraft attended college at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Ga., studying architecture. At the same time, he was deciding whether to pursue a professional career or go into ministry. He says he was an average guy, no megachurch pastor in the making. “I would tell friends about my faith if they asked, but I didn’t go knocking on doors. I was just an average person.”

In his faith, he was anything but. He lived by what he believed. “I escaped most of the things that demolish people: drugs, sex, drinking. I was a pretty good kid,” he says. He volunteered as a youth minister Wednesday nights, taught Sunday school and began to think, This is where I’m supposed to be. He married his long-time girlfriend, Julie, whom he had known since second grade, and after graduation began a professional career at an architectural firm in South Atlanta. At night he worked at Chick-Fil-A, where he had been employed since high school. With those connections, he landed an interview with the human resources director at corporate headquarters, with thoughts of making a living as an architect for the company. “I was so ready for all the questions,” he recalls with a laugh. “And the first question he asked me was, “What do you think God wants you to do?” The man knew of him, so the question wasn’t out of line. Still, Ashcraft was floored. “I remember almost not being able to answer, because it was a great company and I just really wanted to work there. I just said ‘I think I’m supposed to be in ministry.’ And then he’s like, ‘Then what are you doing here?’”

Ashcraft was told to wait on God, so he went back home, went back to work. Chick-Fil-A didn’t call. And neither did God.

Well, not right away.

A PASTOR IN SANDALS

Ashcraft, with his youthful look, worn jeans and T-shirts, is everything you wouldn’t expect a megachurch pastor to be. And he doesn’t apologize for it. “You gotta know who you are,” he says. “I think that’s what God uses. I’m not (pastors) Rick Warren or Bill Hybels or any of those guys. … I have to be OK with what God’s using. Even wearing jeans and how, some of the way we do things, it’s not something we do to appeal. It’s how we live.”

Ashcraft does worry about perception, though – not so much about him, but about the church. A concert-like musical worship? A pastor in sandals? On this day, Evan Vetter, the church’s 29-year-old director of E-media, rides a Scooter onstage to deliver the announcements. Even the name PC3, as the church is often called, sounds a little too hip. And yet, nearly 5,000 attendees. “People ask, ‘Was it the jeans? Was it the music?’ I think it is God,” Ashcraft says, “and it is precious.”

What it’s not is church-lite. Ashcraft is conservative. Very conservative. “I would fall into the Evangelical Christian kind of banner, in terms of how I would articulate things,” he says. He does not support gay marriage or sex before marriage. He’s given sermons on premarital sex that some in his congregation have taken issue with. “It’s sin. I call it sin. (But) sin is not the act itself. Sin is the indifference to God. … God made you for this and you said ‘No thank you and I’ll take this substitute?’ Whether it comes out in lying or cheating, indifference to God is all the same. … I use the phrase ‘If God created life, then he alone gets to define it.’ And that’s where I start.”

From sermon to sermon, Ashcraft doesn’t so much preach as talk. In his sermon on tithing, he talks about himself. About his struggles. “I’m not perfect. … I’ve struggled with things just as everyone else does.” He says tithing broke the hold money had over his life. In the sermon, he says the church gave away $400,000 last year: mosquito netting in the Sudan, a women’s center in the Congo, spreading the Gospel in regions of Africa, sanitation and student ministries in India. Donations to local groups. The list goes on and on.

Then there’s Mike’s story. Of how a man from Africa came calling one day, after sending e-mails that Ashcraft thought too crazy to be real. The man wanted to start a church in Africa. He said God called him to PC3 for help. Senior staff decided they would give the man $6,000, half their cash at the time. Ashcraft was stunned. That was a lot of money. The church was struggling to survive, but he needed to trust God. “The one who withholds suffers want,” he tells the congregation. This isn’t only our lesson. At one time, it was also his.

Today, a Kenyan church in Africa spreads the Word of God thanks to an at-first doubtful pastor who was still learning to practice what he now must preach.

BUILDING A CHURCH

At 22, after being turned down for the Chick-Fil-A corporate gig, Ashcraft signed on as a youth minister at College Acres Baptist Church in Wilmington. The following year, in 1994, he and longtime friend Chris Kuhne, a youth minister in Atlanta who married his wife’s twin sister, Cindy, attended a church leadership conference at Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago. The pastor at the conference spoke about founding a church, and Ashcraft felt as though the man was speaking directly to him.

In January 1996, Mike wrote in his journal, I think God wants me to start a church. He and Chris often dreamed of starting their own church, but nothing ever became of it. Months went by. Years. He and Chris floated ideas: Go to another country, do it in Atlanta, do youth camps only. They kept going back and forth. As Kuhne recalls, “I think we were sitting at IHOP and I just said, ‘We need to stop talking about this or do it.’” So in 1999, the pair started a nonprofit under the name Port City Community Church and established a board to deal with the finances. (“Two things that get pastors in trouble are money and women,” Ashcraft says. “I take significant precautions in both.”) The church would be nondenominational, with a simple concept: We all learn to walk.

“We wobble, we stand, we need someone to hold on to, we fall, we get back up,” Ashcraft says. “I think that’s the relationship with God. The starting point requires someone to really hold their fingers out, let people take a step, use balance, then let go for a second, and grab back on.”

Helping people walk with God became the church’s motto. Ashcraft, then 28, became the church’s pastor. Kuhne would manage the services behind the scenes. They rented the auditorium at Roland-Grise Middle School for $150 a month and held their first service on Oct. 24, 1999. Thirty people were expected to show up. Eighty came. “We were shocked,” Ashcraft recalls. “It was all college students, asking us, ‘You going to do this next week?’ We were like, ‘You bet.’ ”

The early days were stressful. Ashcraft and his wife had a small daughter. Kuhne drove from Atlanta each week. No one was paid a salary. A check for $20,000 arrived anonymously, and the pair bought sound equipment. To keep their families afloat, Mike taught a drafting course at CFCC and Kuhne did landscaping. The days were full of writing messages and membership books. There were staff demands, and setting up and tearing down Roland-Grise weekly. What donations came were barely enough. But, somehow, it was just enough. They found offices for the right price. People would “come out of nowhere” to help. Ascraft read everything he could on leading a church. But at times, it felt overwhelming. “I remember the first time Roland-Grise was just packed, people in the halls, the doors open, people sitting on the stairs,” he recalls. “It’s almost as if you’re going, ‘God, you’ve got the wrong guy. You have got the wrong guy.’”

“Walk with God” was the message. And people embraced it. So it grew. Eighty to 180. A few hundred to 1,000. Then 2,000. Then more. Soon, it was time to move.

While Ashcraft may be the face of the church, its 52 staff members and hundreds of volunteers are its body. Parking attendants usher in the hundreds of vehicles that often overflow the parking lot into the wooded area around the church. The daycare hosts 600 youngsters. A coffee shop streams the sermons when the auditorium overflows. The program Starting Point gathers newcomers to learn the foundations of Christianity.

Ashcraft admits that he doesn’t always have all the answers. When a deal fell through on land for the new building, he worried about where the church would go. But this was a church that God built, Ashcraft and the staff concluded, and they would pray for answers. Again, the church relied on faith, and soon, the land on which they now reside suddenly became available. It’s been like that often for PC3. The little church that could. And, somehow, did.

“I had a guy tell me one time ‘I’m trying Jesus on like a shirt.’ I said ‘Have you taken the shirt off yet? And he said ‘No, not yet.’ And I said ‘You know what that’s called? That’s called faith.’ That’s exactly what faith is. It’s not having all the answers.”

His words, though, speak to those looking for answers. During his sermon he looked into the audience and spoke to anyone who’s ever dared to have faith. “This is just the Bible,” he had said, “We’re going to have to figure out what this means for ourselves.”

(via)