May 24 Update

ElenaClaire graduates tomorrow from Kingwood High. The ceremony is at 8:30 pm at Reliant Stadium - the same venue where a famous wardrobe malfunction occurred. I feel confident that no such problem will occur tomorrow.

After Graduation, Alicia and I are volunteering at the "Project Graduation" all-night party held at KHS. Alicia and Miles are now at Hobby AIrport picking up Aunt Elena, flown in from San Diego and here until Tuesday afternoon. Aunt Rachel arrives tomorrow by car from Plano, TX. Elena can't stay for Tuesday night's party. We hope Rachel can.

ElenaClaire will spend the summer working part time as a nanny and a couple days a week as a barista at Jitters Coffee. What a thoroughly stereotypical thing for a 2007 grad to do. (One of her favorite songs is "Taylor the Latte Boy". A recording of Kristen Chenoweth singing “Taylor” is available here. Click the stream labeled 30:14 and scroll over to about seventeen minutes into the clip.)

EC was also offered a lead role in Kingwood College's Opera Workshop this summer. If she can work it into her schedule, it would be a great experience. Her role would be Gretel in the opera "Hansel and Gretel" by Engelbert Humperdinck (No, the famous British pop singer from the 1960s -- real name Arnold Dorsey -- the one with the cheesy tuxedo, sappy songs and silly sideburns -- did not compose this opera. The Engelbert Humperdinck who wrote Hansel and Gretel was born in Germany in 1854.)

Miles is officially through with 4th grade tomorrow at noon. Please God, may this year have been the worst year of his schooling. He's missed, I am sure, in excess of 50 days - nearly a third of the year.

I've just completed a re-designing of the basic arrangement of the CTK website. The goal was to make the page designed more for the visitor or person considering a visit, and less for the member (though members can still easily find what they need). The main menuing now makes it much easier for a visitor to find basic information they might need, and avoids churchy language. I implemented many suggestions made by Tony Morgan and the Internet Evangelism Day site.

Mark, my much-valued colleague in Worship and Music Ministry, has decided to remain at CTK rather than accept the call he received from the church in Ohio. We are all grateful. I still find the idea of a congregation officially extending a call to a pastor (or church worker) who has told you he is not interested is kind of unusual. But there are probably ways that seem normal to me that others would find strange.

Mike Breen was here yesterday to meet with our staff. Mike is the developer of LifeShapes, a series of unique discipling tools. He is now gathering 7 churches to be the model churches for a ministry approach that steps away from the well-marketed church growth method in favor of a disciple-making approach. What does that mean, you ask? Most of us are not entirely sure, and if we are, we're still looking for language to explain it. But it appears we are going to be one of the model churches. I am enthusiastic.

Brad was commenting on his blog about his experience of convergence:

he's a pastor and missionary with the Evangelical Covenant Church, serving on Guam in partnership with the Liebenzell Mission and Pacific Islands Bible College, where their primary work is with Micronesians; he's also helping out at the Lutheran Church of Guam, an independent, culturally diverse Lutheran congregation which maintains affiliation with both the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (where he and Cheryl regularly worship) as the intern supervisor and occasional preacher. Their summer seminary intern at LCG is an American who does US Air Force reserve duty on Guam every few months, but who is living down under, studying to become a minister in the Uniting Church of Australia.

I replied that as a Covenant pastor serving an LCMS congregation that has done 2 campaigns from Saddleback (a Baptist Church) and whose leadership is now being mentored by an Anglican who is connected with an ELCA congregation in Arizona, I thought all the convergence was pretty cool.