Scout is here...

We got our new pup. We named her Scout. Here's some pics...

It's Snowing

Today is November 20th, and the snow is pouring down outside. This is fantastic. I haven't seen snow in a long time. We've lived in Dallas the last 4 years and I think we only had one snow in 4 years. Last year at Thanksgiving time it was about 80 degrees in Dallas. I love living in Tennessee where it snows at Thanksgiving.

Humanity never changes

I watched the 4th quarter of the Chargers-Broncos last night after our Community Thanksgiving service. As a side note, when Emily saw the team initials "SD" beside the Chargers' score on the TV she said as serious as could be, "What do all those football players do in South Dakota when they're not playing football?" I just said, "I guess they go hang out in San Diego."

Back to what I was going to say...The Chargers were up by 8 points with a little over a minute remaining and Denver had the ball on their own 4 yard line, so they have to go 96 yards for the touchdown and score the 2 point conversion. Practically impossible, but the Broncos got a big play and move the ball out to the 40, and then one of the Chargers defensive linemen got man and started punching a Broncos player. That got him ejected and gave the Broncos another 15 yards on the penalty.

Who's team is this guy playing on? It's not about his petty revenge on some other player. It's about the team winning. When will we ever figure out that everything is not about us? For that guy it was about his team winning the football game.

For Christians out there...this whole thing is not about you. It's all for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Get over yourself and starting playing for the team. Let go of grudges and forgive.

Community Thanksgiving Service

I was asked several weeks ago to preach at the community wide Thanksgiving service this Sunday night (19th). I feel this is a great honor and opportunity. This will probably be about the largest group of people I've ever gotten to preach for, except for that time I filled in for Billy Graham during one of his crusades and the Sunday last year when Charles Stanley called me to fill in for him while he was on vacation.

You can pray for me. The Billy Graham and Charles Stanley things were no prob, but I'm a little nervous about this one.

Later folks...

Toilet Fun

You read that right. I found Luke hanging over the edge of the toilet today with both hands just splashing away.

Adventures in Home Ownership

Emily and I are about to finish our second month as home owners this week. Here's some of the joys we've experienced so far...

1. Our house has a built-in grill on the back porch. The first time I went to use it I found a mouse nest with a mamma mouse and 3 babies inside our grill. So I ran the mouse off (unsuccessfully tried to kill it) and gave the grill a good cleaning. A week and a half later I went to grill again and the mouse had come back in the grill and rebuilt the nest!!! This time the mouse did not escape. Victory was mine.

2. I use those glue boards in my garage to catch insects. Here's the list of things I've caught on the glue boards besides insects. 2 birds (they get in the garage and try to eat the insects but get stuck on the glue board), 1 snake (this was a nice catch), 1 mouse.

3. Our house is two stories. Luke has fallen down the stairs.

4. We've been rolled twice.

5. Life is great and God is so gracious. I'm glad to have a house.

Later folks.

Haloween Pics

Well...we didn't get rolled on Haloween...thankfully. Rolling season has officially ended in Smithville. I'm not kidding. They have a socially defined season running from Oct. 1- Oct. 31 where you can roll anybody's house.

Here's some recent pics of Luke. Enjoy.

Search Words...

I recently checked my website site stats. Here's some of the search queries that people entered into search engines (i.e. Google, Ask.com, Yahoo, MSN Search, etc.) that ended up leading them to our site...

"nature tithe doug stuart"
"computer basses"
"postexilic judean community/ezra prophecy ceased"
"4"
"st102 notes"
"joseph wiles bcm"

Go figure. How does the number 4 bring a person to our site?

Name My New Dog...

Emily, Luke, and I will be getting a puppy in about 4 weeks. Some friends of ours in the church have a dog that just had a litter of 9 pups. It's a pure-breed boxer pup. We're getting a girl.

So...what should we name our new dog? I like the name "Scout."

Tell me what you think.

Some Recent Pics

Em and I wanted to share some recent pics with you. As you can see the youth group has already showed us their "love" for us by rolling our yard, not once, but twice.

Funny Church Videos

This site has some funny videos that are short commentaries about the state of the church in the United States today.

Firefox 2.0 released

Firefox 2.0 has been released. Firefox is a web browser that is becoming a serious challenger to Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). I use Firefox b/c it's so much better than IE. You can download the Firefox browser here.

However, on a similiar note, Microsoft also just released the next version of IE for download from their website. The new version (IE7) is a vast improvement over it's predecessor b/c of it's security enhancements. IE7 also has most of the cool features that make Firefox so good.

Getting' Back into the Blog

Okay folks, I've been incredibly busy starting this pastoring job. I've practically forgotten about the blog during this time, but I want to keep it up for the millions of you worldwide who thirst for the wisdom from this blog. Yeah right.

I'm going to shut down our website. The website is shutting down because it costs money but this blog is free. Also the purposes of the website were to publish photos for our family to see since we were living far away and to publish my resume for potential churches to be able to download it. Both of those things have changed now.

We'll post our pics on the blog from time to time rather than on the website.

I'm coming up on two months as the pastor of First Baptist Smithville. It's really incredible so far. Emily and I have received so much encouragement from the people, and I'm really enjoying preaching. God has been good to us. I'll post pics soon.

God bless friends....Mark

Gettin' Started

Well this whole blogging deal has fallen to the wayside in light of all that's going on in our lives now. This coming weekend is my first to preach as the offical pastor. Emily and I have signed a contract on a house, and we'll probably get to move in around the 11th of September. So, I'll be commuting for a week until we get moved. It's about a 40 minute drive, so it's not that bad. Hopefully by the end of September we can get set up in the house and I can get my computer out and update our website with some new pictures. I've also got some new heretical papers that I'd like to post:) You'll enjoy reading those.

We're Goin' to Smithville

First Baptist Smithville has called us to come and pastor the church. Our first Sunday is September 3rd. We are really and excited and can't wait to get started. If you prayed for us we really appreciate it.

Some dates for you to pray for...

Here's what Emily and I will be doing of the next couple of weeks with the church in Smithville. If you're praying for us sometime you can pray for these events. The purpose of all these events is to allow the church people to get to know us before they vote on the 20th.

Sun. 6th - speaking to youth group in the evening
Mon. 7th - meeting the senior adults for lunch and a time they can ask me questions
Fri. 11th - cookout with a small group from the church
Sun. 13th - church's homecoming; will be there in morning and afternoon; preaching evening
Mon. 14th - meeting in evening with the brotherhood group (men's fellowship)
Sun. 20th - preaching morning service; church votes after service

A Little Road Map

Here's how the next month might pan out for us as we meet with the new church. I'm currently working on a short DVD movie about us that the church will play next Sunday in order to start introducing us to the congregation. We'll be going to preach on Aug 13th and spend the day with the congregation b/c that day is their homecoming service. Then on Aug 20th we'll go preach again and the church will vote after the service on Aug 20th. Assuming they like us, we'll probably start around the beginning of September.

Keith...don't you love suspense???





















































Smithville, TN

Job Offer...

Emily and I have accepted a job offer to pastor a church. Hurray!!! We will be going sometime in the next couple of weeks to preach and allow the church to vote on us (that's how Baptist's do it). So you can be in prayer about that for us. I'll let you know when we're going....

Hurray for 5 Years

Today is our 5 year wedding anniversary. God has been good to us for the last five years. We celebrated our anniversary by going to the Smoky Mountains and doing some tubing down a river, spending some time at Cades Cove, and relaxing a few other places.

Genesis 1 and Creation Timeline

I've been studying Genesis lately in my time off. As I was studying Genesis 1 a few thoughts occurred to me.

1. The reason Genesis 1 was written is explained in verse 1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This is the summary statement for the whole chapter. Genesis 1 serves as a record of God's creative activity, and displays that our God is creative. But more than this verse 1 makes a clear statement of fact that God is the one who brought our world into existence, not any other power or force.

2. Genesis 1 does not exist to serve as a timetable so we can figure out the amount of time God used to create the world. First, Biblical Hebrew was a pre-scientific language. The Hebrew language was a very artistic and picturesque language. So, rather than describe exactly and scientifically the amount of time it took God to do his work, the activity of God was described and summed up by days.

3. In biblical interpretation we must allow the author's original purpose of the text to come though in our interpretations. That means we don't force the text to mean something in today's highly scientific world that it didn't mean in Moses' pre-scientific world.

So, what was Moses' purpose? To make a very direct statement that God is the sovereign author of all creation. He is bigger than his creation. So as the Israelites sat poised to take the promised land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, when they read the account of creation it would cause them to know that God is over all. Also, they would see that other nations were worshipping the mere things (sun, moon, stars, trees, rocks, etc.) that had been created by the God of Israel. Therefore, the gods of the other nations were powerless while the God of Israel was in full and sovereign control.

Does Genesis 1 describe 7 literal 24-hour-days? Maybe, but what does it matter because that was not Moses' purpose in writing Genesis 1. Unfortunately we major on this one point when we come to Gensis 1. Can you see the Israelites as they're about to move into the promised land arguing over whether Moses meant literal days or figurative days? Doubtful. They knew that their God had created the land and so he had the power to give it to them as he was doing.

Okay...so I suppose that will stir you all up and get some fun comments. Don't be too hard on me.