I’ve been asked for the link to the video I showed on Sunday.  I got it off of youtube, and the link is right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA

It’s a skit performed to the song “Everything” by the band Lifehouse.  It’s worth watching.  I’ve seen it a dozen times and it still gets me every time.

Here are some pictures from our recent baptism and picnic out at Lake Johanna.  We baptized 18 people.  What a glorious day, and what a wonderful celebration of God’s grace at work among us!

Thanks to Jessa Roquet for taking these pictures (and about a hundred more).

When the years have done irreparable harm
I can see us walking slowly arm in arm
Just like the couple on the corner do
‘Cause girl I will always be in love with you
And when I look in your eyes
I’ll still see that spark
Until the shadows fall
Until the room grows dark
Then when I leave this Earth
I’ll be with the angels standin’
I’ll be out there waiting for my true companion

Happy 20th Anniversary to my true companion.  I love you, Jane.

Love, Pat

For the past two hours, I’ve been sitting in the Overflow Espresso Cafe working on editing a story for a friend.  I’ve come to love working here when I want to get away for an extended period of time.  The Overflow is run by Molly, the sister of Rachel, a member of our congregation.  Molly opened the Overflow a couple months ago, and by all appearances business is going well.  I’m impressed by the steady stream of people coming in.  It’s located on University Avenue near the U, so I expect it’ll get even busier once the U gets into full swing.

I love the decor here.  It’s a spacious, beautiful setting, with a water theme running through it all.  I think it’s meant to subtly call one’s mind to Christ’s promise of streams of living water.

Come in and give the Overflow a try!  They are doing this whole thing well, which is nice to see.  As our church continues to learn how to be missional in the city of St. Paul, I believe we could learn something from the way Molly has managed the Overflow.  If you spy me sitting in the corner reading or working on my lap-top, come on over and say “Hi.” 

Here’s their website: http://www.overflowespressocafe.com/index.html

Several people have recommended the book Church Centered Mission to me.  It was written by Joel Holm, who spoke at Bethel Christian Fellowship (one of our partners in ministry).  Joel is returning to BCF in October for another conference, and I plan to attend.  The book is all about helping the church to become missional in everything we do - which is exactly where we’re at as a church right now.

I’m going to read this book, and since it relates so well to the growth process we’re going through at St. Paul Fellowship, you’re invited to read it with me.  I thought of calling this “Reading With the Pastor,” and got made fun of for that name…so that’s what I’m going with.

So if you’d like to participate in “Reading With the Pastor,” let me know.  You can e-mail me separately (pat@stpaulfellowship.org) or comment here.  We’ll pick a time to get together in August and discuss the book - especially as it relates to helping St. Paul Fellowship become more missional in everything we do. I have access to a few of the books, so you don’t need to buy one.  If you’d like to buy one, I know you can find them on the internet.

I still get amazed at technology.  You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

So tonight as the sun was setting in St. Paul, I was sitting in the hot tub with my son, Sam, studying Latin.  At the same time, the sun was rising in the Philippines and our missionary friend, Ken, was placing a call to me from his computer.  Within seconds, my daughter carried the phone out to me and I was talking with Ken.

I’ve been trying for days to send Ken some important documents via e-mail.  For some reason they haven’t been getting through to him, so right there, in the hot tub, I decided to solve the problem.  “Your missions agency must have a filter on their e-mail,” I said.  “I must be using a word that your missions agency finds offensive (no surprise there) so it must be getting filtered out before it ever gets to your computer.”

So I summoned my wife from the comfort of my hot tub, and she brought me my laptop.  I got online, right there in the hot tub, and created a new Gmail account for Ken.  I sent the documents to his new account, while the sun continued to rise on the Philippines and I continued to soak in my hot tub, and then I gave him the password to his new e-mail account and he retrieved the documents.

As Ross Perot would say, “Prob’em salved!”

I love technology.

By the way, kudos to the first person who can identify the technology in the picture, above.  (Hint: It has nothing whatsoever to do with the article, other than it was a new technology at one time.)

My brother-in-law, Mark, was a bit tired before the softball game the other night.  I asked him why, and he told me he had just spent 8 hours in surgery.  He’s an Ear, Nose, and Throat surgeon.  “I was putting a woman’s face back together,” he said.  “She had fallen down the stairs, so there was quite a bit of damage I had to fix.”  He said he was happy with how the surgery went, and he’ll know in a few months if she’s making a full recovery.

Over the next few days I reflected on the difference between our two careers.  An imaginary conversation plays out in my head that goes something like this:

Mark: “Hey, Pat.  What did you do today?”

Pat: “Oh, I don’t know…I talked with a few people about issues going on in their lives…I prayed with some folks…I wrote part of a sermon…I drank a lot of coffee…stuff like that.  How about you?”

Mark: “I put a woman’s face back together.”

Pat: “Oh…wow…I’m a lazy, unproductive (expletive deleted), now that I think about it.”

I could see a person making two opposite mistakes about this sort of thing.  On the one hand, I could take the approach that Mark’s life is more productive than mine, and spiral into a whirling gyre of self-loathing and doubt: “Is what I’m doing even significant?  Does it matter at all?  I didn’t put anyone’s face together today…in fact I’ve never put anyone’s face together.”  Because Mark is doing tangible good in people’s lives every day, I could lament the intangible nature of what I do most days.

But I could make the opposite mistake, as well.  I could do what a lot of Christians do, which is to so spiritualize life that my pastoral work takes the pre-eminence over Mark’s work.  Because I’m dealing with the care of souls, I could say that what I’m doing has eternal consequences, whereas what he’s doing is “merely” temporal. 

But that sort of thinking is sub-Christian.

When God took on human flesh and came into this world in the form of Jesus Christ, He gave an emphatic “yes” to the physical creation.  And when he told the leper, “I am willing,” and reached out to heal him, he showed the sort of heart all of His followers are to have towards the sick and the hurting.

So Mark is doing tangible good in his work as an otolaryngologist, and I am doing intangible good in my work as a pastor.  But we’re both doing good.

That was the point of my sermon about renewal on Sunday.  I hope that all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus will find our own ways to bring renewal to God’s creation, and not spiritualize life to such an extent that we don’t care about the real, physical needs of people. 

I love this sort of thing: just a few minutes ago I pulled into the parking lot of the Caribou at Snelling and Grand.  I parked my truck, walked in, and they had my drink waiting for me - a large cold press with a shot of white chocolate.  I must be a regular!

I’ve been in the habit this summer of coming to Caribou and working.  It saves money on air-conditioning at the church, and somehow I’m able to focus pretty well at this particular coffee shop.  The music is unobtrusive and the large cold press is a kick in the pants - you can slam a lot of caffeine down in a hurry when it’s poured over ice.  These two factors combine to get me in a pretty focused mode.

As much as I love this place, though, I’m going to start splitting my time between here and the Overflow Cafe on University (near the U).  I’ll write about it soon.  Molly (the sister of Rachel from church (and the sister-in-law of TC, a frequent reader of this blog)) opened the Overflow a few weeks ago.  I’m hoping to bring the digital camera over there and get some pictures one of these days.  Then I’ll write about it. 

Coffee in any form is one of God’s greatest gifts, but it’s especially nice when it’s combined with a peaceful atmosphere and pleasant people.

This is fun!  Drew Johnson from St. Paul Fellowship appeared recently on NPR’s new morning show, “The Bryant Park Project,”  in their “Make Me Care” segment.

Drew was given one minute (with the clock ticking in the background) to make this entire nation care about soccer - specifically about the UEFA Champions League Final between Liverpool and Milan.  Mission accomplished! For one brief, shining minute I cared about soccer. 

You can listen to the interview here, or go to the full article at NPR here.

Good job, Drew!

I know what you’re thinking: “Pat is breaking 3 months of blog silence with a Harry Potter article?!”  For those of you who question whether or not Harry Potter is a good thing for a Christian to be reading, you won’t find my response here, but I’d be happy to go into that another time.  I love the books, though, and I just re-read them all in preparation for the seventh, and last, book to be released in July.

I have a prediction, and I’ve been told I should put it in writing so we can test it once the book comes out.  It’s not a prediction about how the book will end, or whether or not Snape is a bad guy.  I have my thoughts on those topics (Snape is good, and he and Dumbledore had an “understanding” - in fact, I believe Dumbledore was Snape’s “secret-keeper,” and there was a fair amount of legilimency going on between the two of them in the final chapters of the sixth book.  But that’s not what this article is about).  Before I get to the prediction, though, I have to lay out my theory about the various Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers Harry experienced in his years at Hogwarts.

Theory: Each of the six Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers Harry has encountered have suffered from one of the classical Seven Deadly Sins.

First Year: Quirrell - GREED - He is described at the end of the first book as a man consumed by greed, and this description comes up again in the fifth or sixth book somewhere.  Also, the goblins at Gringotts Bank sing a song about greed in the beginning of the book. 

Second Year: Gilderoy Lockhart - VANITY/PRIDE - I’d call this the gravest of the Seven Deadly Sins, but Rowling does a masterful job of lampooning it in Lockhart’s character.  Pride, at its core, is displacing God at the center of the universe.  This is evil, but it’s also very, very silly.  Rowling shows us the silly side of it.

Third Year: Remus Lupin - GLUTTONY - Lupin is the one Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who is a sympathetic character.  Problem is, he’s also a werewolf.  When he’s in his wolf form, he is unable to control his insatiable appetites.  And of course the wolf is widely viewed as a symbol of gluttony: you’ve heard the term “ravenous wolves.”  Not to mention, Rowling simply talks a lot about gluttony in the third book - it’s a recurring theme.

Fourth Year: Barty Crouch/”Mad Eye” Moody - LUST - This is the one I’m not as sure about, but I think I’m right.  The lust theme is introduced early on with the veela at the Quidditch World Cup, who are able to exert power over men through, you guessed it, lust!  Then “Mad Eye” exhibits lust while at the school.  His magical eye is shown to follow the girls down the hall, and at one point one of the girls talks about being uncomfortable around him because of his magical eye.  But he also exhibits lust in his relationship with Voldemort - not sexual lust, but he definitely wants to be Voldemort’s number 1. 

Fifth Year: Dolores Umbridge - SLOTH - I love Dolores Umbridge!  Well, I mean, I can’t stand her, but what a character!  My definition of sloth is basically “failure to display active love towards God or others.”  We’re created to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and soul and mind and STRENGTH, and to love our neighbor as ourselves - sloth is a failure to live this out.  But in Dolores Umbridge we see a wonderful illustration of how this works out on the ground.  She’s wicked in so many different ways, and she represents everything that’s bad about the bureaucratic mindset, but at her core she DOESN’T DO WHAT SHE’S SUPPOSED TO DO!  She’s supposed to teach the kids how to defend themselves against the dark arts, and she refuses to do so, which causes Harry to have to start giving lessons.  The sloth theme also shows up in the name of the new Quidditch maneuver the kids learn that year (something about a Sloth Roll).

Sixth Year: Severus Snape - ENVY - Snape envies Harry because he envied Harry’s dad.  Pretty consistent theme throughout all the books.

PREDICTION!!!  So if you’ve read this far, you’re probably seeing where this is going.  But I’ll say it anyway:

1) The Seventh Year Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher will be consumed with WRATH - the last remaining of the Seven Deadly Sins.

2) Harry ended the sixth book in what state?  Consumed with wrath!!  He also declared that he would not be returning to Hogwarts the following year, but would be striking out on his own.

3) Through some sequence of events (a visit from McGonagall, confirmed by some other event?) Harry will end up back at Hogwarts not as a student, but as the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.  This is certainly not his intention at the end of book six, but something will happen to convince him that this is the right route to go.  My hunch is that he will become convinced that one of the horcruxes lies within the walls of Hogwarts, so he’ll have to sign on to teach DADA in order to have access to Hogwarts.

This is all just a theory, but we’ll see…  Suffice it to say, I think J.K. Rowling is putting a lot of thought into this stuff.  I’m sure she’ll surprise us all with how the story unfolds, but we’ll see if I’m right about this one small piece of the picture.  I’m looking forward to the book coming out.