GOD/LOVE/SEX

I'm really excited about the sermon series we're starting this week! It's a 4-week series called GOD/LOVE/SEX.  We'll spend the month of October discussing relationships, marriage, sex and much more. It's actually primarily a study of the Song of Solomon. (If you've never read the Song of Solomon, you should stop reading this right now, grab your Bible, read it, and thank God for putting it in the Bible!)

The series will go like this:

• Week 1 - When Chemistry & Theology Collide
• Week 2 - Till Death...
• Week 3 - Great Sex!
• Week 4 - Questions??

I'm especially excited about Week 4. If you follow this link to our church website -http://livinghope-dixon.com/news/godlovesex/- you can anonymously submit a question about relationships, marriage, sex, divorce, dating, or whatever.  I will use Week 4 to address as many of the questions submitted as possible.  It's completely anonymous. Your question is emailed directly to me with no indication of sender or anything.  So ask away. Nothing is off-limits.

Even if you're not a Living Hoper, feel free to follow the series by listening to our podcast.  There's a link to the podcast on the sidebar of this blog or you can download it through iTunes (search for Living Hope Church - Jeff Myers).

I really enjoy preaching about this topic.  It's a lot of fun and honestly I believe most churches don't hear enough of it.  In Lebanon, MO I was honored to help out the Pregnancy Support Center in teaching abstinence in the area public schools.  Tons of fun.  The greatest side affect of this, was that almost everytime I was in Wal-Mart some teen would stop me and say, "Hey, aren't you the sex guy?"  If I every had someone else with me, I always had some explaining to do.

Preparatory Prayer

Has anyone ever given a name to something that you were barely aware of in your life, but when they named it suddenly it became big and obvious?  I experienced this yesterday when we discussed this concept of preparatory prayer in our LifeGroup.  We've been going through Jim Cymbala's study called When God's People Pray.  Cymbala describes preparatory prayer as God drawing you into a time of prayer to prepare you for something that's coming up in your life.

I'm amazed at how the older I get the bigger and broader prayer becomes.  I've always believed in the power of prayer, but I've come to believe prayer is kind of a secret Swiss Army knife.  It's like for years you think you have this great knife and then suddenly out of the blue you discover, "What the..? You mean there's a great pair of scissors in this thing, too?"

For many years I believed prayer was our means of communicating with God.  Then I learned that prayer is also a two-way conversation - God can communicate with us through our prayers.  Then I learned that prayer is not so much about us trying to influence or change God, it's about allowing God to change us through our prayers.  Then there's this preparatory prayer thing...

That God will actually woo us into a time of prayer to build us up and prepare us for something coming up in our lives.  I know I've experienced this in the past, but had no idea of what it was.  I've felt the Spirit lead me to pray, but probably felt like it was because I was being convicted of not praying enough or something.  But God knows that we are empowered when we spend time with him in prayer and will sometimes call us to pray for the purpose charging up our batteries and giving us extra strength for an upcoming trial.  It's the same way Jesus called his disciples to pray with him in the garden before his arrest. It wasn't for his benefit - it was for theirs!

But how many times have I had a sleepless night and chose to watch TV or eat a big sandwich to help me get to sleep, when maybe God wasn't letting me sleep because he knew I needed to spend some time with him?  Or how many times have I felt a hunger for time in prayer, but still put it off?  It's almost as if the LOW FUEL light was blinking and I just kept ignoring it!

Now that this has been named and I'm more aware of it, I hope I can be more sensitive to the drawing of the Holy Spirit into times of preparatory prayer!

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

Great weekend!

• My Oklahoma Sooners have officially secured the #1 spot!  God is good!
• I really felt God's leading through some difficult situations all day Friday.  Had some potentially rough situations to deal with in the church, but God truly went ahead of me and prepared the way!
• Had a great conversation with my Mom on Friday.  God is doing amazing things in her life right now.  I'll share about it sometime soon.
• What a beautiful night Friday night at the DHS football game.  It was awesome seeing so many Living Hopers there, too!
• Great day today at Living Hope! God really orchestrated a beautiful service.  Several weeks ago I knew I would be preaching on our identity as God's children and the title of my sermon would be "There Are No Orphans".  What I didn't know at the time was that today would also be the day that Sharon Linebarger of Little Flock Children's Home in India would be in service and we would officially announce that Living Hope will be taking a mission trip to India to work at Little Flock in October 2009.  It all just weaved together beautifully.
• I enjoyed holding Isla throughout most of my sermon, too.  She was sort of my object lesson to share about our relationship with God the Father.
• It was great visiting with the Taylors at lunch today. What a beautiful family! Jamie's roast was spot-on!
• LifeGroups were great tonight.  I'm really enjoying the Jim Cymbala study, When God's People Pray.  One of the things we hit tonight was this concept of preparatory prayer...AWESOME!  I'll share more about it later this week.

Can't wait to see how God uses and grows our church this week!

Football & Skype

Last night was an absolutely perfect night. The weather was gorgeous with a slight breeze and Isaiah and I got to watch our Dixon Rams open up a can on the Amador Buffalos. Very cool! I did my chaplain thing before the game. It's so funny, because right before the game the atmosphere is so intense! The coaches and players are mannin' up and getting ready for battle. Lots of screaming and slapping each other and cursing. Then they all take a knee, pop their tops, quiet down and allow me to lead them in prayer. But as soon as "Amen" is said it's immediately back to screaming and cursing and slapping each other. Kinda funny. I'm seriously honored to have the opportunity to be out there. They're a good bunch of guys.

One of the things that I always miss about the mid-west when I'm living in California is that I don't get to watch very many Oklahoma Sooner football games. I'm trying to keep track of it with the weak play-by-play text/graphic report on ESPN.com, but it's not the same as watching the actual game. So far my Sooners are having a great season. Boomer Sooner, baby!

I'm loving Skype right now. If you haven't downloaded Skype you really should. I've been able to have video calls with my mom, my brother Kenny and his family, Joe Wilson in Lebanon, MO and Steve Torrison in Panama. It's totally free and the quality is AMAZING! Seriously the audio is better than telephone and the video is pretty good, too. Get it if you haven't yet. Feel free to Skype me once you've downloaded it. My Skype ID is "jeff.jamie.myers".

Letterman Miffed at McCain

David Letterman was a little put out by John McCain backing out of his Late Show appearance the other day.  I don't care who you support...this is pretty funny.

The One I Couldn't Shake - 9/25

Amos 6:3-7 (The Message)

Woe to you who are rushing headlong to disaster!

Catastrophe is just around the corner!

Woe to those who live in luxury

and expect everyone else to serve them!

Woe to those who live only for today,

indifferent to the fate of others!

Woe to the playboys, the playgirls,

who think life is a party held just for them!

Woe to those addicted to feeling good--life without pain!

those obsessed with looking good--life without wrinkles!

They could not care less

about their country going to ruin.

(Sounds eerily familiar! And vs. 7 tells us the result.)

But here's what's really coming:

a forced march into exile.

They'll leave the country whining,

a rag-tag bunch of good-for-nothings.

What if...?

In a sermon a couple of weeks ago one of my points was that many, if not most, of us are "practical atheists" (a term I heard Craig Groeschel use at Catalyst '07).  We say we have faith, but live as if the opposite is true.  But what if our lives matched our "beliefs"?  How would your life look different?

What if we prayed like we really believed God was listening and would answer?

What if we read our Bibles expecting to hear a Word from God?

What if we actually believed the second coming was imminent?

What if we shared Jesus with others believing that He really can change lives?

What if our faith and trust in God's provision was bigger than our checkbook balance?

What if we started seeing ourselves as disciples and not JUST Christians?

What if we stopped trying to help our kids get to graduation day, and started discipling our families?

What if our hearts were broken for "the least of these" instead annoyed?

What if we stopped having discussions about social justice and actually got up off our butts and helped someone?

What if we honestly believed our sins are forgiven and forgotten by God?

What if we stopped trying to make the Bible match our theology and started making our theology match the Bible?

What if we loved each other enough to risk losing the relationship by lovingly pointing out sinfulness?

What if stopped slamming the door of "ministry" shut on broken, sinful people and instead, put our arms around them and helped them heal their souls so they can be effective in ministry?

What if we didn't care if people knew the #1 priority in our lives was Jesus Christ?

What if...?

Prayers for Dixon High

We had our Tuesday Night Prayer Meeting tonight on the campus of Dixon High School. It was a really sweet time together. There were about 10 of us. First, we prayed for each other and our church. Then we split up and prayer walked around the campus.

It's funny how sometimes you don't know what the cry of your heart is until you start praying for a good amount of time. As I was walking the campus I found myself praying hard for two things:

• That our Dixon teachers, coaches, school board members, and students who attend LHC would realize the vast mission field they step into every day and would become broken for that campus.
• That God would powerfully transform DHS over the next few years into a school that Mollie, Isaiah, and Isla would greatly benefit from and be excited to serve God in.

Whisper a prayer for Dixon High and your local HS campus, too.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

Wow! Another busy weekend, but lots of fun.

Jamie went to the Thrive Worship Conference at Bayside Church with the rest of our worship team on Friday and Saturday.  So I had kid duty.  I actually had a good time with the kids.  

Friday night we went to the Gretchen Higgins Elementary Family Fun Night. Kind of a carnival atmosphere. Mollie and Isaiah were really excited about it and had a good time.

After spending time at the school, we went to Winters to see the Dixon HS football team play. I love being the team chaplain.  It's an incredible opportunity!

God did an incredible work at Living Hope today.  Our worship gathering was great.  The worship team came back fired up from their conference and my message today was one that was burning to get out of me.  I believe many people took steps closer to God today.

Today was also the 7th birthday of Living Hope Church.  We had a great feast and a membership meeting after the worship service. The meeting went smoothly and I think people left excited about what God is doing.

We visited one of our LifeGroups tonight and had a great time getting into the Word and praying! We have so many people being stretched to the limit by their life's circumstances, yet God is present and working it all for their/our good.  God is good - all the time!

The Orphanage

Jamie was out of town last night, so naturally, Mollie, Isaiah and I watched a scary movie.  I rented The Orphanage from a Redbox. (I love Redbox. It's a movie vending machine that is in the entryway of many Wal-Marts and other locations.  $1/per day. Can't beat it.)

The Orphanage is a Guillermo Del Toro movie.  Del Toro also made Pan's Labyrinth, which I also love.  This movie was pretty darn creepy.  It felt like a strange mix of Poltergeist and The Sixth Sense.  Honestly it was probably a little too scary for my 11 and 9 year old kids, but it's fun getting creeped out occasionally.  We watched The Office after it was over to laugh away the fear.

Del Toro is an incredible filmmaker.  He creates these environments and characters that offer both a sense of wonder and fear.  Like Pan's Labyrinth, it's in Spanish with English subtitles.  I'm amazed at my kids' ability to sit through and enjoy both of those movies even though they have to read the entire thing.  After a while you don't even realize you're reading everything. Check this movie out. It's worth it. Here's the trailer.

Rams Chaplain

Several months ago I was honored to be asked by Coach Scott Winslow (Dixon Rams Head Coach and fellow Living Hoper) to be the team chaplain for the Rams Varsity Football Team.  I've met with the team a couple of times and it's an incredible opportunity to share Jesus and invest in these guys as men.  I got to pray with the team before the game tonight.  I love being able to plug into the community in such tangible ways.

Go Rams!

Go Jesus!

Approval Seeking

I'm listening to Craig Groeschel's sermon from last week at LifeChurch and his main point is "I can't please everyone, but I can please God."

This is an area of my life that I sometimes struggle with.  I put up a pretty good front that I don't care what people think of me, but a lot of times nothing could be further from the truth.  Even though I love preaching to large groups of people, I am also very uncomfortable in large groups.  I'll walk into a crowded room and feel like people are looking at me and judging me or mentally criticizing me.  Sometimes it comes over me so strongly that I find myself alone in the corner of the room or simply just leaving the gathering.

I once heard someone say that the brutal truth is that if we all knew how SELDOM people think of us, our feelings would be even more hurt.  This obsession with worrying what people are thinking about us is often something that exists almost entirely in our minds.

As a pastor, I want people to like my sermons and approve of my work.  As a dad, I want my kids to think I'm cool and value my opinions.  As a husband, I want Jamie to approve of me as a man and find me attractive.  As a consumer, I want people to envy my purchases.  As a pet owner, I want the dog to think of me as her favorite member of the family.  And it goes on and on and on...

I have this fear that I will reach a point in my life where I am living primarily to keep my critics content.  I know that Craig's statement is true and I need to remind myself of it often.  I want to live my life in such a way that God is pleased with me and that is sufficient approval.  The scary thing is that I know that living a life pleasing to God will not always please people in my church, family, community, etc...  I hope at the end of my life I've feared not having the approval of God more than I've feared not having the approval of people.

I Will Rise - Chris Tomlin

I heard Chris Tomlin's song I Will Rise from his new album for the first time today.  It's really great!  I can't wait to see it make its way into the Living Hope Worship rotation.  You can listen to it below (found this on Travis Penn's blog).

I love Tomlin's stuff even if his songs tend to get overplayed in most churches.  He really is the Fanny Crosby or Isaac Watts of the 21st Century.  He's writing and recording songs that we'll probably be singing 50-100 years from now occasionally.  This is one of the reasons that those arguments against modern worship music drive me nuts.  Today's worship music is not just about flash-factor and lame attempts to be relevant.  It's the new hymnology.  It's the heartbeat of today's church.  The psalmist said, "I will sing to the Lord a new song."  We write new music not because we're trying to be cool.  We write new music because God is not dead and he deserves to have new songs written about him every day.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

Had another great weekend!  Here we go:

• Friday night we went to Oakland to see the A's get spanked by the Rangers.  It was still a good time, though.  This was Isla's first BIG game and she was loving it.  She gets excited whenever she hears people clapping, so she was pretty much in heaven.  We also got to spend some time at the game with a new couple at LHC.  Good times.
• Saturday we spent the day with the Ents in Novato.  I love this family and am always encouraged after spending time with them.  Even when they're going through tough times, they're pretty positive people.  They're in the process of doing one of the gutsiest things anyone can do...start a church.  Pray for them.
• We had terrific services today at LHC.  We talked about the importance of being a praying church.  We're beginning a Tuesday Night Prayer Meeting this week and going through Jim Cymbala's "When God's People Pray" in our small groups.  I mentioned a line from Shadowlands that I love when CS Lewis says something to the effect of "I don't pray because it changes God, I pray because it changes me."  We cannot over-emphasize prayer!
• Our small groups kick off this week and we had three groups meeting tonight.  I'm already hearing good reports.  God is beginning to do an incredible work at Living Hope.  I love it!

I'm on Facebook

I finally joined facebook and I have to admit I'm really enjoying it.  Within minutes of signing up I connected with one of my best friends from high school in Houston, MO whom I haven't seen or spoken to since high school.  Very cool!

It would be easy to allow it to consume my time, but I'm glad I'm part of the "community".  You can check out my Facebook link on the sidebar to right.

Towel Troubles

Jamie thought she was going crazy the other day because she didn't feel like she could keep up with the laundry...specifically the towels.  After a little investigation we discovered that our beautiful (and very clean) daughter Mollie was the culprit.  She's been showering daily and using one towel to dry her body, one for her hair, and one to step on when she gets out of the shower.  Seriously, she's using 2-3 towels day.  After we spoke with her about it, you would have thought we were taking away her cell phone the way she reacted to the new one-towel-per-shower rule.  She seriously thought we were being unreasonable.  She'll probably be getting a crash course in "how to maintain the laundry for a family of 5" soon.

Remembering 9/11

I wanted to post this yesterday, but had a hard time putting it into words.  I do think it's important for us not to forget the events of 9/11/01 - not that anyone alive on that day ever could.  I think the thing I remember most about that day is sitting in shock in front of the TV thinking that nothing would ever be the same.  I think the nation, and probably the world, was forever changed on that day.  Probably the biggest change for Americans is that we live with a new sense of fear and paranoia that we had never really experienced before.  I'm sure many other nations have experienced that fear for decades, but it was new to us.  We lost our innocence on that day.  I wonder if we'll ever get it back.

meetup.com

I discovered a great website today called meetup.com (ht to AFrayedKnot).  The concept is that you type in an interest of yours and your zip code and the site informs you of groups that meet around that topic in your area.  You can also simply search all groups meeting about anything in your area or start your own meetup.

I think this site has potential to become a great tool for the church.  You could encourage your people to start meetups like religious discussion groups, book clubs, quilting meetups, root beer lovers meetups, or any other kind of meetup, with the intent of getting our church people more connections in the community.

I found it interesting that there were 20 groups within 25 miles of me that meet about "religion & beliefs".  Here are the topics of those 20 groups:

Kaballah

Paranormal

Paranormal

Pagans

Tarot Card

Metaphysics

Jewish

Huna

Zen

Astral Projection

Science of Deliberate Creation

Sufism

Psychics

Atheists & Free Thinkers

Soul Healing & Soul Wisdom

Conjure, HooDoo, & Rootwork

Christian

Flying Humans (I'm not making that up - they practice flying and levitation.)

Science of Deliberate Creation

Quantum Physics

Unbelievable!  Such is life in Northern California.  By the way, the one single Christian group was a group about exiting the church and worshipping in your home.  I'd love to see Living Hopers start up some Bible Study, Theology, and various other meetups.

Benched

I saw this short video on the CataBlog of a handful of people trying to make a difference in their community.  I LOVE the idea - rather that complaining about a problem, they choose to celebrate the people most affected by the problem and make their lives a little better.  Beautiful!

Benched from Brandon McCormick on Vimeo.

Cluster & The Church's Response to Gay Marriage

A few times a year, the EFC pastors in certain areas get together for what we call Clusters.  Our district superintendent, Gil Stieglitz, does a great job of encouraging and equipping us pastors in these casual round-table meetings.  The East Bay Cluster is a great group of guys.  I love the interaction.  We do a lot of razzing each other.  I love pastors.

One of the things we discussed today was the fall-out of legalized gay marriage here in California. Evidently there are some homosexual activist-type groups that plan to press the issue as far as possible.  Churches are being asked to marry gay couples and if they refuse they are being sued. Evidently they have a case, too, because civil rights trump religious rights in the eyes of the court. This is causing many churches to adopt clauses in their by-laws that state the church will only marry church members and even statements that specifically state that they won't marry active homosexuals.  This is something that our church leadership will probably have to consider and wrestle with.  I hate the implications of all this for churches.  I don't like the idea of picking on one specific group of sinners in our by-laws.  It'll be interesting to see how churches handle this - ours included.

I Finally Caved

Well, I finally bought in to all the hype.  I'm now using a MacBook.  I fought this for a very long time.  I used to love teasing the hardcore Apple fans and tell them that the whole Apple thing was just a fad.  But honestly I got tired of the viruses and crashes and such.  I have to say that so far it's living up to the hype.  Extremely fast, very sleek, great pre-installed software that would have cost me hundreds, if not thousands, to purchase for a PC.  So far, so good, but there is a bit of a learning curve.  I feel a little like I'm in the UK driving on the opposite side of the road.  It really is the Cadillac of computers.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

My weekends are always so full and so much happens that I think I should mention, but usually when it's all over my head is just spinning to the point that I don't know where to begin.  So the result is that I normally blog nothing about my weekend.  Alot of other bloggers have started doing "weekend reflection" blogging, so I think I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and start these "Monday Morning Quarterbacking" posts.

A lot of stuff happened this weekend, most of it great:

• Thursday night a couple in the church invited me to go to a Sacramento Rivercats baseball game.  They had two extra tickets so I brought Isaiah.  He has a friend who has been talking a lot about the Rivercats, so he'd been asking to go to a game.  He was soooo excited!  When we arrived at the ballpark, we didn't go in through the normal entrance.  We headed down this tunnel and to our surprise were seated on the first row, right behind the plate.  IT WAS AWESOME!  We could literally reach out and touch the backstop.  We didn't have to get up and stand in line for concessions.  Ballpark staff waited on us and brought our food/drinks to us.  Then to top it all off, seated right next to us was Ruthie Bolton - former WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist.  She and her husband were so friendly and gracious.  They passed out about 10 cases of ice cream cones to the crowd and she had her gold medals with her and she let us hold them.  Very cool night!  One of those nights where Isaiah said, "This is one of the best nights of my life!"
• Saturday we attended a banquet for Little Flock Orphanage in India.  I love this organization so much and its founder, Viji.  She's an incredible lady.  We're going to do a mission trip to India and Little Flock in October of 2009 and I can't wait.  I'm excited to see what team from Living Hope God puts together!
• Saturday night Mollie had her friend Mia stay the night.  She's a sweet girl.  I'm so thankful that Mollie has made good friends here in Dixon.
• Sunday's worship gathering was great!  I think the summer slump is finally over, so our attendance has started coming back up.  We had 112 yesterday.  The worship music was incredible.
• I've been preaching about the need for authentic community in my "CONNECT" series.  God is really using it.  I talked with one guy before service who was saying he was discouraged and feeling himself want to isolate from everyone.  I told him that the sermon was going to speak to him especially.  Afterwards he said it was exactly what he needed.  Another lady came to me after the sermon and showed me her prayer card.  She said, "I just wanted you to know I wrote this BEFORE you preached."  It was all about praying for more authentic community in her life. I love it when God connects the dots between a sermon and a soul!
• Sunday afternoon we had small group leader training at my house.  I'm excited about kicking off our small groups next week.  God is going to do great things!
• Jamie cooked a couple mean chocolate pies for our meeting yesterday.  She is so good to me and for me.  I definitely married UP.
• Sunday evening I headed to Vacaville to speak to the college group from Valley Church.  It's a great group and many of our college-age folks join them regularly.  I spoke from 1 Kings 12 about the need to heed the wisdom of the older generations.  One of the best things I've ever done is to intentionally surround myself with a handful of older, more experienced pastors who will invest time in me and give me Godly counsel.  I'm eternally grateful to these men.

The Faith of Barack Obama

Thomas Nelson Publishers sent this book to me to review on the ol' blog. I have to admit it's a much better book than I anticipated it being. In The Faith of Barack Obama, Stephen Mansfield does an excellent job of detailing the non-traditional childhood that Obama grew up in. While he was raised by his mother to respect all religions, as a child he participated in Muslim worship with his step-father, attended a Catholic school, and was strongly influenced by his atheist mother. Through deep soul-searching in his early adult years, he came to faith in Jesus Christ under the pulpit of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

This book is truly about what its title suggests. While I believe Mansfield is probably an Obama supporter, he pulls no punches in revealing any blemishes in Obama's faith and theology. One of my favorite lines from the introduction is, "This book is instead written in the belief that if a man's faith is sincere, it is the most important thing about him, and that it is impossible to understand who he is and how he will lead without first understanding the religious vision that informs his life."

Mansfield does an excellent job at choosing to see the positive attributes of the faith of ALL the players. He spends some time discussing the faith journeys of Jeremiah Wright, Hilary Clinton, Jon McCain, and George W. Bush as well. While all of them have differing journeys and even differing theology, they are all portrayed as sincere in their faith.

While I do believe Obama to be a sincere and active participant in his faith, the book brings up a few items that are potential red flags for evangelicals:

• Obama's view that all faiths lead to God.
• Obama's reluctance to let his personal faith influence his social/political worldview.
• Obama's stance on abortion is abysmal (my words, not Mansfield's). "...his radical stance on abortion puts him further left on that issue than even NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) Pro-Choice America." Barack voted against a bill that would allow doctor's to take life-saving measures on babies that were born alive after failed late-term abortion attempts. These are babies, not fetuses or tissue masses. But babies would have survived and been healthy if they had simply been a few weeks premature. Even the NARAL didn't oppose this bill, but Obama did.

I found Mansfield's book thoughtful and fair. I would recommend it to everyone who wants to know how Obama became who he is spiritually.

----------------------

As a pastor, I don't believe it's my role to endorse candidates. I have no problem talking issues or propositions, but I keep my views on the candidates more private. While I have occasionally commented on politics on this blog in the past, WIDE OPEN is not really about politics. However in the interest of being "wide open" (i.e. - vulnerable about my journey), I have to admit I am still very undecided in this presidential election. I have my leanings, but I'm trying to spend considerable amounts of time praying about which candidate to vote for. As I'm doing this my mind is flooded with questions like:

• Is the best Christian necessarily the best leader?
• Is it more important that the next president's spiritual walk is devout and sincere or that his theology is correct?
• Is the prospect of hope/greatness more important than the prospect of experience/wisdom?
• Are Christians being seduced by both parties?
• As long as the president is a strong protector of freedom of religion, does he/she need to believe the way I believe to earn my vote?

I won't give you my answers to these questions, but have you been asking yourself similar questions? Or do you have answers to any of mine?

Jeremy Hubbard

So I'm watching the news yesterday and I think of an old friend from when I was a senior in high school named Jeremy Hubbard. Jeremy and his older brother Craig were in our youth group at our church in Wichita, KS (we moved there my senior year, but I'm not bitter). Jeremy is my age. I use the term "youth group" loosely because our youth group pretty much consisted of about 5-6 teens from 3 different families - it was a very small church. Anyway, I'm thinking of Jeremy because he went into news broadcasting and the last I heard he was working at a station in Kansas City. So I Google Jeremy and to my surprise he was hired by ABC News a few months ago to anchor ABC World News Now and ABC America This Morning. This is ABC's late night/early morning news broadcast. So I've started Tivo-ing World News Now and getting my news from an old friend.

It's really weird because "anchorman" Jeremy is not entirely the Jeremy from my memories. I remember being nervous about moving to a new, bigger city and not having any friends. Jeremy and Craig and Craig's new bride Kristi (congrats, guys, if you read this! - I read the news on your blog, Craig/Kristi) were the first people to befriend me and my brother, Kenny. I just remember laughing so hard all day that first day in town because Craig and Jeremy both had a wicked sense of humor. Great memories!

Anyway, congrats on the new job if you read this, Jeremy!