The bank accepted my bid and today we went over the building with an inspector and accepted the contract. We are scheduled to close April 3rd. This is a done deal.

Thank You Jesus, this is truly a miracle.

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5450 W. Fullerton. GodsGarage.org coming soon

It is my vision to launch a Christian gathering place in an impoverished inner-city community. A place rooted in music and fellowship more than in the traditional trappings of the “Church.” I believe that we need to invite everyone in; that we need engage and embrace would-be Christians as well as the saved. How else are the unsaved going to hear the message?   What might then be preached in a church catering to the unsaved? Unpacking verbatim scripture would not necessarily work with those who are not yet familiar with the bible. Conversely, to not preach biblically could turn away Christian members. I think that the answer lies in the way that Jesus taught. I believe that it could be possible to compose biblically based parable-esque sermons designed to be understood and useful to both the indoctrinated and the curious. I think that by spending time together in fellowship and music, offering firsthand examples of Christian life, and parable and principal based practical teachings, that Christ’s message can be communicated to all who might come.   God has given me more than enough resources to do this. In fact, lately, it seems as if he has been intentionally dropping needed resources into my lap. I believe that God wants me to do this, that he has actually been noodging me to get it started. After a LOT of prayer, I believe that God directed me to get a solid foundation in his word. This is why I am at Seminary.

 

I realize I haven’t posted an entry in a while. I can use the excuse that school was too demanding, which it was…but that isn’t really the whole thing. I guess that the crux of it is that I have been too busy, which is a good thing.

 

Since I lost my job in ’08 I have had WAY too much time on my hands and blogging was one of the main ways I was dealing with it. Lately, I have a few other ways of keeping myself busy, I will try to play catch up with my life and detail a few of the things I am doing lately at the same time.

 

I finally got approved for disability (PRAISE THE LORD!) I don’t suppose I am so pleased about the health issues that got me here, but they are what they are irregardless and it is good to be getting help financially. I also got another 20% scholarship at school, which makes 40% all together. Considering I am borrowing everything else, and that I will probably qualify for a low minimum payment when I finish school, I figure that the government is NEVER going to get all of that money back. It will be a miracle if I get another 30 or 40 years on this planet.

 

School is going well. I just finished my 3^rd semester at seminary and am maintaining a 3.6 or so GPA. The program I am in calls for 6 semesters so I am technically half through. Practically though, I will probably go to a 7^th semester so I won’t have to kill myself by stressing out. There are a whole lot of extra things that need to be done as part of the program too, and the 7^th semester will let me handle them all better.

 

All of this stuff goes to further cement my plans to open a church. I am looking on it as a sign that God is behind me and giving me the resources I need. I have already started looking for a really cheap property in uptown.

 

The PrayzMunkees have had some ups and downs, but we are still going strong. We played two ‘shows’ at the church in April and were VERY well received. We definitely have something going on. Again, it feels like God has a hand in this. I have been collecting stuffed monkeys for a couple months, buying any that I find at garage sales or thrift shops that are less than a buck. The plan is to bring them to gigs and throw them out to the audience. I have maybe a hundred so far.

 

There is SO much more going on…I am well into 1,500 bibles being shipped to people, I have been chasing down personal responsibilities better than usual, I am playing softball on the seminary team (even though I can’t really run), I put together a sweet les paul copy I found at an estate sale for $20…and on an on…but I am burning out on this post.

 

There is even a limit to how bored I can get on a rainy day.

I finished my Greek Exegesis paper today!!! Thank you Lord, I couldn’t have done it without you. It isn’t due yet, I think it is due in the middle of December. I was SO overwhelmed by the very idea of it that I began right after break and made a commitment to work on it a little bit every day. I have two other classes and another major paper due around the same time, so by starting early I was able to focus on this alone.

 

I didn’t expect to finish this early, but there it is. I still need to do a word study (or two?), but we haven’t even gone over how to do a word study in class yet. I picked out which word(s) I’ll do when I know how to, and left a place in the text where I can insert them without messing everything up. I also have to do the bibliography, and format all the footnotes (there are almost 50) properly. I used my instructor in one of the footnotes, talking about kissing up. All of this remaining stuff is basically busy work, following instructions, and won’t take more than a couple of hours.

 

This is my crowing achievement at seminary so far. I have another paper to do for Christian Heritage, but that will be mostly just reading and regurgitating. This paper required actual thought. Maybe I will post the final on my blog here. Maybe not, it is 14 pages long.

 

Thank you Lord, thank you.

I have had a pair of classic pignose 10w amps since I was in my teens. Orby, an old friend, had pawned them to me when he was hard up for cash. One of them tweeked out, but I kept it and picked up a third for a few dollars somewhere else. Last year, I found the short in the tweeked out one and frankenstiened it into an old stratacastor copy. I think there is a post about that elsewhere on this blog.

 

Last month, I picked up a pignose hog 20w on ebay cheap because the batteries were no good. It still worked plugged in, it just didn’t work on battery power, which is pretty much what pignoses are all about. The hog series uses its own ‘internal’ batteries whereas the old classics just used AAs. I searched out replacement batteries and found out that official pignose replacements were VERY pricey.

 

So I did a little sherlocking using the specs from the expired hog batteries and was able to find a very similar battery of the same exact dimensions and power considerations VERY cheap. The stand in batteries worked great and I got an idea. The price tag on working hogs was significantly higher than the cost of a battery deficient hog plus replacement batteries. Woohoo! A possible profit center!

 

There is also a hog 30w pignose, very similar to the 20w. I picked up one of those very cheap without batteries last night on ebay. I am hoping it uses the same batteries as the 20w, but if it doesn’t, I bet I can still find a cheaper stand in. My plan is to corner the market on battery-less pignoses, of which there seems a steady supply on ebay, replace the batteries and resell them. Keeping a few select amps in the process.

 

This is fun.

the prayz munkees have had almost a dozen practices now, and about as many songs. it only takes about 7 minutes to play them all.

it has been very up and down so far, but i think we are more up than down. as things are shaking out, i am finding myself to be the manager, the writer, the provider...pretty much everything. well, it *was* my vision. it is really cool though to see it actually happening. i had watched a ramones documentary and am trying (roughly) to follow thier story in putting this together. hopefully we will be more successful.

i got a drum set for us yesterday. my nephew had given me his old peavey electric when he moved out over the summer. at the time i didn't know why he gave it me, i had always gotten a vibe from him that he didn't like me much even though i have tried to be a friend to him. a few weeks later it became apparent that it was a sort of guilt offering. it turned out that he had been trash talking me to my son, telling straight up lies about some important things that really set my son against me.

i don't think that he intentionally tried to cause a rift between me and my son, but that was what happened. if my relationship with my son had not been so solid, it might have been serious. as it was, it caused us a few weeks of really turbulent times and things got ugly more than a few times.

i was SO mad at my nephew over this that it has been a struggle to forgive him for it. i put the peavey into storage and couldn't even look at. i have been trying to find forgiveness in my heart over this issue, but there are a few other weasley things this kid has done to me and i was having trouble letting it go.

back to the munkees; the band needed drums. the drummer had been borrowing a set from a guy down the hall.  however, this guy down the hall is kind of flakey and just said "no" twice already on a practice night. i came up with a little plastic yamaha "toy" drum machine that got us through one of those times, but we needed drums. i started thinking of how we could raise some cash for a drum set and i thought of my nephew's guitar.

i put it up on craig's list for $200 and sold it the same night for $175. i found a decent no-name set on craig's for the same $175 and brought it the next day. I brought it to practice last night and we are in business.  the praze munkees ROCK!

i am still stink-eyed about  what my nephew did to me, but i think i can forgive him now.

god is SO good.

friday night was the first practice for an idea whose time has come (and gone).

punk praise.

we are taking all the old standards and CCM monstronsities and screaming them in frantic double time with too loud and too distorted electric guitar and bass and insane chaotic drumming.

it is really really funny, and really really wrong.

ala ramones, most of our songs are less than 60 seconds. so far we have 4 or 5, we are going to need a boatload more.

current selections include: are you wa(r)shed by the blod of the lamb, knockin' on heaven's door, they will know we are christians, amazing grace (grace like rain), lay your burdens down, and *maybe* 'god' (rebecca st. james).

i *think* i am playing bass, but i have been playing guitar and switching back and forth until we get a guitarist. we have me, a drummer, and a front man. the music is *really* basic, but we really sounded pretty good for the first practice. i think this is going to work out.

i am taking an online theology course, that is where my last post comes from. one of our texts is "free of charge" that is a feminist take on theology.

i have been falling through the required readings and this book increasingly gets my undies in a bunch. i do not see my faith, or god for that matter, as inheriently male or female. i see the 'father' image as rightly so and beyond question. here is a my reaction to this week's assignment which i haven't handed in yet. is it too too much?

(the assignment question is in ital, Leguna is the feminist author)

Discuss either the Apostles' or Nicene Creed in light of the Trinity in LaCugna's article on the Trinity. How does her theology compare with that found in the creed?

Leguna identifies trinity theology as a hierarchy implying genders and argues that this reinforces sexist cultural roles. She argues that Father/Son masculine images reinforces patriarchy. Leguna considers Augustine’s ideas about how the Trinity is imprinted on the human soul and how his ideas differ from Greek ideas of self through another. She progresses to social gender subordination tying it to Greek Trinitarian patriarchal views. She goes on to question the use of masculine address toward God and calls Jesus a protofeminist, commenting on how predominantly male imagery supports sexist theology and patriarchal God-language.

While I agree with her closing solution that Trinitarian theology leaves no room for inequality or hierarchy, the previous discussions made me squirm enough to completely disengage me. While I believe in complete equality between the sexes, this article, and others in this book, seem to make me feel guilty for being male. It is an unfounded shame akin to feelings about how this country historically treated Native or African Americans; or current racist trends towards the Muslim people.

I think that Leguna is ultra-cautious to fully affirm the beliefs of the creeds, and so does not cross any critical lines in her theology. However, I feel that to assail the use of historical biblical language to ply for social equality issues detracts from a theology of absolute sovereignty. To do so subtracts from the objective of unity and certainty fundamental to creed theology.

One day you are talking with a member named Sol Scriptura. He says “Preacher, I know that you’re a Bible believer. So I’m sure I’ll never have to worry about you preaching any of that Trinity stuff. No creed but Christ, that’s my motto. Just preach what’s in the Bible.” Write out what you would want to say to Sol in response to his comments.

Traveling through time into the hypothetical future we meet future parishoner Sol Scriptura, who does not believe the Trinity is scriptural. Sol requests that I, his future Pastor, support his ‘no creed but Christ’ motto. Hypothetically, the future Pastor me would draw from the deep treasure troves of biblical knowledge he received from his seminary education. Unfortunately, the present student me does not yet hold a complete understanding of all Christian theology and so I will answer Sol with what is in my heart.

I have always relied on what the bible tells me rather than what men might say. I rely too on what the Holy Spirit tells me. He isn’t easy to hear, but He is hard to ignore. I read the bible and the Holy Spirit is there to guide me, not always explaining, but telling me when I get things wrong. It says in the bible that He will do this. Christ says this as well, and He also guides me. The Father speaks of His Holy Spirit, and of Christ His son, and guides me too.

All three guide me and love me, the bible also makes this clear and I know it in my heart without doubt. They love you too Sol. Once you ask Christ into your heart, and I know you have, you have invited Father God and His Holy Spirit too. We can argue about exactly who these three are in relation to each other forever, but we never will explain it precisely. I have always had trouble wrapping my mind around it the official dogma myself. I like to think of them all as Love, and that they care for me out of that Love. The Spirit hasn’t told me that I am wrong. A more important question for you Sol, might be: are all three in your heart?

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!

i realize that this is a creepy subject, but the truth is that there has been an epidemic of bed bugs in the country, especially in the major cities.  i am a craig's list junkee and i picked up a free box spring off the free section there. sure, it was a little ratty and worse for the wear, but i was just going to put it under my new mattress. i wasn't going to sleep on it.

as it turned out. it was free for a good reason. the person giving it away wasn't very christian. it was infested with bed bugs.

so began my most recent trial. they infested my new mattress, and an adjacent wall before i even became aware of thier existance. fortunately (or unfortunately as far as early detection), i don't seem to react to thier bites. they were having little parties in my bed for almost 3 months before i figured it out.

first, there always seemed to be debri in my bed when i woke up no matter how often i changed my sheets. i never eat in bed, and yet they felt like crumbs. then, little spots of blood began showing up on my sheets and then my pillow case. i thought it was from zits, i still have issues with acne. i still din't get it yet though.

one night, i awoke in the middle of the night after a nightmare that there were leeches pouring out of a hole in my bed and latching onto me. i jumped out of bed and turned the lights on, and there were dozens of the little buggers scattering everywhere. there were even more running up the wall and disappearing into cracks. i started squishing like a mad man, and was completely grossed out when they all bled. i threw out the box spring that night, but they were already everywhere.

so began  the ordeal that has plagued me for the last 3 months. i went to the hardware store and bought every kind of bug juice they had, some were specifically for bed bugs. it was almost a week before the landlord agreed to pop for exterminators, he had finally found one in his apartment upstairs. neither the exterminators nor my best efforts seemed to make a dent in the situation. i had taken to getting up every hour and turning the lights on and squishing everything i could. needless to say, i was not sleeping very much or very well anyway.

i slept in my front room a few nights and sure enough, they were there too. i read up on the internet about them and learned a lot. apparently, they are a kind of superbug. they are tougher and more adaptable than cockroaches. the one thing that cockroaches have over on them is that structurally, they are very flimsy and quickly squishable. these same traits though make them flatter and more able to hide in the narrowest of cracks. also unlike roaches, they are relatively slow, and easier to squish.

when the exterminators were here, they talked about the heat treatment. they recommended i put all my books in a box in the sun (it was in the 90s) that day. i did this, although i only have about 1000 books and it took all day. looking into the heat approach in subsequent bedbug google sessions i discovered that 45 degrees centigrade will kill them dead, eggs and all. that is 113F.

at that time, i already had two electric space heaters and started leaving them on in my room all day. i bought a third space heater at a garage sale and i bought a digital thermometer at wallmart. i was only reaching temps of 99 or so. i bought more space heaters and put a fan in the room to better circulate the heat. i got this idea from some other crazy fool that wrote about a similar problem  on his blog. he was using kerosene heaters.

that seemed a little dangerous, so i stuck with electricity. however, i kept blowing fuses, so i began snaking extension cords out into the hall and stealing power from wherever i could.  i found two virgin circuits in the nearby laundry room, and another in a front entranceway. i am now up to 9 space heaters and daily reaching temperatures of over 120F. it gets so hot in my room that the walls themselves radiate heat and if i shut down operations at 9:00, the room will stay really hot until after midnight. it has been less than comfortable, but...more importantly...there are NO BUGS.

it wasn't long before i realized they were migrating from my bed room into other rooms. so i started spreading out and heating the whole house. that is when stuff started catching on fire. i won't go into this at length, i will just again warn not to try this at home. extension cords are just NOT made for this kind of abuse. i have thrown away a dozen extension cords that were perfectly good extension cords, and i have stuff melted to floors that will never come out, but me and my possessions have otherwise somehow come thru this intact.

god is watching over me. thank you lord.

i started using ultrasonic pest devices in other rooms a couple weeks ago and i think they are keeping bugs out.  it is hard to be sure, they hide really well. i have gotten VERY educated on these little creatures and know what to look for and where to find them, and i haven't been able to find one in over two weeks. i have some other sound devices on order from a place online that makes them specifically for bed bugs. i want to keep this place a no bedbug zone forever.

i also am continually spraying and dusting, i am buying professional poisons online and rotating them. bedbugs quickly breed insecticide resistance into daily generations. i bought a $75 bedbug specific mattress cover that supposedly entombs them and suffocates them. i had bought a $10 waterproof one at target and that was just not doing it. i think that i have won this war. i am sure that more than one got away before i really got good at this, and so it is possible they will be back, or that they have moved into other apartments.

if that is so, i am SO ready for them here, or ready to torch my neighbor's places if they need me. bedbugs go home!