jasonackerman.com

Zoe was asked during her schooltime the other day to draw a picture depicting her Dad as “provider”. Even though it feels like the picture should be a blank piece of paper sometimes, I know that is just beating myself up for some very untrue reasons. And that is reinforced by Zoe’s drawing. That’s a picture of me, with my guitar, leading worship at church – it’s conveniently labelled for your benefit. What made me laugh was Dan, off to the left … mohawk and all. If you’ve ever met Dan, you’d find that highly entertaining.

Thank you Zoe for painting me in the light you see me. I hope I can be all that you expect. But with a less blue head.

Waiting on a crazy huge upload to complete, figured now is as good a time as any to throw down a little blogging, quick update style.

I’ve been trying to make progress on a couple different web projects, mostly so I can get them invoiced so I can stop the avalanche of utility disconnections that are soon to come my way. It’s a finely orchestrated dance, the freelance gig. Sometimes I love it… times like now, I really don’t love it so much. But, progress is being made and work is being completed.

I’m working on a sermon for next weekend about the church… that’s it – just, “The Church”. It’s part of a series that is covering some doctrinal basics. I’m really excited about this one, and I think the main thrust of it is going to be – “Does your heart beat for the church?”. See, because, the thing is… mine does. Not turning blindly from the errors and miscues and lapses in judgment and excesses in judgment and vile atrocities done in the name of the church, but in spite of them. Knowing that the church is filled with disgusting, messy people that have created a disgusting, messy history. Still, I can’t get past – none of us who are a part of the church should be able to get past – the reality that the church is the Bride of Christ, presented to him blameless and holy.

I’ve had a few friends in the past who have said that after growing up in the church, they remain spiritual and still seek God, but no longer find the church relevant. Apparently, they think it is so messed up that not even God is interested anymore. This saddens me, because if God so easily gave up on the church, then who’s to say He won’t give up on me? It just doesn’t jive to me that someone could so coldly turn away from that which God so clearly loves, and yet still try to sneak in the back door and claim a deep love for God. It’s as if someone walks up to me and says, “You know, I like you. I enjoy your company. I want to get to know you better. But I really don’t see the relevance of your wife. She doesn’t belong, doesn’t really reflect the same values you do, and to be frank, she’s pissed me off one too many times. But enough of that, shall we go grab some dinner, maybe a movie?” How fast does Jason call BS on that? Really. Freaking. Fast. Because it’s not just a ridiculous thing to say, it’s downright offensive. And hurtful. Imagine the hurt God feels when we disparage the church so brazenly. Critique? Yes. Call to the carpet when something is obviously wrong? Heck yes. But turn our backs and reject her so callously? No way. Not a chance.

So I’m looking forward to the talk. It will be fun to take a look at how the church began, and explore why God would create an institution that seems so riddled with problems. And to explore what we can do to make things better.

Well, I thought a little blogging would use up the time, but this upload is taking way too long. I guess I’ll go to bed and clean up the mess in the morning. Peace out.

I’m not sure what happened, since I didn’t change anything, but something went wonky with my Wordpress theme, so I switched back to the previous one until I have some time to get it fixed.

That is all.

Yeah, it was still dark when we crept into downtown with 60K+ other people Sunday so Priscilla could run the Race for the Cure. She ran, we parked the car then walked to the finish line (a much shorter route than the race) and waited. Then we all got coffee, enjoyed downtown for a bit, then headed home for some football-watchin’. It was a good morning to be out. The weather was nice, and it’s always fun to be in downtown when it’s crawling with people. This time, the pink level was a little off the charts for my personal tastes, but it was fun nonetheless.

Work stuff feels really scattered this week. Part of it is that I get in these crappy little de-motivation cycles, and I’ve been in the worst one yet the last couple weeks. I’m powering through to get some stuff done though. I have one major project in progress, plus all the church stuff. Then the little things hang around, and it’s too easy to focus on those. I just lost a proposal that I thought I had in the bag… I was really thinking that would make a good November for me. So now I’m back to marketing like crazy for November work. Running a business is it’s own kind of stress. I guess it beats working for someone else, but along with the freedom comes all the risk. And by risk I mean poverty.

That’s all for today. I’m at Forza and my cup is empty, so more coffee for me, less blogging for you!