Well tomorrow is the official debut of my voice on the mic at The Eye. I am excited to have a good crowd at the Bryant game tomorrow night as well as have a win to start the season off. One of the greatest things about Friday night is that I get to watch football. It doesn’t really matter to me what stage of football I’m watching. If it’s PeeWee, I Love It. If it’s Grade School, I Love It more. If it’s College, I Love it most (being that i’m an Alabama Fan “ROLL TIDE”).

Last Thursday night was my “un-official debut” because it was a Jamboree against Satsuma. Nobody counts those games…..but just to let you know we stomped them 14-0 at the end of the half. I was a little nervous at the start, but once I said “Welcome” it was pretty much smooth from there on. I did make one mistake that one of the coaches club members said he would never let me live down. When I was telling everyone about the main concession stand I said, “If you would like a drink or something to eat head on over to the concession stand in the South endzone……….I mean North endzone.” As the game got to rolling I used some old terms that the good ole announcers used in the past. One was the, “Rumblin, Bumblin, Stumblin, for a 1st Down!” Another was one I made up all by myself, “A storm’s a brewing, the Canes are movin, for another Hurricane first down!”

With just a half in my book I’m pretty confident that I will be prepared with all kinds of sayings. I may just google “Football Announcer Catch Phrases” to see what comes up. Well, if you haven’t been invited by anyone else here is your official invite. The Alma Bryant Hurricanes will be taking on the Daphne Trojans and I would love for you to join me cheer the Hurricanes onto a victory tomorrow night at The Eye @ 7pm.

Hope to see you there…..Oh and bring Jesus Christ with you because he is the man!
Chris

The new school year has now started and I’m sure everyone is trying to adjust to the changing of students leaving the house, children going to day care, and long evenings of homework, cooking, and cleaning. It can be tiresome at times, and even a bit stressful. Nicole and I understood that some of the students at our church would like to unwind on the last night before school started so we invited them over our house.

A big thanks goes out to Mark Rainey, which is Matthew Rainey’s father, who provided the pizza and drinks for the night. As more and more students filled my living room (that isn’t conducive to more and more students filling it) I started hoping and praying they would not get out of hand. To my surprise after a couple of hours nothing was broken nor damaged except some brownie and pizza on the floor. (We had stained concrete so it is really easy to cleanup.) Then the college kids come over. It was only 2 and they were both girls, so I thought it would calm down even more.

The fact is that if you do not have enough space or chairs for people to sit in they just start sitting all over the place. On our sectional, that is made for about 5, we had about 10. On our love seat, that is made for lovin, we had about 5……Let me back up a few hours to set this next part up:

Nicole and I usually try and keep the house clean. She has taught me to not leave my socks in the middle of the floor, not leave cups everywhere around the house, and keep from dropping food on the rugs. I do a good job of that because I know if I don’t, the monster will come out. Back to the cleaning – We swept, we vacuumed, we wiped, we washed, and we stuck a lot of stuff in the closet. Behind our love seat we have a beautiful sofa table that has pictures and pottery from Pier 1 with flowers and a nice draped cloth over the table. It adds a lot to the house. As I am walking past it I say to myself, I think we should take that stuff down just incase. Nicole thinks the same thing to herself while walking by. Our decision at the end of cleaning…leave it because “our students are good.”

Now to the love seat made for lovin. Remember I said that our floors are stained concrete. This meaning when pressure is put against something in the living room it will move fairly easy in the direction you push it. And with 5 people trying to get comfortable the pressure was then pushed against the love seat that made it go back and hit the sofa table behind it and made one of the nice expensive pottery pots fall crashing to the hard stained concrete floor and shattering into about a million pieces. (I’m sure that is a run-on) As a hush goes over the crowd I stayed calm and said that it was no big deal and that I would clean it up. That’s not the end…..

As I am on my hands and knees cleaning up, and after everyone has jumped up from the love seat because they “didn’t want to be the one blamed” someone jumps back into it like a crazed fool…..and yes it slides back into the sofa table again, and yes another pottery pot falls. This time I am behind the sofa table and see that pot falling. If you can imagine this in slow motion this is exactly how it happened. Time slowed to just a crawl, both for me and for the falling pottery pot. As I was sweeping and noticed it falling off I threw off the hand broom and made a motion to catch it before it hit the ground. The pot hits my right hand and my eyes light up in joy because I have saved the pot, but in slow motion everything is different. As the pot hits my hand it changes direction in its fall and flips out of my hand. (At this point the pot and I are only about 6 inches from the ground.) To the ground it goes as I hope and pray it doesn’t break…..the pot didn’t hear my prayer and it shattered into a million pieces.

At this time everyone shut-up. You could have heard an ant crawl across the floor it was so quiet. I was so mad I actually counted from 1 to 10 in my head before I reacted. I know if I did react instantly I might have lost my job as youth pastor. Need less to say not long after that everyone was gone from the house and we learned a big lesson. Child Proof Everything!

I believe next time we invite the students over we will have an outside party. Thanks for reading and keep it real with Jesus Christ.
Chris

One of the greatest things about getting older is that you get to experience so much more that this life has to offer. One of the worse things about getting older is that your body does not keep up.

Last night some of the youth wanted to have open gym to play some basketball. I have not been playing much this summer because of all the things that have been going on, but I figured that I would come out and show up some of the students. To my surprise I was doing fairly good for about an hour…..then I started Feeling It. I’m sure you know the feeling: Sweat is dripping from places you didn’t think sweated, muscles are starting to cramp, the water fountain can’t produce enough water, and your feet seem like they are about to fall off from the throbbing pain.

At that time I figured I better take a break a sit down in a chair that was on the stage. After a few minutes I made the decision that I was not going to play anymore and began to unlace my basketball shoes. That’s when it hit me. A sharp pain went up through my back and I knew that something was wrong. By the time I arrived home and walked through the door I had become completely stiff. Nicole then said, “suck it up old man.” That really encouraged me to throw the first thing I touched at her. Just kidding.

My morning would be fairly easy as I would spend some time in the office editing video and working on my sermon for Wednesday. I tried to fly in under the radar, but as I walked into the church office Bro. Jerry quickly said, “What is wrong with you?” So then I explained that Nicole thought it would be good idea to hit me with the car. He didn’t believe me so I gave him the truth and he told me the worst is yet to come. I’m glad that I have encouraging partners in ministry that give me a hope for a future….

Though my experience with back aches are not over I understand that I need to exercise more than ever now. I’m not a pill popper which makes it worse at times, but hopefully it’ll remind me in the future to take it a bit slower and realize that if I don’t want to “feel it” the next day I need to spend some time preparing my body for activities with youth.

Thank you Jesus for a hurt back,
Chris

For most of us the summer is winding down and we are starting to get back to the normal day to day ritual of work, church, and school. This can be a positive or negative aspect of our life. In my life for example it is both. I’ll start with the negative.

Nicole starts back with school this week which means she turns into the spawn of Satan. Just kidding on that one. It does mean that she becomes a bit more stressful because she has 20+ six year olds wondering when the next bathroom break is and if they can sit upside down in their chair while blowing bubbles with their chewing gum. With that case she still does a great job in the classroom. On my part it means that the students at church can become less in tuned with the what is going on and become more in tune to what is going on at school. Though my responsibility is different than Nicole’s it still has similarities.

With Nicole she is required to teach the students a certain curriculum that the state requires. If she does not teach that curriculum (to the students’ understanding) then the students’ performance on the quarterly testing will show that. This means that she will be “viewed” as not doing her job. With myself, I in fact are doing the same. I am required by God to teach the students a certain curriculum that God requires. If I do not teach that curriculum (to the best of my God given ability) then the students’ performance in life may show that. This means that I will be “viewed” as not doing my job.

Both require great work, but come with great blessings. (The positive is next) There is almost nothing else that makes me as happy to get to lead someone to Christ. To my amazement God has allowed me to do this a number of times this past year. God has also allowed Nicole and I to minister to a great number of different students since last school year started. In Nicole’s classroom she is able to share with some of the students because they will ask her about her church or about my job. In my ministry I’m able to share with lots of different folks because of my position as Youth Pastor.

As it has been for the last few years we try to relax when both of us are home together after the “hard” days at work. (We really don’t have it hard at all compared to others) I have learned from the book The 5 Love Languages that one of Nicole’s love languages are quality time. This meaning turn of the T.V., put up the computer and video games, and sit down and talk…….Oh how every man loves that. I on the other hand really do not mind it because we get to talk about the future, about our day, and about the great things that God is doing in our lives.

In all actuality going back to normal really isn’t all that bad when you take into consideration all the blessings God has given you.

Keep fresh and make Jesus Christ a priority,
Chris