Last night Nicole and I went with my mom, dad, and brother Victor to Baudean’s on DIP.  If you don’t know what happens there on Tuesday night you really need to check it out.  All-you-can-eat Snow Crab Legs.  I think I sinned a little bit as well as everyone else around the table.  The greatest thing about the night was that I didn’t have to pay for my meal.  I guess my dad felt sorry for me and offered to pay.  Honestly, the greatest part of the night was spending time with my favorite people.  Though today is my birthday and I get to spend it with 100+ crazy students that I love dearly, I loved being able to go and spend time with mom and dad last night.

Cherish those special moments, even if you are stuffing your face with crab and oyster stew.

I could be totally off from what this actually means, but this popped into my head when reading.  From what I understand I was totally wrong scripturally based when I purchased an engagement ring.  I guess it’s one of those things that is just understood…plus when you get emailed pictures of ring after ring after ring during your relationship you kind of figure out what your future mate wants.

In Gen 24 Issac didn’t have to hunt for his future wife, all he had to do was drink a little water and give up some rings and bracelets.  Onward into verses 22-29, Issac gives her a gift.  A nose ring and some bracelets.  I wonder if Rebekah thought ”Has anyone worn that nose ring, because I don’t want someone else’s boogers in my nose,” probably not.  I look at this and think, dude, I could have done the whole biblical Genesis 24 thing when proposing to Nicole.  A quick version probably would have went something like this:

Chris – “Yo girl, you fine! Lemme get some of that water”
Nicole – “Ok, I guess.  Do you need some for your busted radiator?  I’ll go get that too”
Chris – ” Yeah girl, you know, this is just my work truck.  My Lambo is sittin at the hizzy”
Nicole – “Whatever, I’ll go help you out and get some more water for you”
Chris – “Thanks girl! Look, since you did all this imma give you this nose ring & these bracelets”
Nicole – “OMG! This is sooooo nice!”
Chris – “Yeah, that’s how I roll girl”  BTW, who you from anyways”
Nicole – “From Larry son of Delaney, and Lisa daughter of Nana”
Chris – “That’s tight! I think we are gonna make a good pair”

To think back on it, I should’a got a nose ring.

I was 13 years old at home one night playing some video games when I heard one of the loudest noises ever at that point in my life.  I looked outside and 2 vehicles were in my front yard, one a dark colored sedan, and another a van.  They had collided with each other at the intersection where my house was at.  Dad and I ran out to help and we went to the closest which was the car.  There were two people, a boy and his grandfather, in the car.  The grandfather was bleeding from his neck and dad trying to contain the bleeding.  The 13 year old grandson was in the drivers seat.  While dad was trying to stop the bleeding he told me to go check on the people in the van.

As I ran to the van there were two people trapped in the van.  Understand that this is all in my front yard. I checked on those and they were screaming because of the pain and then I seen something that changed my life.  One of the girls that was in the van had been thrown from the back out of the window and died on the impact.  She was wrapped around the broken round wooden fence posts in our front yard.  Honestly, I still have that image in my brain and I hate when I think about it.

Saturday, February 19 was another one of those days I will never forget.  On our way home from seeing a couple of wedding venue’s with Rachael and Shane we got the experience of a lifetime:

(This part gets a bit graphic) Around mile marker 56 going West on I-10 we decided to switch to the right lane because the white suburban behind us moved over and the car behind it was moving up fast.  We were traveling about 75 mph and as I moved over I checked my rear-view mirror and saw that the SUV was coming up beside me and the Suburban was behind me.  As soon as I was about to look back forward the Suburban run off the road a bit.  The driver tried to correct the move but over corrected and the Suburban went out of control.  As I’m watching this I’m yelling, “Oh my God” over and over.  Nicole, and Rachael are watching it happen also because they had turned around when I starting saying that.  The Suburban then started flipping and as I watched in my rear-view a person was thrown from the vehicle.  Given we are traveling at 75mph, it seemed like this guy was shot out of a human rocket launcher.  The Suburban kept flipping and ended up in the East bound lane and the person also landed in the East bound lane.  Immediately I started dialing 911 and gave them all the details, but that was all I could do.  That is when it hit me.  What am I doing?  Did I have a chance to save that person, no I didn’t.  Do I have a chance to save others, yes I do.

The image of that person flying from the car will probably never leave me, but I pray that it makes me stronger in my faith.  I pray that because of that person’s life I may be able to save the lives of others by sharing Jesus Christ with them.  Honestly, that was one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen, and hopefully will ever see.  Given that I’ve seen stuff like that on the T.V. show “Wildest Police Chases”,  it doesn’t compare to seeing something like that happen in real time.  I told Shane as we traveled home in silence that in 5 seconds that guy was taken from this life.  5 seconds before, he was just switching lanes.  5 seconds after he was hitting the pavement at 70mph.

If you are still reading please pray for that family.  There are no news reports as of yet, and if there is one posted I will link it here.  Let me leave you with this:  Be real and honest with yourself.  If you do not 100% faithfully know if you are going to Heaven when you die please adhear to what Romans 10:13 says, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” If you do not 100% faithfully know you are going to Heaven, right now ask God to save you and ask Jesus Christ to be Lord of your life.

Here is the video I posted earlier if you would like to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG71Ys0Bjdw
And please Buckle Up!

I did not know any other churches in LA so I did what anyone with some tech knowledge would do; I googled.  One of the first churches that came up was a church called “The Dream Center”.  My first impression was, “wow that is a cool name let me search into it further and make sure it’s not one of those crazy churches.”  As I went to the website there was a link to Pastor Matthew’s new book.  About 5 minutes before this search I received an email about a book called “The Cause Within You”.  Guess who the author was….Matthew Barnett.

At this time I’m almost convinced that we are going there but not 100% sure yet.  I went ahead and added him to my Twitter account so I could follow his tweets and then I wrote this: Trying to find a church to attend when we go to LA.  @matthewbarnett’s church The Dream Center looks to be a possibility. A couple minutes later guess who messages me back….Yes the Pastor of a church that has a weekly attendance of 35,000.  No that is not a typo, thirty-five thousand people in one week attend his church.  I then tweeted him back and he told me he was speaking that day and wanted me to come and say hi.

I’m not sure if that makes a difference to you, but it made a remarkable difference in my life.  As a youth pastor I don’t have a lot of time to sit around and tweet people, but this guy is in charge of a mega-church and he makes time to write a few words to me, a youth pastor at a church in Grand Bay, AL.  His short tweet really made a difference.  This makes me think also about my life and how Jesus would live in our day.  Maybe if Jesus was walking on the earth today he would have a Twitter, maybe not, but I know that Jesus would be Making A Difference by doing the small things to get people to hear his gospel.

Remember to Love Jesus and Love People,
Chris

The story starts somewhere along the lines of Thursday night. Kyle Bryant and I had been talking for a number of weeks about going to GameDay and trying to get on T.V. We thought it would be really cool if we had some funny signs so we starting thinking of ideas. After a little while we come up with two. Before I tell you about the pictures let me setup the scenario.

At 2:00am on Saturday morning Kyle and I leave Grand Bay, AL headed for Tuscaloosa, AL. Being the great friend that he is he opted to drive, and being the great friend that I am, I opted to “pray” for 3 and 1/2 hours on our drive up. Needless to say it was a quick trip up for me. We arrived there and found a parking place about 6am and headed to the front of the stadium where ESPN Gameday would be broadcasting from. Honestly we were welcomed with open arms because of our signs. I almost felt like a celebrity for a short time, except all the pictures I took with the sign I was behind it….

Celebrity status or not, a whole lot of people loved our signs and wanted to take pictures of it. After taking some pictures we moved into the line where the Gameday entrance was. When we were moving to the front we heard some of the security or “GameDay Nazis”, as I like to call them, telling people that if you have a stick or pole you cannot enter. That was not too bad of news given that everyone else was standing on the outer portion of the circle and was still very close to the cameras. So we took our signs and moved to the outer circle. At that time we met more people that wanted to take pictures of our sign so we did.

About an hour went by and GameDay was about to start so I took the sign I was holding and started putting it in the air waving it around and honestly acting like a complete idiot.  At that time some of the GameDay Nazis come over and asked it they could take a look at the sign.  After examining it they told us that we could not hold our signs up because they were derogatory.  I then told them that I’m a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that nothing I would hold up would be derogatory so he could take his security badge, brown pants, and greasy hair and shove……just kidding, but that is what I was feeling at the time.  We graciously put them down in disappointment because we did not want the sheriffs to come and take us away.

At this time our goal of getting on T.V. was cut down to nothing, but we still had an idea.  We knew that they would be broadcasting a large view so we walked back to the steps in front of the stadium and actually was on the opening clip of GameDay that morning.  If you were watching you probably could not see us because we were so tiny, but our goal of getting on T.V. was accomplished.  An A+ for effort, but more like a C- on the actual examination.  Below you can checkout our signs we made:

This represented the story of Auburn QB Cameron Newton.  While attending Florida he “allegedly” stole a laptop and used his internet access card to get online.  The school traced the laptop to where he was located and when they banged on the door he then took the laptop to the window and tried to throw it into a dumpster.  Funny part was that he missed the dumpster.

Click here for the actual story on Birmingham News

Click here for the song remake.

On Sunday I have the opportunity to preach in big church. I think I will be calling it big church for the rest of my life. I was asked the other day and have a great message that will be a lot of fun to preach and share. Pray for me as I do that at 6:00pm. The other event on Sunday is some Late-Night Bowling with the youth group. This gives me the opportunity to demolish some student’s pride and wave my flag of victory in their faces after I crush them on the lanes…..well maybe not that exhaustive, but I do plan on playing a few games.

Monday is Labor day which means NO LABOR for me…..I think. I did not ask if the office is closed or not, but I assume we are not working. I’m probably going to assume so much to not wake up until about 11am on Monday morning. Can you say LAZY?

Well, I pray you have a great Labor Day weekend also. Keep Christ first
Chris

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

So the last few weeks I have been churning my gears and moved back into the eBay circuit of sales. I purchased some broken Xbox 360s, was given a laptop, and had some stuff laying around that I needed to get out the door. After setting up my camera and taking pictures of all the items I started listing and placing them for sale.

As a general rule I always start my auctions off at .99¢. The reason for this is because I have researched enough to know that whatever is on sale of eBay is going to sell for whatever someone wants to bid on it no matter what you think it’s worth. Almost always I come out ahead, but there are a few times where the have to eat a few bucks…..but that’s business. There is also another general rule I stand by. My auctions always end on either a Sunday night or a Monday night. The reason for this is because more people are at home on these nights and are what they call, “eBaying.” Other than the 2 general rules, I let the eBaying commence.

As always, in my case with eBay, I cannot stay only on the selling portion of the website. Browsing for things I cannot afford intrigues me for some reason. So then entails my eBaying. I purchased a 17″ Macbook Pro a couple of years ago for a great deal on eBay. It was about 1 year old, worth about $2000, and I pulled it for $1200 on eBay. I was astonished with the buy because every other 17″MP went for around $1600 at that time. The little Devil on my shoulder must have spoke into my ear and said I needed a new one, so I went searching. To my amazement I found one right off the bat. It was about to end on auction and the price was hovering around $1100. As the minutes counted down I waited to about 30 seconds left in the auction and then I shot a bid in for $1145. The seconds counted down and I won. This can be one of the greatest feelings because at the moment you believe that you have actually gotten a better deal than anyone else on the planet. From experience, THERE IS ALWAYS A BETTER DEAL. That goes for houses, cars, electronics, clothing, gas, food…..i could go on.

After winning I sent my payment in right away through a company called PayPal. They are a great company that secures your payment and keeps everything else confidential. I trust them with my bank account and credit card numbers so that should tell you something. Not long after that the person emailed me saying thanks for the purchase and that he would be shipping in the next few days.

A few days past and I received the UPS Tracking number, but was a bit upset because we were going to be in Birmingham for Steven Sanders’ wedding to Destinee Wigley……I wasn’t upset for the wedding I just wanted my new toy. By the way, the wedding was spectacular and I am super happy for my boy Steven. He deserves a great girl and I believe he married one this past weekend. Congratulations to them!

We left on Saturday after the wedding to come home and I was anticipating getting home and opening the box and staying up late playing around on the new Macbook. We arrived home and as I opened the front door the box on the back porch caught my eye. I went straight for it and brought it inside and Nicole gathered behind me as I went to open it. Tore the tape, opened the box and there was a toaster oven box staring at me. At first I was confused because it was suppose to be a Macbook, but then I thought, maybe it’s inside the toaster oven box. That is when I become petrified because as I opened the toaster oven box……it was an actual toaster oven. This meant that I purchased a $20 toaster oven for about $1200….not a good feeling in my stomach at this time.

Nicole at this time doesn’t know what to say because she thinks that I just spent $1200 on a $20 toaster. I at this time don’t know what to say because I know she thinks I just spent $1200 on a $20 toaster. At this time I start to prepare my pillows and blanket on the couch for the evening. Just kidding, I told her that Paypal covered me and there would be no worries. To make a long story short I filed a claim with Paypal and the person refunded me completely and let me keep the Toaster Oven.

This brings me to my next statement: If you have a wedding, birthday, house warming, get together, Christmas party, Sunday School party, anniversary party, or anything that requires me bringing a present……you may just get a Toaster Oven.

Remember to Love Jesus Christ
Chris

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

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