Good evening Jo
Good morning everyone else.
I have already posted on the “Politics” thread.
The California legislature has already exceeded it’s authority.
This can’t happen.
Good morning all. Laundry day, it is Tuesday. It is also our fortieth wedding anniversary. Nothing different happening today. I did my morning chores and Bible reading. School starts at eight thirty. And so it goes. This is one of the days I miss my mom and sister the most as it is such a clear memory of us all working together.
Chas, I’d posted something about that resolution last week — and AJ is correct, it does not carry the weight of a law. Still, pretty stunning (although not for California, really).
Mumsee, happy anniversary! I think my last living uncle made it past 40, past 50 even (his wife died the day after my husband and I met in person the first time, but she’d had Alzheimer’s for several years), and my oldest brother will (Lord willing) make it to 40 next summer, but all other marriages in my family have had one spouse die before then. And I’m sure I will not make it, with both me and my husband getting a late start. It’s really a milestone!
I’m again working from home today, hoping the story I have in mind pans out — at 11:30 a mobile dog groomer will arrive to work on Tess & Cowboy. They have fully-equipped vans with everything inside, they just need an electrical hookup and they do all the work inside the vehicle. Mobile groomers were quite the novelty around here 10-20 years ago but now are fairly common. This company operates 9 vans, I noticed my neighbor across the street was using them about a month ago. Costs don’t seem to be any higher than the brick-and-mortar “salons” based on the estimates they gave me. But we’ll see, the dogs this time will need some extra work I’m afraid.
Back to the CA resolution, conservative churches are probably the last remaining hold-outs when it comes to embracing same sex marriage in California. The issue has swept over our state (and the nation in many other areas) like a tidal wave and none dare question it publicly anymore. I would not be surprised if social-political pressure, in the form of resolutions like this or perhaps in opening up the debate about revoking tax-exempt status for churches, will increase as the effort continues to bring everyone in line.
The same-sex issue already has had a silencing effect in our state where most opponents (other than a few of the wacky sign-toting ones we all disown) have essentially quit engaging in discussing or debating the topic altogether. The culture has made its choice which is regularly celebrated.
Morning and Happy Anniversary Mumsee and Mike!
Beautiful iris up this morning…how I love the scent of that flower…brings back many memories of childhood living in a little Victorian era house. There were Iris and lily of the valley planted alongside the house by the fence….I would love to have a Victorian garden….
The iris is a wild one growing down near a pond, with raindrops on it. They bloomed along the pond for several weeks, which I enjoyed. I’ve never smelled an iris, though!
Argh, everyone’s too busy getting ready for the long weekend to do phone interviews today. I have 1 (maybe 2) ready to go on Monday, though. But meanwhile, I’m on story search …
And the mobile groomer is late, says he’ll be here in 15 minutes …
We are suppose to be in prayer about the focus of our church. Should we try to focus on building a larger congregation or on being a church that plants new churches so our facility can house a smaller number of people as it always is sending out new church plants. Does anyone have any thoughts about this to share?
Focusing on planting churches. A church that is large may be more financially able to afford certain commodities, but also can become personality temples to individual pastors, while most of the congregation barely knows one another. The city church is at the optimal size for a church, able to support a pastoral staff and several ministries, but not so big that it is impossible to get to know everyone. It is not necessary to be close friends with everyone, but there should be connection and cross connection between members. The city church planted a church within the time I was in the city, and they intend to carry out other plants.
I like that, Janice. 🙂 And it would star my dogs in the photos …
But, alas, I did turn up a story — today’s LA City Council agenda included approval for the transfer of $7 million in funds to construct the temporary homeless shelter in our town. Whew. Editor was happy when I told him I would, indeed, have something coming today.
Our pastor believes in planting other churches, he feels our church is about as big as it should be (a few hundred or thereabouts). He’s not a fan of “big” (mega) churches.
Wow, Tess looks great, her fur is so shiny and he was able to avoid shaving the mats, was able to get them out while leaving her fur naturally long.
Got Cowboy into the van, groomer had to lift him and Cowboy did his dead-weight thing, crouching down as low as he could go on all fours to create optimum resistance.
And here I thought my church was the optimal size. About thirty people, counting children. We can afford our pastor (as long as he works or has a pension), we have music (that lady has an ipod and somebody provided a speaker), run the community VBS, send missionaries, help in the community, interact with the community, etc. And we know each other and get together for lunch and Bible studies. And we are currently working through Colossians. But I can’t be a member as a sprinkled.
Happy Anniversary, Mumsee, and many happy returns.
I didn’t know there was such a thing as a mobile dog grooming business. So it was ladies first, with Tess going before Cowboy, huh DJ? Sounds like Cowboy was only too happy to oblige with that order. 🙂
Janice, I’d think a church plant would be better. Our congregation has over a thousand members (I think it’s closer to 1500, actually), and there simply are a lot of people I don’t know, even having been a member there for 31 years.
Tomorrow will be a first for me — I am going to go look at a grand piano for sale that might have my name on it!
A few weeks ago, my husband walked into the music store where I used to teach in my college days, just to say hi to the owner (a friend of ours). Hubby was in the area for another purpose, but thought he’d stop in to visit a bit.
He told me later that he’d told the owner/friend, S, who had sold us the piano we have now, that I was thinking of getting a different one in the next few years. (My current piano has received a lot more use than one of its size normally gets in a 30-year period. IOW, it’s more designed for average use in a household of one or maybe a few casual players, not so much for decades of teaching many students, and practicing often as a performer. I bought it when I was a school teacher, with no plans to perform or teach piano. I thought it would only be for my own light use, and perhaps played by my future children. I was childless at the time.)
Anyway, fast forward a couple weeks, and hubby, by coincidence (well, not really, God knew it was going to happen), runs into the same friend again! We haven’t seen him and his wife in 18 years, now hubby has seen one or both of them twice in the last month.
So guess what? The store had to repossess a baby grand, same brand as the piano I have, and S told hubby, “I have just the piano for [Mrs. Arrows].” 🙂 Deeply discounted, and within a price range we can afford.
Tomorrow when I make our weekly visit to my parents’, I’m going to buzz into town and check out that piano. I have a 2:00 appointment with S for a showing, and the two other pianists in our household will be with me and are also excited to try it out. 😉
I don’t know for sure how it will sound and feel, and it’s entirely possible I won’t get the piano, but to even be able to consider a grand, even a baby grand, is something I never thought would have been possible.
Might be a little interesting, though, trying to put it in our relatively small living room that now houses not only our vertical piano (which we would sell if we bought the grand), but also a couch, loveseat, chair, cabinet, skinny bookshelf, and table with a 40-gallon turtle tank on it. 🙂 The piano, only about 5 feet in length, may just be something we’ll have to forgo and get a taller vertical piano instead, an instrument that wouldn’t be any cheaper new than that repossessed grand and which wouldn’t have the benefits that distinguish grands from verticals.
Good news Six.
I have belonged to large and small churches. It doesn’t matter. You usually form into a group,(SS class, evening Bible study, deacon friends, etc) regardless of the size. Larger churches usually have more options for training young people.
As for starting new churches. That may be good for some areas. But Greensboro, Hendersonville, Spartanburg, Columbia etc. do not need any more Baptist Churches.
Chas, haha, yeah, that’s what we hear about y’all back there … Baptist church on every corner?
6 That is SO exciting! Yay. 🙂 Smiling for you.
Yes, LA is the land of mobile dog grooming now. He backed his purple van into my driveway, used an electrical connection inside the garage to power up everything, and went to work, it’s all contained inside the van — water, dryers, electric trimmers, etc.
My neighbor came out and got his card, said she’ll plan to piggy-back on my next appointment and have him wash down her 2 Labs as well, that way he wouldn’t even have to move his van. My bill was considerably less than it used to be when i’d take the dogs in to PetCo for grooming.
Kizzie, 7:49, LOL! Maybe knock out a few walls and throw some furniture out on the driveway. 😛 One of my piano moms — the one who sits in for lessons every week — joked yesterday (when I mentioned I might be getting a grand piano but didn’t know about space requirements for it), “You don’t need living room furniture, do you?” 🙂
I think I might only have to move the chair into a different room. That way we’d only lose seating for one. I’m kind of limited in where I could put the piano because of the upstairs layout. We’re in a split level house, and the living room has the stairway/ironwork/railing system on the north side, a bay window to the east, the long wall (shared with the attached garage on the south), and no wall to the west except for a little abutment (?) that sticks out from the south wall, which leads into the dining room, a smaller room yet in which our meal table that once seated eight dominates most of that space.
The piano now is along the south wall near the abutment (or whatever the divider between the living and dining room is called), and the table with our turtle and tank is right next to the piano and really can’t be moved anywhere else. Turtle loves being part of home base, which our living room is — we do lots of school there, and plenty of piano, too. Did you ever hear of a turtle who likes piano music? Ours does. 🙂
Anyway, it’s neither good for the turtle nor a piano to be placed by a window. So the grand would need to be in the same general area as the vertical is now, but would jut out further into the living room walking space.
I’ve heard some piano dealers allow a person to try the piano in their own home to see how well it fits, how its acoustics are in the space it’s put, etc. I think that’s only high-end dealers that offer that, though. But I’m going to ask S about that, anyway. Who knows? Never hurts to ask.
DJ, 8:10, we talked years ago about building a room above our garage and having a dedicated piano room, and maybe a small bedroom or office or something up there, too. The irony is that the larger our family grew, and the more we needed extra space, the less we could afford to build something like that (and pay extra property taxes on the expanded space every year for the rest of the time we would own the house).
Now, as the kids are growing up and slowly leaving, and as we get older, having a bigger living space is less needed, and less desirable, too. I’d rather go smaller, not bigger, as we get older.
But our present living room will be pretty cozy, space-wise, if we do get that grand. 🙂
I too vote for “plant.” For years I attended a church that was 200-250 Sunday morning and thought that an optimal size, but it would feel big now. Over the last 16 years I have been in three churches, 50-160 on Sunday morning. Fifty is really too small (they need a new, larger building, but finances are a real issue at that size), but 75 to 150 or so allows you to know nearly everyone and not count on small groups for knowing people. (Small groups aren’t the same as corporate worship.) Once it gets past that 100-200 mark, I really think it’s time to plant and not continue to grow.
Smaller churches can’t do as much with youth and children’s ministries . . . but in my experience, they do a better job with actually including the youth and children as part of the church family (which is better for spiritual growth and for the possibility that the young people will stay in church as they grow up). I’m not at all a fan of extravagant youth ministries, as I think the fancier the setting, the more likely they are to be simply temporary places for youth until they outgrow “church.” Children need the same thing adults need: the Word rightly preached with the church family gathered for worship and fellowship.
Wandering Views 
Good evening Jo
Good morning everyone else.
I have already posted on the “Politics” thread.
The California legislature has already exceeded it’s authority.
This can’t happen.
(If this is true. I don’t see how it can be. )
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Morning Chas.
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Greetings, Chas, Jo, AJ and all. I am waiting for the ponies to come on the track. Should be a pretty sunrise with the clouds.
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AJ, didn’t we already have the lady’s slipper up? I was thinking we did. It’s such a pretty flower, though!
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Good morning all. Laundry day, it is Tuesday. It is also our fortieth wedding anniversary. Nothing different happening today. I did my morning chores and Bible reading. School starts at eight thirty. And so it goes. This is one of the days I miss my mom and sister the most as it is such a clear memory of us all working together.
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Happy anniversary Mumsee.
I hope your fortieth is as happy as ours was.
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Chas, I’d posted something about that resolution last week — and AJ is correct, it does not carry the weight of a law. Still, pretty stunning (although not for California, really).
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Mumsee, happy anniversary! I think my last living uncle made it past 40, past 50 even (his wife died the day after my husband and I met in person the first time, but she’d had Alzheimer’s for several years), and my oldest brother will (Lord willing) make it to 40 next summer, but all other marriages in my family have had one spouse die before then. And I’m sure I will not make it, with both me and my husband getting a late start. It’s really a milestone!
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Happy anniversary mumsee! You’re a good team.
I’m again working from home today, hoping the story I have in mind pans out — at 11:30 a mobile dog groomer will arrive to work on Tess & Cowboy. They have fully-equipped vans with everything inside, they just need an electrical hookup and they do all the work inside the vehicle. Mobile groomers were quite the novelty around here 10-20 years ago but now are fairly common. This company operates 9 vans, I noticed my neighbor across the street was using them about a month ago. Costs don’t seem to be any higher than the brick-and-mortar “salons” based on the estimates they gave me. But we’ll see, the dogs this time will need some extra work I’m afraid.
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Back to the CA resolution, conservative churches are probably the last remaining hold-outs when it comes to embracing same sex marriage in California. The issue has swept over our state (and the nation in many other areas) like a tidal wave and none dare question it publicly anymore. I would not be surprised if social-political pressure, in the form of resolutions like this or perhaps in opening up the debate about revoking tax-exempt status for churches, will increase as the effort continues to bring everyone in line.
The same-sex issue already has had a silencing effect in our state where most opponents (other than a few of the wacky sign-toting ones we all disown) have essentially quit engaging in discussing or debating the topic altogether. The culture has made its choice which is regularly celebrated.
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Happy anniversary, mumsee! We are at 47 years and have yet to celebrate, as well. I cannot believe how fast those years have come and gone.
Sad for California and our whole country that we have slipped so far. 😦
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Happy Anniversary, Mumsee.
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Happy 40th Anniversary, Mike and Mumsee!
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Happy anniversary! May you share many more years of happiness together.
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Morning and Happy Anniversary Mumsee and Mike!
Beautiful iris up this morning…how I love the scent of that flower…brings back many memories of childhood living in a little Victorian era house. There were Iris and lily of the valley planted alongside the house by the fence….I would love to have a Victorian garden….
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Good article on the push to make evolution and Christian truth coincide: http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2019/06/evangelical-evolution.php
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The iris is a wild one growing down near a pond, with raindrops on it. They bloomed along the pond for several weeks, which I enjoyed. I’ve never smelled an iris, though!
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Beautiful header to celebrate Mumsee and Mike’s 40 year mark!
♡Happy Anniversary♡
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Just dropped the four Adorable older granddaughters off at overnight camp for the first time.
It was fun, they were nervous, it when they saw so many other kids from their churches whim they knew, all was well.
Fun.
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Argh, everyone’s too busy getting ready for the long weekend to do phone interviews today. I have 1 (maybe 2) ready to go on Monday, though. But meanwhile, I’m on story search …
And the mobile groomer is late, says he’ll be here in 15 minutes …
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He arrived, Tess went first.
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A story about mobile groomers?
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We are suppose to be in prayer about the focus of our church. Should we try to focus on building a larger congregation or on being a church that plants new churches so our facility can house a smaller number of people as it always is sending out new church plants. Does anyone have any thoughts about this to share?
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Focusing on planting churches. A church that is large may be more financially able to afford certain commodities, but also can become personality temples to individual pastors, while most of the congregation barely knows one another. The city church is at the optimal size for a church, able to support a pastoral staff and several ministries, but not so big that it is impossible to get to know everyone. It is not necessary to be close friends with everyone, but there should be connection and cross connection between members. The city church planted a church within the time I was in the city, and they intend to carry out other plants.
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I like that, Janice. 🙂 And it would star my dogs in the photos …
But, alas, I did turn up a story — today’s LA City Council agenda included approval for the transfer of $7 million in funds to construct the temporary homeless shelter in our town. Whew. Editor was happy when I told him I would, indeed, have something coming today.
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Our pastor believes in planting other churches, he feels our church is about as big as it should be (a few hundred or thereabouts). He’s not a fan of “big” (mega) churches.
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Wow, Tess looks great, her fur is so shiny and he was able to avoid shaving the mats, was able to get them out while leaving her fur naturally long.
Got Cowboy into the van, groomer had to lift him and Cowboy did his dead-weight thing, crouching down as low as he could go on all fours to create optimum resistance.
But he’s in.
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And here I thought my church was the optimal size. About thirty people, counting children. We can afford our pastor (as long as he works or has a pension), we have music (that lady has an ipod and somebody provided a speaker), run the community VBS, send missionaries, help in the community, interact with the community, etc. And we know each other and get together for lunch and Bible studies. And we are currently working through Colossians. But I can’t be a member as a sprinkled.
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Happy Anniversary, Mumsee, and many happy returns.
I didn’t know there was such a thing as a mobile dog grooming business. So it was ladies first, with Tess going before Cowboy, huh DJ? Sounds like Cowboy was only too happy to oblige with that order. 🙂
Janice, I’d think a church plant would be better. Our congregation has over a thousand members (I think it’s closer to 1500, actually), and there simply are a lot of people I don’t know, even having been a member there for 31 years.
Tomorrow will be a first for me — I am going to go look at a grand piano for sale that might have my name on it!
A few weeks ago, my husband walked into the music store where I used to teach in my college days, just to say hi to the owner (a friend of ours). Hubby was in the area for another purpose, but thought he’d stop in to visit a bit.
He told me later that he’d told the owner/friend, S, who had sold us the piano we have now, that I was thinking of getting a different one in the next few years. (My current piano has received a lot more use than one of its size normally gets in a 30-year period. IOW, it’s more designed for average use in a household of one or maybe a few casual players, not so much for decades of teaching many students, and practicing often as a performer. I bought it when I was a school teacher, with no plans to perform or teach piano. I thought it would only be for my own light use, and perhaps played by my future children. I was childless at the time.)
Anyway, fast forward a couple weeks, and hubby, by coincidence (well, not really, God knew it was going to happen), runs into the same friend again! We haven’t seen him and his wife in 18 years, now hubby has seen one or both of them twice in the last month.
So guess what? The store had to repossess a baby grand, same brand as the piano I have, and S told hubby, “I have just the piano for [Mrs. Arrows].” 🙂 Deeply discounted, and within a price range we can afford.
Tomorrow when I make our weekly visit to my parents’, I’m going to buzz into town and check out that piano. I have a 2:00 appointment with S for a showing, and the two other pianists in our household will be with me and are also excited to try it out. 😉
I don’t know for sure how it will sound and feel, and it’s entirely possible I won’t get the piano, but to even be able to consider a grand, even a baby grand, is something I never thought would have been possible.
Might be a little interesting, though, trying to put it in our relatively small living room that now houses not only our vertical piano (which we would sell if we bought the grand), but also a couch, loveseat, chair, cabinet, skinny bookshelf, and table with a 40-gallon turtle tank on it. 🙂 The piano, only about 5 feet in length, may just be something we’ll have to forgo and get a taller vertical piano instead, an instrument that wouldn’t be any cheaper new than that repossessed grand and which wouldn’t have the benefits that distinguish grands from verticals.
We’ll see. (Or hear.) 🙂
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Great news, Six!
Thank you to each of you who have commented on the church situation.
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Good news Six.
I have belonged to large and small churches. It doesn’t matter. You usually form into a group,(SS class, evening Bible study, deacon friends, etc) regardless of the size. Larger churches usually have more options for training young people.
As for starting new churches. That may be good for some areas. But Greensboro, Hendersonville, Spartanburg, Columbia etc. do not need any more Baptist Churches.
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Chas, haha, yeah, that’s what we hear about y’all back there … Baptist church on every corner?
6 That is SO exciting! Yay. 🙂 Smiling for you.
Yes, LA is the land of mobile dog grooming now. He backed his purple van into my driveway, used an electrical connection inside the garage to power up everything, and went to work, it’s all contained inside the van — water, dryers, electric trimmers, etc.
My neighbor came out and got his card, said she’ll plan to piggy-back on my next appointment and have him wash down her 2 Labs as well, that way he wouldn’t even have to move his van. My bill was considerably less than it used to be when i’d take the dogs in to PetCo for grooming.
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Somebody has a mobile dog grooming business in our area, too, but I haven’t used it. Maybe I will some day.
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6 Arrows – That piano sounds wonderful for you!
Is it possible to move anything out of your living room, into another room, to fit the piano? Or can the piano go into another room?
You and Mr. Arrows don’t really need your own bedroom, do you? I’m sure you could bunk in one of the children’s bedrooms. 🙂
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I shoulda tossed the cat into the van for good measure at those prices
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I’m sure Annie would have appreciated that.
(Not really.)
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Yes, the piano needs it’s own big room, I think.
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Kizzie, 7:49, LOL! Maybe knock out a few walls and throw some furniture out on the driveway. 😛 One of my piano moms — the one who sits in for lessons every week — joked yesterday (when I mentioned I might be getting a grand piano but didn’t know about space requirements for it), “You don’t need living room furniture, do you?” 🙂
I think I might only have to move the chair into a different room. That way we’d only lose seating for one. I’m kind of limited in where I could put the piano because of the upstairs layout. We’re in a split level house, and the living room has the stairway/ironwork/railing system on the north side, a bay window to the east, the long wall (shared with the attached garage on the south), and no wall to the west except for a little abutment (?) that sticks out from the south wall, which leads into the dining room, a smaller room yet in which our meal table that once seated eight dominates most of that space.
The piano now is along the south wall near the abutment (or whatever the divider between the living and dining room is called), and the table with our turtle and tank is right next to the piano and really can’t be moved anywhere else. Turtle loves being part of home base, which our living room is — we do lots of school there, and plenty of piano, too. Did you ever hear of a turtle who likes piano music? Ours does. 🙂
Anyway, it’s neither good for the turtle nor a piano to be placed by a window. So the grand would need to be in the same general area as the vertical is now, but would jut out further into the living room walking space.
I’ve heard some piano dealers allow a person to try the piano in their own home to see how well it fits, how its acoustics are in the space it’s put, etc. I think that’s only high-end dealers that offer that, though. But I’m going to ask S about that, anyway. Who knows? Never hurts to ask.
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Now a turtle would not need grooming now
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I started retyping that (this the 2nd now), it looked like the comment didn’t post
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DJ, 8:10, we talked years ago about building a room above our garage and having a dedicated piano room, and maybe a small bedroom or office or something up there, too. The irony is that the larger our family grew, and the more we needed extra space, the less we could afford to build something like that (and pay extra property taxes on the expanded space every year for the rest of the time we would own the house).
Now, as the kids are growing up and slowly leaving, and as we get older, having a bigger living space is less needed, and less desirable, too. I’d rather go smaller, not bigger, as we get older.
But our present living room will be pretty cozy, space-wise, if we do get that grand. 🙂
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Thus – a word spell check doesn’t recognize or accept apparently
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Praying for you for wisdom as you check out that opportunity, 6 Arrows.
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I too vote for “plant.” For years I attended a church that was 200-250 Sunday morning and thought that an optimal size, but it would feel big now. Over the last 16 years I have been in three churches, 50-160 on Sunday morning. Fifty is really too small (they need a new, larger building, but finances are a real issue at that size), but 75 to 150 or so allows you to know nearly everyone and not count on small groups for knowing people. (Small groups aren’t the same as corporate worship.) Once it gets past that 100-200 mark, I really think it’s time to plant and not continue to grow.
Smaller churches can’t do as much with youth and children’s ministries . . . but in my experience, they do a better job with actually including the youth and children as part of the church family (which is better for spiritual growth and for the possibility that the young people will stay in church as they grow up). I’m not at all a fan of extravagant youth ministries, as I think the fancier the setting, the more likely they are to be simply temporary places for youth until they outgrow “church.” Children need the same thing adults need: the Word rightly preached with the church family gathered for worship and fellowship.
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Thanks for the prayers for wisdom, Cheryl. I meant to ask for them, and can certainly use them. I’ll let you know what I learn today.
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