Peter and Luke

Sarah and I have been in the process of trying to find a new church. We currently attend Bethany Community Church, a wonderful church that is unfortunately located about an hour away in evening traffic. Over the past year or so we have felt more and more strongly that God has been calling us to move to a church closer to home, somewhere it is easier to invite friends and easier to engage on days besides Sunday. We have as of this week attended three different local churches. Each of these churches are assuredly home to numerous people that love God. As we have progressed through this process we have discovered a number of things about ourselves and perhaps about church in general.

First, Sarah and I thought we had a pretty clear vision of what we liked in a church service. I think we both wanted something a lot like Bethany. Now having attended a local Baptist, Lutheran and Community church we are very confused. The Baptist church and the community church from a church format were very similar to our home church, contemporary and non-liturgical. The Lutheran church, for obvious reasons was very different. While you might expect we would find the very liturgical service a turn off, quite the opposite was true. I found that I really enjoyed the liturgy and the next week when we attended the community church I found I missed that element. I think that if we stay at a non-liturgical church I will probably continue to miss it.

Second, Where have the churches from the middle ground gone? It seems like modern churches are divided into two groups, Huge and tiny. What happened to the church of 200 to 500 people? In our hunting we have found that, on the Eastside, the churchs are either in the 1000+ or the 150- size range. As parents of a burgeoning family, building relationships with other young families is very important to us. We want to be able to spend time with other folks who are walking through the same challenges as we are. Unfortunately, it would seem that all of the young parents are, perhaps like us, dismissing the small churches in favor of the gigantic churches in an effort to find other people in the same walk of life, as well as the Christian education associated with the other families children. So again I ask, What has happened to the church of a few hundred people, a church with enough bodies to provide peers for most walks of life, as well as the talented folks who educate and train up the next generation, but not so many that you get lost in the muddle?

Lastly, for now, I have discovered how very important it is to feel welcomed by a church. As a long standing member of my current church it was very easy to lose sight of the first time visitor or newcomer. Now, as a visitor, I have experienced several different churches of various sizes and all different levels of welcome. I have found the welcome the regulars offer is probably the single largest influence on my impression of a church. As a visitor I have also found that churches, in general, need to do a better job making themselves accessible. Here is just a little advise I think churches could take to help with this process. First, make an intentional effort at every service to have members of your church tasked with hunting down newcomers. This is easy and natural in small churches but is no less important, even though it is more difficult, at larger churches. Once the newcomer is found intentionally connect them with an individual of similar age or life stage, have that person show us around the church and introduce us to their friends. Have a great website. If it is not better than mine it probably needs work. Please give us a realistic idea about what to expect when attending your church. I can enjoy a variety of worship environments but there are certainly some I am more comfortable with, please try to help me avoid feeling awkward during your worship time, an order of worship would be completely reasonable and helpful. Lastly, clearly enunciate how your childrens ministry works, both on your website and at your church, with signs and personal help where feasibly.

So this is a brief look at our church hunting Journey. I still have not determined what is the correct way to actually choose a church outside of praying and asking God to reveal where he wants us.

A while back I set up a Facebook account to see another page. (You have to have an account in order to see any real pages in Facebook). I thought nothing of it for another 6 months. Then, about a month ago, I got a friend request from a guy I knew in college. I went back on figured out who he was and added him to my friend list. Still I didn't do much with it. Then I got another two or three requests and when I went to check out my page it had recommended that I may know a bunch of other people. Lo and behold I did. Enter the magic of Facebook. Within 2 weeks I have 50 friends and probably 10 or 20 outstanding friend requests. Perhaps I need to take a step back.

Facebook is a (maybe the) social networking site. It is basically a really simple webpage you can use to keep track of a broad spread of people you know. You start by creating a page. Then you search for people. Once you have put in a few people Facebook begins to suggest that you may know. These suggestions are based on the relationships between your friends. The remarkable element of this whole thing is that it works.

So for the last week or two I have been diligently adding new friends. I have connected with old college and highschool friends and even got to chat with a friend that is currently on the other side of the planet. Sarah had been using my Facebook to poke around and look for her old friends and finally she broke down and created her own page last night. The really good news about Facebook is that you don't really have to spend much time with it. While it is kind of like a blog it is really only designed to be updated occasionally and only in very small entries, like a sentence or two.

I highly recommend checking it out. Facebook has made this massive appearance and has a really amazing breadth of users. I would be amazed if anyone could NOT find someone they knew. Give it a shot, if you are reading my blog you probably have a friend in me.

www.facebook.com

Well, I finally broke down and bought a Wii. It is great! I found it on Criagslist for $200 with some extras.

Last night it was about 90 degrees in our house and some friends brought dinner over for us. After dinner we headed downstairs where it is much cooler to play the Wii. I have discovered it is nearly as much fun watching people that have never tried a Wii play with one for the first time than it is to play with one yourself. Jeremy and Margaret, our friends, are a married couple and I could just see Margaret thinking "what a waste of my time". Ha Ha, by the end of the night she was already making plans to get one if they had extra money after Christmas.

It is really hilarious to watch people go from awkwardly waving about to understanding how the remote works then to violently stabbing at the air in an effort to knock out there spouse in Wii Boxing. By the end of the night the rec room was as hot as the upstairs and we were all sweating like pigs but we had a good time. In any case the whole evening was a hoot and we now have two more avid Wii fans. I guess I am going to have to go out and find a couple more sets of controllers.

My recommendation: Don't try a Wii if you don't want to get hooked. I did about as good as anyone. My brother bought his Thanksgiving the year they came out and I have waited a year and half. I say I was a pretty good holdout. We will see how Jeremy and Margaret do.

Sorry it has been a very long time since Sarah or I have posted so it is high time. A couple of notes:

The Website has been updated. There is now a Gallery tab rather than link. This tab integrates our old Gallery into the new and improved updated webpage. It is really slick and deserves to be checked out.

Luke is two and half months old. How time does fly. I will try to get some newish pictures of him up soon. Again check the gallery, there is some pretty recent stuff in there. Now on to the topic of the day.

Luke for the last few months has been up pretty late in the evenings. He has historically been going to sleep around 11 maybe 11:30. As you might expect at first this takes a toll and then you just start getting used to it. Well, Sarah and I have gotten used to it (although, I still think that she needs a nap most days, whether she gets it or not). So in an effort to pass this new found time we have been reading books together. We have started with The Chronicals of Narnia. We had both already recently seen the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe so we started with the Magicians Nephew, then read the Horse and His Boy. We are currently about 3/4 of the way through Prince Caspian (we will hopefully be able to get out and see the movie once we finish).

Now, this may sound like a wonderful relationship building thing to do together. It really is. But, it does have negative side effects. Last night, for instance, Luke went to sleep around 10:30 (he is in general going to sleep much earlier). However, do to some other stuff going on we didn't get to read until about that time. I ended up reading to Sarah until just about midnight. It is really ridiculous. You would think we would learn our lesson and take sleep whenever it is offered. Not so much.

Apparently we are just gluttons for punishment.

In any case, Prince Caspian is a great story from a master storyteller. I would encourage anyone to either pull out or borrow from the library the Narnia books. They are so much fun and perhaps you will find yourself so enthralled that you forget the time and immerse yourself in the story.

W

So you would think that naming a child would be pretty easy. We named Peter and it sure was. We looked through some books and found Peter both Sarah and I loved the name it worked really well. Settled... Number Two has not been nearly so easy. The story begins before we were even pregnant. We found out my uncle (actually my 2nd Cousin) was sick with Cancer. It turned out to be terminal and truly truncated a wonderful man's life. Prior to his passing away Sarah and I decided that we would either his first or middle name as the middle name of our next child. We talked it over with him and he wanted us to use his first name, Dale. So when Sarah got pregnant we figured we had smooth sailing, we were, after all, half way there. Unfortunately for us, no name jumped out of the books. We looked and hunted and instead of one name we got a bunch of names. You can see the list in the poll at right. So we are seeking feedback. What should we name our next little dude. ______ Dale Erickson.

Here is a new first post. I keep on breaking things in my Drupal build so bear with me as I try to get things moving again. I think I may be able to figure out how this thing works yet. Just so it is here this is a link to our Gallery. www.wserickson.com/Gallery2 Hope you enjoy the site as it gets built up.