TheBS

My Faith Journey

I wrote this at the beginning of the year for a missionary organization that I was applying to. I ended up withdrawing my application for other reasons, however, I thought this was worth sharing. And what better day to share than Easter? He is Risen.

I’ve never really been sure how to best answer this question. I do not believe there is a single identifiable point in time where I became a Christian. I was raised in a loving Christian home, as both my parents are Christian’s. My faith has been, and continues to be, a wonderful journey of understanding. Along the way, I have developed a relationship with the Lord that I can call my own. My goal is to seek Him, incessantly. I can, however, identify some critical points in my journey.

High school was a time when a lot of my faith flourished. I went on student trip to Lake Shasta through my church and an organization called Sonshine Ministries. I became part of an amazing Bible study that, even after high school ended, still stays in contact with each other regularly.

College has been hard though. I attended Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Campus Crusade for Christ for a little while my freshman year, but it was radically different from what I was used to and I soon stopped going. Sophomore year, I tried going to a variety of different churches around my school. Toward the end of my sophomore year, I thought I had finally found a church: First Presbyterian Church of Golden. I went for the remainder of sophomore year and the start of my junior year. However, it just wasn’t sticking. I found the sermons uninteresting and inapplicable in my life. The audience was also predominately older couples and children, there were practically no college age students. So I gave up and coasted for a while, going to church only when I was back in Seattle.

When I was back this last summer, I was talking with our senior pastor, Earl Palmer, and some friends from my Bible Study. One question came up about how to find another church away from home. Part of what I got out of the that discussion is that I was missing something when I was trying to find a church in the past: the community.

When I got back to school this past fall, I called up a friend, Matt, and asked if he wanted to go this church I’d heard about, Flatirons Community Church. As it turned out, he was already planning on carpooling up with another mutual friend, so we all carpooled together. After church, Matt introduced me to his community at church. This is when I stopped coasting in my faith. I had found community within a church; which is the part I had been missing previously. And it has been an absolute blessing to be in this community.

I have been enjoying going to Flatirons. I’ve also been going to The Annex (a college ministry run by First Presbyterian Boulder) on Tuesdays and I recently volunteered to drive freshmen from their dorms to The Annex and back.

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Our Man McConnell

I’m not sure where to start with this story. It is one that has been in the making for at least the last ten years1, some might argue even the last twenty-three. I’ll skip the boy-meets-girl, boy-falls-in-love-with-girl part and go straight to the boy-gets-married-to-girl part.

Saturday night was the first time one of Us got married. To think that ten years ago, we were sitting around playing video games; and then to think that a decade later, we would be here: celebrating the union of two wonderful people and loss of our friend Kelly2.

Kelly’s marriage raises the bar for all of Us and is yet another reminder that I’m growing up. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few days pondering.

But enough of my doom-and-gloom thoughts. Kelly and Kristin’s wedding really was spectacular. It took place in the wonderful backyard of Kristin’s parents’ house in New Castle. The weather was pretty much unbeatable.

At one point during the reception, I caught a glace of orange out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head to see what it was: the plastic-like tablecloth the cake was on had caught fire.

I jumped up out of my seat and ran over to put it out. I got a round of applause and everyone at my table was relieved to find out that I was solving problems and not causing chaos. Staples thinks I should have snapped on my latex gloves3.

Around 11:30pm, Kelly and Kristin finally departed in Kelly’s rebuilt baby blue ’65 Nova Wagon.

Photo: Copyright 2008 Jen Emert

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  1. How long I’ve known Kelly/been in TheBS, more or less. ↩

  2. I kid. I kid. ↩

  3. This an another story that I should probably tell at some point. ↩

The Bet

The Rockies and Red Sox are playing the World Series (in case you didn’t know). Seeing as I’m going to school in Colorado and my good friend Jeff is going to school in Boston, I figured we’d make a little bet.

Every Christmas Break, we all go to Cheese Cake Factory to get together.

Thus the bet comes into place.

Let it be known that Andrew Ferguson and Jeffrey Staples have a bet for dinner at The Cheese Cake Factory not to exceed USD$ 20, loser pays.

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More on Lent

I have this really cool book I got for graduation called The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. Lent is traditionally a time of 40 days before Easter spent fasting. When I started giving something up for Lent a few years ago, it was in the spirit of fasting from something particular, soda, caffeine, swearing. Soda was originally suggested by Darren (I think) for our entire Bible Study to give up because we drank quite a bit of Dr Pepper and it was going to be a hard thing to give up. Every year I try to thing of something that I can fast from that would be meaningful.

I felt that giving up soda this year would be too easy and I wanted to find something that would be more of a challenge. I thought about blogging, instant messaging, and reading my news feeds. They would be hard to give up, but they are also critical to what I do and giving them up would be more akin to not journaling, not talking with my friends (i.e. giving them the silent treatment), and not reading the newspaper. I don’t play that many video games, so giving that up wouldn’t be a challenge at all and I’m really not that into Facebook (I might check it every three days or so).

I started to think about other things I could do. Perhaps instead of giving something up, I could do something instead. And so for Lent, I am going to go to church every single Sunday. It’s something that I’ve been trying to do ever since I moved to Golden and I just really slacked on it. It will be hard, but I can do it.

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Didn’t See That One Coming

Note: Posted with Jeff’s permission.

There really is no point in beating around the bush on this one, so I’m just going to say it. Jeff Hanway just told me he was gay. There. I said it.

Jeff is, has been, and always will be an awesome friend. I’ve never been in a situation like this before, so for the most part, I’m rather stunned. I can honestly say I had no reason, what so ever. I think the oddest thing is there are people I know who are homosexual and there are people I know who have delt with someone they know being homosexual (usually a family member). They’ve blogged about it, I’ve read it, and that’s that. But now to be on the other side. It’s very surreal.

Having said that. Jeff is an awesome guy. We went to high school together, are in the same Bible Study, and have shared many a laughs and what not. For all intensive purposes, he is my brother and one of the few people I will trust with my life.

JHan has known he was officially gay since freshman year of HS, or there abouts. He even had a few boyfriends, which no one knew about (thus now earning Fergs "Super Sneaky Award").

I like to think that I notice quite a bit. In retrospect, I suppose there might have been a few tip-offs. But nothing conclusive.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about this whole bit is that theBS discused homosexuality on many occations.

I’m really not sure where I’m trying to go with this. I have a lot flowing through my head right now and I really just want to get it out.

Futher comments will be posted as encrypted logs.

Update: Cleartext’d

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