On the Move!

We've just been offered and accepted a ministry position. I'll be the Pastor of Adult Discipleship at Trinity Baptist Church in Walla Walla, Washington. More details to come, but check out trinitywallawalla.org.

Thanks for praying!

Update (of sorts)

So, it has been a while since I blogged, but there is good reason. Our family is in a great state of flux/transition. We are still in the midst of the transition, but I'll update you as best I can:

By this time next week, I'll be completely finished with all my seminary coursework. Forever. Yay.

By this time next month, our family will be moving out of our current apartment. We're packing, saying goodbye to friends and family. Boo.

Sometime soon, we'll be starting a new, full time ministry position. I can't go into details, because I don't have any details yet. But rest assured that when we know, you'll know.

We appreciate your prayers during this time that is both exciting and difficult. We'll provide detailed updates as we begin to put the pieces together of the plan God has woven for us (Mixed Metaphor Alert!).

The List is Life

OK, so I borrowed the title of this post from the movie Schindler's List. But I want to tell you about a different list I've created.

After attending a recent conference (thanks, Bruce!) I was inspired and challenged to be more intentional about my life. So, I created a daily To-Do list. To clarify, I have a To-Do list every day, but it fluctuates. This new To-Do list is a list of things I am intending to do every single day of my life, regardless of whatever else needs to happen. I've been doing many of these things for a while, but now I'm systematizing them and hopefully making them more regular. Here it is:

1. Pray for my wife and family.
This is fairly self explanatory, I hope, but I want to be continually praying for my wife and kids. In a sense, this is selfish, too, because I'm praying about my own role in their spiritual lives, too.

2. Pray for my church and my ministry.
As I have finished and reflected on my time of training at DTS, I realize more and more the desperate need I have to keep myself connected to the Father. My ministry and the church I shape must be continually given over to God if I am to have any "success" at all.

3. Pray for leaders.
This is connected to #2, because I'm speaking of church leaders. I'm passionate about seeing God's people doing the things that God desires them to do. Obviously, I'm thinking of specific people here, and praying about the specific ways they lead. Also included here is emerging leaders. Praying about people who need to be invested in so that they can become leaders. And, then hopefully my prayers for them will lead me to act in the lives of those people.

4. Intercessory prayer.
This includes prayers for friends, family, others that we hear of who need prayer. Pretty simple, but pretty important.

5. Manage my decisions.
I stole this from John Maxwell. It is great to make decisions, but if we don't take action to manage the outworking of those decisions, then what is the point? I want to use my time well, stewarding what God has given me always.

6. Serve Willingly.
Rather than being a slave to managing my decisions, I want to balance that with serving others well. Sometimes things come up that interfere with the plan. But if I model my life after Jesus, then I must be willing to set aside my own agenda in order to follow God's.

7. Study and Read.
Certainly I'm thinking of the Bible here. But, not just the Bible; I want to be learning each day. This is pretty easy for me, because I love to learn. But, it is also one of my strengths, so I want to be fostering it.

8. Build Up My Wife and Kids.
This is where the prayer above turns to action. I feel that too many days go by where we just coast through life. The result is not stagnation, where we stay static. The result is that we recede in our discipline, our godliness, etc. So, I want to be intentional in this area.

9. Practice Integrity in Thought/Word/Deed.
Again, this seems pretty self explanatory, but I hope it will serve as a reminder to me daily.

So, there's my list. I've got it stored on the welcome screen of my iPhone so I can't get away from it. And now you can hold me accountable to it.

What is on your list?
What things do you need to be reminded about every day?
What priorities might I have overlooked?

The End of My Seminary Career

So the reason it has been a while between posts here is because we have been busy with finishing up coursework at DTS, graduating, and looking for a job. And while the first two tasks have been successful, the third is still a work in progress. So, we have a lot to look forward to as God reveals His future for us. We'd appreciate your prayers.

As I reflect back on our time here, there are many lessons I have learned at DTS. Here are three:

1. God is faithful. He has come through for us time and time again, and we have seen Him come through for countless others. If you ever want to test your faith, enroll in seminary. You will not be disappointed.

2. God works through His people. The money and encouragement God gave us did not fall out of the sky (except that one time). He used people to provide for us each time. Our time at DTS will be marked by a string of faces and friends who prayed, listened to God, and responded to the stirring of His Spirit. I would encourage you to be listening, too. You'll never know what blessings God desires to give to you or through you if you don't seek Him and His will.

3. And finally, simple apposition requires that both nouns be in the same case, while the genitive of apposition requires only the second noun to be in the genitive case. Hey, I never said that everything I learned was inspiring and important.

Set Loose on the World!

Misspellings

You know those words that no matter how many times you type them, you always type them wrong? I hate those words. I think everyone has different words that give them trouble, but for me, these are probably my top three:

church (chruch)

resurrection (ressurection)

ministry (minstry)

Maybe I should look for a new line of work...

Have I Ever Told You...

Have I ever told you this story? As you may know, we set up this blog partly as a way for friends and family to keep up with us while we were attending Dallas Seminary, and partly so that we could share some of the amazing things God is doing for us and through us. I've shared a few of those things, such as how God has come in at just the right time to sustain us (here and here), or how all four years of our tuition was paid by God and how we are graduating without any student loan debt (here). But there's a story I didn't tell, and I perhaps should have. We've generally tried to avoid singling people out on our blog, but this story is too cool and too bizarre not to share.

We met a Catholic priest (who happens to live in Europe) through a family member. He came here to Dallas to visit, and when he found out we were in seminary, he was very excited. Even though he is Catholic, he's always had a soft spot for Protestants. It seems that his father was a Baptist. Our priest friend grew up in the war, and one fateful day his father was getting on a bus. He stopped to let a woman on to the bus ahead of him, and in that moment, German war planes strafed the street where he was standing and he was shot and killed. Thus, he was raised Catholic, because of his mother, but never lost his admiration for Protestants.

Well, having struggled through seminary himself, he wanted to do something nice to support us. As he was about to retire, one of his parishioners gave him a generous gift. She gave him a retirement home and a bit of money. He told us about this gift and that he wanted to share a bit with us. We were flattered, and were thinking he might be really generous and give us a few hundred dollars. Apparently his parishioner was incredible generous, because he ended up giving us several thousand dollars. Praise God.

As I reflect on this story, I think it is amazing all of the little details that worked together. One moment in getting on a bus that changed lives forever, one woman who wanted to reward a priest for years of faithful service, one priest who saw a family with needs to whom he could relate. And generosity like that which has allowed our family to minister well to others, setting off a whole new chain of events that God is using to draw people to Himself.

Where are you in the story? Is there an action God is calling you? Is there a response God is seeking from you? Or do you have a story of your own that deserves sharing? What better forum than this?

The God of Hope

I'm trying to be better about blogging in the moment, that is blogging at the time I think about it, rather than waiting and eventually forgetting to do it. So here's something I was thinking about today.

I've always been a little puzzled by Genesis 12. The chapter starts out this way:

"The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you."

That's all we get of the conversation. But surely there was something else. Surely, Abraham had some sense of who this God was who had the nerve to command him. After all, what person in their right mind would follow the command of God who they had no prior contact with? As I pondered what must have happened, it struck me: this God offered hope. A hope that no other god could.

Abram was 75 at this time. He knew that he was childless, and perhaps resigned himself to the fact that he would die that way. All his prayers to other gods, all his actions that he had tried over the years had been fruitless to change his life. They were met with only silence and tears.

And then he encountered the one true God. And this God promised him offspring. Which meant he had hope.

Abram met God, and something about this God was different from the other gods he must have tried. Something about his encounter with this God gave him hope that there would be offspring, that their would be a future for his family.

The best part is that God still offers hope. No matter what we've tried and failed to achieve, God holds out hope that the future is better. My prayer for you who are reading this is that you embrace that hope. It wasn't too late for Abram, and it is not too late for you.

Theatre Review-Macbeth at Kitchen Dog Theater

Kitchen Dog Theater celebrated their 20th season of theatre with what they describe as a "stripped-down" version of Shakespeare's Macbeth (playing at McKinney Avenue Contemporary through March 5). And it is indeed stripped-down: eight actors swapped out all of the 30 roles, there is a mostly bare stage, minimalist costuming, and the script has been trimmed to about half its normal length, with no intermission. All of these things set the stage for what could have been an outstanding theatre experience, but was in fact only a pretty good theatre experience.

The design team created a barren, urban apocalypse environment. There was multi-level scaffolding built around the small theatre, even behind and above the audience, and a simple platform at the rear of the stage. The metallic black and grey gave Donna Marquet's set an abandoned warehouse feel, but the director didn't fully utilize the levels until the end of the show. Prior to that, they seemed to serve as little more than very long exit stairs. The set design being open allowed for the entire ensemble to be visible to the audience even when they weren't in the scene. Again, this seemed an underused element of the production. There was very little reaction from the ensemble at key emotional points in the play. They seemed content to just hang out, rather than contribute in a tangible way. The experience of seeing the actors as passive observers gave a Brechtian, disconnection to a play that is overloaded with dramatic emotional decisions and consequences. The result was that the audience was unable to fully connect emotionally to the action of the play.

One design highlight was the "soundscape" created by John M. Flores. Flores uses both music and the sounds created by the actors as they stomped, ran and clanged against the metal scaffolding throughout the show. The result is an environment that rang as hollow as the weird sisters' empty promises, and as hollow as Macbeth's embittered heart. Combined with that was a solid lighting design by Aaron Johansen. Johansen had essentially a "blank canvas" on which to work, and filled that canvas well, maintaining a creepy, hollow mood throughout.

The costuming was perhaps one disappointing element of the design. Clad in almost all black, the characters used only slight modifications to delineate the different characters they play. The most effective modification was the use of dirty towels to cover the faces of the actors playing the Weird Sisters. Their facelessness added to the mystique of these central, otherworldly characters. The rest of the costuming, though, felt uninspired. The costumes created a vaguely socialist/militaristic society, which didn't quite seem at home in the urban warehouse.

And speaking of things that weren't quite at home, we must turn our attention to the acting. First, let me say this: the actors were all strong. As an ensemble, they worked well together, and each of them handled the text quite capably. That being said, the decision to limit the cast to eight generated some difficult casting problems. Rhonda Boutté, who was my favorite of the Weird Sisters and who had a stellar moment as Lady Macduff, never really got off the ground as Banquo.

Max Hartmann was sufficiently creepy in his various ensemble roles, but his Malcolm left me feeling nervous for the future of Scotland. Again, the actors were obviously all talented, but dividing so many roles among the eight left for some disappointing miscasting. Among the ensemble players, Adrian Churchill seemed the most well suited for his various parts, and he shone in each role. Jenny Ledel and Drew Wall were never in large enough roles to settle into just one character, but they both played the utility role well. Cameron Cobb did a decent job as Macduff, though at times he came across as too youthful for the role.

Ultimately, though, any production of Macbeth hangs on the actor playing Macbeth, and to a certain extent, on Lady Macbeth as well. Christopher Carlos was a timid, even affable Macbeth at the beginning of the show, duly surprised that the Weird Sisters would prophecy such grand things for him. His downward spiral to insanity was slow and a bit too controlled—I longed for him to emerge wild-eyed at the end of the play, and he never did. Christina Vela captured Lady Macbeth's passion from the beginning, and was solid throughout.

In the final analysis, this review was admittedly rather nit-picky. And since this reviewer had the luxury of being nit-picky, that is a sign of a pretty good production. Kitchen Dog Theater has been creating solid performances for 20 years now, and Macbeth continued the tradition.





Pegasus News Content partner - John Garcia's The Column

What is Your God Story?

So it has been a while since I blogged (not counting theatre reviews), and I'm sorry. I feel as if I have let down all six of my faithful readers. So, here's something of what I've been thinking about lately:

I've been reading Augustine's Confessions. Augustine was an early church father, in the 400s. (Who also was apparently a magician, if you believe the picture on the Wikipedia page linked above. Or maybe an ancestor of the dude in the Temple of Doom. Creepy.) His Confessions is a spiritual autobiography, which means he tells his life story, but tells it from a spiritual perspective. One of the things that Augustine is good at is looking back on his life and seeing God's hand at work. Even in the years before he believed or even thought about God, Augustine was able to look back and see how God had worked his circumstances to either protect him, to teach him, or to guide him. God used his family, his friends, and other means to communicate to Augustine and ultimately to lead him to the truth about Christ.

As I read, I couldn't help but think about how God has worked in my own life. And more to the point, I realized how little I tend to reflect on God's work in my life. Yet if we believe in the sovereignty of God, then we believe that God is in control of everything. God is capable of using and redeeming our circumstances for His glory. All too often, though, we just plow through our days as if there is no significance to the choices we make. After reading Augustine, that just doesn't seem to be true.

So my question to you is, how has God worked in your life? Or more to the point, where is God's hand in your present circumstances? We know several folks going through some tough stuff, and maybe you are one of them. Where is God in your life right now? What is He protecting you from? What is He pointing you toward? What is He trying to teach or show you? It is a valuable question to ask ourselves, and it has been a question I'm asking myself more and more these days.

Theatre Review: Simply Etta

SIMPLY ETTA
Written, Directed, and Starring Sheran Goodspeed Keyton
Musical Accompaniment by Alejandro Serrano Ayuso

Reviewed by Kristopher A. Harrison, Associate Theater Critic

for John Garcia's THE COLUMN

From the moment you walk in to Tucker's Blues, a small, dark, blues club in Deep
Ellum, you know that this is the kind of place where special things can happen.
Tucked away in a back alley of the local birthplace of blues, you get the
feeling that this is the kind of place where legendary people get discovered.
And Simply Etta is just such a discovery: surprising, enjoyable, and at times
amazing.

Simply Etta, originally conceived as a tribute to iconic singer Etta James, uses
the actual words of Etta James—taken directly from her autobiography, the liner
notes of her albums, and transcripts from interviews—to form the basis of this
biographical musical. Singer and actress Sheran Goodspeed Keyton marvelously
brings to life this portrait of the troubled musician, guiding the audience
through a powerhouse performance of acting and singing.

Whenever you go to see a one-person show, you never really know what you are
going to get.  Everything rests on the abilities of the lone performer.  If
he/she is good, then you are in for a wonderful experience.  If, however the
lone performer is bad, you are in for a very, very long night.

From the moment that Sheran Goodspeed Keyton first opens her mouth, this
audience knows we won't be disappointed.  Her confident swagger and her
phenomenal singing voice grabs our attention and our admiration right from the
start.  Better yet, this seasoned performer kept the audience in her grip,
making us laugh along with her, cry along with her, and even sing along with
her.

Etta James, best known for her trademark song "At Last," was in the news this
past year, as it was revealed that she suffers from Alzheimer's disease.  You
may recall her biting criticism aimed at Beyoncé when Beyoncé sang "At Last" at
Obama's inaugural ball.  Her family later apologized, blaming her fierce
comments on the dementia.  Simply Etta begins at this point, with the aging Ms.
James looking back on various episodes in her life.  Keyton uses some of Etta
James most recognizable songs to weave an emotional tapestry telling the story
of her troubled childhood, her drug addiction, and her abusive relationships.

Through it all, we root for Etta, because Keyton portrays her so well.  There is
never a moment in which she falters or misses a beat.  Keyton has a broad
emotional range as an actress, and she paints an intimate portrait of a troubled
soul.  She brings us gut wrenching dramatic moments as she delves deep into the
musician's painful past memories.  She also brings us joyful, hilarious moments
that celebrate James' highpoints.  But the main reason we love Ms. Keyton so
much is because of her powerhouse voice.

The show is as much blues concert as it is dramatic monologue, and she brought
the house to its feet song after song.  Backed by Ayuso on the piano (who has
his own moments to shine in some fantastic solo work), Keyton belts out gospel,
soulful R&B, and blues that seems to be rooted in all the drama of Ms. James'
real life struggles.  I left wondering where I could buy the album.

If you love blues, this show is a must see.  It is a hidden gem of a
performance.


Reviewed by Kristopher A. Harrison, Associate Theater Critic
for John Garcia's THE COLUMN

_________________________________________________________________

SIMPLY ETTA at Tucker's Blues
2617 Commerce Street, Dallas, TX 75226

Sundays and Mondays only - January 30th-31st,
February 7th & Feb. 13th-14th-All at 7:30 pm

Run time approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.
$10 cover charge-cash bar. Call 214-744-2583 for tickets.

Theatre Review: Death is No Small Change!

Pegasus Theatre celebrates its 25th season by producing yet another of its now famous "Black and White" plays. The plays, written by and starring Kurt Kleinmann, all feature the would-be actor turned would-be bumbling detective Harry Hunsacker, and all are set in the stylized world of 1930's-era black and white films. Death is No Small Change! (playing at Eisemann Center for Performing Arts in Richardson through January 23) has all the classic elements of an old film murder mystery. A (mad?) scientist and his fellow brain surgeons live and work on a private island. When detectives come to investigate a bizarre string of murders, a fierce storm forces them all to spend the night on the island, knowing that one among them is a murderer. Hunsacker is brought in to help (or hinder) the investigation, and the audience attempts to stay one-step ahead of Hunsacker and figure out the identity of murderer before s/he strikes again.

The design elements are the reason to go see Death is No Small Change! Pegasus's trademark "Black and White" production style attempts to recreate the look of old 1930s and 1940s films. And, after all these years, they certainly have perfected the process. Everything from the costumes, the scenery and even the actors' make-up (which I'm told takes two hours to put on and take off) are all done in shades of white, black, and grey. They've done such a good job that by the end of the night when producer Barbara Weinberger came out on stage in a bright red dress, there was an audible reaction from the audience. Everyone had gotten so used to seeing only "black and white" that the burst of color made us realize just how effective the designers work had been.

Throughout the performance, the designers did an excellent job of creating a world that faithfully adhered to this vision. At times, you really felt like you were watching an old black and white movie. Kudos must be given especially to the lighting designer (Sam Nance) who was able to subtly create different moods without relying on color. Also, the set and prop designers (Clare Floyd DeVries and John Harvey, respectively) created a wonderful environment. The play is set entirely in the laboratory of Dr. Lionel Yarazelski, and the set was full of fun, 1930s-era scientific details—machines that looked as if they were pulled straight from the back lot of an old film studio.

In terms of the acting, there were some notable bright spots. Miranda, the daughter of Dr. Yarazelski, played by Catherine DuBord, did a fantastic job of fully living in to the style of the piece. Her vocal work and her movements were perfectly reminiscent of the presentational style of acting that dominated film work from the pre-War era. In a play full of stereotyped characters, she was able to create a character that was intriguing and enjoyable to watch.

Some of the other actors who turned in solid performances--even though their characters were quite two-dimensional--include Leslie Patrick as Muriel the maid who made the most of her role. And David Benn as Sebastian the stiff and creepy butler got consistent laughs with every entrance.

The lead characters handled their roles well too. Kurt Kleinmann could likely play Harry Hunsacker in his sleep at this point, but a twist in the plot showed off his acting ability in a different way. Chad Cline as Lt. Foster started off the night a bit flustered, but soon settled in to his role and turned in a solid, energetic performance. Ben Bryant as Nigel Grouse, Hunsacker's assistant, showed off his strong comedic instincts and made me want to keep watching him. Mario Cabrera was perhaps the most creative, evoking real empathy even in the midst of the campy style. I'd enjoy seeing him tackle a meatier role.

Where this production suffers is in the pacing and the writing. Act I of the play does all the right things to set up the murder mystery well. Each character is placed under suspicion and the plot is knotted up tightly so that when Act II begins, we have all the possibilities of a really tense, farcical mystery on our hands. But the script simply fails to deliver in Act II. There are plenty of unnecessary moments written in, and the pacing is so painfully slow that when the climactic moment comes and the real killer is finally revealed, there is little payoff. The actors seem to enjoy some self-serving laughs, but they don't deliver them well enough for the audience to fully enjoy them. The result is that many of the jokes simply fell flat.

In the final analysis, this company is to be commended. They did such a good job of recreating the world of old films that the audience truly loses itself in the world of 1930s-era murder mystery films. However, what the script and the director fail to do is go beyond simply a Xerox copy of that style to give us also a fresh play that speaks to 2010. That being said, it is worth noting that, when the director asked the audience how many had seen a Harry Hunsacker black and white play before, about ninety percent raised their hands. I guess that whatever they are doing is working just fine. If you've never seen a black and white play, it is worth it, if only for the design elements.

  John Garcia's The Column