Yearly Archives: 2006

Fun Times with Oral Surgery

Although there is no biblical precedent for it, this morning I allowed an oral surgeon to plant a titanium post in my jaw, into which a fake tooth will someday be screwed. He was supposed to do two posts, but some complication related to lack of sufficient bone mass prompted him to put the second one on hold to a later date, which I can look forward to with eager anticipation.

As I type, my jaw is swollen, and I just finished swishing around for 30 seconds a truly horrible fluid which, I suspect, was bottled a few hundred yards downstream from a Russian petrochemical plant.

Tomorrow, the oral surgeon assured me, will not be a banner day in the anals of Dennie pain management. I can hardly wait.

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My Parents Say Good-Bye to the Lakeville Church

Dad

Don Dennie, my dad, talking to parishioners at Olive Branch UB church in Lakeville, Ind.

Photos – Page 1 | Photos – Page 2

Yesterday, July 2, my parents retired…again. It was their last day pastoring the Olive Branch United Brethren church in Lakeville, Ind., just south of South Bend. Pam and I drove up for the service. We had attended their final service at Third Street UB church back in 1998, the last time they retired. This was a tremendous day, and I felt so grateful for the way this congregation showered love and appreciation on my parents.

Mom at the piano
Mom at the piano (for the last time?). A photo of her Sunday school class sits on the piano.

My parents originally came to Lakeville in 1989, just a few months after the previous pastor and his wife, along with two young daughters, were shotgunned in the church parsonage. Mom and Dad moved back from Arizona to serve this shattered congregation, and over the next five years helped bring a great deal of healing. They then moved on to serve three years at the Third Street UB church in Fort Wayne, Ind.–the predecessor of my current church, Anchor. Next came a brief interim stint in Convoy, Ohio, and then they, uh, retired.

And got bored. Four years ago they returned to Olive Branch in an interim capacity, were asked to throw their hat in the ring during the pastoral search (which they did somewhat reluctantly), and got voted in. But this year, my parents felt it was time to move on. Or, to move back to their home in Fort Wayne, and then figure out what the next chapter of their life will hold.

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Superman Returns

Went to see “Superman” this afternoon. I liked it. This new guy, Brandon Routh, makes a good Superman, though maybe I think that only because he looks so incredibly like Christopher Reeve.

Don’t care for Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane. Margot Kidder was a better Lois Lane, though Terri Hatcher is the ultimate Lois. Kevin Spacey was a hard-core Lex Luthor, compared to the somewhat comedic Gene Hackman.

The little exchange between Superman and Lois about the world needing a savior was quite interesting. I’m sure, once it’s out on DVD, that clip will show up in numerous church services as a sermon illustration.

Pam and I watched “Munich” last weekend. I read the book upon which it was minimally based back in the 1980s, when people still said the story never happened. Reviewers played up the angst which the Israeli assassins felt, but I was actually a bit disappointed with that part; I though the hype exceeded the substance. But the action was good, and I enjoyed the movie. It just wasn’t what I expected.

Okay, that’s enough pop culture fluff for this week.

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Hippies, Tongues, and Missing the Point

My first real exposure to the Jesus Revolution came in 1972, sometime during my 9th grade year. That experience also taught me that sometimes, even the wisest adults don’t know squat.

I lived in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., and attended a vibrant, growing UB church that was doing most things right. I loved the youth group, and loved my youth pastor, Jack Wade, a former Campus Crusade worker who influenced me significantly.

One night we all bundled into cars and traveled the 40 miles to Needles, Calif., where a Christian rally was being held. That’s Needles as in, “Well I headed for Las Vegas / Only made it out to Needles.” Pastor Marvin Price, Jack Wade, my dad, and probably several other adults accompanied us to Needles High School, where a bunch of sound and music equipment occupied the middle of the football field.

The music was loud Christian rock music, something new to Sheltered Stevie. Our church was progressive in many ways, but not in music. But it was not a concert. It was more of a worship service. For probably the first time in my life, I sang worship songs to the accompaniment of a full rock band. I tell you–it really grabbed my heart, like nothing I had experienced before. It connected. The preacher, probably just another hippie who found Christ, spoke not necessarily with eloquence, but with conviction and urgency. Again, my heart leaped with something I couldn’t explain. I caught glimpses into a whole new level of Christian living, and my heart yearned for it.

An altar call was given. As people went forward, the band sang and the preacher prayed and talked. And as he talked, he occasionally lapsed, just briefly, into another language. It was my first exposure to speaking in tongues. He didn’t make a show of it. A few words, then it was gone. And I remember the words, burned into my mind like it was yesterday. It sounded just like this: “Shone alamos.” Whatever that means.

But that was a sideline, not something I focused on. Rather, I found myself overwhelmed with the newness of this whole experience–the drums and screaming guitars, the long-haired hippie preacher, the urgency and depth of his message, and the overwhelming way in which I sensed the Holy Spirit’s presence in that gathering. It was incredibly real to me, unlike anything I had experienced before (though I’ve had many such experiences since then).

Well, afterwards we headed back to Lake Havasu and were directed into the fellowship hall, where we sat around on the floor. Dad told me, while we were still outside, “Pastor Price wants to talk to everyone about something.” “What?” I asked. “About speaking in tongues.” And I wasn’t even sure what he meant.

Some denominational tussles over tongues in our California churches had embroiled Pastor Price to some extent. Now his whole youth group had just been exposed to someone speaking in tongues, and he felt compelled to talk to us about that. So he did. Now, I heard years later that Pastor Price himself prayed in tongues, but it was purely a private thing; he never emphasized it, never preached about it, never encouraged it publicly. He just privately practiced it. So he knew what he was talking about. We teenagers received a doctrinally sound, balanced presentation about speaking in tongues. Pastor Price did a fine job. He beautifully answered questions I wasn’t asking.

You see, this incredible man of God totally missed the point. So did Jack Wade and my dad. The three most influential men in my life at that point. My mind was still back on that football stadium, still wondering:

“What was that?!?”

I was thinking about the incredible new way I sensed the Holy Spirit in that meeting, and how much I loved experiencing worship with my generation’s style of music. The adults totally missed this. Lousy antennae. The style just wasn’t their cup of tea, or maybe the Holy Spirit simply didn’t target them.

I think about that as I’m around today’s teens and young adults. I may participate in a gathering and find myself concerned about some theological issue, or perhaps a lack of Bible content, or something else. That may be all I see, as a 49-year-old, and I may downplay the event’s value. Meanwhile, a 20-year-old could be experiencing direct contact with the Holy Spirit and wondering, “What’s going on here?!?” Where I see shallowness, he may be thinking, “Wow! They are so genuine! So real!”

So on one hand I can take some pride in five decades of accumulated wisdom, experience, theological knowledge, and general spiritual discernment. But on the other hand, I need the humility to recognize that in contexts related to today’s emerging generations, I can sit amidst them and yet be totally blind to what God is actually doing. If a spiritual giant like Marvin Price can miss it, then I sure can.

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Those Who REALLY Fought for Freedom

We’ve all heard about the slaves who fought against the British during our War for Independence. But since victors write the history books, we haven’t heard much about the thousands of slaves who fought for the British. Slaves were well aware that slavery had been outlawed in England; if they could just reach the British Isles, they would be free at last.

The British offered freedom to any slaves who came to their side to fight against the American revolutionaries. An estimated 100,000 slaves (one out of five) fled the US by the end of the revolution. One was George Washington’s slave, Harry Washington, who ended up dying outside of Freetown, Sierra Leone. When the defeated British departed after losing at Yorktown, 15,000 former slaves went with them. Two new books, one by an English historian and one by an Australian historian, tell this forgotten piece of America’s story and what happened to these slaves, who were dispersed to England, Africa, Australia, and elsewhere.

So here’s what’s interesting. We celebrate our forefathers for fighting for freedom. They were not exactly “unfree,” but did have grievances about taxes and other issues. Meanwhile, here were these thousands of slaves who were, absolutely, fighting for freedom. And when the British lost, thousands were returned to a life of slavery (while their masters could celebrate the lower cost of tea).

But there are other interesting twists. Why were they slaves to begin with? Because of the British slave trade. While slavery was illegal in England itself, they hadn’t outlawed the slave trade on the high seas. The US, in 1808, outlawed the overseas slave trade, but still permitted slavery on US soil. Ah, what a web. Thomas Jefferson originally wrote about this in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, criticizing King George for violating the “sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery.” In addition, he said King George had vetoed efforts in the colonies to abolish or restrain slavery, and was now offering these slaves the “liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded [imposed] them.”

Alas, some signers felt that paragraph was too harsh, some felt it was too soft, and so they struck it from the final document which landed on King George’s desk.

Ironically, at war’s end, five of Jefferson’s own slaves were recaptured as they tried to flee behind British lines. Now who was imposing slavery on whom? Don’t ya just love this stuff?

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Trivial Quote

I liked this. Someone on the ChurchMedia.net forum uses this as a signature:

God is good, all the time
Sometimes it’s obvious

This is a reminder that sometimes, God’s goodness is not obvious…but he’s still good.

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Nine Web Design No-Nos

One of my seminars at the Church Media conference last week dealt with web design. Frankly, I didn’t learn a whole lot; after all, this is something I do professionally. But I did get a kick out of the leader’s “Six Things Never To Use in Web Design.” I agreed with all six, and added three of my own. So that’s nine items. I’ve been trying, hard, to come up with a tenth thing, but though I’ve had some good candidates, nothing has surfaced as a rock solid “definitely don’t do this.”

So, I’ll run with the nine. Most of these were popular in the 1990s, and should have died in the 1990s, the early days of the web. And most of these are very common on local church websites, a fact of life which pains me greatly.

1. Frames. Don’t design web pages with frames. It is so 1990s. Some browsers have trouble with frames. And if you care about Google rankings, definitely avoid frames. (I’ve never designed with frames.)

2. Scrolling banner text. This comes under the heading “Don’t do it just because you can.” Designers see that their program enables them to scroll text, so they do it. It’s just annoying. Like the similar FX in Powerpoint, where letters come flying across one at a time to form words. Don’t do it just because you can.

3. Animated GIFS. I hate sites that are plastered with cutesy animations that the designer stole from somewhere else.

4. Hit counters. Don’t put these on your website. They look amateurish (from a design standpoint), and “hits” are not like the more accurate “visits” (by accessing my blog homepage, I got probably a dozen “hits” as you accessed pieces of artwork, plus my javascript and CSS pages).

5. Patterned backgrounds. You can download gobs of square patterns to use as backgrounds for your pages. In general, avoid them. They look cheap.

6. Template buttons and art. You can buy a CD with thousands of graphic buttons; you just add your words to it. Plus lines, shapes, stars, symbols, and all kinds of other things. All of which look cheap. They also take extra time to load, as opposed to using textual links and buttons, which is the current standard (in tandem with Cascading Style Sheets).

7. Midi music. If I come across a site with music playing on it‚Äîthat’s the quickest way to get me to close the page. Especially if I’m at work. Music is especially annoying on ebay.

8. Splash screens. This is a page you’re forced to endure before getting to the actual page you want. You certainly don’t want to see it every time you visit that site. Instead of directly entering the store, it’s like being forced to come through another entrance with a special waiting room. Splash screens kill you on Google rankings, and studies show that up to a third of people never go beyond the splash screen. I click out of them as fast as possible.

9. Under Construction pages. I constantly have pages under construction‚Äîbut I don’t advertise that fact. I only link to a page or a section when it’s done. Nobody wants to be taken to an “under construction” page. It just wastes your time. When you have something there, then give me a link. I’m not interested in your master plan or good intentions.

Any candidates for a 10th item?

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Photos from Paula’s Wedding

I put up a bunch of photos from this Saturday’s wedding of my niece, Paula Jo Dennie. There are three pages on my Mac.com account.

Wedding Photos – Page 1
Wedding Photos – Page 2
Wedding Photos – Page 3

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Tabatha Lamb – Back from Vietnam

Tabatha and BikeTabatha Lamb spoke briefly at Anchor this morning. That’s her on the left. Anchor supports three Taylor University-Fort Wayne graduates, all girls, who now serve on the mission field–in Azerbaijan, Haiti, and Vietnam. Tabatha spent a lot of time at Anchor doing volunteer work during her college days. Last summer, she went to Vietnam–to Hanoi. Tabatha is one of my heroes.

The work is very difficult–very few Christians, deep cultural opposition to converting to Christianity. She told me of one young woman who had become a Christian and was involved in Bible studies, growing in her faith. But because of opposition from family and friends, she gave it up, renounced everything, and will now state sincerely that while she used to be a Christian, she is not anymore. Stuff like that must be highly discouraging.

Tabatha spoke for only a couple of minutes, and then showed a nine-minute DVD, a collage of photos from her time in Vietnam (she’s going back, by the way). I viewed those photos through two filters, which I should explain first.

1. I grew up during the Vietnam War, and the constant barrage of information from the government and media implanted, deeply, certain impressions of the Vietnamese, especially those in the North with whom we were at war. They were barbaric, psychotic even. No regard for human life. Cruel, primitive, fearless. No hint of being civilized. Attacking with reckless, wild-eyed frenzy. As an adult I know those descriptions aren’t accurate. But that’s what I picked up as an impressionable, patriotic kid.

Tabatha with 3 others
2. A few days ago I finished the novel “The Sorrow of War,” written by a former North Vietnamese soldier. The author, Bao Ninh, entered the war in 1969 as part of what was called the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the 500 who went to war, only 10 survived. Bao Ninh’s novel tells the story of a soldier. It is a bit tricky to read, since it jumps back and forth from pre-war, to post-war, to the present, to the war years itself. The book is non-partisan, neither pro-Vietnamese nor anti-American (actually, they do much more fighting with the South Vietnamese than with American troops). The book stirred controversy in Vietnam, since it didn’t portray Vietnamese troops as heroic and noble. But the book achieved international acclaim because of its honesty. The protagonist, Kien, deals with family issues, a girlfriend, the post-war effects of years of bloodshed, fear, despair, hopes and dreams, earning a living, and much more which left me feeling a kinship with Kien. He was just a normal person and a normal soldier (neither bloodthirsty nor particularly heroic), a man who survived the war and had to get on with life. At heart, Kien wasn’t unlike me.

So I watched Tabatha’s photos with a eye for the everyday humanity of the Vietnamese people. Most of the photos were of young people. The Vietnam War ended in 1975; they fought in Cambodia in 1978 to remove the Khmer Rouge from power, and then fought off an invasion of nearly 100,000 Chinese soldiers. But all of that was nearly 30 years ago. Most of the people in Tabatha’s slides appeared younger than that. They smiled a lot–much more than even American kids smile, I thought to myself. They played games, danced, ate, dressed up, mugged for the camera, and laughed.

Tabatha - party

Tabatha labeled this photo “No Electricity Party”

I looked at some of the young men in her photos, and thought of news reports from the 1960s and 1970s showing American soldiers herding captured Vietnamese soldiers. These guys in Tabatha’s photos, so full of smiles, could have been those so-long-ago POWs, whom I viewed as barbaric, uncivilized, bloodthirsty, and hateful. What was I to do with these pictures of young men who seemed wholly likeable?

I’m not passing judgment on the war and our involvement. That was an entirely different time. You can’t lay the present over those years and render analysis. The Vietnamese did horrible things, and American soldiers did horrible things. That’s what war does to people.

But in Tabatha’s photos, I was looking at peace. As I watched these fun-loving people with the ready smiles, I mused that this was the natural state of people. To laugh, to enjoy each other, to live in peace. Whether they are Asian, African, Palestinian, Russian, or American–young people yearn to smile. We are made for peace. We are made to smile. But we are also made to love Christ, and that’s the crucial element that the Vietnamese are missing. I’m glad Tabatha’s trying to do something about it.

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Paula Jo – She Got All Growed Up

Tom and PaulaPaula got married today. That’s my brother Stu’s daughter, the second of four kids (the others all guys). Of my six nephews and nieces on my side of the family, Paula Jo is the first to get married. Now she’s Paula Merkle, wife of Tom. And this new guy, Tom, has now invaded our family. Fortunately, Tom is a great guy; I liked him from Day One. He and Paula have dated for a couple years now. Tom’s a solid guy–talented, hardworking, a great sense of humor, smiles easily. He’s far more than a welcome addition to the family. And he’ll take real good care of Paula.

Stu and Joyce.jpgMy Dad and my brother, Stu, both conducted the ceremony. Mostly Stu. That’s him on the left, with his wife, Joyce. Stu walked Paula down the aisle, and when Dad asked who’s giving away Paula, Stu did the usual “Her mother and I.” Then Stu walked around the groomsmen (five of them) and took the center place while Dad moved aside. Tom then brought Paula onto the stage, and the ceremony continued.

Stu did a great job. Others said they thought he struggled in a couple places, but I didn’t detect it. He joked later that the trick was to not look at Paula. He would look down, up, between them, around them, but knew that if he looked at Paula and their eyes met, that it would be all over.

So this was a big day in the Dennie family.

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