I just learned that Taylor University is closing its Fort Wayne campus.

• It started out as Fort Wayne Bible College.
• It became Summit Christian College.
• Then, following what some describe as a hostile takeover by Taylor University, it became Taylor University – Fort Wayne.

Now it’ll be no more. About 200 employees will be affected. That includes a variety of people I know (including at least one person at Anchor).

The Fort Wayne campus served a lot of urban, lower-income students. The Upland, Ind., campus is known for being a hot-bed of rich kids. So once again, the poor get shafted.

I’ve been greatly impressed with the students at Taylor-Fort Wayne, and with their mission-mindedness in serving Christ throughout the city. They live within a big mission field on the city’s messed-up south side, and they represent Christ well. These kids will be missed. I imagine most will end up at Indiana Purdue – Fort Wayne.

I’m sure Taylor U didn’t make this decision lightly. But I see churches leaving the neighborhood where Anchor is located, fleeing to the richer suburbs. And now Taylor does something similar. I wonder what Jesus thinks.

Two Missouri couples joined us Sunday morning at the bed & breakfast. During out breakfast conversation, I mentioned that we’d spent three days in Oklahoma City. I said there wasn’t much to do in OKC, but that the city had some great steakhouses.

“Oklahoma thinks they know how to do barbecue,” one of the guys said. “For real barbecue, you need to go to Kansas City.”

Aha, a rivalry. I guess Missourians have spent decades getting clobbered by Oklahoma football and basketball teams, so some resentment has built up. They’re obviously inferior to Sooners when it comes to sports, so they resort to claiming superiority in something more subjective.

But then, I’ve not had Kansas City BBQ. Maybe I would agree.

Here, for my own record, are the steakhouses we’ve eaten at during this vacation:

• County Line BBQ in OKC. Terrell Sanders, head of MinistryCOM, took the workshop leaders, speakers, and sponsors here last Wednesday night. Terrell told me, “County Line is where Oklahomans go.” It was certainly excellent.
• Longhorn Steakhouse. This place, near our hotel, had been open just two weeks. Amazing service, excellent food. Added a skewer of grilled shrimp, which was a good move.
• Earl’s Rib Palace, in Bricktown (downtown OKC). Big ol’ juicy-tender ribs with lots of fat surrounding the meat. Supposedly the best ribs in OKC.
• Shorty Small’s Steakhouse in Branson. What an amazing meal! Very meaty ribs. Definitely a place I’ll revisit during return trips to Branson.
• Santa Fe Steakhouse. That’s where we just finished eating. Right across the street from our Hampton Inn. Tough, overdone ribs. But I got the ribs in combo with coconut shrimp, which came close to redeeming the meal. But overall, the weakest steakhouse we tried on this vacation.

Now it’s back to Indiana. Not a steakhouse wonderland.

My all-time favorite church potluck food is the corn casserole. You know, the corn with Jiffy cornbread mixed in. I can never get enough of it.

In what must surely be the bizarrest-ever version of a midlife crisis, I’ve spent the year learning how to cook. Instead of getting a Harley (which I’ve not ruled out entirely), I’ve gone domestic. I had a goal of learning ten crockpot recipes, and I think I’ve gone beyond that. On Saturday, I made pancakes for the first time. In stores, I look at skillets and cooking utensils. Yes, I’m losing it.

In light of my infatuation with cooking, it’s not surprising that I learned how to bake a corn casserole. I checked out various recipes on the internet, mixed-and-matched some ingredients to form my own recipe, and gave it a try.

Jodie, Pam’s sister, was over a few weeks ago. I grilled us steaks and baked a corn casserole. Jodie loved it. In fact, she asked for the recipe (yes, a woman asked ME for a recipe). She called to say her kids liked it. This gave me a decidedly un-guylike sense of satisfaction.

Pam’s not so crazy about corn casseroles, but that’s okay. Just leaves more for me. Potlucks are few and far between, and I haven’t seen a corn casserole at a church potluck for a while. But now, I don’t have to wait.

Today, as I write, two guys are installing a new furnace, humidifier, heat pump, and water heater at our house–the whole shebang. Just did the roof a couple weeks ago. Molly and Jordi are locked in the bedroom.

A banner year, indeed, for the Dennie Household finances. Bring me your tired, your poor, your endless homeowner bills yearning to be paid.

I love this.

At a cheerleader camp at the University of Texas, 26 cheerleaders, ages 14-17, decided to see how many girls could squeeze into an elevator. The number was 26–the number of cheerleaders, and the number of minutes they were stuck inside. The elevator descended from the fourth floor to the first, but the doors refused to open.

There was panic. One girl fainted, and two others received medical attention. A few cell phones wriggled free and they called for help.

An unsympathetic police spokeswoman, who was probably never a cheerleader, said, “They’re lucky that’s all that happened….There are signs everywhere: No more than 15 people or 3000 pounds.”

As a high schooler who was never part of the “in” crowd, certainly never on any cheerleader’s attention list–even at age 51, this story infests me with totally juvenile glee.