tonyandkirsten.org

I got a really weird phone call this afternoon.  A guy calls and says something along the lines of, “Hey, do you know one of your neighbors named Alexander?”  I say no, thinking it has to be some kind of wrong number.  Then the guy says, “Well, he lives at 3415 or 3414.  Sometimes he goes by Alex.  Are you sure you don’t know him?”  I said I didn’t — I know some of our neighbors but I don’t know anyone from either of those two houses.  Even if I did, I’m not sure I would have told this guy without a great deal more explanation as to what he wanted and why.

So, after I hung up I was even more weirded out that this guy found my phone number, with just knowing I lived down the street.  It quickly occured to me he probably was using one of those reverse phone/address searches on the web to track down someone who knows this guy Alexander for whatever reason.  Out of curiosity I decided to try one myself and see if our info came up.  I tried a couple of them, and it didn’t.  After again being weirded out for a few seconds, I remembered that property owner information is freely available on the county assessor website.  It would then be a trivial matter to look up the phone number from there.  I’m not sure why I did this, but I decided to look up our info on the online whitepages.  Much to my surprise, a search for our names didn’t bring up anything, even on Qwest’s own search page.

Thinking it might be some weird online error, I go to check the phone book.  Again, I am not sure why I did this, other than it seemed to make sense at the moment.  Much to my surprise, we were not listed in any of the three phone books I found in our house.  Um, don’t you have to pay for an unlisted number? But, being determined to solve this problem, I decided to do one other thing — I looked up myself under my maiden name.

Much to my surprise, there I was.  “Kirsten Skelly” — Listed with my current addy and phone number.  As far as I can tell, it must have been like that for the last four years.  You never look yourself up in the phone book, and I guess no one else ever tried to look us up either (or if they did, they must have assumed we didn’t have a home phone or it was unlisted).  I guess no one we know has caller ID either (or actually looks at if they have it), because it would have showed up wrong there too.

Next step, I call Qwest and get it fixed.  The customer service rep I talked to said something along the lines of, “Huh.  I guess when they updated your name and added your husband four years ago they forgot to ask you about your directory listing.”  Now, in the past four years I have called Qwest numerous times about various issues including moving twice and changing or dealing with internet service problems numerous times.  And never did a customer service rep (who always tries to look at your current service and sell you other things) ask if I really wanted to have a different name on my directory listing than on my billing and the rest of my account info. Amazing!

So, here’s the rundown on the mysteries:

Solved:  Why I couldn’t be found under my current name in the online whitepages.

Probably Solved: Why I still get lots of junk mail under my maiden name.  I assume they were just using databases or lists derrived from the phone book.

Partially Unsolved:  How the guy looking for Alexander found our phone number.  However, since my correct and current address was listed in the phone book, i think there is a good chance he just had a better reverse phone/address search than I did.

Mostly Unsolved: How we could go for four years without knowing our directory listing was wrong! Amazing!

Totally Unsolved: Why the guy wanted to find Alexander. How strange!

So, there’s been a bit of commotion recently about church planting.

With all this happening, and with a desire to see the gospel go to the ends of the earth through the vehicle of the church, the pastors of Stonebrook and a few other regional leaders met a week and a half ago to discuss church planting. I wasn’t there, but Tim passed on his notes to me. Additionally, I sought out some extra input and I got some responses about what it’ll take to get ready for a church plant.

So, I’m posting the key parts of those notes here. These need to be prefaced with the fact that these notes are from a discussion in progress, not the final decision. I repeat, these notes are from a discussion in progress, not the final decision. OK?

The biggest conclusion of the time was that Stonebrook does not currently contain enough tested leaders of pastoral character to plant a church in the next couple of years. So, a lot of these notes should be interpreted in light of remedying that.

Steps to take to more quickly prepare leaders to plant churches:

1. Training/ steps of faith needs to occur with people being with people- starting Bible studies from scratch, doing outreaches, living a daily disciplined life (sacrifice to do X during the day so you are available at night).
2. Call church planting enthusiasts to make day to day decisions and lifestyle choices as if they are on a church plant right now (active training for the days of battle). How badly do you want it?! Don’t pray that you want to do great things for God, but not get out of bed when your alarm goes off.
3. It would be good for these young leaders to be in on church planting discussions where they see us (the pastors) under the authority of our regional elders that they may model it. They need to have a clear vision of who we are and how God has entrusted us to do things. Also, invite Pat to come in and tell everyone how it is… what it’s really like to plant a church from scratch.
4. Pastors need to learn how to identify these passionate, gifted saints early so we can come alongside and train them. We all need to have the humility to let Spirit-filled men run ahead of us.
5. Church planting leaders should view recurring problems, weaknesses, and struggles in their lives as “addictions” and get counseling and trusting God for healing and growth.
6. Set time lines for church planting goals. At the next pastors conference, bring your next guy AND your next young/ “still has a lot of growing to do” guy. Read Hudson Taylor, the Pauline epistles… and realize that God is often times not in as big a hurry as we are. It takes time for things to crystallize and grow.
7. Recommend teams go to a less hostile place first and then move their intended location. For example, have the Madison church planting team (or at least the core) go to Iowa City for a year of training and experience what I (Pat) am talking about.

   These small teams could be sent out for the summer, lead by future church planting leaders, and see what they are made of. Imitate the example of CSU’s infusion teams where they come alongside a local church to serve them for a summer.

Action step for Stonebrook: get a whole year under our belt with implementing these 7 steps, especially pulling off sending summer teams. If green light, the go!!!

Additional thoughts from Pat Sokoll on qualities necessary for a church planter:

Here is my basic criteria to evaluate.

1. Some measure of effect with the lost. (Don’t need to be gifted in evangelism)
2. Men following. (effect not based on charisma or gift but rather responding to love and character) (they are not following because of the structure that is in place but they are following the guy)
3. Personal initiative and boldness with truth and service. (Sees needs and seeks to meet them, owns the great commission and the Great commandments)
4. basic life orientation of living for others. (not too distracted)
5. Disciplined with time and money. (hard working and focused, not prone to waste time on silly things )
6. Walking Victorious in moral purity
7. Been victorious in yielding to his band of brothers and making others successful.

So, men, if you want to be planting churches, this is what you have to strive and pray for (in addition to the character qualities listed in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1)!

Be sure to congratulate Madeline on being a “big girl” the next time you see her — she is now using the potty and wearing training pants instead of diapers! Hooray!

This was our second real effort at potty training. We tried once before right around her 2nd birthday, but she just didn’t seem ready. Two days of effort in May produced virtually no progress. I was finally ready to try again, so we devoted the whole day to it yesterday. I was using primarily a method from a 70s era book called “Toilet training your child in less than one day,” while adding a few ideas from a more recent book I spotted at the library called (similarly), “Potty train your child in just one day.”

I spent a lot of the day worrying I was doing it wrong, and not following the steps in the book precisely enough. Even in the late afternoon/early evening, it seemed that Madeline wasn’t making much progress. One of the books claimed that most children should be trained within a few hours, and it had already been 8+ hours for us.

By after dinner I was exhausted and tired of watching Madeline like a hawk to catch any accidents. She wanted to just play with her new “potty dolly” in the bathroom, so I let her (it’s a doll that can be filled with water and ‘use the potty’). I relaxed for a few minutes and caught up on some blogs and email. After going through the potty cycle with the doll what seemed like a dozen times, Madeline finally put things all together for herself and managed to use the potty on her own without any prompting and with no accident. While I am sure all the practice and specific procedures helped through the day, it was her own practice and play that got her the rest of the way.

She did a great job through the rest of the evening, even remembering to get up from watching a video to get to the potty when she needed to go. It took a little convincing this morning to get her back in the routine, but she has done a great job today too with only one real accident. I was so proud of her progress that we went for a special treat today — ice cream at Coldstone Creamery.

I know we still have work to do and she has more new skills to learn (like staying dry during naptime and eventually overnight, and learning to use the potty at friends’ houses and in public places), but I’m encouraged and proud that Madeline has come this far.