If you have been reading my blog at all you know our church had a huge celebration for 2008 last night called Celebration Dinner. It was a fantastic evening of looking back and also ahead to 2009. One of the highlights of the night to me was when the band did a great version of Coldplay’s Fix You. Below you will see some photos of the band and b/ (the worship leader) playing Fix You. To see the entire Celebration Dinner gallery click here.
Celebration Dinner is going to be intense tonight. It is the one big celebration that we have each year, once a year, at cumc to look back at what the church body did through the year and to look ahead at what is coming up in 2009. I have been really looking forward to this evening for some time. So much planning and detail has gone into making this a wonderful evening that I know those who decide to come out on Sunday night will be glad they did. If you can’t make it, we will be streaming the celebration live on mogulus here.
I took this photo of BJ, our drummer for tonight, during the Wednesday night practice (see Year in Review and a Look Ahead at Celebration Dinner), and that was just practice.
This has been one of the weirdest football years for Auburn, almost uncharted territory since Tommy Tuberville took the rains here 10 years ago. It sort of mirrors Tommy’s first year here at Auburn and I hope this doesn’t turn out to be book ends to his career here in Auburn. It has been a real tough season for Auburn in 2008, I would hate to see what happens if we loose the homecoming game to Tennessee Martin next week.
I took this shot above of Tommy during Tiger Walk for the Tennessee game (see Auburn vs Tennessee Photos, Tigers Football Wins 14-12 // Game 5, hope Tennessee Martin turns out to be a win too, I would like to see him walk Tiger Walk again?
What is interesting about NCAA football this year is although one of my teams, Auburn, is going down faster than the Titanic, my other team has turned the corner to what might become their all time greatest football season ever. Last night Texas Tech beat Texas in one of the best football games I have seen this year. Making a catch at the end with 8 seconds to go to win the game was unreal, and watching the highlights I still expected him to fall out of bounds or something.
For those who might not know, I spent the first two years of my college career over at Texas Tech and have very found memories of going to school in Lubbock. Certainly isn’t the same view as living here in Auburn but it was a great place to go to school (and yes, I went to UAB, not Auburn).
On another note. My last post has become very interesting. I seem to have found the fastest and best way to create spam. Give something away on your blog. We actually do this quite often on our other blogs. We (Deb mainly) has two blogs where she frequently gives away all kinds of door prizes for her readers and fellow knitters, but for those two (here and here) spam doesn’t seem to be an issue.
If you don’t know what I am talking about, please read I am Giving Away a Free Dell Dimension Computer and 17″ Flat Panel in 29 Days, and you will see what I am talking about. Even though I seem to be bombarded with spam now, I am going to keep it going for the reason I posted it in the first place and would prefer to find a non-profit or some organization that could use a computer. If you know anyone like that, just have the enter on the post above. All spam like entries will be discarded, and certainly won’t be considered.
Last night I had dinner with some friends and stuck around to listen to the band practice for Sunday morning. It is so nice to spend a little bit of time with people who are passionate about what they do (like b/, Josh and several others), because it’s contagious. If you have ever been around someone who is passionate about what they do, you will notice that it wears off on everyone around them. The same as negativity produces negative people, so it goes with passion and positive people.
As a photographer I think you really find the look or the shot you have been looking for all along when you think you have exhausted all possible angles, focal lengths, and exposures and just sit down and stop trying. It’s at that point that you really have to start getting creative. Sometimes when the creative juices are not flowing that can look very forced, and down right bad, then there are other times when you look at the results and think, wow, why didn’t I try this all along.
Last night was one of those night, for me anyway. I had taken a few shots of the band’s practice and couldn’t really find anything new and exciting so I just sat down on the stage next to the drum set and there it was. I really had been trying to get a good shot of the drums in this particular setup for about 6 months. I felt like raising my hands in the middle of thier set to say “I’ve got it!”, but hey, it’s just practice, right. So here are two of my favorite shots above from last night’s practice. The first, on the drums is BJ, and the second image is Rob from Marth’s Trouble (a band I have regrettably yet to shoot or see in person). Other images from last night can be found here.
A story of Cindy Wall that many of you may already know at this point is continuing to make its way around the Internet. Cindy Wall’s commitment to Christ, baptism, and death in such short succession has now moved around in ways none of us who were involved could have possibly imagined. That may show the limitations I put on God and His greatness, but it is bigger than just our congregation or church. See some of the more recent posts from others like:
There are many other examples, and I know I have missed some important ones, but this is a good example of how her story has made it around the Internet, just an incredible story.
Tomorrow the team from Cornerstone (see commissioning below) will continue the story of lives coming together from a small church here in Auburn to a small church in Buloba, Uganda. The last trip, made in June ( see Welcome Home from the Mission Field in Buloba Uganda Africa) of this year, was a working team trip, and one that delivered some incredible news about funds raised for the drilling of a much needed well for the church (see THE WELL and Creative Chaos 14 // Allowing God to Work in Your Church) in Buloba Uganda. On a side note: I was once one who was somewhat skeptical of the overall good that could be done in mission trips that (I thought) were short, sort of hit and run type of mission vacation things, but I would say to anyone who has similar thoughts or questions, just dig a little deeper, get involved, and really find out what is going on before you come to any conclusions. It may be there is more to the story, and it may be changing lives in a significant way, as is the case here.
The incredible story about missions and CUMC is the extent to which this particular congregation goes in its willingness to support missions. This is made very apparent by the statement on the church finance blog that says:
Cornerstone UMC is a tithing church. We take 10% of everything given each week and designate it for missions. Therefore, operating income/expenses are based on the 90% we use to support our staff and other ministries.
In my past experiences and (probably misconstrued) understanding of mission trips growing up, it has been a once a year trip, for one week, then the church moves on to another location or mission, many times with little real impact made on the visited community, town, or church (this of course is not always the case, just some of my past experiences). The impact that working with one church, in one community (Buloba in this case), with multiple visits throughout the year can have is very obvious when you look at the results these two churches have been able to achieve in Buloba. An entire church building is being built, a well is being drilled that will deliver fresh, clean drinking water (something unseen so far), and most importantly, lives are being changed.
Cornerstone has made several trips over the past 18 months to this small town and the team members and congregation in both churches have been able to get to know the people in both churches, formed relationships with them, and each church continues to grow and is blessed by the other.
This particular trip will last about one week and is mainly to continue forming the bonds between the two churches, to see the progress made on the construction of the new church building and the drilling of the well, and to speak with members of the community in Buloba. The team leader, Andi, will be updating the mission blog (looks like Andi already has something up her sleeve at And then it blew up…) starting on Friday with photos and stories from team members on the trip, so jump over there to see the updates. The photo gallery has been started with the image above on flickr. To see more photos as they are loaded just go to the Buloba Uganda Oct 08 gallery. Good luck to everyone, can’t wait to hear the stories and see the photos when you get back.
It seems that every day since Cindy Wall [AU press release] died I have found out more and more about what a great person she was and how much she meant to so many people. Yesterday there was a beautiful memorial service for Cindy at Cornerstone United Methodist Church in Auburn where many people shared what an impact she had with the Auburn Athletics department and the Auburn students in general.
Today during the Auburn vs Tennessee football game, Auburn University has said they are going to fly the traditional pre-game flight of either Nova or Spirit (sorry, don’t know which it is today), one of the eagles in the Auburn Raptor Center, in honor and memory of Cindy.
I don’t actually recall Auburn doing anything like this before but I am sure they have. Either way, it is a great show of how much Cindy meant to so many people at the Auburn Athletics department. Below is an image from her celebration service at CUMC. I will be at the game today and will post the images of the game later tonight (hopefully). Let’s hope the Tigers fare better against Tennessee than they did against LSU last week.
[Update] The game yesterday was hot and loud but fun… the pregame did have a special memorial to Cindy Wall and the photo is posted below. The stadium announcer did say the Auburn University eagle (Nova) was flying in her honor that day, and I took a quick photo of the AUHD sign as Nova flew.
I am writing this blog post right now because I am not really sure what else to do. Today I got the shocking news that Cindy Wall (of Auburn Alabama) had passed away and is now with our Lord. This is the same person that I wrote about in my last blog post, (called Skype Video Baptism from Innovate08 in South Bend to Auburn) who had blessed all of us so much through her baptism. [To see the full slideshow of photos from the baptism, click Cindy Wall Skype Baptism gallery.]
This truly had to be God’s will and timing. Something so hard to explain and so hard to comprehend could be nothing else than God’s raw will expressed through her life, shown as a witness to us all, that there is never a good time to put off God’s work. At this point it is so hard to process the information and put into words the flood of thoughts that come to mind.
Over the past several months I have written many blog posts (like my mother-in-law Georgia Christal, musician Matthew Butler, and others like Steven Curtis Chapman, Prayers for His Family, Family Testimony, Bronner Burgess Drowns in Pool) about individuals that have come into my life in one form or another and then died, and I am then again reminded that we are NOT in charge of this world, God is. After the last few posts about Matthew Butler and after hearing from his mother and his widowed wife, I wrote Is it Really Important to Ask God Why Anymore?, and that is a little how I feel right now. Why bother asking why, it isn’t up to us, no matter how hard we try to make the world conform to our life, instead of us conforming to God’s will for our life.
I spoke with Cindy on Sunday morning about the baptism and I told her how much it really meant to the people involved, and me personally. The conversation we had was something I meant to tell her on Friday after the baptism, but I am so glad I did on Sunday.
Now, her actions to follow Jesus in baptism on Friday was something so huge, so important, that none of us could have possibly comprehended at the time. Any one person could have said no, could have decided it was to much trouble, our pastor could have said he didn’t have time (after all, he was in another state), and any number of other things could have kept the baptism from happening. Yet, the people involved, in another state, said yes, we will follow the Lord.
Much of my conversation with Cindy before the baptism was about our preconceived notions of “church” and “a baptism”, and why it doesn’t always have to be like the traditions of history. Her baptism was to be a party. She wanted her baptism to be a celebration, which meant, a party. In the same sentence, she told me she wanted her baptism to be a party, just like her funeral. Of course when you are talking to a young person, about to be baptized, the second part just flew by my ears without much notice.
She took the time to talk to me, tell me about her experiences, and invite me into one of the most exciting times in her life and to that, all I can say is thank you.
There is no greater example of a life in submission to the Lord than this. If He is doing the same to you, don’t wait, our time here is short. It puts into perspective some of the people I interact with each day, some of the projects I am involved with, and what importance each has in my life. It does makes me think about the things I did today… what did you do? I spent several hours working with b/ this morning, and then spent the rest of the day with my wife. Not every day goes like today, but It was time well spent.
Tonight I felt compelled to spend some time and write something about Cindy’s story and the witness of faith her life now represents. Tomorrow, when I re-read this, it may not make any sense to me at all, but her life was special to many, and it was to me as well, thanks Cindy.
This was probably one of the busiest weeks I have had in a long time, but Thursday was a little more relaxed and I was part of the welcome home crew at our church (the part that shoved a camera in everyone’s face after they had been on a plane/bus for more than 28 hours). A mission team from our church went to Uganda for 10 days and arrived back on U.S. soil on Thursday. There was a group of us waiting for them at the church when they arrived and I did take a few photos without really trying to annoy anyone who really just wanted to see a bed.
Two of the staff from the church went and both have blogs about their trip. Josh Agerton (Connections Pastor) wrote several great articles while he was over there like TIA…THIS IS AFRICA and TIA…People Need to See Jesus and Andi Longest who wrote a day by day (see starting with We are Here).
On Thrusday I had the easy job. After all the work is done, show up and take some photos of them arriving. Pictured above is Josh and Jack Fisher (who also has a great blog) as the team arrives. You can see the photos that have been loaded to date here.
After the team arrived and left the start of the construction for the kids playground at church began with a little tree clearing. This was something that the church has been planning for a long time so I was out here to take some initial images of the first part.
You can see the rest of the images up to this point in the playground construction gallery. This is a God sized project and will be great when it is finished. We are going to do a little ground moving ourselves this weekend and try to prepare for a fall vegetable garden. First on the list is to till up all the ground where the garden will be. It just started raining (hasn’t rained in like two years here) so this should be fun.
on I Have Now Joined the Ranks of Church IT?
