Monday, April 27, 2009
Last weekend I attended the AAIM conference (Arkansas Association of Instructional Media) where I learned of an inexpensive operating system for our library! An instructor at Arkansas Tech found this system when searching for a program for her own church library. The price is $1/day, or $365.00/year, which is an extreme bargain compared to the systems most school libraries use! This includes web hosting, (which means you can search the library catalog from home or any internet...
Monday, April 27, 2009
Numbers has been an interesting book so far. The attention to detail! Wow! God is a God of order and organization. I want to be a child of order.
In Numbers 1 God orders a census of all males 20 and over, excluding the tribe of Levi. There were 603,550. Can you even imagine traveling with that many people? This does not include Levites, women, or children under 20. What a massive group they must have been!
Numbers 2 gives the traveling...
Monday, March 30, 2009
VBS is just 12 short weeks away and now is the time to really get started on it. I have asked Susan Martin to be the guest blogger today to tell us a little bit about this year’s VBS.
I do plan to do a better job blogging in the future myself. We have had some technical issues that have kept me from it here lately. So here is Susan’s post.
The 2009 VBS theme is “Studio Go”. Although this theme will be quite different from last year’s laid-back western theme, I hope that it...
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Chapter 19 begins with a restatement of the 10 commandments and many other commands for the good of man's relationships. I found v. 23-25 interesting, referring to not eating the harvest of a tree until the 5th year.
Verse 28 mentions not tatooing ourselves. I looked into this further. One commentary says that this verse and v. 27 (hairstyle) were referring to the Israelites imitating the pagan practices of their neighbors by cutting themselves, tatooing, and arranging their hair in a...
Thursday, March 05, 2009
First let me apologize for getting so far behind. I am going to try very hard to get caught up this month for my sake and yours. Who wants to read commentaries several weeks late!
The commentary in my Bible reminds the reader that God is Holy and sometimes we forget that He is not on our level or that we are not on His. Its commentator writes, "We can't use God. God is not a tool or appliance or credit card."
Leviticus shows us the demands God placed on the Israelites. The rules were...
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Today we'll wrap up Exodus before moving on to Leviticus.
Chapter 35 talks again about working 6 days and resting on the 7th. I know we talk a lot about no longer being under the Old Law, but I think God knew what he was talking about. If I worked harder every other day of the week, I probably wouldn't have much to do on Sunday, but I'm a procastinator, so many times I'm doing things at the last minute. I'm going to give it a try, though. If you decide to try as well, let me know how it...
Monday, February 09, 2009
Leave it to the devil to use an ice storm to throw me off my reading plan! I am working to catch up!
To recap, Pharaoh has finally agreed to let the Israelites leave Egypt, but at the last minute he decides to call them back. God hardened his heart once again. The Israelites were allowed to cross the Red Sea on dry ground thanks to an east wind sent by God, but when the Egyptians tried to cross, they were drown. The Israelites saw the dead men and knew God's great power. They were in...
Monday, January 26, 2009
Yesterday we were out of town and we missed the budget presentation at church. This is the second year in a row that I have missed budget day. It is my understanding that if we meet the budget this year there will be a surplus at the end of the year. I have come up with a few things I would like to spend the money on if they would ask me how to spend it.
Youth minister
Projector and screen for the back of the auditorium (To help songleader and preacher)
Playground...
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Genesis 43-50 bring the dreams of Joseph to fruition. His brothers would bow before him. Joseph reveals his true identity to his brothers, and with the help of Pharaoh, he sends for his father, all the family, and all their possessions. Because they are shepherds, Joseph's family is not expected to integrate with the Egyptians. The Egyptians had a strong aversion to animal herders. So they were allowed to settle in the land of Goshen. This was part of God's plan to prevent the Israelites...
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Sunday night those of you at Bono will be in for a real treat. Tony Sauser will be the guest speaker while Richard is out. Tony is one of my favorite classroom and pulpit speakers. His knowledge of the Bible is great and his lesson this week will be challenging to everyone there.
He sat down with me last night and briefly told me what he was going to talk about and his epiphany about the subject matter as well. It is excellent. I urge you to be there. The lesson will come from Luke chapter...
Monday, January 19, 2009
On Sunday nights for the past 6 months we have been having a college age small group Bible study every week. I really do look forward to this each week. Not only do we have a great worship together, we get to know each other very well in that small setting.
The small setting lends itself to a better discussion and a better environment for friendship building. On a couple of occasions it has been said in our small group study that we felt sorry for everybody else because they did not get to...
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Genesis 22-42 continues the life of Abraham and moves onto to Isaac, Jacob & Esau, the birth of the 12 tribes, and begins my favorite childhood Bible story - the life of Joseph.
In Gen. 22 Abraham uses the plural pronoun when telling the servants how many will return to them after the sacrifice. He does not forget God's promise of descendants. He knows God can raise the dead if he chooses to do so. I find his trust in God comforting. God was faithful. I wonder if I have I been asked...
Thursday, January 15, 2009
I ran across this post on a blog I frequent yesterday and I used it in the young men's class last night. Read it and see what you think. Let me know if you agree or disagree.
The Unconscious Goals of Established Churches
As we enter a new year there will be many reflections on past failures as well as victories. There will be new determination to do better, accomplish more, and grow deeper. Preachers across the land in the next few weeks will attempt to utilize these reflections to...
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
It has been a long time since I posted a blog. I am sorry about that, but the holidays and other things got in the way. The website is a very big job to keep updated and I am looking for someone to help me keep it current. If you would like to help just let me know. I will show you what to do.
Sunday morning worship was one of the best that we have ever had since I have been at Bono. You know how I know that? Many of you came up to me afterward and told me so. I have to agree. Please let me...
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Wow! I had forgotten how much information is packed into the first 21 chapters of Genesis! The first sunshine, first man, first woman, first childbirth, first sibling rivalry, first murder, first giants, first rain, first name change, first allusion to homosexuality, along with many more. These chapters also give us great insight into God's personality. We see his unimaginable creativity, his wisdom, his judgment, his faithfulness, his patience, his compassion, his longsuffering, and his...
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Guest blogger Darah Watson
I'm embarrassed to admit that I have never read the entire Bible "cover to cover". I have studied it in Old and New Testament survey when I was at Harding and in numerous Sunday school classes here at Bono, but I have never actually read all the words myself. This is one of my goals for 2009 and I hope you will join me and encourage me to see this through. My plan is to engage you weekly, probably on Wednesday, sharing what is new to me in the passages...
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
As I was coming to work this morning I was listening to NPR as usual. Paula Poundstone was giving a guest editorial on what all of the "get the vote out" volunteers from this past weeks election should do now that the election was over. She suggested that everyone that was involved in that process should get involved in something that could do good for this country. She was talking about about a grassroots movement like we have never seen before.
If everyone of those volunteers would be...
Monday, November 10, 2008
Here is an interesting article by Cal Thomas. He is a syndicated columnist. His articles run in the Jonesboro Sun. Tell me what you think about it.
RELIGIOUS RIGHT R.I.P. on November 05, 2008 4:15:09 |
By Cal Thomas Tribune Media Services
When Barack Obama takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, he will do so in the 30th anniversary year of the founding of the so-called Religious Right. Born in 1979 and midwifed by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Religious Right was a...
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
by guest blogger Darah Watson Some women have discussed having a group garage sale the second Saturday in November at the Red Brick. The date has slipped up on me. I didn't realize the first Saturday is THIS week, so that doesn't give us much time to dig! We have been given elder approval, so now all we need is people with stuff to sell. Let Andrea or me know if you are interested.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Wow. Wow. We had a great Trunk-or-Treat last night. Most of you are like me in that you like numbers. It is one of the ways that we gauge how successful something is. Well if you do like numbers then you will like this one. 330+ That is the estimate of total people in attendance for Trunk-or-Treat! 425-That is how many hot dogs we cooked. Oodles and gobs, that is how much candy we handed out. (Job security for me)
This is our third year to do Trunk-or-Treat in this fashion....
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Special thanks to everyone who brought soup, chili, and the other items for last nights meal. It was great. The Wednesday night meal has been a fantastic success. It is coming up on two years that we have been doing this and I know those of you that participate in it truly do enjoy it. Here is to another two years and beyond.
I felt like we were spread a little thin last night at church. We had a lot going on for a Wednesday night. To go along with our regular classes and our fellowship...
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Today I bring you this post from Terry Rush. He has been the pulpit minister at the Memorial Drive Church of Christ in Tulsa Oklahoma for 31 years.
Keeping up with today's younger generation.
The living church is constantly challenged to stay in tune with the culture it tries to reach. This can be a burden. How do we remain true to the Bible we’ve properly hallowed while adapting to new things which bring perpetual disturbance to the patterns of the long-term members?
An...
Monday, October 20, 2008
Hope everybody had a good weekend this past weekend. Darah and I were out of town in Lexington Kentucky. We had a good time. It is just good to get away every once in a while.
This coming Sunday is Trunk-or-Treat. We need as many volunteers as possible. We will beginning the evening with a meal starting at 4:00. We hope to have everything done by 6:30-6:45. We will need at least 10 people to decorate their "trunk". If you can do this please email me at drwatson@grnco.net We will also...
Monday, October 13, 2008
Why is that we like to have no responsibility? Why is it that we like to just show up for something and not have to do anything. I think this behavior comes natural to us. Most of us like to attend events and go to activities but we do not like to be a part of the work that takes place to the get the event or activity off the ground.
For almost five years I taught a Sunday morning Bible class. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this. In May I decided to step down from it for a while. I have really...
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
I have mentioned on this blog before how much I like NPR. It should be required listening for everybody. On Sunday mornings NPR does a segment called "This I Believe" . From the This I Believe website : This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived here and featured on public radio in the United States and...
Monday, September 29, 2008
For those of you wondering what was up with the cookout after church last night, we were cooking hamburgers, hotdogs and chicken for the college kids. We also were blessed to have Brad Martin's parents join us in the meal. Darah and I have been hosting the college group at our house on Sunday nights for a worship service and meal for the past few weeks. Last night we decided to have it at the church so that we could listen to Brad's dad give his presentation of the work being done in South...
Thursday, September 25, 2008
We had a good meal last night with a lot of good mexican food. We followed that up with good classes and a great lesson by Alex. Nice job everybody.
An interesting idea came out of our men's class last night. I wont give up the details right now, but I will say that it will involve Wednesday nights and it will be involving the community. I will let you in on more of the details when we get it all worked out. I think we may have hit upon something good here and I know I am excited and I know...
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Here lately I have been a little lazy with the blog. I will try to do better. I do hope that you enjoy it.
This past Sunday morning we had more issues with technology. By Sunday morning we had not taken a full assessment of the computers after the storm of the previous week. When we began to set up worship for the morning we noticed that one of our hard drives had gone down with the power outage. This hard drive contained our graphics that we normally use with the worship service. After...
Thursday, September 18, 2008
We had a great time in New York. We did just about everything we set out to do. We did leave a few things for another day. The one word that comes to mind is BIG. Everything there is big. Big buildings, big prices, big parks, big museums, big numbers of people. If you don't like big then you wont like NY. You will like NY if you are a fan of history. Everything there is historic. I will blog about the trip more in the future.
I hate that we missed out on the excitement Sunday...
Monday, September 08, 2008
Wow! Let me say it again, wow. What a wonderful service yesterday morning. Marco did a great job with this. Nice song selection and nice worship flow. This was all Marco and he did splendid. Be sure and let Marco know how much you enjoyed it. You can send him an email at morozco@harding.edu to let him know how much you appreciate what he did. We will look to do a special service like this, with a little tweaking, once a quarter.
Be sure and let the elders know how much you appreciated it. I...
Friday, September 05, 2008
As most of you know I generally do not work on Fridays. That is I do not go into the dental office on Fridays. For the past two months though, I have been working on Fridays. It does feel a bit odd being here on what I call the first day of the weekend. I spent many years in school to be able to take time off.
You see, I am working on these days because Darah and I are going on a vacation next week to New York with my family. My family does not vacation much together, but it should be a good...
Thursday, September 04, 2008
by guest blogger Darah Watson
Group, the company that produced our VBS program this year, will be conducting a children's ministry workshop in Jonesboro on Saturday, Sept 13 at the First United Methodist Church. If my memory serves me correctly, it was last year, but maybe the year before, that Peggy Lane and I drove to Memphis to attend this workshop or one very similar to it. We both enjoyed it and purchased some educational books. Peggy won a book as a doorprize that we have both...
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Reviving the student center ministry at ASU will be a challenging job. I want to thank the elders here at Bono for allowing Richard to spend the time necessary to get this back up and running. Many people are involved in this and I am thankful to them. We still have a long road ahead of us to return this ministry to where it needs to be, but I think God will bless us in our efforts.
Newer and better is not always the best entertainment. Oh sure it is a lot of fun to play video games such as...
Monday, August 25, 2008
We just finished our month of Sunday prayers with guest speaker Kent McDaniel. I truly enjoyed the lessons that he gave on Sunday night and I know everyone else did also. Our Sunday night attendance showed this to be true.
The response to how we did worship on Sunday mornings this month was phenomenal. I had a tremendous amount of comments from people saying that they liked the way we had variety in the morning services. Richard presented what I think were some of his best lessons during...
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Last night was a bit of an experiment. For our Wednesday meals in the past we either had a potluck or we bought the food from a restaurant. This week I wanted to try and see what we could do using our kitchen in the fellowship hall by cooking spaghetti. We learned a lot. We learned that the stoves we have were not made for large pots. We learned that on those stoves it takes over 30 minutes to boil water. We learned that we need better pots and pans and we learned it gets hot in that kitchen...
Monday, August 18, 2008
by guest blogger Darah
I hope all of you were blessed by our two services yesterday. I certainly was.
Prayer is an avenue to God that I must admit I have not taken advantage of nearly
as often as I could have or should have. I am working toward changing that!
Many times I second guess myself, so I have felt abit like the freshman lawyer being reminded, "Don't ask a question you don't already know the answer to" concerning the bookclub. I initiated a bookclub discussion about a...
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Every four years I really look forward to the olympics. I don't know what it is that attracts me to platform synchronized diving, but I am just glued to it. At least I am during the olympics. It is not so much the sports that attract me to the olympics as it is the stories. Darah and I love to watch for the back stories on the athletes and the host country. Every night for just over two weeks we set our DVR (Dish's version of Tivo) to record the games. We then sit down and watch just about every...
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
I missed posting yesterday, but Darah picked up the slack with a guest blog appearance. She will do some guest blogging from time to time. I hope she will do it every week. I do hope that some of you will be interested in doing a book club with her. I think you will enjoy it.
Sunday we had a good service from top to bottom. Sunday morning was very good. With a very good lesson you can listen to online . I will be posting Kent's lessons online Wednesday. All you have to do is click on the...
Monday, August 11, 2008
Last night after church I listened as two ladies talked about a book (in the Christian genre) that they had been reading. They were eager to talk about it with others. I was excited to see their enthusiasm and to learn that several of our ladies had been reading it or were planning to soon. I suggested forming a book club to discuss this book and other books in the future. The ladies were pleased to have a forum for discussion.
I have been interested in starting a church book club for...
Thursday, August 07, 2008
It is so nice to see it raining today. It has been a long time since we have had any measurable rain. I think seeing it rain after a long dry spell is one of my favorite things. Seeing the earth being replenished with rainfall is one of God's little blessings. Now everything can come back to life. I hope it will bring back the tree we have in our backyard. About a month ago we noticed that some of the leaves were turning brown. About a week later the tree was dead. Or at least the leaves were...
Monday, August 04, 2008
Good Monday morning to everyone. All two of you who read the blog. We had a good first Sunday of prayer emphasis yesterday. I thought we had a great morning worship service on prayer with some very good singing, then last night Kent did a fantastic job for us. We has a good turnout last night, as we always do when Kent speaks. I will get the sermons posted for yesterday sometime today. Next week the prayer emphasis will be on children. With kids heading back to school in a few short weeks we...
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
This past weekend was a great weekend. It started with the wedding of Sarah Oxford and Darrell Parks Jr. It was a beautiful wedding a Darrell Sr. did a great job officiating. Saturday was another wonderful evening at Bono with the area wide singing. Alex did a fantastic job getting the songs ready for the inspirational singing led by the local songleaders. Sunday afternoon the college & 20 somethings got together for another devotional and then played a little Rockband. I was not able to...
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tuesday I attended a meeting to help plan a lectureship for the Crowley's Ridge Academy campus in November. We had a good and productive lunch meeting and we are pushing full steam ahead for a lectureship that will be the weekend before Thanksgiving.
The meeting gave those of us there the opportunity to reminisce about our time at CRA. We all had fond memories of the school, but the one thing that stood out the most for us was the smell. The school smells the same as it did the first day I...
Monday, July 21, 2008
Technology is a beautiful thing... Yesterday we had a bit of a problem with getting the sound to work for the powerpoint for Richard Johnson's CRC presentation, but in the end we did get it up and going. You can listen to his sermon here.
Sometimes you can look at something so long you can't see what the problem is. You can become so familiar with something you can't see what is wrong with it. We have used that sound board for over a year now, but when we had no sound coming out of the...
Friday, July 18, 2008
Every morning on my way to work I look forward to one thing, NPR . Every afternoon I look forward to two things, NPR and calling Darah on my way home from work to tell her how my day went. NPR is, in my opinion, the best thing on radio. The two shows that I listen to most are Morning Edition and All Things Considered . I don't know what I like about the shows the most. The special interest stories, the reporters reporting from exotic locals, or just the pleasantness of the voice of...
Friday, July 18, 2008
This is nothing more than a test for our website development company to see what is wrong with the video loading.
What goes around.
Witness
Hearding Cats
Ocean
Monday, July 14, 2008
Technology is a beautiful thing (when it works). It was very frustrating yesterday to not be able to show off the website to the congregation. Much time and energy was put into the website to ready it for Sunday morning. A little help from the weather would have been nice. The storm that came through Saturday night/Sunday morning fried the internet cable modem, thus keeping us from being able to connect to the internet. Something definitely needed to introduce a new website. I would like to...
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Some of you may have heard of Dr. Mark Elrod . He is Professor of Political Science in the Department of History and Social Science at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas and he is taking some heat for a facebook group he is promoting. He is organizing students and friends to declare their Husseinhood on facebook on August 4, Barack Obamas birthday.
Mr. Elrod was my social club sponsor when I was at Harding (Titans, for all of you Harding folks). He is someone that I have admired...
Monday, July 07, 2008
This next Friday we will be having a fireworks party for the teens, college & 20 somethings. We will have a cookout at church starting at 6:00. We then move to Brad and Susan Martin's house for the fireworks festivities. I do hope that everyone will be able to attend. BTW Marco's band will be playing live before the show.
This past weekend was the 4th of July weekend and as you can see we will be continuing the fireworks into this week. If you went to the fireworks show at the...
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Here is an interesting article from Relevant Magazine . Comments Welcome.
7 Burning Issues:
Consumerism In our society, we're surrounded by the push to consume. We're constantly bombarded with the newest gadget or trinket we supposedly cannot live without. How do we combat the pull toward materialism, and what does simplicity look like in the 21st Century? In the second part of our "7 Burning Issues" series, we asked leaders to grapple with these problems.
Brian McLaren: ...
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
This is the first post on the myBonoblog. I do hope everyone will come to the blog and participate. I also hope the new website will be our church's version of "facebook". Here is a video making its way around the internet.
Cardboard Testimonials