Blogging Elsewhere

Oh yes, I blogged again on my church's blog. This time I blogged about killing in the old testament.

http://wakingthesleeper.blogspot.com/2007/04/thou-shalt-kill.html

Impending Blessings or Impending Judgement

After I sat through the eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering exam on Saturday, I found that I was nearer to Monroe where I used to live than usual, so I decided to travel there and attend the Quinceañera of the adopted daughter of the pastor of the church in Monroe that I attended when I lived in Monroe. It was the second birthday party of a teenage woman that I can remember ever attending.

As everyone else (or seemingly so) was busy dancing, I was standing and sipping my punch and talking to the father of a high schooler about the advantages of comedy colleges for science majors. My friend of a number of years entered and I congratulated her because of her recent marriage engagement:

Me: lady'sname! Congratulations upon your impending marriage!

Lady: Thank you Joshua! But you make it sound like such a bad thing. I think that you have just associated my upcoming wedding with doom, gloom, and destruction.

Me: I did wonder if that use of 'impending' was appropriate--

Lady: No, I don't think that it is.

Me: --So I looked it up in an on-line dictionary to find out and the only example in the first definition was 'impending marriage!'

Another source in the on-line dictionary indicates that impending is a good word to use for describing the day of God's judgment because it is impending just like 2 Peter 3 says. The sweet thing about the impending day of the judgment of God is that many people have actually had the judgment that was to be applied to them diverted.

Pancakes

I built the first pancake that I can remember ever building today. I built it because Luke and I decided that Luke should visit me for breakfast this morning. I told him that I could provide him with some protein in the form of chicken noodle soup (kind of like I built with my stir fry on Tuesday night), but he told me that he doesn't like to eat chicken noodle soup for breakfast and that pancakes are much more acceptable. I realized that his visit was an opportunity for me to learn to build some food that I am not supposed to eat and yet not waste it. Both of these pancakes turned out well so that Luke was able to eat them. Even though I forgot to buy margarine and syrup last night when I was purchasing the pancake mix, the pancakes were edible because of the jam that I found in my cupboard since then. Maybe someday I will bother to build pancakes without a pre-packaged mix. In the meantime, I am debating whether or not it is worth my time and money to learn to build protein-laden food even when there is no one to eat it (thus wasting the cost of the food and the nutritional value of the food, but gaining knowledge for myself). What do you think? I will probably make that decision after my engineering exam.

My first Acts 29 Resurrection Sunday

The alcohol that I consumed on Sunday was located at Mike's house and had been built previously (i.e. prior to being consumed by myself) by the lead pastor of Seaside Church. I had never had such an easy time with getting a beer (this one was an ale) down before then.

Mike had just finished leading one of the three (or so) bands at Seaside Church during the Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday services and pushed me and a bunch of people through a fair amount of work that we all wanted to do. I didn't find myself thinking about anything explicitly ultra-spiritual except for the rebellious attitude that rises to my head so that I realize its presence every time that I am told to do something that I wasn't about to do regardless of the opinions of others. When this happens I can't very well say to myself, I'll do it because I want to, not because you told me to.

Oops. That last paragraph probably made you think that Mike wanted me to do something that I didn't want to do anyway, but that is not the case. I may blog about this later.

The good part of the whole thing is that after all of the bullets had been bitten, the result was appreciated a lot and I got a better idea of what the sound system can do after working with it for four days straight. One church member commented that some of the music was the best music that she had ever heard in church or elsewhere, and a number of others indicated that the services were spiritually beneficial to them!

Let me also point out that he Good Friday service did not include commentary. Just about every other Good Friday service that I have ever attended (e.g. the ones at other churches) included quite a number of little interpretive readings that were placed in the program between songs and scripture readings and I always thought that they were stupid because many of them seemed quite distracting and a number of them seemed unbiblical. The Good Friday service at Seaside Church went like this:

Song
Scripture reading
Song
Scripture reading
Song
Scripture reading
Song
Scripture reading
Song

NewsFox (not Fox News)

I consumed alcohol again on Sunday and I intend to continue my habit of blogging about each instance of my own alcohol consumption, but Bishop Jefro wanted me to point out a particular plug in to you: NewsFox. NewsFox is a plug in for Mozilla Firefox which will run through a list of feeds that a user provides and reports back to said user, indicating which feeds have been updated since the previous run through of said list. If there has been no previous run through (e.g. as at the first time that this plug in is run on a particular system), all available content is marked as unread.

The advantage to the whole thing is that users don't ever have to spend whole minutes at a time by visiting their favorite blogs, only to find that they have not been updated.

Oh, do you know how sometimes a blog posting that was posted last night does not appear at the top of the blog page so that you may be ignorant of its existence for as long as the entirety of eternity future? This little plug in can find those too.

Once again, at least half of the elders at Seaside Church recommend NewsFox because it will allow you to become a better steward(ess) of the time that has been given to you while you keep up with all of the activities of your fellow missionaries and with those of those other people on the mission field.

CFIs & XDLs

I stayed home from work yesterday because I needed to study for the FE or the EIT (Fundamentals of Engineering exam or Engineer In Training exam). I probably haven't mentioned it in a while, but for your benefit (or your boredom) I can be redundant: I am a civil engineer who has yet to take the first real step toward becoming a professional. I used a lot of the time during which I was awake yesterday by reading my transportation engineering book and doing example problems. I am quite happy about the understanding that came to me regarding particular topics that I had not managed to understand as a result of my study of them for the first time or the second time or the third time. I started off with vehicle performance and moved onto vertical curves and sort of skipped over horizontal curves and read about pavement design, levels of service, cues, etc.

Today, while my boss was looking at some of my work (because he is a professional engineer with a stamp and I am not so that I have not), I opened a civil engineering magazine and read an article about reducing congestion at intersections (yes, the kind related to transportation engineering). This article had been written all about a particular engineering solution called a continuous flow intersection. When I first saw the phrase, I thought that the article must have been written about roundabouts (you know, those approximately horizontal rings of pavement onto which and off of which vehicles turn right, but never left). I was wrong.

The CFI (which has also been called a crossover displaced left-turn intersection) is something that I wish that I had invented, and I should have thought of it sometime, but I was always too lazy to concentrate on solving such a problem because I assumed that if such a solution existed, the Washington State Department of Transportation would have thought of it long ago. It turns out that I would not have been the first to imagine such a solution since the CFI was conceived a good twenty years ago, but coming up with a similar idea independently would have been nice.

I suppose that I should let you know what the idea is: http://www.abmb.com/cfi.html

I have read that this solution has only been built at about fifty intersections in the world and that most of those are in Mexico. Take a look at the animations at the above URL and tell me if you don't think that a couple of the traffic lights shouldn't be replaced with yield signs. Perhaps someone should invent a conditional yield signal.

Phenylketonuria

Don't scroll down to look for a picture of a smashed can in this blog posting because it isn't there. I didn't smash this can because I didn't open it and everyone knows that difficult it is to smash a sealed can. The reason that I did not open it for easy access to its contents is that my interest in its contents was not sufficient because I am a Phenylketonuric. I took this picture of this can so that I could point out to you that my name has been written on it. See, right there above the website address: Phenylketonuric which had may as well be my name because there are only fifty or so of us in the state and fifty of anything is fewer people than the number of people who are named Joshua and who live in this state. So now I am likely to have people calling me by this name. Oh well, can't say I didn't ask for it (but I didn't say please).

I took this picture while lying down on the Seaside Church parking lot and pointing the camera to the west directly after the second service.

Oh, you probably want to know what a phenylketonuric is. A pheylketonuric is a person who is allergic to Phenylalanine. Phenylalanine is an amino acid. Amino acids are the building of protein. Since I am such phenylketonuric, I avoid all protein except that which has been processed so that the said amino acid has been removed. This often appears odd to people who are ignorant of the reasoning behind it. Fortunately, I have nearly always had a dear sister in the same condition to help me out.

My dear sister has told me that one of the good parts (I don't think that she said best) parts of her honeymoon was not having to pack any food or even think about what she was going to eat because her new husband knew exactly what she would want to eat. This brings me to the the most valuable part of this posting: instructions for people whose VIPs have complicated diets:

1. Find out what the name of the condition is and then research it yourself. It will show that you have been paying attention to the lady and that you really can't think of anything better to think about than what is good for the person to whom the name of that condition applies.
2. Don't say "Poor you, I could never live like that!"
3. Don't ask the same questions about it over and over again.
4. Don't say how sorry you are to not have any food appropriate for your VIP and then forget the next time and talk on and on about how sorry you are yet again.
5. Don't make a point of mentioning it to all of your friends when you are telling them about your new VIP. This will only force them to answer the same questions over and over again while listening to the same insensitive comments.
6. Don't be like a relative of mine and say "that vegetarian pizza looks like dog food."

Can I hear an "Amen" sister?

MCG Sequim

I did some things that were fun for me to do on Sunday. I got to church on time and all that, but during the second service, I got to be part of the congregation and read the words which were displayed on the screen and thought about them and sang them, which I hadn't done in months. I was able to do this because one of my volunteers told me that he was ready to take the new sound mixing board and so I let him, and I only had to remind him of a couple of things. I am happy about this not only because it helps the spiritual component of my life and thus improves the whole thing, but also because it means that eventually, I'll be able to go and do other things like visit Coram Deo Church where I am told that the audio/visual team needs help and like visit Alathia Community Church in Issaquah where some friends of mine have helped to build another Acts 29 church.

Pastor Chris preached from the end of Philippians 2 about how Timothy had a genuine interest in the wellfair of the church and how conern for Seaside Church consumes every one of his waking minutes and many of his non-waking minutes. He painted a bleak picture and also said that it was hoped that all of the men in the church would become qualified for the responsibilities (of which there was quite a list, even applied to each attender). Maybe when the church body grows some more there will have to be a teaching pastor and a shepherding pastor or something like that.

I had the Seaside Church executive assistant over for dinner which was too short because of the Sequim MCG.

I hurried over to my community group leader's house to borrow a book for the MCG and rushed over to the lead pastors house only to be later than I was supposed to be, but earlier than Luke and Jamie (Jamie is pregnant, so they can't really be late).

I drove with Luke and Jamie. As we drove up to the appropriate exit from highway 101, we looked up the hill to the south and saw a cute little development. It made me think of a song that I started to sing, which you can listen to by clicking here. Then we drove into that development and began the MCG.

Just in case you didn't read the candy party memo, I guess that I had better state here that MCG means Missional Community Group.

I was kind of excited about this MCG because I was told that Adam would be attending. Adam lived in a house called The Embassy before I did. He seems to have been a part of the ultra smart, ultra gracious group Christians that lived there before I did. The people in this group care deeply about thinking God's thoughts after Him and not much about coming up with their own new philosophies or perspectives. This may be why he is interested in helping to build a new Acts 29 church. Oh, that reminds me: The new church in Sequim is to be an Acts 29 church (as opposed to an Acts 30 church) because Acts 29 is a really long chapter and we don't know when it is going to end.

Maybe sometime I will blog about the content of the meeting and the trip home.

Chris S (lead pastor)

Chris S is the lead pastor of Seaside Church and he does use an IBM compatible computer. Yay. I could say a bunch of little things like this, but I guess that I said that I would be typing about the conversations that I have had with the men at Seaside Church.

Chris S got around to talking to me for the first time directly before he began to preach about money from Galatians chapter 6. He asked me if I had met anybody yet. I pointed out a number of men whom I had met in the previous few minutes and then added, "who knows, maybe I'll be allowed to meet a woman in a week or two." He responded by saying something like, "just so long as you have a goal." I guess that that conversation was kind of about something.

Then there was the time that I finally showed up on two Sundays in a row (or a column or a diagonal or a rank or a file) and pointed that out. I finally had to become aggressive at a certain point because I didn't want to have the same sort of role at Seaside Church as I had at the Evangelical Free Church of Pullman in Pullman Washington during my college years (i.e. being a do nothing for a couple years and then being assigned to doing something that I wasn't any good at after that) so I sent him and the other elder my customized resume with a customized cover letter (is there any other kind of cover letter for a resume?) in an electronic message. The subject line of the electronic message read, "put me to work." The execution of this idea worked even better than a really really well engineered and manufactured product delivered in a properly padded parcel. I recommend this course of action to everyone, although I guess that it may not actually work at a great big large church like Mars Hill Church in Seattle, but if you're just sitting around waiting for someone to ask you to do just what you've always wanted to do in a church, stop waiting and point yourself out to the leadership.

The problem with conversations that are actually about something is that I cant' always repeat them, so I'll just tell you what these conversations were about. I have actually conversed with Chris S about designated giving, the practice of respect for elders, women, sin, expiation, and I am in the middle of an electronic discussion with him about whether or not husbands are supposed to "help" (that word is important) their wives (clearly husbands are to love their wives, and this can look like help, but is it really?)

Average Birthday

I realize that all of you who have VIPs are swamped because of anniversaries and birthdays and trying to be in two places at once during major holidays and other such things, but since I have no VIP, I have a tendency to think of things for other people to do.

One such thing is the average birthday spreadsheet which I built around the time of a house meeting of the Embassy in Pullman because there were eight of us and the child we were sponsoring wanted to know how old his sponsor was.

I very quickly realized that my creation could be used for romantic purposes, i.e. some sharp guy could input his birthday and that of his VIP and receive the output and use it as excuse for some sort of celebration with said VIP.

It works like this: The computer looks at the current date and then looks at the first input date and determines the number of days between them. It does this same thing for the second input date. These two numbers are added together and divided by the number of input dates (which must be specified by the user). This number of days is subtracted from the current date and the resultant date is the average birthday.

Just what you always wanted, right?

Download the file by clicking here.

Click

Some time has past since I realized that I have had conversations with a lot of men at Seaside Church. The conversations about which I am typing were conversations that were actually about something. I have noticed that when I go to a church or a college group or something like that, I generally wind up talking to one or two people the whole time and determining that everyone else is comparatively boring (which is probably not really the way that they are), but that hasn't happened to me at Seaside Church. I haven't exactly determined why this is, but it might have something to do with being assigned to a leader for ministry and spiritual growth with whom I do not naturally get along so that I often have to force myself into self restraint for the purpose of godly behavior. This excludes rebellion.

So I am going to make a list of these people and maybe I'll accidentally leave some out.

Chris S (lead pastor)
Chris C (my former community group leader)
Eric (my community group leader)
Mark (Real Deal with a truck that can outrun my body)
Steve
Zach
Russ (killer good drummer)
Mike (been hiding that voice for much to long)
Jeremy (executive assistant)
Jeff (bishop)
Pat (worship pastor)
JD
Josh G. (church planter)
Luke (teaching finance class)
Luke
Matt
Alan

Perhaps I'll go through this list and write about the conversations that I have had with people when I run out of things to blog about.

I'm so brilliant that it hurts to look at me

My friend Brandon about whom I have written before got himself a blog from blogger, apart from that thing called Myspace. He told me on Saturday that blogs are just for the documentation of one's own brilliance. Unfortunately for him, his blog doesn't really document his own brilliance. On the bright side, it does document my own brilliance! So let me point it out to you. After all, Proverbs 27:2 does say, "Let another praise you" and that is just what I am doing.

http://hisblogisanawesomeblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/intro-blog.html

Acts 29 or 30?

I went to my first all church prayer meeting at Seaside Church on Wednesday and learned that the plan is to start a new church in Sequim or Port Angeles. I learned that Seaside Church is a place of rest for me and other people, and that if we deserve a rest, other people do too. The text was from Joshua chapter 1. Oh yes, and the Hood Canal was considered analogous to the Jordan River and all of us at Seaside Church were considered analogous to the tribes to whom God gave land on the east side of the Jordan River. This church is to be planted out of Seaside Church, so I wonder if this church will be considered an Acts 29 church or an Acts 30 church. Oh well, I am looking forward to it because I have never before been part of a church plant that has not been planted out of discontent, and neither has my father. I guess that I don't know that I will be a big part of this church plant, since my ministry at Seaside Church doesn't seem to be going away, but it is still kind of fun to think about.

My first Acts 29 retreat for men 2

On Saturday morning the first thing I said was, "That depends on how fast you eat," or something like that because someone in the room in which I slept was asking someone else, "how long does breakfast last."

I was able to find food to eat for breakfast and to eat it, but not in time to finish building a power point presentation for the morning worship song set and set up the projector, so all of the attendees has to wait while the computer was rebooted. The computer had an apple on the front of it and it has a touch pad mouse that is not terribly sensative and it seemed to slow me down. After some time and "help" from people who volunteered their advice, we finally made it work. The first teaching time was from Romans chapter six about four things:

1. Know
2. Consider yourself (i.e. apply knowledge to yourself)
3. Turn from
4. Turn toward(s)

If you didn't go, don't expect to understand this, I have placed it here as a reminder to people who attended, but may have forgotten already. This teaching was followed by a meditation time (considering the power and provision of God (which are known) with respect to ourselves and how we can turn from them and toward obedience to Jesus) which was of appropriate length. This was followed by a sharing time about the meditation time and the determinations made during it. This time was too short because of the lunch thereafter.

During the afternoon I played frisbee golf and ultimate frisbee! I lost both games, but I don't remember previously having the pleasure of playing both of those games on the same day. I guess I learned that Frisbee is bigger in Portland than on the Kitsap Peninsula, but still not as big as it is in Pullman. I think this because I had to play frisbee golf with men from Red Sea Church, and only one other person from Seaside Church played ultimate frisbee with us.

I got my act together on the power point presentation for the evening worship song set so that there was no significant delay at the front end. The last teaching was about a number of things, some of which have been included below:

1. Knowing that you are a warrior
2. Knowing your enemies: The world, the flesh, the Devil
3. Knowing your weapons
4. Knowing your brothers

This was followed by another sharing time in groups made up of whole churches. Seaside Church got done before Red Sea Church got done. I learned some interesting things there which I won't share with you because you may not have been there. If you were there, you probably remember them. If you want to find out about these things, show up next year.

Ryan found another way back to Bremerton to hang out with his parents for a bit. Pat rode back with me on Sunday morning and decided (temporarily) that my driving had improved markedly. We entered the Seaside Church building and set up for the first service, and we did it all apart from our lead pastor (gotta love compitent and qualified elders and elder candidates and church planters).

Can Smashing (or my first Acts 29 retreat for men 1)

These are pictures of a can that I smashed a few minutes ago inside of my own home. I took a picture of this can and then I smashed it and then I took another picture of it so that I would have pictures with which to illustrate this blog entry.

I went to Black Lake Bible Camp last weekend and while I was there, I lost four games of chess to Alex from Red Sea Church in Portland Oregon. I did not win any games of chess, but for every game of chess that I lost, I smashed a soda can with my two hands. The integrity of the can failed due to excessive compression. I have no doubt that some people think that I did so out of frustration, kind of like a particular young lady must have assumed when she saw me smash such a can directly after she told me that no, I was not to be allowed to ask her parents if I was to be allowed to ask her if I could go out with her. In actuality, I just smash these cans because I can (what a pun!). I figured out that I could do it while I was living at the Embassy.

Fortunately, these four chess games and smashed cans were not the high points of my weekend.

The drive from my parents house in Monroe which I had been visiting because of a stormwater product seminar and the birthday of my younger brother was exceptionally lengthy (with respect to time, not distance) because of the high traffic load with which interstate five was burdened. The unpleasantness of the excessive duration was offset by the pleasantness of the company of Ryan from Mars Hill Church in Seattle who used to be the worship leader (as opposed to worship pastor) at Seaside Church in Bremerton. I had a nice time conversing with him about Jesus, church, music, simple theology, and of course, traffic. I managed to input bad data to my computer mapping program, so we were ten blocks off of our target at the end, but Ryan was wise and asked directions and got us there before the electrical system of the Illuminate 2 became overloaded by the frequency modulator transmitter, the frequency modulator receiver, the electrical inverter, the audio amplifier, the cabin and forward lights and the engine's demand for spark while we were driving around slowly and looking for the camp site. We did arrive before 1900 when I was told that the gate would be locked and a nearsighted guard would be posted with a shotgun.

After I parked the Illuminate 2, I unloaded and joined the music worship team (provided by Seaside Church) in the chapel area and soon found that there was lots of power available and every reason to use it. The music sounded good, and I got to use a graphic equalizer that had controls for even more than three bands! Dinner was good, but the chess games were not so fun. At least I didn't throw my chess pieces all over the room.

Pithy terseness

During the meeting of my community group on Tuesday, the topic of God's specific will came up and I managed to get a word in edgewise which met with some resistance. I didn't back down and transmitted an aggressive little electronic message to the group about it the next day.

It sort of sums up a bit of what I learned from the Discovering God book by Henry Blackaby, but the references were pointed out to me by David Andrews who was the "leader" of the house at which I once lived in Pullman. These references were pointed out to him by someone else, but I pulled them out of the house meeting documents that I had built so that I could include them in the electronic message about which I am typing.

I have received so much good feedback about this electronic message that I have decided to include its text below:

Subject: Getting started on God's will

God's will for your life is God's will applied to your life.

1 Thess 4:1-12
Romans 12:2
Ephesians 5:17
1 Thess 5:16-18

I am Joshua

More Alcohol

On Monday night the Seaside Church elder candidate who is my community group leader picked me up in the Illuminate 3 and drove me to the Bremerton waterfront to a place called Frtiz European Fryhouse where I consumed some beer with many other men of said local church body. I blogged about that previous time upon which I consumed alcohol with my community group leader, so he told me that I needed to do it again this time. So here you go Eric:

Fritz European Fryhouse is owned by Andy who also attends Seaside Church. We have all been told that the group won't be back unless Andy's tithe check increases in magnitude as a result of these monthly Monday night meetings. I really don't think that beer is my thing, but I ordered the third of my life and got it down anyway. I think that soda would have been more fun.

The spiritual discipline of the month was evangelism. The leader indicated that a fascinating question to ask people would be, "If you knew that I was a Christian, which hyporisies could you point out as a result of your observations of the way that I live my life?" or something like that.

I'm leaving the comment field here open for all you non-Christian people who know me to answer that question. If you need to say any bad words, perhaps you should just say them to my face or send me an electronic message.

Superbowl Sunday

The Seaside Church building seemed quite empty to me yesterday, but two services were held in it on that day anyway. I became kind of excited because of the talk about another church being planted out of Seaside Church! No one seems to know where this church is to be planted or who the leader will be, but I have been told that we don't want to just sit around and make Seaside Church look shiny.

I spent yesterday afternoon sleeping and then walking to my community group leader's house and giving all of the parents there a hard time about how I got to take a nap and they didn't. I was probably less than gracious, but I did offer to take care of the three sons of a married couple in their own home (i.e. married to each other) so that they could take a nice nap in my apartment. The husband said that that seemed to be too good to be true. I'll see if he takes me up on it. Observing all the little kids there was at least as fun as watching the super bowl, a good third of which I missed (o dear).

Oh, on the way home from the Seaside Church building I used my debit card for the second time ever. I bought fuel this time. I didn't even have to type in my personal information number. That just makes me feel ultra-secure. I tried it last week, but at that time I seemed to be incapable of interpreting the instructional illustration correctly, so I inserted the card incorrectly and could not make the card reader function. This reminds me of the Luther movie, There is but one proper interpretation of Scripture, and of my favorite way to twist that saying: There is but one proper interpretation of the cookbook: That which your mother has established.

Tonight I'm off to drink beer at spiritual disciplines class with the elders of the church. Maybe my parents are right to be worried about Mars Hill Church and the Acts 29 Network, but I am not worried yet.

Funny comments

During the meeting time of the community group that I attend, I received a request to include my comments in the main part of my blog so that they can be seen by all of my visitors who don't want to press their mouse buttons just to see them. I received this request from my community group leader who likes to post his comments twice. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out how to do that. If you know about this, please comment and I will make sure that everyone sees it (but only if you really do know and communicate it well).

So one day while I was attending that very same community group, a man who was sitting to my right said of his fiance who was present, "I never did any dating before I met her." To which I responded, "Really? I didn't do any dating before I met her either!" What a coincidence.

Addition: So then the hostess tried to clean up my mess by asking, "Joshua, have you done any dating since you met his fiance?" I had to respond with something like, "Well no, but that is beside the point."

Seaside Church building

I had a killer good time at the Seaside Church Building yesterday. There were probably a few reasons for this. I'll try to guess what they were:

1. Being in less sin than I was in the week before
2. The ("symbolic") baptism during the second service
   
3. The wedding during the second service
4. Getting a new volunteer for the ministry team that I lead (50% increase!)
5. Sunshine
6. The irony of listening to the first sermon of my community group leader who used to not want to sit through sermons
7. Patting myself on the back for remembering to change my cellular telephone ringer mode to vibrate so that it didn't ring loudly when the worship pastor called it during the prayer of the lead pastor to give me instructions regarding the unrehearsed baptism ceremony
8. Two FULL services (if we keep this up, we'll have to go to three services, or plant another church or something)!

There you go: a few (which is eight (1 Peter 3:20 (NKJV))).