What a Week!

I’m always saying to my wife, Sara, ‘As soon as life returns to normal….,’ to which she replies, ‘this is normal.’ Whew! What a week! Busy! But lots of fun. Crazy, insane, but exciting at the same time. The thing I like best about this blog is that it helps ME to keep perspective on all the great things God is doing – so that in the midst of all the deadlines, e-mails, paperwork, and chaos I don’t overlook all the good things that have happened. I often look at this blog and marvel at the fun things here, and know it looks like all I ever do is play – the hours at the computer, late nights at the office, nearly missed deadines, and overall scatter-brained activity isn’t blogged. People often ask me, “How do you find time for all the fun stuff when you have two very full time ministries to lead.” My answer is always, “I don’t find the time, I make the time.” If you don’t schedule fun, time with people, recreation, and travel – you’ll never do it. The important things in life never ‘pop up’ – you must make them happen in the midst of the madness – or they never will. That’s my two cents for the day, before blogging all that happened this week!

MONDAY

Sara’s brother and his wife and two kids came to Chicago for a visit, and it was so awesome to see them – it’s been several years since we saw them. The kids are twins – and a smart pair they are! After lunch we all went mini-golfing!

Sara lining up her shot… she’s actually a pretty good mini-golfer… when we go alone, its some fun competition, and I’ve even been known to let her win!

The fastest mini-golfer you ever saw on the course. Most quoteable at the end of the 18th hole on this 90+ degree day: “I think at the end, there should be a pool you get to dive into.” We filled out a comment card for the owner.

Future PGA Tour? He’s got the stance down, that’s for sure!

TUESDAY

Great American Pastor!

On Tuesday, our senior pastor treated the whole staff, spouses, and kids to a lunch cruise on Lake Geneva, a historic Wisconsin town known for its beautiful lake (home to many Wrigley Family Mansions).
We sailed on the Yacht Polaris, which was built in 1898 for Otto Young, one of the original millionaires on Geneva Lake. The boat floor was the original mahogany and had brass railing and trimmings. The weather was beautiful and the breeze made it an ideal day.

At the end of the tour, I asked everyone to pose for a group picture – perhaps the most complete staff photo we’ve had in awhile… but the funniest thing happened…The last thing I had done with the camera on the boat was take a video of a sea plane taking off, so I balanced the camera precariously on a stack of chairs – posed everyone – set the timer for ten seconds, and ran to join the group…. only to discover that it was taking a video (!) not a picture. The video is actually kinda funny, you can view it here: Karls VCB Group OOOPS! (1.8MB QuickTime, 10 seconds long)

WEDNESDAY / THURSDAY

Wednesday I was up and on the road before the sun was shining to head to Philly, well actually Valley Forge Christian College, where I have just been added to the faculty as part of the teaching teach for the NEW Children’s Ministries University Online.
( www.cmuniversity.org , or www.cmuo.com )

Here I am with: Dr. Philip McLeod (Vice President of Academic Affairs), Jason Rhode (Founder/Creator of CMUO along with Dick Gruber), Me, and Dr. Don Meyer, (President Of Valley Forge Christian College).

I was there for faculty training on Blackboard, the online training software I will use to teach children’s ministry courses online as a part of CMUO. The first course I will be teaching is “Pastoring Children” (Begins Oct. 1st) and the first course I will be writing/developing is “Children in Ministry” for the Spring semester. I’ll write more about this later (mostly on Kidology.org) but in short, Kidology is partnering with CMUO to provide accredited online training to any childen’s ministry worker/leader ANYWHERE that wants to be trained in childen’s ministry. The potential is so exciting, I can hardly sleep at night. This is the realization of a dream since 1994 when I started Kidology.

Just a cool picture I took while there, download the wallpaper!

Here is the moon over downtown Chicago, taken from the air. Well, OK, so I moved my camera around a bit too much while the shutter was open… but I thought it looked cool. The red at the top is the light on the wing of the plane. I may be the only person, but I think this picture looks cool, though I doubt I’ll win any awards for it!

Got home late, and then O’Hare was INSANE! Took me 50 minutes to drive the 2.4 miles out of the airport! Arrrrrrg. And all the blocked off lanes had NO construction or work being done. Overall, a usually 45-50 minute trip was well over two and half hours! And this is after 11pm!!
I had to drop by the church on the way home, and it was a full moon! I took my anti-dote to prevent turning into a hairy beast, but snapped some post-midnight pics, that I’ll share because it’s my blog, and I can post if i want to:

I just KNOW you want the wallpaper for this gorgeous shot,
so go ahead, make your day,
and download it!


FRIDAY

Is it Friday already? I began today asking my wife, “What day is today?”

Today was catch up day, and my first planning meeting with the adult leaders for my fall Kids Church. We had it at one of the leaders home… and she suggested we swim since it is 90+ degrees here every day lately. Swim when we had important ministry business to discuss?!?!? So what did we do?


Had our meeting in the pool, of course! Complete with laminated agendas!! I hope this starts a new trend in children’s ministry. Remember, the WWJD fad is over (tho hopefully not the concept!), instead, when it comes to ministry, I like to also ask, What Would Kids Do? A meeting in a pool? How can it get any better! What started as a joke ended up being one of the best planning meetings we ever had. We splashed some topics around, tried to make sure we were going deep and not just riding the latest wave, and floated different ideas around, all the while tredding carefully into the tough areas so that we could dive right in to what was most important. Overall, the flow of the meeting was great and we decided that we will hold our breath until we can do it again. After all, instead of being a flop, the idea was a stroke of genius. (I know, I’m all wet, time to go to bed!)

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Kidologist

Karl Bastian is the founder of Kidology.org, the creator of ToyboxTales.com, and the author of OrderoftheAncient.com. His personal website is Kidologist.com He is Big Kid with a passion for equipping and encouraging those who minister to children.

4 Comments:

  1. I hate to correct you on your own blog, but… Lake Geneva is in Wisconsin. ;) I was just there last night! I need to sugesst the in pool mtg idea to my senior pastor!

  2. OOOPS! You are right!! I actually made the same mistake when searching google for the Lake Genva website, and corrected my search… didn’t realize I stil had it wrong in the blog!! ahhhh it’s so close to us, it’s hard to remember it’s actually a different state….

    I just imagined a giant peice of cheese in the middle of lake, now I’ll never forget. :)

  3. OK, I’m going to have to do the mtg in a pool thing, eh! (I thought I should start usind “eh” now that I’ll probably end up just north of the border).

  4. Yes I too love the pool idea.

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