Ray Brown

Falcon of the Day: strong safety Ray Brown and his unique facemask.

 

Old joke: At a banquet the speaker went on so long that three of the Four Horseman died during it.

 

GA/KY was Brent Musberger’s last game. Weird that it came during the regular season.

 

Was reading an article in Sports Illustrated about Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger. Years ago his father was a QB in high school, and earned a scholarship to Georgia Tech. A knee injury ended his career.

 

One year ago the Hurts had just sold their house, so they had one last Super Bowl party. They downsized and moved even further away, to northern Johns Creek/south Cumming. This past weekend we hadn’t heard anything about a party. Mary is always great at organizing those things, so we figured they weren’t having a party. We accepted an invite to watch the games with Ceil’s best friends. Then Mary invites us to her party. Too far to go just for a little while. What time does your party start?

 

Passion has one or two baptism services during the year. They don’t really give an invitation at the end of the service. I’m not sure exactly, but they like you to fill out a form with your testimony and other info. After that they probably have someone contact you to guide you through the process. What’s special about the baptisms at Passion is that the person baptizing you shares your testimony with the congregation while standing in the water, just before the baptism. Women baptize women, and men baptize men. The people doing the baptizing I suppose are on staff, actively working with young people and college students, for instance. Passion does not have a baptistry, so they bring in two round black tubs/pools. While they’re showing the testimony baptism in one pool, the people are climbing in and out of the other pool.

 

There’s a similar process at North Point. Once you’ve expressed an interest and sent in your testimony, someone works with you. Each NP small group leader keeps a staff member updated on the progress of the group. The staff member used to be/may still be a young man named Brian. Brian was great at knowing who people were just from watching over all the many groups. “Dave – you’re in Lee’s group, right?” Anyway the small groups often funnel new believers toward baptism. Every person being baptized writes up their testimony and tapes a video giving the testimony, which is aired in church just before the testimony. NP has a baptistry, and will often baptize once or twice a month. Adults are baptized in the regular worship services. There is a baptistry in the teen area for students, but friends and family members of course come in for those baptisms. That’s where Anna was baptized.  

 

I might’ve mentioned how JFBC “saves up baptisms” for one big service, then does them all back to back in almost like an impersonal assembly-line fashion. Worshipers in the service are invited to come forward and be baptized. JFBC even keeps spare clothes for them to wear. JFBC usually conducts their baptism service in their gymnasium, which has one built-in baptistry, then brings in a second tub-like pool so they can also alternate.

 

NP puts an emphasis on small groups of 4 or 5 couples – the number of active small groups is the only real statistic they track. NP even pays for babysitters. Small groups are meant to only last 1-1/2 – 2 years, then split into 2 or 3 separate groups, adding in new couples. NP holds regional “Grouplink” meetings in various places around the metro area where couples interested in joining a small group can meet up with similar couples who live in the same area. That’s how we got in a small group with several other couples from East Cobb.

 

Passion has several what they call “small groups” around the city. We haven’t been, but they seem to be comprised of about 100 people in each, making it very hard to share and build community.

 

Will was baptized over in Athens a couple of years ago, at the church he joined. A few years ago M confessed Christ as his Savior, but has yet to be baptized. I was baptized in Macon when I was 16. Easter Sunday 1975.

 

Still kicking myself over getting that ticket at the International Terminal last month, but I was in the wrong. It was my first trip to the International Terminal. With the regular airport I know where I can go and not go, where it’s crowded and not crowded. But everyone should know better than to use handicapped spaces. For several years we carried around my father in law’s handicapped card to hang on the mirror. He didn’t like using it. When he was with us I’d be driving, and I usually dropped him off at the door anyway.

 

At the beginning of every month I have to review inventory, plus another bi-weekly project was coming due, so I had plenty on my plate. Then we learned one of our team members will be out on leave for a while. We’re not up to speed on the products he handles, so it will take us some time to learn. Hopefully stuff won’t fall through the cracks. At least most of my emails are caught up.

 

Tuesday: nice and busy here at work. Had my annual review from my new boss yesterday and it went well. Praised me so much I asked him if he could repeat some things to Ceil. Also had our customer in for a visit, so we met with them for a long time. Left work both Monday and Tuesday shortly after six.

 

Wednesday: after our meeting last night at JFBC I stopped by the library. Checked out “Killing Reagan” and Stephen King’s “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.“

 

Came home and watched Hunted. GT/Clemson was almost over. Always nice to hear Wes Durham on the call. Hunted is better than WWE. M was at work. Tonight C has a school meeting.