Scott Freeman

We are here in Ponca City. It was an extremely eventful process. Some good. Some bad. Some ugly.

I will give a full rundown of the last few days as soon as AT&T decides to fix our phones at the house.

But we are here and glad to be home.

It’s all packed. The movers arrive early tomorrow morning to load us up for our move to Fort Ponca.

Tonight we went back to our old congregation and said goodbye. It was hard, especially since I leave with such a profound feeling of failure. But that’s behind now and we look forward.

The next time you hear from us we will be Oklahomans and living in Ponca Gulch.

I’m so tired. Why am I still awake?

This is our last weekend in Waco. We load up the truck first thing Monday morning and head for Ponca Springs.
And it looks like our marriage will survive another move. It’s a good thing I’ve been so pleasant during these last few stressful months

We have made great progress on packing. We should finish up most everything tomorrow except last minute type things. Then one more Sunday. I’m thinking Episcopal. Then a trip back Sunday night to our old congregation to bid farewell.

We met one of our new elders yesterday in Fort Worth and gave him my car to drive back to Ponca Junction. Great time had by all at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Burleson. But, note to self: don’t get the blazing wings when you have an hour and a half drive afterwards.

Did I mention I’m tired?

I have played more games of Scrabble in the last week than I have played in my entire life. People are ate up with it.

I stand 4-1 at the moment but am in the middle of 4 games I very easily could lose. I still see the loss in my head as I go to sleep.

Cursed Facebook.

I also find it interesting that Hermit Greg did not post a screen-shot of our game.

I hope to continue blogging regularly over the next few days but I don’t really know what my schedule will be. Packing is picking up steam and the desktop is already dismantled. Tracy and I will have to fight over the laptop.

One of the things that I am looking forward to beginning next Wednesday is the opportunity to be in an office again. Call me weird but I love being in an office. I love study time and digging deeper into the text.

Shortly after I announced my resignation in Waco my office computer died. The cost for it to be repaired would approach the cost for a new machine. Rather than expect a new computer as a lame duck I just spent the last two months of my tenure there working at home. That amounts to 3 months that I have not had regular office hours. I miss it greatly.

I also look forward to getting back into some more substantial blogging. While looking for a new work I stayed away from some of the more sensitive issues that I have dealt with in the past. When I get back to a regular grind here are some things that you can expect in this place:

–More on Moltmann’s Theology of Hope
–How militant atheism is a good thing for the church
–A series on soteriology
–More on nonviolence
–The 10 best and worst song-writers
–What’s the Deal? An opportunity for readers to plug their own political candidates
–A return to C.S. Lewis
–The greatest living theologians
–The role of women
–Good science as a backbone of good theology

These are just a few of the things that I’m looking forward to talking about. Thoughts?

OK, I got my handy-dandy new Razr in the mail yesterday. Now, I have to customize it in such a way that it screams post-neolithic emergentesque preacher type.

In other words I need a new ring tone.

For the past year or so I have used the theme song to “The Office.” I love it. But that’s part of the downside. I have been known to wait until the last possible second to answer because I want to listen to the whole thing.

Any suggestions on ring tones? What would fit in with a guy whose finger is constantly on the pulse of the shifting sands of postmodern missional contexts and structures? (Yes, the verbal assault on the English language and mixed metaphors are intentional.)
What do you use?

I am beginning to wade through Jurgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope. It’s a dense work but from what I have been told I align closely with him theologically. If this quote is any indication I am in for a treat.

To believe means to cross in hope and anticipation the bounds that have been penetrated by the raising of the crucified. If we bear that in mind, then this faith can have nothing to do with fleeing the world, with resignation and with escapism. In this hope the soul does not soar above our vale of tears to some imagined heavenly bliss, nor does it sever itself from the earth. For, in the words of Ludwig Feuerbach, it puts ‘in place of the beyond that lies above our grave in heaven the beyond that lies above our grave on earth, the historic future, the future of mankind’.(Das Wesen der Religion, 1848.) It sees in the resurrection of Christ not the eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands. It sees in him the future of the very humanity for which he died. That is why it finds the cross the hope of the earth. This hope struggles for the obedience of the body, because it awaits the quickening of the body. It espouses in all meekness the cause of the devastated earth and of harassed humanity, because it is promised possession of the earth. Ave crux — unica spes !

I’m sure I will be blogging about this as I go.

Well, we are in the home stretch. One week from today we will load up the moving truck and head to Poncaville.
We will be moving ourselves this time around as we got a sweet deal on a truck that we just couldn’t pass up. I’ve never driven a 24 foot truck but how hard can it be, right? I just hope we can get everything on it.

We got a great deal on boxes as well. And environmentally friendly, too.

We have set up our utilities except for electric and satellite. We have to do electric when we get there and once we contact Dish to move us we will lose our local channels. It seems that once we give them the address we are moving to we will be listed in a different area. So I have to wait until next Monday to call them or no local shows for a week.

We had a good garage sale this weekend. Actually, Tracy did. She was the mastermind and did a fantastic job.

Now comes the part I hate the most about moving: packing. I hate the way cardboard feels. I’m scared of the tape gun. I never know where to start and it always seems like things are multiplying.

I’m just ready to get there and get to work.

I was able to catch this segment on 60 minutes last night featuring Joel Osteen. Wow. Just Wow.

I’m excessively hard on preachers. I nit-pick and can be extremely unkind in my analysis of others. Volunteer preachers, not so much. But paid guys I can be merciless.

I repent of that.

But I still hold to the notion that to preach well you must be theologically responsible.