I'm so happy...

Boy! I am so happy with how IWU's new seminary is coming along.

Here is a series of YouTube videos explaining the idea. This is really going to be good!

GREAT Cycling trip!

Just returned from a GREAT cycling trip with two friends--biology professor Burt Webb and political science professor Kris Pence. We started in Pittsburg on the Great Alleghany Passage—a rails-to-trails route—to Cumberland Maryland. The GAP is a gravel route that never rises above 1 ½% grade, but it does rise a couple thousand feet to the Laurel Highlands over 50 or so miles. In Cumberland Maryland we got on the C&O canal towpath, a National Park route that is mostly dirt & puddles, and rode that right down into Georgetown-DC, 335 miles in all.

This was a test trip for me—last year I hammered my knees on 500 miles of the Appalachian Trail in may—they never recovered. I tried cycling to see if it would have less stress on my knees. Sure enough my knees are fine, thanks mostly to an awesome bicycle—the “Salsa Fargo” whose designers had a mission of “designing a bike to ride the Continental Divide Route, which is my real dream—and something I’ll probably start to tackle next summer—a route right down the backbone of the Continental Divide from Canada to Mexico paralleling the Continental Divide Trail.

I’m returning to the GAP-C&O in July to ride it again, that time with Sharon. Until then I’m looking at re-riding with Sharon some of the off-road trails radiating from Xenia, Ohio and maybe the White Pine Trail in Michigan. I love cycling!


Click here for a video of our recent trip.

Who Reads the Tuesday Column?

I don’t chase after visits to my Tuesday Column site—I know that some online writers monitor their traffic daily and write more of whatever gets them the greatest number of visits. As for me I write whatever I’m thinking about regardless of readership and frankly I have all the readers I need to satisfy me.

However, writing on the web gets one fewer responses than preaching at a church (well most churches at least ;-). When preaching I can see the crowd and know for sure they at least listened to some of what I preached. On the web most folk read but never comment—I have learned to live with that. (Those who DO comment get read by about 350-400 people each week so the commenters have a following too.)

Yet, sometimes I wonder if anyone is reading. That’s when I check the data. Today I had an extra half hour so I looked at the data. Here is what I saw concerning the last two weeks.

-825 of you visited this week’s column on homosexuality--thanks for coming by!
-657 visited the column last week on Grandparenting--thanks (even though it applied to few)

The vast majority of the rest of the readers these last two weeks came directly from a Google search that brought them to one of the past columns. The most popular past columns by the family (besides the weekly Tuesday Column) are invariably the same:

-My own most visited past column was my speed-reading article
-David’s past column on Leadership Movies
-John’s past article on How to Write an Exegesis Paper
-Sharon’s booklet on Leadership Theory for Pastors

In total 13,692 unique visits occurred the past two weeks, which is about the average for the year (900-1000 per day). In the last two weeks readers visited from 92 countries--so it is nice to "see" you guys from other countries too.

Well, I don’t suppose these figures mean anything to anyone but me—but I thought I'd resport them to myself here anyway. ;-)

Just Kidding--it's more like this

Just Kidding--it's more like this (Teaching the Bible to adults-Thursday evenings)

My Inspiring students

This is what being a college professor looks like from up front.

IWU approved for M.Div degree

Just heard we were approved for an M.Div degree.... so seminary here we come... Ken Schenck describes it best here.

I like Google Chrome

I already use several browsers from Firefox to Mac... but I've kept IE on one old PC... I even downloaded IE8 Beta to give Bill Gates' a fair try... YUCK!  It crashes contnually and worse, once I downloaded it Microsoft boxed me in and I can;t revert to the old browser.  

Today I downloaded Google Chrome and boy it is crisp and clean,  fast as pretty stable even... 

Bye Bye Bill Gates..I'm outa Microsoft!

Windows is next to go.

Cutting myself

I've been rewriting Holiness for Ordinary people for the 25th anniversary edition (third edition ) coming out this summer. The book has four new chapters and the style and tone of the rest is being changed significantly. I've been working on it all semester and have dedicated my Christmas break to finishing the work to send it in by the January 9 due date.

So the last three days I've been doing the painful work of cutting --getting a 60,000 word manuscript down to 55,000 words. that means cutting 5000 precious words out of what I've written... OUCH! I just finished the third trip through the mss. "cutting myself" and have got it trimmed below 55,000... so I'm taking the rest of the day off...I think I'll go do something sweaty.

Here is my latest word count after self-cutting. (red chapters are new)

words
1003 Preface ..... to 1st, 2nd and 3rds editions
4361 Chapter 1 Sanctification Overview
3587 Chapter 2 It’s Everywhere
2679 Chapter 3 Seven Approaches to Holiness
1783 Chapter 4 Sanctification and Sex
1758 Chapter 5 Sanctification and healing
3577 Chapter 6 Images of Sanctification
4443 Chapter 7 Growing toward Entire Sanctification
3551 Chapter 8 God’s Part in Sanctification
3373 Chapter 9 Our Part In Sanctification
3106 Chapter 10 How to Know You Are Sanctified
2372 Chapter 11 Continual Cleansing
3349 Chapter 12 Understanding the Sanctified Life
2945 Chapter 13 Sidetracks from Holiness
3632 Chapter 14 A sanctified Church
5206 Chapter 15 Personal Testimonies
1040 Afterword
1427 Glossary of Terms
-------------
53,192 TOTAL WORDS (target word budget = 55,000)

OK I knmow this is irrelevant to whomever stumbled across it... but I needed to tell someone ..so I told my personal blog ;-)

Graduation Dec '08

I just finished up the semester at Graduation... In December we have a few graduates from our division. This year from our division we had 17 graduates from what I could count in the march. That included these:

CM: Johnnie Blair, Greg Boland, Alan Downing, Jess (Manglos) Hamlet, Jonathan Hicks, Brian Morton,
YOUTH: Brandon Faust, Chris Tabone
SPORTS MIN: Rachel Horner, Josh Miller, Paul Knight,
CHILDREN'S MIN: Megan Kiami, Katie Martin, Aubrie Rovenstein, Heather Tharp

I'm about to leave my office for Christmas break. All my grades are in and syllabi are done so I'm not omcing back until next year.
BIL: Tom Davis, Sarah Smith,

Grading LCE books

I've been grading all weekend... mostly the Local Church Ed. "papers" (which turn out to be somewhere around a hundred pages each--single spaced.) Grading is hard work but so gratifying. Man these students can work hard!