"I told you so!"

So...I'm writing this blog with red cheeks (embarrassment) and excitement in my heart. I'm going to give a little back story so if you didn't know why I am writing this blog, you will be in the loop.

This past August Kallie, the boys and I loaded up our stuff and moved in with my parents here in Taylor, Texas (east of Austin). We have been here since August 20 something. We are so indebted to my parents for them allowing us to invade their space for a few months. To make a long story short, central Texas is not for the Garzon family. It definitely has it's perks but we love and miss Amarillo.

We came down here with a mission to help plant a church north of San Antonio. We have high hopes for the church and know they will do great because they have great leadership in place. Church planting, like central Texas, is not for the Garzon family either. We have some financial responsibilities that we felt would be irresponsible to ask people to pay for with their financial support, so we backed out.

With all this said, WE ARE MOVING BACK TO AMARILLO. We miss our house, we miss our friends, we miss our church. We miss it all. This will be the 3rd time we will be moving back to Amarillo and the last. It is where our children will come visit us when we are old. We will make Amarillo our home for many years to come.

Do me a favor if you are reading this and you live in Amarillo. Next time you see me, punch me in the gut and say "I told you so!"

See you all soon! We hope to be back by the middle of December.

-the garzon's

Update on my book.

Hey everyone.  I hope you haven't been holding your breath for an update on my book.  I suck at updating.  I have started writing again and am almost finished with the entirety of this massive project.  If you need a reminder the book is titled, well, for now, "Confessions of a Pastor's kid: A view from the front pew."

I am going to post a excerpt on here for you to read.  Please feel free to comment.

-much love

At the height of the charismatic movement our church (the church my dad pastor-ed) was moving right along.  We were seeing people saved and lives changed.  I was only ten or eleven so my memory is vague.  My dad was so excited to have his best friend from seminary come and preach a time of revival at our church.  His best friend was a protégé as an evangelist and a mere follower in his faith.  Little did we know that the time our church had as a whole was short and the clock was ticking. 

Excitement was in the air and the smell of Clorox filled our church.  You see, when you serve at a Hispanic Baptist church, clean time means Clorox time.  The people of our church, all with busy hands and altered minds, had been in deep thought and prayer for this weekend of revival.  The banner outside our church read, “Revival Services. Friday through Sunday. 6 P.M. Juan de la Garza preaching.”, or something like that.  Just look at any revival banner at any Baptist church and it usually reads that way.  Fliers were sent and the people of our church were living, breathing billboards for this one weekend.  The night had finally arrived and people filled the building being welcomed and ushered in not knowing that they would be a part of something life changing, at least for me.  The pews were full and the nursery bursting at the seams.  This was an exciting time at our church and with numbers comes revival, or so we thought.  You could hear all of the wood pews creak and crack as every body in the house sat down simultaneously and all of our heads shifted from the piano to the pulpit in unison.  “I’m honored for all of you to meet my best friend, Juan de la Garza.”  My dad’s excitement read by the tears in his eyes and the joy on his face.  The pulpit was cleared and a few seconds of silence reassured us that we were doing the right thing. 

Seconds turned to minutes and minutes into hours.  The words “Holy Spirit” were translated as “genie in a bottle” that night and this salesman had come to sell his product.  (I’m just now realizing how hard this is to write without getting emotional.) Pressured conviction lay heavy in the room and tears were now flowing steadily.  It was a weird phenomenon that night, one I could never describe as people dropped like flies to the floor.  One after the other someone would fall, lay on the floor, vulnerable and full of emotion after sense entered their mind.  It was hard for my mind to conceive what was happening.  The conversation of “the charismatic movement” dominated the prior weeks at our house and now it was happening before our eyes. 

The night continued on and the floor of the church mirrored the last day of the civil war.  My dad had put me in charge of the projector, the old school kind, so I was hard at work as we sang song after song.  Finally, the smoke arose, figuratively speaking and the salesman exited the room.  Division set in and my family was left to pick up the pieces.  News of this happening spread like wildfire around the local Baptist community and my dad’s job hung in the balance.  The night everything went down, (excuse my slang) I remember riding home with my mom.  Her jaw clinched tight and her silence communicated that my sister and I were only to speak when spoken to.   The light of the golden arches filled the car and my mom ordered our supper quickly and in just one breath.  The ten mile ride home seemed like an eternity as I watched the stripes on the road fly by and become one.  Confusion and questions collided in my head as my mom and dad talked very loudly in the living room.  For some reason that night my mom asked my sister and I to sleep in their room.  I stared at the light that seeped under the door and watched their shadows pace through the living room.  I listened to the soft rhythmic inhale and exhale of my sister echo next to me.  “I’ll take the kids if I have to because I can’t stand for this.” My mom said firmly.  “Mosito, (my dads pet name for my mom) you know I love you.  I don’t know what to do.  The church will fall apart. “  My dad responded.  My Mom ended the conversation by saying, “it’s me or this church, Ricardo, choose one. “  

 

Jesus is my girlfriend.

Catchy way to start this blog.  I hope I have your attention.  My other thought for a title was "the repercussions of K-love radio and a dangerous mind" but that seems way too arrogant.  

I spent the last week listening to 2 different christian radio stations here in town.  One I hear all the time at work.  Mainly because we are forced.  I haven't see any super-natural life changes happen over a plate of rice and an egg roll yet because of this station.  Eh, doesn't bother me too bad.  Anyway, I made myself listen to these 2 stations as kind of a...let's say...experiment.  It wasn't painful or anything.  It was a change from my usual, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage stuff on AM radio.  

Some songs I knew and some I didn't.  Some were catchy and some were just...bad.  Don't get me wrong, I like some christian music.  Heck, I consider myself a worship leader so I have to like a majority of it.  I'm just tired of the songs that have nothing to say.  I'm not one to judge an artist by their art but, come on.  I literally changed the station several times because I could not listen to the garbage they were playing. 

At times it wasn't even the songs but the things the DJ's were saying.  For instance, they talked about how we needed to give money for the station to stay afloat and things of that nature, which makes sense but not 2 minutes later they have a Hollywood approved nutritionist on to tell us how to eat.  Tangent but relevant.

Now for the songs themselves, the majority of them were "Jesus is my girlfriend" songs.  Feel good about myself and really over positive type songs that just made me sick.  Sounds like christian "artists" are never sad or never struggle with anything.  That's the song I would like to hear on K-love.  "I struggle with porn and my wife hates me."  Honesty might not work in the christian music industry.  I think it's gone too far now.  Past artists have set a pace or paved a path for others that honesty or truth seems too far out of reach.  

Disclaimer:  I like some worship songs.  God deserves praise and how else will the world hear it without some songs the church sings?  I know this.  My reason for writing this is to question the heart of an artist.  Why make pointless art or like Paul said in Corinthians, "a clanging gong"?  Are we writing songs to make a buck or are we writing songs that have something to say?

-much love 

The power of the narrative.

My boys make sense.

Let me unpack that statement.  I watch my boys play, either together or apart and the things they do make sense.  Kyle, our youngest is still a little too young for this but our oldest, Elijah does what this blog will be about so well.

I've noticed that when Elijah plays he has a grand imagination.  The way he captures me and his mommy as his audience goes to show that he does not imagine for the recognition or any kind of glory but simply because he himself is captivated by story.

When I watch him play with his "super heros", which the majority are bad guys or VEDOM, (Venom from Spiderman) he carries the story so well.  To be completely honest with you he's hardly ever violent either.  These are some of the things I witness when he plays...  

That's just an example and one of the better pictures I have of him playing but you get the drift.

I only wish I could be inside his head as he plays.  To see the story that drives his play.  To see who he will rescue and why he does it.  To see the outcome from his eyes.  This is the power of the narrative.  The power of story.  We need to keep our kids dreaming.  We need to challenge them with math but remind them to be mystics.  To keep wonder as close as a whisper.  Imagination can be a beautiful thing but when suffocated our children no longer are our children, they are our co-workers, our pastors, our teachers and yes, even our Presidents.

The power of story reminds us of who we are and what we were meant to do.  To tell a story.  A true story about a God who loved a people who were so lost.  A story about a cross and an empty grave.  A story about a King and a Kingdom.  A story about struggle, about pain and about hope for those people.  A story that makes sense.

Get involved with story.  Tell a story.  Imagine with me.  Appreciate beauty because it is soon followed by wonder...