Brains On The Wall

I think the past two weeks have been the busiest of my life.  Seriously, I've been thinking if I've ever had any time in my life that I've had more going on than I do now.  I've been so busy these past two weeks, I was pretty sure my head was going to explode.  Allow me to elaborate: Two weeks ago I started seminary - all four classes at once.  I'm taking a load of nine credits this summer.  Yes, I know, that's crazy.  But I want to get done as soon as possible (an mDiv. is technically a three year degree, but it's 96 credits!  Most master's degrees are 30 or 40 credits.  Thus people usually take 5-7 years to finish the mDiv. - I want to try and finish in three).  One class in particular has been an intensive class - that is to say that it meets every day for four hours and there is a mountain of reading as well as a paper due each day.  Top that off with the professor and I having pretty significant disagreements about the material that we were learning, and you've got a pretty busy schedule just in the school department.  But there's more.

Last week I spent three days at our church's camp in Iowa, leading staff training seminars.  Keep in mind that this is at the same time as my intensive class.  I had to borrow my sister's laptop and use the WiFi at the camp.  Every minute that I wasn't leading a session, I was on the computer doing homework.  But the interesting part about the staff training was getting the booklets and discussions prepared for the sessions, which took longer than something like that usually takes me.  I had to beg my dad for help in folding the booklets, and I didn't get a power point presentation finished for the last session.  Oh well.

Every Sunday I give the message at my church's SHOUT service.  These messages usually take 12-14 hours of preparation.  So now I'm doing school work every day, getting ready to go to camp, staying at camp, and doing message prep.  But wait!  There's more!

Our church is doing a series called "Science and the Bible" on Wednesday nights.  There are 11 total sessions in all - I'm leading 5 of them.  My first scheduled session was this past wednesday.  So now Im doing school, preparing for SHOUT, and getting this lecture together about Darwinian evolution.

And now, here I sit on Saturday afternoon, with a full intact head (not exploded), and the two weeks are almost over.  I spent all last night and all day today finishing my message for SHOUT, and I just came in from mowing the lawn.  As soon as my wife gets home, I'm going to the church to prepare for my Children's Church lesson tomorrow morning.  I've also got to get a last minute power point presentation ready tomorrow morning, do a "ministry moment" in the blended service, pass out VBS kits to the leaders, and, I think that's it.  Oh yeah!  Did I mention that next week is Backyard Bible Club?  Sorry, I forgot to throw that into the mix to, plus the usual maintaining a marriage and raising a 10 month old.

I suppose there are still roughly 30 hours left for my head to explode.  We'll see what happens.