The Land of Ozz

What about the Easter Bunny? Those who have be around my blog long enough to read my opinions on Santa Claus and Halloween should expect that I must have an opinion about the Easter Bunny. I do.

Before I give my opinion, I want to make sure you understand that the reason for this post is not specifically to change anyone’s mind about how they celebrate Easter. My main reason for this post is to encourage any other parents out there who share my basic practices concerning the Easter Bunny.

I have a standard American background in terms of Easter. As a kid I woke up on Easter morning to find that there was a nice big basket filled with eggs, jellybeans, and a box containing a hollow milk chocolate bunny rabbit all padded with a nice layer of fake plastic grass. I usually got a new church outfit. I even got a real live baby chicken once for Easter. All of this really was pretty cool and I don’t have a problem with any of it, well except maybe the jellybeans. They are not compatible with my dental work. I could go on all day with Internet references about what colored eggs mean and why someone should or should not hide Easter eggs, but I am not going to bore you with that nonsense. I have no underlying religious reasons for coloring Easter eggs and having an Easter egg hunt. It think it is plain good old fashion fun and it helps bring attention to this very special day.

Now, the Easter Bunny is one part of Easter that I no longer find as being cool. The Easter Bunny game was played in my house when I was a child and was fairly harmless. The fact that it was done in my house when I was a kid and it was fun does not automatically cause me to follow suite with this particular tradition. I now see this tradition of telling about a magical Easter Bunny for what it really is, a lie. It is a small lie and told with the best of intentions by most parents, but it is none the less a lie. This like any other lie can diminish the much needed healthy trust relationship required between a parent and a child. This is why I no longer tell this little lie to my children.

What do I tell my kids about Easter? What is the best way to celebrate Easter? As a Christian, should we participate in secular Easter activities? As a parent, these are just a few questions that you may be asking yourself as Easter approaches. My short answer to all of these questions is to keep it true.

Keeping it true is fairly easy. My wife and I do put out Easter baskets for our kids. We just tell our children the truth about where the baskets came from. The baskets came from Mommy and Daddy. We then share the most important meaning of Easter with our kids. We tell them the story of how Jesus gave his life for us on the cross. We then explain the resurrection of Jesus to our children in the best way we can. We tell our kids that Easter is a celebration of what Jesus did on the first Easter that paved the way for us to follow him into eternity in Heaven with God as long as we believe and trust in him.

Parent who keep it true should be encouraged that they are not alone. There are others of us who try to keep the focus on building healthy family relationships. I understand that secular holiday traditions can be fun, but we as Christians do not have to embrace them all just because everyone else is doing it. Parents can be creative in building their own family traditions that set them apart from the world and help you build a unique family identity.

“And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.” Col 2:6-10 NLT

Man that is good stuff!

Is there such a phrase as “Too Premature”? If you ask some experts in the UK, then the answer is yes. A TimesOnline story reported back in November that the The Nuffield Council on Bioethics released a report titled Critical Care Decisions in Fetal and Neonatal Medicine that says:

..intensive care should not be given to babies born before 22 weeks, and that babies born between 22 and 23 weeks should not, in normal practice, be given intensive care unless parents make a specific request and doctors agree that treatment is possible and in the baby’s best interests.

If you ask Eddie and Sonja Taylor of Homestead, FL if there is such a thing as “Too Premature” then you would find that a new chapter needs to be written in this bioethics report. Their daughter Amillia was born in the fall at just under 22 weeks gestation. The exact gestation time is known because she was conceived via in vitro fertilization. Amillia was about the length of a standard ball point pen when she was born and weighed about 10 onces. You can see a picture of how small her little feet were on The Sydney Morning Herald. Now at four months of age Amillia is well over 4 pounds and will likely be going home from the hospital with little concern for her future health according to doctors at the Baptist Children’s Hospital in Miami.

God continues to show that he has a greater plan no matter what the experts say.

UPDATE: Yahoo Sports has photo of of the post game prayer.

I might just have to become a football fan if I keep seeing things like this. This is what happened in the Colts locker room after the Superbowl last night.

Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy called for quiet.
Dungy called his team over in a circle.
“Let’s finish the way we started,” he said.
They gathered around. Dungy prayed. The Colts recited “The Lord’s Prayer.” SOURCE

I did not watch the game, but I did watch the post game show and the highlights. The one GoDaddy commercial that I did see was enough to remind me why I do not watch Super Bowls anymore. The responses to the media from several players and the coach in the post game displayed a strong reliance on their faith in God.

The main reason I really had a bad taste in my mouth about this Superbowl in particular was because of a story that broke a few days ago about the NFL coming down on churches for having Super Bowl parties. Shawn Wood did great job of explaining the details of this story.

My good friend and guest blogger Robin sent me an email today asking for help. A young man that grew up with Robin’s children is in a tough spot and could use our prayers and any help that we might be able to muster out here in the blogsphere. This young man’s wife gave birth to their son about a month ago.

Robin told me that this couple’s son was born very premature and weighed 2 lbs. at birth a month ago. Obviously the baby’s lungs were not developed and as a result not enough oxygen could get to his extremities. The doctors recently had to amputate his fingers and feet to stop gangrene from killing him, and they give him a 5% chance of survival. The parents are being housed in a Ronald McDonald House in Columbia, SC. The parents are in their early twenties and have practically no support. They have lived with the mother’s family since they were married two years ago.

Both parents spend every possible second at the hospital, but the dad knows he has to support his family. He has a high school education and is trying to find work in t he Columbia, SC area. His employment history includes fast food restaurants only.

As many of you know, my wife and I have been through many months of hospitalization with our son Caden who continues to battle some pretty big health issues at 27 months old. It was the love, time, and gifts given from others who helped us get through some of the toughest times with Caden. My friend Robin was one of the biggest supports for our family when she moved into our home for several weeks to care for our older son Riley while Caden was still in intensive care after his first open heart surgery.

I am asking all visitors and bloggers to help this young family in any way you can. A restaurant or discount store gift card would be great. If you want to donate some money or gift cards to this family then I will tell you how you can send donations directly to them if you will contact me via email.

You can email me at:

No matter what the Lord puts on your heart concerning this story, please pray for this young couple and their son.

There is a new virtual venue at Seacoast Church. A couple of staff members from Seacoast have posted plugs for this beta campus. Shawn Wood is the Creative Pastor and my friend Trace Pupke is the IT Director for Seacoast. I have not seen the new service in action, but I plan to check it out in the next few weeks. You can check out the Internet Campus for yourself at Seacoast.org. Pastor Shawn gives credit to LifeChurch.tv for inspiring this project at Seacoast.

This new Internet Campus is not the only place where Seacoast is making move regarding technology. Our Seacoast Summerville Campus will be getting a behind the scenes technical upgrade this weekend. I also found an article on Light Cast Media featuring an interview with Pastor Shawn where he talked about how Seacoast has moved to outsourcing the streaming video for the church instead of doing it all in house.

These upgrades may not sound like that big of a deal, but you would have to see a Seacoast satellite campus in production mode to appreciate these changes. I have been a part of some very fragile and nerve racking moments as a Seacoast Summerville tech team volunteer. The delivery process of a Sunday morning message at Seacoast Summerville has some single points of failure which have been tested a time or two. I remember one Sunday morning when the equipment trailer was MIA. This particular trailer held the sound board (affectionately named “The Ark”), the video switching gear, the lighting system, along with most of the items used to stock the information and small group tables. The Ark and everything else was finally delivered and the service was went on without a hitch. I remember a conversation I had with Pastor Phil after that service where I asked him what the back up plan was if our technical team was unable to deliver the recorded message using the overhead projectors and the sound system. As I expected, there was a good plan.  He said that he would deliver a live message. He did say that having to deliver a complete message was nowhere near his greatest concern when it comes to equipment failure. Pastor Phil said that it would be way more difficult to pick up in the middle of a message that had already begun playing from a recording of another pastor.

I have to say that Seacoast has come a long way in technology, and it still amazes me how so many people can be reached in a rented space with a week old video taped message. I have heard our senior pastor say that we have more people attending Seacoast via satellite campuses than we have attending the original Mount Pleasant campus where many of the sermons are still delivered live. I think we are averaging somewhere around 600 people between two services at Summerville and we are nowhere near the largest satellite campus. I am pretty sure that the West Ashley Campus tips the four digit mark on their attendance numbers on a regular basis. The big difference between the Summerville Campus and most of the other large campuses is that we are in a rented space that we can only occupy between on Sunday mornings. We walk into an empty room at 7am to set up and deliver two services at 9:30 and 11:15. Then we tear it all down and load it into trailers. Tomorrow is a big day for Seacoast Summerville because we will be coming together as a church to pray for God’s direction and provision for a more permanent building to have worship services.

One place where technology is being implemented is at the heart of the leadership and personal spiritual growth training for the church.  A web site called MyNextSteps plays a key role in providing tools and lessons to disciple small group leaders and help all Seacoast members become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.
I expect the new Internet Campus to be a huge success.  This new venue and the technical upgrades to Summerville and other areas of Seacoast are testimonies to the commitment of the Seacoast staff to deliver the highest quality worship experience to every single person who attends a Seacoast service.

I have posted for a while a link to the MySpace page I created some months back. It was initially an exercise to see what the technical capabilities were and how people were using these pages. I also signed up for a Christian alternative to MySpace called JCFaith. The first question to answer is why bother leaving the MySpace page live?

” 9 When I wrote to you before, I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin. 10 But I wasn’t talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin, or are greedy, or cheat people, or worship idols. You would have to leave this world to avoid people like that.” 1 Corinthians 5:9-10

After reading this again recently I remembered a post back in September done by Jay Atkins titled “Why MySpace?” Jay’s post gives a pretty good example of why we as Christians should not be afraid to have a presence on MySpace or any other social networking site. There is nothing wrong with being in this world as long as we do not become conformed to this world and its standards. I continue to leave my page up on MySpace with a copy of the feeds from this blog and Caden’s Page in particular. I feel that my blogs have become much more inspirational and serve as a small ministry tool. I continue to receive emails from people who are encouraged by our family’s attitudes and actions in response to the tricks of the devil.

The secular social networking scene on the Internet can make you sick if you really get a close look at what is going on in that realm. Social networking is basically an electronic form of the things I remember from the average high school weekend hangout from my teen years. My teen years were way more typical and did not reflect a devotion to serving or following Jesus Christ. I try to keep focused on what I am trying to accomplish on sites like MySpace and not do any browsing around. I treat MySpace much like the folks at XXXChurch treats a porn convention. I go in and set up my both (page) to shine a little of God’s light in a largely dark place on the Internet. A very small majority of secular social networking site members are sharing their desire to serve God. You don’t find much in the way of good Christian influence when you go to searching MySpace for God or Jesus.

So, what if you are not really wanting to shine light into dark corners of the Internet? What if you just want to have some health Christian conversations and share stories with some folks and rejoice with each other when God blesses you? Maybe you are looking for encouragement from online friends to continue to grow your relationship with Jesus Christ. Is there a place where you can go to set up a free social networking page that is Christian? Is there a Christian alternative to MySpace? There are several that I have found, but only one that stands out so far. JCFaith has proven to me to be a great place for people get the same type of features that secular social networking sites offer without the filthy ads and requests from half naked friends. I have been much more of a spectator than a participant JCFaith, but I can say that I have not yet run into a single profile that I would consider questionable. Here is what JCFaith has to say about themselves:

Co-founders of JCFaith.com (www.JCFaith.com), saw a glaring omission in this emerging new trend. “I feel young Christians are searching for an online community where they can grow their faith by interacting with other Christians in a social networking environment. Unfortunately there are not many options for Christians that completely filled this gap, so a few of us got together and created one. Co-founders banned together to create a user experience that was uniquely Christian, yet completely social. “We wanted to create a Christian experience for users but maintain all the top aspects of the popular social networking sites. (www.JCFaith.com.)” Source

Regardless of how “Christian”, clean, pure and innocent a social networking site may seem, there are still opportunities for inappropriate relationships and communications to occur. I want to leave you with a few basic rules for all online activity.

1. All online activity should be performed in a public place in your home.
2. All passwords to email accounts, social networking sites, and other personal communication systems should be shared between the husband and wife.
3. All passwords for children’s email, chat/IM, social networking sites should be known by the parents. And parents should regularly review the content of these accounts while logged in with the child’s user id and password.
4. Browser history files should never be cleared by anyone other than the parents.

These basic rules will help create an environment of openness and trust between all of the members of your family. It may be more difficult to implement rules like these if some members of the family have been allowed a certain degree of privacy in some of these areas. These rules also assume a certain degree of respect and trust between husband and wife. If your spouse is not your best friend then voluntarily sharing your user ids and passwords to email, IM, and social networking sites is a good step towards building that relationship. If you don’t know your children’s user ids and passwords to email, instant messaging, and social networking sites, then you should. There are a ton of ways that kids can get around the above rules, but they are a good first step in protecting your children online.

I have completed a document that contains the entire year of the Bible reading plan that I have been posting each month since March of 2006. You can download a copy of the Adobe file at the bottom of this posting or by clicking the image on the right.

The reading plan that I have been sharing with my readers has been recreated from a very old copy that was give to me during a Bible study in the fall of 2005. My copy came from a copy machine duplication of an original that is in pretty rough shape. The original is even missing a couple of corners and edges.

Please contact me with any corrections that need to be made if you have a cleaner copy of the original. I am also interested in learning more about the origin of this schedule. The article gives credit to for the plan being devised by Fullgrowth Ministries of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I can not find any information on this organization and I am guessing that they no longer exist. The original copy talked about reading the Bible through during the year of 1984 which leads me to believe that it was originally printed late in the year of 1983. The format of the original leads me to believe that it was produced in some printed magazine.

This time of the year many people are working to improve their daily Bible reading practices. This is an excellent plan for reading the the entire Bible in a year. My wife and I read on this schedule as a minimum daily Bible reading. I hope this schedule blesses you as much as it has blessed me.

Adobe PDF version of reading plan: DailyBibleReadingPlan.pdf

Our good friends Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo will be joining us at Seacoast Summerville on January 19, 2007. They will be presenting a unique and exciting one night teaching titled “How to raise a Responsible Child”. The announcement of this event has just been released this week and the RSVP messages are pouring in. You can get more details on this event by visiting GFI Charleston.

The Ezzo’s have been writing parenting curriculum since 1985. Their curriculum has impacted over four million parents throughout the world. They have written 13 books on parenting to cover birth through teens. Their books have been translated into 17 different languages.

This event is a great opportunity to meet Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo if you have not yet had the pleasure. This one night teaching is also a small glimpse of what you can learn from the Growing Kids God’s Way curriculum. Sherry and I offered a DVD version of this teaching as a supplemental lesson to our Growing Kids God’s Way class last year.

Don’t forget that there a ton of new classes beginning in the Charleston area in the next several weeks. You can get the details on these local classes by visiting the Class Schedule over at gfigharleston.org.

Update: You can see how our train turned out by visiting my Grill’n Time blog. There are a ton of pictures taken during the construction process.

There are a ton of creative things a family can do together especially during the holiday season. We get some really cool ideas from FamilyFun magazine. The picture below is a screen capture from their web site where you can go to see one of these great ideas.

Our entire family is involved in making this Gingerbread Train this week. It started out as a joint project between our family and some friends, but nearly every adult and child involved in the project has come down with some form of illness that as sidelined them from participation. My wife Sherry could barely talk due to a scratchy voice earlier today and Caden had stuff start draining out of his left ear earlier this week. Riley as well as our friends have also been under the weather with varying degrees of cold and flu type symptoms.All this illness left me a little more involved in the Gingerbread Train project than originally planned. That’s okay though because I was sad that this project was going down mostly during the day while I was at work. From the beginning I was assured to see the completed project since it was going to be one of the desserts for the last night of our current Preparation for Parenting class.

We have been taking pictures along the way. About half of the gingerbread dough was baked tonight. Sherry is planning to bake the rest of it Monday during the day so that it will be cooled off in time to assemble by the evening. Riley can’t wait to see the train assembled. That boy loves trains.

Our class meets on Tuesday night, so we should be done in plenty of time to have a nibble after class that evening. I will post some pictures when we are done. Sherry and the boys have been working on some other cool holiday treats that I may get to capture some pictures of and share here if I they last long enough for a photo.