Daniel Farrell

We used our free passes to Lifebridge Health and Fitness today. Major thanks to the Battaglia’s for those. It’s the first time I’ve ever really worked out with Alicia on more than just cardio machines. I gotta say, after watching her work out… my wife is buff! and hot! and sexy! It is am amazing gym, certainly the best one I’ve ever seen. I think Alicia would live there if she could. I would like to start working out regularly again… maybe I’ll get a couple of month membership to Gold’s and see if I use it.

I had a short but nice conversation with Dave Cowan the other day that included some talk of the type of church planting we want to do. It was very encouraging(Thanks Dave!) and has got me researching more. In that vain, I found this really awesome website about the city and it’s neighbourhoods. For a neat view of the neighbourhoods of Baltimore go to that link and then click on the Baltimore City Neighbourhood Map link on the right. It’s a PDF of Baltimore City all divided into neighbourhoods.

It looks like we will target Mount Washington first, but others on the top of our list include Hampden, Charles Village, Mount Vernon, Federal Hill, Fells Point and Canton. Not that we want to limit things, but I think those are the neighbourhoods that are most like us and would be the easiest to reach. We’ll see where God leads. We would love to connect with other like minded people and make a network of missional churches all over Baltimore. At least one missional church in every neighbourhood would be ideal. Then keep this network connected in some way to the Horizon network that is going to be reaching all the suburbs.

Lord, may your Kingdom come and your will be done here in Baltimore just as it is in heaven!

While on vacation I got the oppurtunity to read my first N.T. Wright book, The Challenge of Jesus. It was very good. It kinds of gives you his views in an overview instead of the more in depth stuff he’s done with his other books. Definitely a good starter.

Other people I know who have read his stuff have been blown away by it. Can’t say that happened to me, but maybe that is because I’ve been exposed to many of the themes in his writings before. I’ve done my own research into parital-preterism, the kingdom of God and the resurrection before. I really did enjoy how he put it all together, and framed it in such a way that it wasn’t divisive. He also added quite a bit of “what does this mean for us right now” kind of stuff in this book.

I’m interested in reading most of his other books. I’ll probably do his three part series(The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God and The Resurrection of the Son of God) and What Saint Paul Really Said first. But before that I’ve got to finish A Primer on Postmodernism and Missional Church.

We are back. We actually came home last night instead of tonight because of a few things(the sun hating me, the park ranger giving us a bad weather report, etc), but have taken today to do nothing.

We spent Sunday night through Wednesday camping at the Frisco campground on Hatteras island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Wednesday we went down to Ocacroke for the day, then drove up to Chesapeake, Virginia to stay the night. We went to Colonial Williamsburg yesterday and then came home afterwards.

The first couple of days were some of the most relaxing of my life. I read all of N.T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus on Monday and Tuesday. I’ll post more about it later. I think we would have enjoyed the whole trip more if we just spent it like we spent the first couple of days. Oh well, you live and you learn.

First, major congratulations are in order for Jamie and Cara Shey Havlicsek!!!! As of tonight they are husband and wife! I’m really sorry we couldn’t be there to celebrate with them, but we wish them the best!

And second, we leave for our vacation tomorrow morning. I’m pretty excited about it. Camping on the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for 5 days. We have been packing and gettings things ready. Should be a blast! I’ll blog when we get home.