Playing The Interview Game

Carmon of Buried Treasure started this game this morning. I’m being interviewed by Rebecca of Rebecca Writes. If you want to participate, the instructions follow my answers to the questions which Rebecca asked of me.

1. This question assumes that your church is liturgical. If I’m wrong, you can ignore this question or ask for a different one. What is one strength you see in liturgy? I think that liturgy does two important things: 1. It balances the service between those who lead and those who are in the pew. In this way worship becomes a collaborative process that makes everyone intimate participants. 2. It adds significant elements of symbol and mystery into the worship process touching us in ways that aren’t always obvious. Symbol and mystery are important biblically and having them part of worship adds significant depth to the experience.

2. What happened to the Knowing God series? It is still going on with my group of men; we are doing the first half of chapter 18 this Saturday. I have slipped horribly on my blogging though. I went through a combined period of leaving my old church, finishing my security clearance, switching my web host, and being inundated with work. Then I got sick. Lions, and tigers and bears, oh my. The goal is to resume next week on Thursday with chapter three and then post one chapter a week from then on until completion. All prayers are appreciated.

3. What’s the best book you’ve read in the last 12 months? I could get out of this one by saying Knowing God and that wouldn’t be fudging it at all, but I believe I should pick another one. The only other books that I have read all the way through have been fiction and I greatly enjoyed reading Ted Dekker’s [Flash required] trilogy: Black, Red, and White aka The Circle Trilogy Series which comes in a three volume set. I have been reading a lot of fiction in the last year getting ready to finish my first novel in my Moses series, The Chronicles of the Lawgiver: Destiny’s Passage.

4. Are you a morning person or a night owl? I can be either. I have no problem getting up at 5 am and going right to work, but I tend to be a night owl, sometimes working till one or two in the morning. I am ADD, really, and I do best when there are no distractions. When everyone is asleep (including the animals) it is easy to concentrate. The daytime is somewhat ok while my wife and daughter are at work, but it has lots of interruptions, including email, telephone calls, the animals, neighbors (I work at home), and a myriad of other things. But working at home beats working at an office no matter what small problems interupt you during the day.

5. How did you meet your wife? That was an interesting experience. Anna Marie was moving from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Orlando, Florida and stopped to see her sister in Baltimore, both to visit and get her last check cashed. It was Wednesday January 5th. Her sister and her husband, with whom I attended church, asked me to come over after dinner and see if I could witness to her about the Lord. They considered her a “wild” party girl and someone who leaned to the countercultural side. They thought that I, a former hippie type, could relate to her.

I arrived about 6:45 pm, just as they were finishing dinner and joined them for desert. It was obvious from the start that Anna Marie didn’t want to have anything to do with me, but we eventually sat down on the living room floor opposite each other and began talking. The conversation started about 8 pm and when I left at 2:30 am, she had cried in my arms, accepted the Lord, and prayed a sinner’s prayer. For various reasons she ended up staying longer than she had anticipated. That Saturday she visited a college friend in Washington, DC and told her she had met the man she was going to marry (after three days!). Two weeks later we were engaged. We were married on May 28 of the same year and this year we will celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary. We have one daughter.

Here’s how you can play the interview game:

1. Leave me a comment saying “interview me.” I will interview up to five participants.
2. I will respond by asking all of you five questions in a single post for everyone to see, so that they can navigate to your answers.
3. You will then update your blog/site with the answers to my questions.
4. Part of your participation is to include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post as your answers.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions to continue expanding this little exercise in getting to know each other. (Write your own questions or borrow some from someone else–no matter.)