I put my grandmother on speed dial. I call that instagram.

OCD cookie jar

Building the coop without a plan has come back to bite me. Nothing I can't fix with a sawsall and a couple of new 2x4's, but my layout doesn't work.
Neither does the outlet on the porch, which quit mid-morning for no apparent reason.
Or the compressor, which just as suddenly decided to FAIL.
Yeah, it wasn't the morning I'd hoped.

It's supposed to start raining tonight and not stop until March Thursday, with nearly 2" by that point. So more work on mi gallinero will have to wait for a few days.

One of the advantages of growing older is a sense of perspective. Watching the next great thing promise improved results only to be replaced a few years later by another new paradigm that has its brief moment in the spotlight reminds us that, as Solomon said, "There is nothing new under the sun."

How many revolutions has the classroom been through over the last 40 years in math, and reading, and social studies? (Do they even use that term anymore?)

Because my work life has been spent in the local church, as a pastor and as a ministry studies professor, I've watched that dynamic at work in my field as well.

In the 80's and early 90's the church growth movement promised to transform the local church by applying a business model to ministry. Careful statistical tracking, effective advertising, retention strategies...

In the late 90's and into the 00's the seeker movement dominated. Drama, videos, blue jeans and untucked button-downs, almost no music...everything carefully designed to draw in the unchurched or church refugee. Church isn't for the believer, it should be designed for the seeker. That means getting rid of anything that smells like church and would therefore be off-putting to the seeker.

Now we're well into the missional church era. Here the church doesn't try to draw people in, but prepares its people to go out in mission to their natural community. Church programs are at least suspect, if not discarded outright. The missional strategy can't be programmed, it has to be natural and dynamic, and conducted at the individual level. The goal of the church isn't to attract to a product but to disperse to ministry.

These movements all have some things in common. Each has had its leaders, speakers and authors who serve as the high priests, drawing acolytes who hang on their every word.
Each starts out fighting to be heard, gains a wider acceptance, and, when the revolution fails to bring the promised results, fades away while the next great thing emerges.
And each has a measure of truth to its premise.
The church should pay attention to how and why it does the things it does.
The church should be easy and welcoming to those who come in from the cold.
The church should understand it was always meant to be in the world (but not of the world), each of us reaching out to those within our personal circles.

But this old man thinks that while each next great thing has something to offer, two thousand years of history suggests there's something to be said for what was and what, I'm pretty sure, will be.