Praxis Church Missional Community Promo from Praxis Church on Vimeo.

Following this link will take you to the videos mentioned in the promo. There is a great explanation about the groups and then a few interviews about what being a part of them has done for some people.
My church runs over a 1,000 people on a Sunday divided into two missions and three services. An optimistic estimate would be to say that a fifth of those people are in a MC, so there is a lot of room for improvement.

The situation I wrote about in my last post is still on my mind all too often. I had a big paragraph written out about it and then decided that it’s exactly the sort of thing that didn’t need to be written… so I un-wrote it.
It’s about 95 degrees here, which means it’s “fall”. It also means that I’m not confined to an air conditioned box all day.
I’m going for a walk, take it easy.

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The way things fall

Friday before last I was driving down Pecos Road away from work and I looked down to see my car had just passed a little landmark. My reliable yet loathed Oldsmobile Alero had just reached 100,000 miles. “Good little car” I thought as I pulled out my phone and carefully snapped a picture. I pushed down Pecos and got on i10 towards Tempe. A little bit after the Warner Road exit I changed into the middle lane and just as I settled in the lane a huge grey truck to my left decided he too wanted in the middle lane. I swerved right and then left, became perpendicular to traffic and I clearly remember saying “Oh God, help.” I kid you not, those could have been my last words. If I had been t boned that would have been it for me. I really believe that I was protected… my luck just isn’t that good on its own. :)
I hit the center divider almost head on. The scrapes and paint would later show that my car’s front end almost crested the k-rail. I was tossed around a bit, but I had my seatbelt on and thankfully the airbags didn’t deploy. I was pretty shook up, I think three cops asked me if were sure I was ok even half an hour after it happened.

So the Alero was done. My insurance offered me a good amount for it. Truthfully it was more than I could have ever hoped to sell the thing for. I spent the last half of my week looking and found a nice car for a good price.

It’s a 2008 Dodge Avenger, low miles and a lot of great features. Even if it’s just another vanilla American used car it does at least look more aggressive than the Alero. I don’t buy into the “American car” myth, the parts on any car are just as likely to be made in Elkhorn as they are in Harbin. My car was assembled in Michigan though, which I like… that plant is scheduled to close sometime next year.
The car’s also got an AUX port for my iPod, that’s worth $12,000 by itself right?

I lost a friend this week. No one died, no one moved. Nothing was decided, nothing was changed. It seems things just came to their logical end. I cut ties and almost immediately felt lonely. It was a great friendship… a year and a half ago. It’s done now and I’d love to just get to a point where I really only remember the first two years I knew her. Before I screwed all this up.
I’ve really let her down, that’s by far the worst part.
Urban Outfitters announced last week that they would make available some Polaroid instant cameras in their stores. These are literally the last ones made… the first thing that came to my mind was how much I wanted to buy one for Andy. :/

Take it easy, I’m off for a nice drive in my new car. :)

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Too much in one week

Praxis Arcadia Launch Promo from Praxis Church on Vimeo.

At work my project just keeps getting longer. Color correction that should have gotten started this week is now slated for early September. This delay, like most thankfully, are not my fault, but it’s sorta at my expense. I’ll take the next month to work on the later stages of the project so it’s not like I’m left without. I really just want to be done with this DVD though, it was originally going to be done in June.

I’ve had a rude realization about my own stubbornness this weekend. It seems someone can tell me something very true and rather detrimental right to my face and I still won’t accept it. I like to think that I can follow through on things, especially matters of the heart. I really want to believe I am doing what I think is right. Maybe I just want my way for the sake of getting my way, I hope not. If this is a hill I’m willing to die on, I hope it’s at least the right hill.

All in all, I’ve decided that I don’t have time to dwell on things I’ve rehashed in my mind hundreds of times. I have a good week ahead of me. :)

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No more time for thought.

I’m still loving my new place, and am getting to spend a lot of time there. I still can’t really explain to you how nice it is to be done with school. I got myself a little dining room table and a couple of chairs last weekend, which pretty much wraps up furniture. The place is pretty well filled out and now I just need a few things on the walls.

Work is getting interesting. I’ve had the concert portion of the concert and behind the scenes documentary done for a while now. I sent off some QTs to the producer this week to have the music mixed. I have had a little commercial to work on for the last few weeks, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I got the final approval on monday and have been trying to jump back into this documentary ever since.
It’s really hard to know where to start, I have literally days worth of footage. I have had the luxury of watching all of it, so I now know what is there. Although I can’t say that has helped me start cutting like I thought it would. I bought myself some time this week by down-converting the interviews that were shot HDV. The DVD is being produced anamorphic NTSC, and the way AVID MC was down-converting the footage was just horrendous. I’ve decided to just start cutting stories together from the interviews. There are obviously experiences that each one of the band members talk about and I think piecing them together with some B roll should be a good start. The main guy, the one this whole DVD is built around, doesn’t really have very good interview material though, getting enough of him into those stories is going to be tricky. Fans want to see the front man, the other members of the band are in many ways nobodies. I have a couple of months to get this all cut, so I’m not worried about it… I just really want to feel like I’ve made some headway.

I met someone the other day that I can relate to in a way I haven’t been able to with anyone for a while. Being raised as a pastor’s kid is often odd. I love my parents, they did a great job of raising me, I often tell people how lucky I feel to of had such loving role models. However being a pastor is not a full time job, it’s not just something your dad or mom does. It’s your parent’s lives, and as such becomes your life. I talk about my parents and some of the challenges they are facing with very few people. As a matter of fact there use to be just one person down here in AZ who knew what was going on. It was really nice to talk to another PK about it though, a pastor’s kid who’s parents are in a strikingly similar situation even. I couldn’t help but chuckle at both of our hesitation to say how big the congregations were, it’s such a silly thing to be self conscious about.

I cut off all my hair this week, it was time for it to go. I know I’ll want long hair again, and it will be a very awkward year to get back to the length I had. It just wasn’t working out anymore though, my hair is now longer then most, but not long. I am still mulling over just buzzing it all off for my next haircut.

I’m out, take it easy,
David Hildreth

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Hit the switch

If you don’t know who Danny Boyle is you’re a terrible human being. I went to go see his latest: Slumdog Millionaire and no one I went with had any idea who the director was. It’s a shame because the guy has really had a pretty amazing career. He’s just a director that pretty much always makes a great movie, and not just one type of movie either. He stays away from the studios and has to fight for every film but most turn out great. Slumdog is about a young Indian guy who ends up on the local version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. He grew up in a Bombay slum and while he was out doing anything he could to survive his slum was transformed with the rest of the city into Mumbai, a center of commerce and industry. After doing well on the show he is suspected of cheating and relives his life to explain how he picked up the answers to questions an uneducated slumdog never should have known. It’s a great movie so go see it, take the whole family.

Things seem to be have new beginnings lately, not just in my favorite topic of discussion, but in most aspects of my life. It’s not cold and barren here in Tempe, and I think that helps. Nothing is dead here, it’s all still alive, the sky is still just as blue as it is in May. It does a lot for one’s spirit. My new contract job is working out so far, school is going to be over before I know it and things are looking up socially. I have a lot to be grateful for this holiday season, and I’m making a point to stop wondering about what could have been and to just focus on what I have.

Just incase you were wondering… this post’s soundtrack (facebook people follow the original post button below) is that Belle and Sebastian song, you know the one we’ve been listening to and enjoying. I’ve been watching High Fidelity just about every other day lately. It’s just what I need right now.

David Hildreth

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An early spring