What is really Tithe?

Ok.  I'm really trying to figure this out and I am totally torn. I fully believe that all mine and Marty's money is God's and we are blessed to have every penny and we only have every penny because of Him.  Our church is a small church and like most churches are having financial issues because the world is having financial issues.  One of the first things that people cut back on when their money gets tight is their money to the church.  Marty and I are really wanting to do our part and feel it is our obligations to follow the word of God but here is where I'm confused.  Is tithe 10% of our gross or our net?

Now I'm not trying to split hairs here or to short God.  I would give him 20% if I could but I would like to know where the line is.  Here is why I ask.  (I'm using round fake numbers here to make the math easier and to not just say I make X amount so don't read anything into the numbers.  If you want to know my income, call me.  I've got nothing to hide but I'm not publishing it on the net.)  I make a good salary.  As does Marty.  And because of that Uncle Sam really likes to collect "his fair share".  From my salary is taken: retirement, social secrity, state taxes, federal taxes, health care insurance, dental insurance, FICA, TSP.  This equates to 49% of my gross income that I never, ever see.  At least I will see some (I pray) when I retire (which I will tithe on then), but 49% that is not available for use by Marty or me to pay any bill or use as we would like.  So if I make $500 a week, Uncle Sam gets $246 a week and Marty and I get $254 a week.

So if Marty and I give $25.40 a week to the church, are we considered tithers?  Or must we give $50.00 a week? 

I'm really serious about this because my goal is to be a tither.  I just don't know what that really is.  This year we are reaching down and doing the 10% of net for the first time and it is really going to be scarifical giving.  I don't know how the money will stretch each month, though I know God does.  I guess that's why it bugs me so much because I want to be called  tither but if it's gross I don't know if I have the faith to make that jump.

Hearing the Calling

Every since Marty went on his Walk to Emmaus walk April 2006, he has been trying to discern the feelings God has been stirring within him. Marty is a cradle Methodist, which means he was born to a family that attended church regularly all his life because they had attended church all their life and that denomination has always been Methodist.

Marty was raised in two very different Methodist churches though. His home church and the one he was baptist and confirmed in was Pulaski Height UMC in Little Rock and it is very high church. They are televised and have 4 or 5 associate pastors as well as the senior pastor. Then there was his Grandmother Bowie's church in rural McCool, Mississippi. That church had an a circuit pastor, which they shared with two other churches. The pastor would preach at one church, travel to the next and preach and then travel to the last church and preach. The congregation was small, maybe 10 or 20 when Marty was growing up with those hard pews with no padding and there was a little elderly woman who always played the piano. It was a very broad church experience to say the least.

Pastors are also common in his family. His Uncle John (Dad's older brother) is a retired United Methodist pastor and John's son Scott is a United Methodist pastor.

Well he has been wrestling with: is he or isn't he being called by God to preach. He's currently a lay speaker by taking lay speaker 1 and 2 classes offered by the United Methodist Church, but the path before him has a few options. He can try to go to seminary and become an ordained minister, he can do some seminary but only become a local pastor or he can just continue to be a lay speaker. He doesn't know which is the path that God has planned for him but today was the first of a feel many times to come.

Today I got the humbling pleasure to hear him preach for the first time. Rev. Aubrietta Jones is on maternity leave from Old Austin UMC and she had asked Marty to fill in on one of the days she was off. Today was that day. It seemed very fitting that it was Father's Day to be his first sermon. His Dad and Mother came along with me and the girls, but also Emily Bredfield brought her girls. Which was very fitting because the first person I heard express their option to Marty that he should pursue preaching was Chip. I am truly sorry that Chip wasn't here to hear him though, but Emily and the girls were there for him. I don't know who was more nervous, me or Marty but it would be close. Then during offering they played Mercy Me's song "Here with Me" and the video. I lost it. The tears started and there was just no stopping them. The pride I felt being there in the Lord's presence knowing Marty was doing something he was called to do. I can't describe it any more then I could turn the tears off. It was so awesome and he did such a great job. I couldn't be more proud.

I love you Marty. What ever path God calls you down, I will be right behind you with my love and support.

Just another month in the Bowie house

It's not that I have a boring life but that it's just isn't all that interesting when I decide to post. Guess I could start with catching you up from my last post.

Several things have happened that I'd like to share.

Erin has ran her first 1 mile race. On March 14th, she, along with her fellow students in the running club at Magness Creek, participated in the Little Rockers Marathon. Though she didn't run the whole thing, she did get away from the TV and participated. She really has enjoyed running club this year and her Daddy is so very excited that he has decided that he would start running with her. Not a lot of running has been done yet, so don't be looking for them in the next Marathon, but who knows.

I don't know if I mentioned it before but in January Emily took the Duke Tip Explorer ACT test. This is offered to GT students as a challenge and a gage as to where they are at an early age. We received her test scores finally and out of a possible total composit score of 25, Emily scored 20. She made a perfect score in one part of the English and a 99% on the second part of the English.

Marty and I are so blessed to have two wonderful students.

The girls and I finally talked Marty into a new dog. On Saturday the 4th of April, we went to the Cabot City Animal Shelter and adopted a 4 month old German Shepard/Boxer mix. The girls named her Ginger and she is one sweet pup. She is an indoor/outdoor dog at the moment and is doing very well. She has learned to sit and not doing to bad on the house breaking. The biggest obstacle is her and Snowbelle. They will come to terms soon enough but it does get interesting if someone accidently lets go of Ginger's leash and Snowbelle is in the same room.

My junior troop has finished it's Bronze Award. WaaHoo. This is a big first step for them and has been a small chore this years due to some lack of planning on my part, but it is now done and all the girls will be receiving their Bronze pin on May 17th from the council.

Emily and Erin will both be bridging to the next level of scouts this year. Emily is becoming a Cadette and Erin is becoming a Junior. It is amazing to me at how much they love scouts. It is so much fun watching them and listening to them as they explore new things through scouts.

Well, Emily and Chip Bredfield and family are moving to Arkansas. On May 15th they will arrive from Germany. Chip and Emily were just here to find a house and their prayers were answered as they are now owners of a beautiful house on the south side of town. My only dislike of the house is it's location (the south side of town) but it is gorgous. My girls are so excited about them getting that house because it has an awesome playhouse that came with it and there is talk of a pool. We keep telling Emily and Erin that it isn't their house but Chip and Emily may be finding themselves with 6 daughters insted of 4. LOL. Sorry Chip.

I got to see Tiffany!!!!!! It was a whirl wind visit but I got to see and hug and chat with Tiffany. It's amazing at how fast that visit went by. She is looking good and the kids have grown sooooo much. Alexis is 2 or 3" taller then Emily. Course we knew she would be tall but gees. I've got a really good photo of Emily and Alexis going through Emily's yearbook from last year. I'll post it soon.

We had a wonderful Good Friday service on our church property. Some 50+ people were there and the service was awesome. The Men's Ministry did a fabulous job cleaning up the property for the service and though somewhat cold, the fire was perfect.

She blogs!!!!

Well now that March has come and gone and April is almost too, thought it would be a good time to catch you up. Not that anyone reads this anyway, but here goes.

Severe Weather

We have had record severe weather here in Arkansas. Snow at the first of March, then rain that caused flooding and then tornadoes that came way too close to home and then more rain and more flooding.

I am trying to figure out how to get my old camcorder hooked up so I can share the video I shot of the Arkansas River. It is absolutely amazing to see the river completely out of it's banks. I drove over to our construction site by the White River and was just in total awe of the magnitude of water. You have to see it to believe it. I saw it and still can't wrap my mind around it. It's actually a good thing that our project is stopped for litigation because that site is under water.

The tornadoes where a little too close for comfort and too many of my friends were even closer then I like. There was officially 10 come through from one wall cloud. I just consider it one that just kept touching down but they call it 10 separate ones. Marty and I were watching TiVo TV so we were behind on the warnings that were coming out. We had just caught up with real time when we really started looking at the path projections. I don't usually get worked up about storms (guess I've been through too many that were nothing) so we don't normally even do more then just watch the broadcast but for some reason we both felt that we needed to get up and get dressed for the weather. So we did and we even got the girls out of their beds and put them in ours. I've NEVER done that. (They slept through it though.) About that time, the phones started ringing. First Mom, because it had just past her and she knew it was projected at us. While I was talking with Mom, John called Marty's phone. I called Stacey because they are just down the street from us and if it was coming our way it had to pass them first. Her family went next door then to a neighbors storm cellar so I didn't have to worry about her. Marty called his mom while I talked to Stacey. She said that it wasn't bad there because it had gone east of them. Christine called me after I got off the phone with Stacey. They were doing well but they were concerned. Their power went out while we were on the phone. We had lost satellite but we still have an air wave TV in the kitchen so we could still see the news plus Marty has his ham radio license. So I stayed on the phone with her. The tornado turned and took the path it had taken when it wiped out Cabot in the 70's. Which was a lot closer to Christine than to us. Like I said too close. They didn't have any damage but there was lots of damage around the city park/pool off of Richie Lane. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep that night. I was on the phone calling friends to check on them.

Later I found out I had friends even closer then I knew: Laura, Melanie, Mr. & Mrs. Merritt, Ronnie & TJ.

It did a lot of damage to the baseball field at Sylvan Hills and my old high school, Sylvan Hills High.

Emily

The other things that have been happening is that Emily has started singing with the Praise Band at church on Sundays. She is really good and is starting to not look scared to be up there. Again if I can get through some technical challenges I'll post some video of her.

She decided that she wanted to do a talent show, so she looked in the paper and found the "Babies and Children's ABCExpo". She was very serious about it and kept reminding us what date and that she really wanted to go. So we took her. She performed Hannah Montana's "Rock Star" for the audition. They only took the top 10 talents for the show. She didn't make the show but she was great about it. She did well but it was her first audition and there were many of the "pageant/talent show" kids that were there also. Who knows, we maybe doing it again.

She is working hard at the moment on getting ready for her second piano recital. She is working on 4 pieces. I don't know the day of the recital yet but will be posting about it soon.

Erin

Little Miss Sunshine is working hard at school. She is still struggling with reading and writing. So if you get a letter from her, would you please be her pen pal? She doesn't like story writing so we are trying to let her write letters to friend telling about her life to get her to practice. She just finished benchmark testing at school and said that it was easy, so lets hope we're moving in the right direction. I do think the glasses have helped though.

Church

We have our first annual Easter Egg hunt and it was a huge success. I got to do the planning this year but I hope to have someone serve as Family Events coordinator and take that off my plate. We had it at a new members home and it was fabulous. They have huge yard out in the country. It worked out great except that it was really wet from loads of rain that we have been getting. Didn't dampen any ones spirits though and we all had a fabulous egg hunt for over 1500 eggs.

On Palm Sunday, the kids started the service with a parade of palm branches then stole the show with a performance of two songs. It was so wonderful to see the kids sing "Come to Jesus" and "Get Up, Get Up". Again, if I can get the technology worked out, I know where a video of it is.


There is more but I guess I can try to type that soon.

Exciting Weekend

Wow! What a fun weekend we had. Saturday evening my junior troop got together for our annual pumpkin carving. It is so much fun to watch the girls as they clean out their pumpkins and then to start work creating their master piece. Most of these girls started this when they were in second grade. As they have grown their skills have grown and we had some very awesome pumpkins this year.

Troop 130 Pumpkins

Then there was the first annual Christ UMC Trunk n Treat. What an amazing turn out! I had my concerns but of course God took care of all of it. We had 8 trunks and 8 activities, plus music, a space walk and hot dogs with chips and drinks. They counted 170 people at 6:00 pm. There is no telling how many people went through total. I can't wait to plan next years event. Course I have to get through Christmas, Easter and VBS first.

Jonah and the Big Fish

Me and my buddy

Thank you Lord for all the blessing in my life

VBS is over Wahoo

Okay, I can finally get back to blogging. Last week was VBS and I had NO time to set at my computer. If I wasn't at VBS, then I was back at work working on a deadline that came up. Both are complete now so I have more time.

Well, okay, no I don't but it isn't as hectic at the moment.

I do need to call a Children's Ministry meeting and a Scout Leaders meeting; plan the Back to School Scout party; the Emmaus Quarterly is on the 5th of Aug; Marty's birthday is the 4th of Aug; Mom's birthday is the 6th, Bryce's birthday is the 12th, Dylan's birthday is the 22nd; there's a walk the 9th-11th; disciple IV starts the 19th; School starts back the 20th; our first scout meeting of the year is the 6th; and the Sunday School promotion day is the 19th.

I did say it wasn't hectic didn't I????

Any how VBS is over for another year and was a huge success and there were an average 90 kids there. Most we had never seen and some that are promising to come back in the fall and Kristi has already said that she wants to be the director next year. She's already looking into the 2008 VBS material and is excited about it. That is awesome!!!!!!!!!