Article
November 27, 2022
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by Richard Wood

A Little College Football Rant

Jay Bilas always says on a certain Sunday in March, “Don’t tell me who you lost to, show me who you beat.” With that, let’s compare Team A and Team B.

Team A and Team B both have identical 10-2 records and 6-2 in conference play. Both losses by Team A and Team B were on the road.

Team A has 2 wins against teams ranked in the top 10.

Team B has 0 wins against teams ranked in the top 10.

Team A finished the season beating a 5-6 team by 56 points on the road.

Team B finished the season beating a 5-6 team by 22 points at home.

Team A defeated Team B in the regular season.

Looking at this, it should be clear that Team A should be ranked ahead of Team B, but yet because of privilege, and because ESPN and everyone else focuses on who you lose to, Team B will be ranked ahead of Team A.

Team A is Tennessee.

Team B is Alabama.

Tennessee may not be deserving of the College Football Playoff, but neither are Alabama nor LSU. Tennessee does deserve a NY6 bowl over them.

Article
January 17, 2022
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by Richard Wood

44

I am very late in posting this birthday post (backdated to January 17). I woke up on my actual birthday and writing a blog post seemed to be the furtherest thing from my mind. All things considered, I feel incredibly lucky to be alive.

This past year has been something else. While I have managed to avoid COVID, I did not manage dealing with some self-destructive choices that led me spending six months of last year living somewhere other than my house. That time away led to a lot of introspection and reflection on some horrible choices I made, realizing that I needed help to overcome my own demons, and to let go of some control. Basically, I shipwrecked my life and found myself floating, holding on to anything that would keep me afloat.

The process of healing is hard, both for me and for others. Yet I feel thankful for my family and friends who have stood with me as I attempt to take the broken pieces of my life and put them back together.

Nothing about this past year has felt normal. It’s hard to plan when so much is changing. My middle school classes have been Petri dishes and I spend most of my days wearing an uncomfortable KN-95 mask and sitting behind a desk covered with plexiglass. It’s taken a toll on me physically, mentally and emotionally. All I want to do with my free time is sleep.

The past year brought some uncomfortableness physically. On one hand, I realize that I’m 44 and not 24 now. I got back into officiating football and soccer, and while I love it for numerous reasons that I’ll explain another time, it has caused its share of aches and pains that I didn’t notice before. I really started to relate to this Garth Brooks song.

I don’t have any particular wisdom to share right now. I don’t feel worthy of dispensing it. Perhaps the best thing I can share is that no matter what you are feeling, keep ROWing.

This year, I want to focus more on my wife and daughter and get out of my head. I want to reconnect with old friends and listen to more music. I want to be a content creator instead of a content consumer. And I just want to enjoy life more.

Article
December 23, 2021
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by Richard Wood

Getting back to the blog

LL Cool J once said, “Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years.” Tony Kornheiser once wrote a book entitled, “I’m Back for More Cash.” Both Michael Jordan and Gonzalo “Papi” Le Batard announced returns by simply saying, “I’m back.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m back from neglecting my little corner of the Internet for far too long now. There’s been a couple of things that have motivated me to start writing on here a little more often now. First, I still feel like I have some things to say. Other than my classroom on the end of a hall, I don’t have a pulpit anymore to say things that I feel need to be said. I’ve been reading some of my old sermons lately and I still feel that urge to preach while I minister to my eighth graders while teaching them about American and North Carolina history. Second, I’m fed up with my online existence being controlled behind a walled garden of voices shouting into the void. About a month ago, I deactivated Facebook in order to still keep my sanity. All I did was get angry or depressed every time I opened the app. Also, I don’t want anything I say or write to be controlled by a corporation or to disappear at any moment.

I’ve heard many people over the years about how it’s better to have your own space, so I feel the need to cultivate mine here. So while I’ll still hang out on Twitter because it’s my preferred social media of choice, most of the time you will find me here, because I don’t want to be chained to a corporation for my digital identity anymore. This time, I plan to stick to it.

Article
January 17, 2021
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by Richard Wood

43

I turned 43 today. As I sit here and reflect on this day, I feel very fortunate to be alive and writing this post, since I skipped last year. I haven’t been posting on here as of late, but with the way social media has been heading, now seems to be a good time to once again curate my own space on the world wide web.

Over the past year, I’ve started a new career as a middle school social studies teacher. It certainly wasn’t where I thought I would be, but after I found myself without a job during this pandemic, the nudging of some close people in my life led to that door opening. It’s been difficult to teach in this particular environment, but I must say that I am enjoying what I am doing, and have seen this more of a calling as of late.

Life has been pretty hectic at the moment. I’ve been dealing with some personal issues and some health issues, and they seem to interconnect with one another. It’s been difficult to plan in this environment, but lately I’ve been trying to think more about long-term goals rather than short-term gratification. One think I hope to do is to turn this space into a hub for projects I want to achieve over the next year or two.

So here’s to mending broken relationships, dreaming new dreams, daring to try something new, not being afraid to fail, and seeing where God leads from here.

Article
March 10, 2019
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by Richard Wood

Gardner-Webb going to the Big Dance!

Today, Gardner-Webb defeated Radford in the finals of the Big South Conference Tournament to earn their first ever NCAA tournament berth. It’s one thing to be at a school that seems to go every year, but it’s something special to watch your school get there for the first time. Seeing this moment above made me weep tears of joy. I’m looking forward to Selection Sunday next week.

It seems lately when I browse through Facebook, a friend of mine posts something politically polarizing that just makes me shake my head. I’ve tried to stay away from political posts, considering that my friends vary all across the political (and theological spectrum). I did make a post that I didn’t intend to be political, but because it involved an incident in the political world, the discussion went off the rails in a hurry and I was left with regret for posting it.

That said, when I see all these politically-charged posts, it makes me consider leaving Facebook. The thought only lasts a few minutes until I remember that I’ve done and do quite a bit of pastoral care via Facebook. So now, when the politically-charged posts begin to be too much, I just click the button to close the browser window. Setting limits and not posting can be the best thing to do. As coach Herm Edwards once said, “Don’t press send.”

Despite the well-known challenges, it is self-defeating for pastors in particular to declare their moral superiority to everyone else and walk away from social media. We may not like the present reality of how people communicate, but it is the present reality. When we opt out, we remove our voices from the conversation and fail to be informed about what others are doing and saying.

A new study from New York University and Stanford University has reported that people who deactivated their Facebook accounts for a month felt less politically polarized but were demonstrably less informed.

Source: Why ministers shouldn’t walk away from social media

Quote
February 10, 2019
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by Richard Wood
Article
January 17, 2019
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by Richard Wood

41

I mentioned in my blog post for last year that I was going to be more intentional about “creating margin” over the next year. In some ways, it happened, due to some intentional steps, but also some unexpected unintentional steps. Having this margin allowed for some time to reflect on my life, realizing that I had spent way too much time living in some type of “organized chaos” without any real focus on much of anything. Some recent time off work after Christmas helped me to gain some focus again in order to be more proactive instead of reactive.

Probably the biggest achievement over the past year professionally has been the research and implementation of live-broadcasting the worship services at my church on a relatively low budget, along with updating the look of the website within the confines of a template. Neither are where I want them to be, but I dare say that both are probably the best quality compared to others in the area. All that said, now that I’ve got past a couple of major projects over the past couple of years, I feel the need to get back to some basics of ministry, to focus more on people instead of tasks, and to be more pastoral.

Healthwise, despite currently being on “injured reserve” due to a pinched nerve resulting from a recent car accident, I feel that I’m in the best shape I’ve been over the past 20 years. I decided a few months ago to plan my workouts over the course of two-week intervals and became part of a group of guys who play basketball in the pool at the local YMCA three mornings as week. We play 21. The games can get intense, but the result is a great cardio workout. My A1C level has been the lowest it’s been since I became a Type-2 diabetic, and I’ve been able to come off two of the four medications over the past year I’ve been taking.

Recently, I came across the phrase mens sana in corpore sano, which is translated from Latin to mean, “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” I’ve done a lot to get what I feel is a healthy body, and I want to work more on the healthy mind. I’ve incorporated meditation into a regular practice, using the app Oak by Kevin Rose. I also want to focus on creating healthy habits in order to alleviate the stress that life brings, including a focused devotional time and journaling.

If you haven’t noticed by now, my theme for the upcoming year is focus. I felt over the past year that I just allowed life to happen and in some ways just ended up surviving a lot of days. Now, I want to be more of a “captain and commander” of my time, as David Allen puts it. So more intention will be put in to the day-to-day operations of life. I want to read more, to write more (since obviously the last post in from a year ago), and to continue to work on the work-life balance and mind-body balance. Now that I’m in my early-forties, I’m excited to see where all of this will take me.