Minutes to Memories

I grew up hanging around the Gramling house, a set of three brothers who were unbelievable athletes, along with good friends. Troy was the oldest, and his senior year at our high school went down as the most legendary basketball season in school history. And Troy was the leader.

When Jody and I decided to get married, we asked Troy to perform the ceremony. Over and above being a great athlete, Troy was also one of the most spiritual men in the universe, and we were honored to have him officiate.

The church Troy led in my hometown grew from 50 to over 600 in the time he was there, and about the time we moved to Ocean Springs, he moved on to other locales. We kept in touch by email.

After Hurricane Katrina, the church Troy leads in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, sent some very generous contributions to help our church family. Beyond that, when life had settled down a bit, they paid for my wife and I to fly to South Florida for a weekend just to get away. The picture above is one I took of Troy that Saturday morning when he crawled out of bed to show Jody and I around the amazing campus at Flamingo Road.

I'm afraid to follow John Dobbs' lead in linking to blogs of all my friends, since that is an awesome task. Instead, I just have two linked to the side: John Dobbs (the king of all blogs, and the man who introduced me to blogging), and Troy's.

I was reading Troy's blog this morning and discovered that he had been on CNN last night! I forgot to mention that Troy is the king of all creativity when it comes to church life. His most recent teaching series was titled "ivescrewedup.com," which came complete with a website of the same title. It is, in effect, a cyber-confessional, and the concept is so novel that he was interviewed and featured on the Anderson Cooper 360 show last night.

If you're interested, you can read the transcript HERE.

And, of course, the more interesting website is found HERE.

It's neat to know someone like Troy, someone whose heart for God and impressive talent combine in such a way that the entire world takes notice.