In honor of JD’s departure to the other side of the world, here are the top 5 JD Senkbile stories… at least the top 5 that we can post here.

1. Threnkbile. At Eppley Airfield preparing to depart for Florida, the airline representative pauses as she looks at JD’s driver’s license. “How do you say your last name?” she asks. Looking at his driver’s license apparently for the first time ever (??), JD realizes that instead of Senkbile, his license reads JD 3nkbile. He spends at least 5 minutes convincing the airline rep that the DMV made a mistake, and his name really is Senkbile. Question: how exactly do you not notice this when you GET your driver’s license in the first place? Additional Question: how typing-challenged does a DMV worker have to be to hit the 3 instead of S-E?

2. PVC Training. When he moved to Omaha, JD was in the midst of training to compete in the Golden Gloves boxing tournament. One day I returned from lunch to find Brent (a CD intern) whacking JD’s bare stomach at 3-second intervals with a 6-foot piece of plastic PVC pipe while JD jogged in place. “Deadens the nerve cells,” JD explained. “Makes it so I can’t feel a body punch.”

3. Strong Man. On 10/22/07, JD preached a sermon from Romans called “Jesus, the Strong One.” On 3/2/08, JD preached a sermon from Mark called “Jesus, the Strong Man.” This led to the joke around the office that JD really only had one sermon, and that whatever text he was preaching from, the sermon was going to have something to do with Jesus the Strong Man.

4. “We Look At Porn.” One of the hardest things as a preacher is to know when to preach to the audience (using “you” language) and when to put yourself in the audience (using “we” language). The apostles do both, and so must pastors. JD wasn’t sold on this distinction, until one time when he was really trying to passionately and authentically preach to the men of Coram Deo and said, “Men, why is it that we stay up late and look at pornography on the internet?” The next day Walker and I asked if he needed to talk about anything, since elders are to be “above reproach” (Titus 1:6-7)… obviously when he realized what he had said, the importance of pronouns took on a whole new significance.

5. Driving Lessons. As part of JD’s priestly nature, he really wanted to help some African refugees learn how to drive. So he asked Michele if he could borrow her car – the GOOD car – for the day, because it was an automatic, and JD’s ugly old Honda was a stick-shift. Michele was not sold on the idea; after all, it was their GOOD car. But JD prevailed. After driving to Michele’s workplace to swap cars with her, he picked up some African friends and chose a parking lot that was reasonably empty – only a few cars in it. Including the Ford F-150 which one of our African friends promptly smashed Michele’s car into. Needless to say that was a good day of marital sanctification.