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Buzzword Bingo

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Everybody has buzzwords - business has theirs, the entertainment industry has a lingo, in sports, and in church work we have ours, too. Dilbert the other day had the pointy haired boss try to lead via catchprhases: copyright Scott Adams I have threatened to make up "Buzzword Bingo" cards for Annual Conference. You know, put words like "Holy Conferencing" and "Inclusiveness" and "Core Value" and, oh yeah, "Jesus" on the card and when you get five in a row you can jump up and yell "BINGO", or maybe "Holy Spirit" I don't know... We're not allowed to play bingo, so we definitely shouldn't yell out that word. Maybe if I had people yell out "Hallelujah!" when they got 5 in a row, the powers that be at conference would just assume that the person was powerfully moved by the point being made.* But we would know - and would secretly give them a prize.** The point being that we like to use the t...
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Goodbye, Farewell

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Last Sunday, Larry Norman died. He was 60 years old. Larry is often considered the Father of Christian Rock - or somesuch... He was a pioneer, no doubt about that. There was a lot of controversy that surrounded him - maybe he was hard to work with, I don't know. I've heard that some in the "CCM Industry" who would laud him publicly (and, you know, record his songs and stuff) would criticize him privately. He made some pretty wild accusations, no doubt about that (apparently Larry wrote a song called The Tune that somehow he says Bill Gaither ripped off in the song "God Gave the Song" - okay, maybe he took the CONCEPT, but, really, listen to "The Tune" above, and then listen to this - Bill Gaither talking about "God Gave the Song" - which sounds like, if something was done it was done by Ron Huff...but I digress. I mean, yeah, it's got a lot in common - but...well, I don't know... Larry says that it was Gaither's biggest hit...
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Man, My Sides Hurt

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I’m not sure what to make of all of this. I was looking at Elie (our 2-year-old daughter) the other day. I smiled. She smiled back. I got to thinking about smiling. What a strange way to contort the face, and yet there’s something so inviting and attractive about a smile. It’s the shape our mouths make when we laugh – when we really, naturally, spontaneously laugh. I have in my wallet our family photo from our pictorial directory and the photographer told Lori and I to just smile and wait for the moment that he would snap the picture – HIS concern was to get the girls to smile. So, Lori and I sat with these smiles pasted on our faces, he would act goofy, the girls would laugh and, voila, they’re SMILING. It’s a beautiful picture. I love it. But smiling. What a weird thing to do. You’ve heard the “it takes more muscles to frown than to smile” or some such nonsense (here’s one take on the whole debate that might be worth a quick peek – http://www.snopes.com/science/smile.asp ). Smiling j...
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