Here and Now

Found Online... Seth Godin wrote a couple blog posts last week that I'll comment on this week.  First up is  Unanimous Is Not An Option . Famous words that Lincoln didn't say: "You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time."* Perhaps the worst thing you can do as a leader of any kind is try to make everybody happy.  It'll never happen.  You'll make nobody happy.  Godin asserts that you have to work to "please precisely the right people, and just enough of them, to get your best work out of the door."  Yeah, he's talking business (mostly) but think about anything that involves groups of people.  You'll never please them all - but you need supporters of what you're doing - and in church work you need dedicated supporters.  The bigger the risk, the more ardent the supporters need to be. In my experience the only time you have unanimity ...

From www.almostmakessense.com July 29, 2012 This is EXACTLY how I feel about flavored coffees.  All of them.  What are you THINKING?!??!!

Would that be your state representatives?  No, I'm just kidding.* *I actually have a lot of respect for our state representatives - they put in a lot of hard hours and take a lot of abuse.  It was just a joke, really.

From IMDB I'm watching Batman Begins  with Lori right now.  Tuesday night we went to see  The Dark Knight Rises  and she said, as we were leaving, "Okay, now I'm hooked.  I need to see the other movies." We went to DKR without any fear or trepidation in the wake of the shootings in Aurora at the premiere.  I went because I like superhero movies in general and I've been a fan of Batman since I found reprints of the old 40s comic strips when I was a kid and discovered a darker, more morally ambiguous Batman than the Adam West TV series I grew up with. Lori went because Hines Ward was in it.  That was her whole reason. Whatever her motivation, I'm glad she went. Dark Knight Rises is getting some flak for being plodding or too expositionally heavy or not making enough sense.  Too pretentious.  Too confused.   It's this series' version of The Matrix Revolutions, The Godfather Part III or Caddyshack 2. Nolan's other Batma...

Um... I watched this video because of a link from the band who is the background music...but this is...well, watch the video.... Oh, yeah, the band is  Manic Bloom

Worse if it's a "Free Meth"odist Church?  Sigh...

From Morguefile I saw  this article   about how hot water freezes faster than cold water yesterday and I was reminded of a time when I was in maybe tenth grade and there was a young man, it might have been a guy from  Teen Challenge , who was giving his testimony and during it he said something about being told that hot water freezes faster than cold water. One of my youth leaders, who was a science teacher, spoke up and said that's impossible.  It defies logic.  It can't happen.  She wouldn't let him use the illustration that he was trying to use because, come on, there is no way hot water could freeze faster than cold water. Turns out she was wrong. It's funny that the incident has stuck with me for thirty years - her absolute insistence that she was right to the point of obnoxiousness - the dumbfounded look on the young man's face when she wouldn't let him proceed. Sounds like a Pharisee, doesn't it? And she is a tremendous woman of Go...

Rend Collective Experiment does this great version of Be Thou My Vision - but they've changed the words (well, I don't know if they changed the words - SOMEBODY changed the words) to be updated from "Be Thou" to "You Are" and lots of other little changes from Be Thou my vision from any of the traditional versions I know. I LOVE - I mean absolutely LOVE the musical arrangement (it's even better in the studio recording, in my opinion) - but I so want to hear the words I know - either the very traditional words, or the United Methodized* words - whatever - it's just jarring for me as is... Anyway, here's RCE with "You Are My Vision": Oh, cool, I found somebody posted the studio version too: Now I'm not sure which I like better :) *Yeah, in the UM Hymnal we've conflated a couple verses to get rid of being "I Thy true son" after all, not everybody is a son, you know?  Sigh...  And gotten rid of some...

From Morguefile I read this quote in an article on a hot button issue the other day and it really jumped out at me: "The top priority for the church when engaging new guests is not to point out their sin, but to point to Christ.  A person can only repent if they really know who Jesus is.  People don't repent to an institution or a religious system. but to a person - the person  - of Jesus." * I was just going to put that first sentence out there - it's pretty provocative - considering how we're likely to read it.  Depending on our own biases, we'll stop at different points in that sentence. "The top priority of the church is..." and we already know what WE know the top priority of the church is, so what follows better line up... Or, "The top priority...is not to point out their sin ..." oh no you didn't just say THAT... Or whatever. But, I think there's more to it than just being provocative, and the point is well tak...

  source   A little while ago I posted that  e-readers should replace textbooks  and gave a few reasons.  Let me summarize...or, rather, quote (from the original post): weight:  my kids, especially Rachel, carry sometimes 30 lbs of books home from school memory issues:  ever forget your book at school?  Doesn't happen with e-reader apps for the home computer -and the tablet, right?  No more "I didn't do my homework because I left my book at school." hyperlink:  the aforementioned linking of definitions to words is the tip of the iceberg - think about how you can link all kind of information - within the book and online - the danger is that it's unlimited...how DO you limit it? easy update:  you need to update the history textbooks (say, you discover that the book says the War of 1612, instead of the War of 1812, if it covers wars...wait, that's a different post), or when you want to get the newest edition - heck, a new upda...

Sorry about the Tabloid style subject line* there but, yesterday when I was doing my weekly internet catchup surfing, I caught the video below via  Stuff Christians Like  (which also inspired yesterday's post, by the way). He talks about how almost all country music follows a formula, and then goes on to describe it - and then sing about it.  Pretty funny stuff, actually... Anyway, it's not just country music, of course, that has a formula to it - he's really describing all story songs.  It's just that country music is, well, easy to pick on.  I'm pretty sure what he's saying, though, is straight out of  How to Write a Hit Song ** and Mark Shultz talks about it on  one of his live ablums , too. Doesn't matter.  We love story songs.  True or not, we love the story.  Make us cry, it's okay... Oh, and do you want to hear the "joke song" that he wrote most of in, like, 5 minutes and finished with Matthew West?  (That's a sill...

From Morguefile I ran across a great quote from Brennan Manning.  Not enough to TRULY resurrect  Manning Monday , but a bit of an Off Broadway Revival, if you will... Anyway, here's the quote: "We deem ourselves too inconsiderable to be used even by a God capable of miracles with no more than mud and spit.  And thus our false humility shackles an otherwise omnipotent God." ** Not the kind of false humility I'm used to hearing and reading about.  Usually it's the, "No, I know I'm awesome but I'm going to sort of pretend I don't think I am" kind of thing that we're used to seeing postured by people in all shapes and sizes.  National politicians and professional athletes to garage band heroes and beer-belly softball league pitchers. But that's not what Manning is talking about.  He's talking about a double humility, I think.  First, that I am too small, too worthless for God to be able to use, too little, too frail.  But ...

Wow, who makes up these signs?

From the other day, so true for me.  Dads just don't know - we have to ask, 'cause we know we'll mess it up.  We're not trying to make it harder, honest, we just don't know. Click to see it all -  from July 6, 2012 copyright Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott - no infringement intended

Public Domain - wikipedia Who knew?  We've been conditioned to believe that "get in a group and discuss this" was a good way to generate ideas, spur creativity, generate out of the box thinking.  Turns out, it may not be the best way to do any of that.* A recent article in  Psychology Today  which actually cites research dating back to the 1950s demonstrating that we are probably generate more creative ideas alone than we do in groups.  I think this article may have been the catalyst for a recent Dilbert strip: Click to see all of this - from July 8, 2012 - copyright Scott Adams - no infringement intended I've been a part of so many of these groups they run together, pedestrian activities in group get togethers where a leader has to fill time so he or she says, "Now, get together and share some ideas on how to apply what I just said.  I need to drink some bottled water and look over my notes for a minute."  Oh, that last part is said in th...

We've been having conversations at our churches about what it means to be a member vs. an attender and why membership is or is not important.  A while back, I read these words in a posting on Facebook on Membership and Confirmation by:  Rev. Dr. Jeff Greenway, pastor of  Reynoldsburg United Methodist Church  in Reyndoldsburg, Ohio* From this weekend: What does confirmation and church membership mean to you? It means many things to many people: • To some—it means that we have joined the "club"—and membership has its rights and privileges. We think that we can pay our dues, reserve our parking spot or favorite seat—and sit back as we consume the services that are provided for us. • To others—it means we now have a place to come for Christmas, Easter and Mother's Day—and the high, holy ceremonies of life—to be hatched, matched and dispatched. • To some—it is a testimony that they know they cannot and should not live life the Jesus way in isolation from others...

I'm not ready for it.  Well, not for me (I grew up sometime in the  early to mid 2000s  , I would guess) but for the girls.  Sunday we took them off to pony camp at Wesley Woods - it's Tuesday afternoon, (when I wrote this - published it Wed morning) and I really miss them.  It's not like when they go to grandma's for the week...but I don't know why it's different... When we were waiting in line to check them in, I was holding Rachel close and I whispered, "Are you nervous?" She nodded her head, "Yeah, I'm kinda scared."  She hugged me hard. "It'll be great," I said.  But I don't know if I meant it.  I've never been to camp.  I have to trust these people I don't even know to take care of these two girls who are so precious to me...  But my good friends Michael and Seth know Wesley Woods, they assure me the girls will have a great week. Andy, one of our youth guys, works there and he can check in on them and...

Cobbled together from found pics online - not my copyright It just takes so long... I was reading a post somewhere else about making a decision to stop listening to certain music on iTunes or Spotify or whatever.  To actually hit the delete key and get rid of the songs.  I've done it.  I've gotten rid of movies, albums, deleted files off the computer because I can't in good conscious keep them - maybe it's because of the content of the file - you know, it dishonors God or takes me to a place in my mind or heart that I really just shouldn't go.* "I will set before my eyes no vile thing" Or maybe it's how I got the item - you know, in the digital age, it's really easy - too easy, in fact, to obtain things - songs especially - illegally.  And should we care?  Well, yeah - and so I pay attention to that... ...sometimes. And then I got to thinking about  how many times I've done that.  Downloaded the song.  Deleted it.  Downloaded i...

A few posts back I talked about the idea that  "Rules or limitations or boundaries are ESSENTIAL for creativity." And it makes me realize a whole lot of things.  First of all, we work within boundaries all the time.  Constraints make us creative. Let me start with with a negative (but, well, positive) example: Have you seen  The Shawshank Redemption ?  Talk about an example of creativity within constraints...  Not just attempted  prison   escapes , I talked awhile back about the movie  Jakob the Liar  which was, again, about creativity within constraints.  Oh, not art in the same sense that we think of visual or musical art.  But creativity nonetheless. And it got me thinking about our Creator - establishing certain constraints on the creation and then making it so.  Gravity will work like this.  Love will work like this.  Fish will swim like this.  Why is it so hard to accept that there are rules ...

But everyone can have a shot.

So I'm talking with a couple guys a while ago (maybe 6 weeks or two months or so ago) and I tell them that I'm not eating donuts anymore.  I have a seriously unhealthy relationship with donuts that I've had for a  rather long time * and I decided a few months ago that I needed to kick the habit.  So, we're having this conversation and one of the guys asks why and I say, "Well, for one reason, I've dropped 25 pounds and I don't want to put it back on."  Now, bear in mind, I had lost the 25 pounds while still eating donuts on a semi-regular basis**.  But the time had come to give up donuts. "I want to lose 20 pounds over the summer," says one of the guys.  "I think I will give up donuts, too." And we talk a bit.  We chat about food and stuff.  The first guy says he won't COMPLETELY give up donuts, though - once a month, that's still okay.  The other guy talks about how he sneaks cookies and pudding at work because hi...

"Did you find everything you needed?" "No, actually, you didn't have what we came here for." "Oh, I'm sorry.  That'll be $39.44." EVERY cashier these days is trained to ask the seemingly helpful question, "Did you find everything you needed today?" (or some variant).  But they almost never mean it.  The above exchange actually took place a week or so ago* between my wife and a cashier at a Big Store.  She searched the store for the particular item, asked for help, it couldn't be located, she was told they could order it and have it in by next week.  No, she says.  Then, checking out, the above exchange took place. Now, the people on the floor were somewhat helpful (well, read on) but my point here is, why have the cashiers ask the question if you are not prepared to have them answer it - if they don't have the willingness, authority or ingenuity to solve my problem if I say, no, I didn't in fact find everything I...