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My other hobby
OK, so this isn’t really me. What was the giveaway?
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Off the Nashville
It’s butt early, but I am freshly showered, packed, and waiting on an airport shuttle to take me to the airport. This morning I’m taking the dark flight over to Dallas for my connection. Anyway, just in case I wasn’t clear enough… my blogging will likely be convention-centric for a few days. Don’t worry, I’m back next week to push theological and political buttons.
Now, onto live blogging and daily recap videos.
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Don’t Bail Out US Automakers
All of a sudden, the czar’s of the old guard Big 3 are interested in Washington again. (By Big 3 I mean Ford, GM, and Chrysler, not the real big 3 of Toyota, Honda, and Ford.) The news is full of stories of their CEO’s begging for federal bailout money to keep afloat. I can hear the words from here, “We only want $25 billion.” They probably each took their own corporate jets over there and are staying at $10,000 per night suites.
Here’s why giving the Big 3 $25 billion is a bad idea:
#1 Their problem isn’t bad loans, it’s bad labor contracts. I lived in Detroit for 5 years and I was totally sickened by labor practices. Over the last few generations an entitlement attitude has run rampant among workers. In short, until they can clean house and only keep the best workers regardless of union status or seniority any bailout will just be wasted on pouring more money into a broken vessel. Most people don’t know this, but they pay people not to work! They want federal dollars to keep paying people not to work! For $25 billion we need a federal right to work law. People should have a choice whether to join a union or not. Closed shops should be outlawed in every state… especially Michigan. Face a fact… unions were great at one point, but have helped bankrupt the auto industry.
#2 Their problem isn’t bad loans, it’s over-generous retirement plans. In the last few year’s they have gotten wise and started buying people out. But the Big 3 are levied with a tax their competitors don’t pay… pensions. (Most have been structured on 401k plans since day one.) Until they can shed those pension problems the federal government shouldn’t give them a dime. I don’t think that they should just fore go the pensions. I think, once and for all, they should sell those debts off and let someone try to make a buck on distributing those dollars.
#3 Their problem isn’t bad loans, it’s trying to sell cars people don’t want. Have you walked on a car lot lately? The Chrysler cars mostly look like space ships. The Ford ones look like Tonka trucks. The GM ones look like cars from the 1980s. I know that’s judgmental and I’m uneducated. But I was recently looking to buy a new car and literally laughed on most of the “U.S. Automaker” lots. For 20+ years they have whined about “foreign cars” on their market. The reason people aren’t buying them isn’t because they hate America, it’s because Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen, and the rest are selling cars people want to drive.
I have no doubt that the auto industry will get bailed out. They will become federally subsidized, just like the airline and farming industries. If it’s not the $25 billion today it’ll be $100 billion next week. My only hope is that in getting the money they will start to repair the damage.
Meanwhile, I hope Michigan continues to look for a new economy. I hope they invest in the health care industry, technology, and financial industry. Michigan is full of amazingly brilliant people who want to succeed. Let’s hope that they get it sorted out soon!
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NYWC Nashville: Pre-thoughts
I am geeked about going to Nashville in a couple days. I know what you’re thinking, having been to Sacramento and Pittsburgh NYWC how can I possibly be excited about a 3rd one?
- Oddly enough, a room full of youth workers always gets me excited.
- Nashville is the “big show” on our circuit. There will be more people in Nashville for NYWC than currently live in Romeo, Michigan. No lie.
- I get to hang out with my live blogging crew for nywc.com/live. Ryan, Shawn Michael, Jason, and Andy.
- More time chilling with my new homie, Andy Marin.
- Unlimited time cracking up with Cathy and meeting folks while shooting future episodes of the YS Podcast. I think we get so tired that pretty much everything is funny to us. But it’s still a good time.
- Friday’s General Sessions will electrify an already excited audience. Don’t make plans for after the general session… you want to go to the talkback sessions, trust me.
- Other than one time where I was at the bus depot at 10 PM on Christmas night 1995 on my way to see my then girlfriend, Kristen Tucker, absolutely scared to death that some bum knew that I secretly had a pearl ring in my backpack and he was going to jump me for it…. I’ve never been to Nashville longer than it takes to change a plane or empty my bladder and buy a coke.
- I want to find out where the casinos are in Nashville. Is that why everyone calls it Nashvegas?
- I find myself constantly saying (internally): Graceland is in Memphis you moron. The Grand Ole Opry is in Nashville.
- I’m hoping the get more than 15 hours sleep. I totalled it up, that’s what I got in Pittsburgh. I’ve built my schedule a lot better this time.
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Welcome Home!
The folks at Improv Everywhere are amazing. This is awesome. This is a great study in group dynamics.
Welcome Back from ImprovEverywhere on Vimeo.
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The Personal Preference Sin
I’d like to talk to some people about a rabid sin running rampant and unchecked throughout the American Evangelical church. Maybe if you’re reading this today I’m meant to talk to you. This is, I believe, one of Satan’s most powerful devices for separating our people. And yet, this sin runs so deep and is so approved that it carries back to some things we hold sacred such as denominations… probably 50% of non-denominational churches founded in the past century are the result of this sin.
That sin is personal preference.
An unfortunate consequence of Modernism as a life philosophy is this concept that you cannot worship in a place you disagree with on some levels. Adopting modernistic thinking as a religious way of thinking has lead to nothing but personal preference sin disguised as “acting on theological conviction.” Whether that preference is musical instruments during worship vs. no musical instruments in worship or modern music vs. traditional hymns or small groups vs. Sunday School or even Arminian vs. Calvinist, forms of church governance, women in ministry, preaching styles, baptism, on and on.
One day, either today or yesterday, a person decided that they simply could not live with that compromise to their integrity or vision or desire and decided to leave a church to start their own. I am convinced that many of today’s churches were founded because someone got ticked off enough to take their friends and start a “new and more pure expression of worship.” If you’ve ever had a meeting with a wide-eyed green church planter you often hear this notion as their primary justification for planting a church.
You may be uncomfortable with how I’ve phrased that. So let’s give some examples:
- John Wesley started a methodist reform movement within the Church of England. As time went on, they couldn’t reconcile that tension and the Methodist Movement was born.
- Meanwhile in Scandinavia, disenfranchised Lutherans (commoners) who were persecuted by the King’s people over tons of issues separated and started meeting outside of official worship services sanctioned by the King. Eventually, they could not reconcile and the Free church movement was born in Scandinavia.
- The Brethren church movement is born out of a personal preference issue on baptism in the early 18th century. That groups has fractured further ever since… it’s in their DNA! Some of them have split of theological interpretations of things like eternal security, or whether baptisms indoors counted, or to start Sunday schools.
- There so much independence bred into the Baptist church movement that no one can even agree on what makes a baptist a baptist or where the Baptist movement originated. Many of my students in Romeo will remember how we read an 80 year old tract in my office called, “What real old regular baptists really believe.”
- These are the tribes, and decedents and fractures of those tribes, that form modern Evangelicalism in America. In other words… we are a people divided for centuries on an unspoken belief that our personal preferences should divide the Bride of Christ. Division over personal preference is our unfortunate heritage.
Let’s state the problem more clearly in your front yard. Modernism has long hated contradictions and mystery. While that is a noble hatred in science and has led to the greatest innovations of our day, it has decimated the church. People presume that their personal preferences are more significant than the church doctrine of unity.
As believers, every one of us would agree with this statement: The church body is a unit. (Singular) And yet, we divide over non-essentials all the time.
- Style of baptism.
- How a person is labeled a member.
- How a person is labeled a believer.
- What types of sin a person can be involved in and still lead and/or be a member.
- Who can vote and for what.
- How we learn best.
- Worship best.
- Give best.
- Serve best.
- Read our Bible.
- How we dress.
- How we act.
- How we pray.
Rather than live in those tensions, struggles that fully represent the “the body of Christ,” we chose to divide and group with who we feel most comfortable with.
Largely, on Sunday morning we go to churches who are lead by people we feel comfortable with, who preach to us things we want to hear, who say things to our kids we agree with, who look like us, sing like us, dress like us, and serve in ways we approve of. When I hear complaints of my friends or when I complain about my church it is almost exclusively about crap that doesn’t even matter!
We have been lead to believe that tension in church is bad. I believe that it’s time to call the church back together. I believe that when we chose to take our flocks and submit them to one another in submission to Jesus, who longs to break down walls that separate, that we will see God do amazing things.
I hear a lot of friends openly wonder why the American Evangelical church is not gaining more ground in our society. And yet we, as American Evangelicals, refuse to deal with our personal and institutional sins.
I’ll quiet this rant by proposing a question. Friend, I covet your response.
If there were a young friar in a monestary today composing 95 charges of sin against the Evangelical Church, what would he nail to the Wittenberg Door?
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College Football Check-in
Here’s a mid-season check-in of my favorite teams.
#1 Notre Dame For a team that barely won 3 games last year, I’m please with their progress. I actually think some fans expected the Irish to win 8-9 games based on their week schedule. Essentially, they have beaten the team’s on their schedule that they were supposed to while gotten beat by ranked opponenents. With Syracuse and USC left on their schedule I think they will end up 7-5 before getting waxed in a bowl game. Some have said Charlie Weis is on the hot seat, I don’t see it that way at all. This is a rebuilding process, his team is very young. Now if they are 8-4 next year or less… I can see dumping him.
#2 Michigan State I’ve watched a couple of their games and been quite impressed. They have climbed to #15 in the polls and if they can manage squeak past Penn State and Michigan pulls off the upset of the millenium, they would be rose bowl bound. Most importantly, they didn’t collapse after the Michigan game. Kudos to State for finally figuring out how to play a whole season.
#3 Michigan Back in September I said it would be a down year and boy has it lived up to that hype. At 3-8 they have often been stunningly bad. I also said that they would have a chance to beat Ohio State. As long as the bus brings the Buckeyes to the correct stadium on Saturday morning I don’t see Michigan having a chance. That said, it’s a rivalry game and anything is possible. No, I take that back. Michigan has as good a chance of beating Ohio State as Jennifer Graham does in getting re-elected in 2010.
#4 San Diego State At 1-10 it is tough to find anything good to say about the Aztecs. Sadly, I never made it to one of their games either. When they played Notre Dame I thought they may have a chance to be .500. I must have been on crack that day. The good news is that I may be able to enroll in the grad school and walk on for the Aztecs. Sure, I’ve never played high school football. But I’m pretty good at NCAA 2008 for the Wii.
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Adam’s Rules for Sushi
Last night I learned a big sushi lesson. Actually, three good sushi lessons.
Lesson #1 Any dude from Indiana shouldn’t make a sushi run at 8 PM. He is hereby required to take someone who knows what the heck they are doing.
Lesson #2 Eight orders for two people means you’ll have so much left over that not even the dog will be able to eat it all. From now on, 1 fish order and 1 roll order is plenty per person.
Lesson #3 Be adventurous in moderation. I ordered cajon seared tuna… completely awesome coice. But I also order a more traditional raw tuna choice. It was good, but I had wish I had done something else in the “seared” category.
p.s. Yes, for those Michigan folks… Kristen and I really are getting Californiaized, aren’t we?
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