Month: August 2007

  • Today is Friday

    All day yesterday my brain kept telling me it was Friday. I worked like it was a Friday, finishing pretty much everything for the week. At lunch, it was Friday in my brain. Going with Kristen to the Peach Festival 5k and later a high school football game further made me feel like it was a Friday. Even going to bed last night, it felt like a Friday.

    Today is Friday. The real Friday with Friday stuff to do. I even have something extremely cool to do today which I will talk about when it’s done. Something way outside my comfort zone.

    Later this afternoon I am heading over to the Art & Crafts show to set-up the KidsTown booth for the Peach Festival. And all the pieces for that are coming together much more smoothly than for the Armada Fair. The last thing I have to do is sew together several hundred finger puppets.

    So, it’s Friday. Definitely not Saturday.

  • Is being a pastor more or less prestigious than 30 years ago?

    PrestigeI’ve wondered if being a pastor was more or less of a prestigious career choice today versus 30 years ago. "Logic" would tell me that with all the odd things that have happened with church workers over the year that most people don’t look up to clergy anymore.

    According to a Harris Poll released on August 1st, being a pastor is actually slightly more prestigious today than 30 years ago.

    What are you doing with your "extra" prestige?

  • 4th quarter team…

    Yes, I think that describes our church.

    To put it in football terms, since the football season is about to crank up:

    Our team would be judged as average in practice and the first three quarters. (Not bad. Not superb. Average.) But when the game is on the line and we need a touchdown to win… or ever 17 points to win late in the game. We’ve have the kind of team that pulls off the victory. It always makes for an exciting finish.

    Interestingly… we’re also trying to be a team that has a strong finish but also shows signs of brilliance in practice and the first quarter.

    Why? Because a 4th quarter comeback, while dramatic and fun, isn’t always needed. Sometimes a solid first quarter puts you in the lead and makes victories easy. And easy isn’t always bad.

    p.s. That said… for both the Peach Festival and the next MainStreet… it’s the start of the 4th quarter. And we’ve got some cool plays left to call.

  • Crazy & Faith

    Yesterday I had a great conversation with Brian Eberly and his team about KidsTown. They are going through the same process that we went through last summer in re-visioning ministry to children at their church.

    It was an awesome conversation, but I left it with one prevailing thought:

    Holy Discontent + Faithfulness to the Word of God = People thinking you are nuts

    I think our staff is a bunch of raving lunatics! We’re a group of lay people and paid staff who are crazy enough to think that we can play a role in changing a community for Jesus Christ. But instead of us being the agent of change we hope to best position ourselves in a place where grace and mercy and forgiveness of sins can flow through what we are doing… therefore being a conduit between lost people and a holy God.

    What is "holy discontent?" I think Bill Hybels used this phrase but don’t quote me on that. It’s merely the action of being stirred by God to say that what we’re doing isn’t good enough.

    What is "faithfulness to the Word of God?"     Seems like a no-brainer but a lot of people are discontent with what is happening in their lives and in their churches but don’t seek God to find the answers. As our staff stays in God’s Word we are pushed to more and more bold attempts to reach a dead and dying world with the love of Jesus. This isn’t a judgment, but I think most churches are more concerned about keeping the people they have happy than they are being faithful to what God is stirring in their hearts. You hear pastors say it with phrases like "You move a church one inch at a time" or "This is just a trend." Um… what if God is telling you to move a mile in a minute or to chase a cultural trend? I think a lot of people aren’t willing to make moves that God has laid on their hearts and revealed to them in the Bible simply because they want to stay faithful to what is getting them paid.

    What is "People thinking we are nuts?"     Heck, I think we’re nuts too! Demonstrating faith is often doing something that makes no logical sense. Faith itself is a "crazy" concept. It makes no logical sense to put 100% of my faith and trust in an unseen God. But it does take faith. And when you put your faith and trust in that unseen God… doing crazy things for Him seems less and less crazy.

    Here’s a fact about my walk with Christ, maybe it’s true for some of you. "If people in your life don’t think you are crazy… If they think you are completely logical, you’re probably not demonstrating faith."

    Abraham moving was crazy.
    Moses going to Pharaoh was crazy
    Esther talking to the king was nuts
    David confronting the kings was raving mad
    Peter putting down his nets to fish for men was insane
    Peter going to Cornelius’s house made no sense at all, it was a waste of time
    On and on through the Bible we see people taking great steps of faith… steps that made no logical sense and got them labeled as "crazy" by the people around them.

    How are you demonstrating a faith that is crazy?

  • Thunderbird: A brief review

    Thunderbird
    I’m an email junkie.     There, I said it. I have at least 20 different email accounts.

    Why? Well, between the church and YMX I operate a bunch of sites and each one has an "adam" account and a "generic" account for information. Then I have my personal email and stuff like that. So before you know it or can control it… you end up with 20 email accounts.

    How to manage that?
    Thankfully all of them are POP3 based accounts meaning I can have use one resource to manage them all in "one" account. The question is always… how do I keep stuff sorted in the right places?

    In July, our church went to an exchange server system so I lost the capability to have all over my accounts go to my Microsoft Outlook on my laptop. I then tried to use gmail’s POP3 manager to have all of my accounts sent there. While it worked great, I didn’t like that it didn’t use my outgoing server to send mail so YMX email wasn’t coming from my YMX accounts but rather "on behalf" of my accounts. So I started looking for an email alternative.

    That’s where Thunderbird comes into play. It’s made by the same people as Firefox, the best Windows web browser. I’ve now been using "the Bird" a few days and have some initial reactions.

    Setup: Pretty standard and fast. The settings look like and act just like Outlook. The learning curve was actually very minimal.

    Account management: It has a wizard to run through for adding POP3 accounts. That was really no problem if you know all your passwords, addresses, and incoming/outgoing server information.

    Downloading email: Again, this acts a lot like Outlook in that you can either have it go look for mail every ___ minutes or you can do it manually. Just like Outlook you can have email with various subjects or email accounts or subjects sort to various folders. I found this process to be a little easier than Outlook.

    Sending email: Very easy. I like that you can set-up different signatures for different accounts easily. All you need to do is create an html file and point that account to it on your local PC. So YMX accounts can feature this while non-YMX ones won’t. I love that!

    Youth Ministry Exchange

    ↑ Grab this Headline Animator

    Spam: The one thing Thunderbird definitely does better than Outlook is handle spam. It learns the types of things I label as spam and then automatically filter them into a spam filter, deleting them on my schedule. And flagging it is as easy as a click. Very cool.

    All-in-all, if you are looking for an Outlook alternative to manage your email… look no further than Thunderbird. And you can’t beat the price… it’s free!

  • Paul’s Party is here!

    From the moment that we found out we were pregnant (OK, Kristen was pregnant) with Megan we’ve heard the phrase "It goes by so fast…"

    Today Paul has his 4th birthday party. (He turned 4 on August 8th) And it has gone by too fast. I’ve never claimed to like the "baby stage" of life and I’m greatly looking forward to doing dad things with a "big boy." But at the same time I look at him and think, "Man, you were just born a few weeks ago!"

    Here’s a couple of things I love about Paulie.

    • I love wrestling with him… he’s got cool moves.
    • He loves his mommy… maybe too much sometimes.
    • He tells great stories.
    • He’s infatuated with growing up and being "big" like dad. He always wants to do stuff on his own right before he’s big enough. That shows some emerging character.
    • He’s super smart. He can write his name, he’s working on what letter makes what sound to spell stuff and loves math!
    • He loves music. Both our kids like music… but Paul loves to sing the songs from KidsTown, privately.
    • He’s got the most infectious laugh.
    • He loves to climb stuff… he would be a mountain climber when he grows up, but he doesn’t want to leave mommy.
    • The thing he loves more than mommy… eating. We’ve joked since the day he was born that the only reason he wakes up is to eat. Just about the first thing he says every morning is, "Mommy, what can I eat?"
    • When he gets excited, he pants like a dog.
    • He plays with his sister. Sure they fight sometimes… but I love watching them play together.
    • He is very teachable. We have two "McLane things" about competing. When we race, "Winner don’t look backwards." And when we wrestle, "We never give up."
    • He’s very funny when playing the Wii. It needs to be seen to believe.
    • He will play dress-up with his sister. This won’t last long, but we’ve got pictures!
    • He makes super silly faces. A lot of people think he is shy. But at home, he’s got some serious acting potential.

    I could list stuff I love about Paul all day! He’s my favorite little boy in the world and I love telling him that I love him best. (Of course, I tell Megan I like her best too!)

  • A great night for the MainStreet team

    For anyone who has ever been to MainStreet, you know we like to be creative and have a good time. Truth be told… a lot of the process isn’t always fun. It can be downright stressful to continue developing and evaluating and getting ready to do the next one. We like to use the term "dynamic" to describe the process that produces MainStreet.

    Tonight was a blast!     Since we have a race theme this month, we decided to do one of our scenes via video at a local go-kart track. So at 6:00 the whole team met up and we grabbed some video cameras and just had some fun. The whole cast, in costume, took to the track and shot some great scenes. The whole time we were out there I kept thinking of different lines from last summers blockbuster, Talladega Nights. "If you ain’t first, you’re last." "Shake and bake." On and on…

    After filming was over, we headed to McDonald’s for a quick bite to eat. Then we all drove back to the church for our first full rehearsal. In our process, this is the 3rd meeting in preparing for the September but it the first real rehearsal. I just have this one hint about the next MainStreet. We have a new character… and he is very funny!

    This was the kind of group building night we really needed.     It was a lot of fun and very productive.

  • New Innovation: Youth Ministry Classifieds

    Over at Youth Ministry Exchange Headquarters Patti Gibbons and I had a board meeting where we decided to launch a brand new line of business. In truth, Patti and I chat over AIM all the time and we came up with this idea Friday morning and ran with it. We don’t have an office and we don’t have meetings. We’re way more progressive than that. 

    It’s a totally new, from scratch, ground up idea. What is it?

    It’s not 100% ready, but check out the Beta release of www.youthministryclassifieds.com.

    Here’s a couple reasons I’m really jazzed about YMC.

    1. It’s a totally free resource to the Youth Ministry Community.You can list and buy stuff with no transaction fees.
    2. It’s going to fill a gap of something that is not already out there. There simply isn’t an "after-market" anywhere for Youth Ministry stuff.
    3. It’s very simple to use. It’s actually a very "plain" site intentionally.
    4. It’s totally independent of our main site, www.ymexchange.com. Other than being owned by the same company… they are independent sites with different goals, different audiences, and different measurements for what makes it a success.
    5. It integrates all that we are at Youth Ministry Exchange. It’s a compliment to so many other things out there and competing with nothing. How cool is that?

    So… even if you aren’t in youth ministry. It’s worth checking out.

  • Farewell Paul at Fred’s Market

    PaulI know people read my blog from around the country, so you may not be aware of my geography. I live in a small town that was once rural but is now semi-suburban Detroit. I live "in the village" meaning that my house is in the oldest part of town. (Our house dates to 1871)

    One of the long time institutions of Romeo is just across the street from our house… Fred’s Market.

    Here’s a story about the retirement of the store’s owner, Paul Ruggirello. Paul is a fine man. He knew Kristen and I before we even moved in. I went in and introduced myself shortly after buying the house and Paul said, "So, you are Mr. McLane. I understand you are a man of the cloth." We’ve had many good chats and I will miss his companionship. There have been many times we’ve had a party and I’ve dashed across the street to pick up a last minute item. He is one of the few places in the world who offers store credit… and he’s even offered me the keys to the shop "just in case" I needed something. Truly, there are few men like this in America today.

    Paul has assured me that the family who has bought Fred’s shares his values. Paul has had many opportunities to expand the store and make it less "family  based." Sure, it’s a liquor store. Sure, he sells lottery tickets. She he sells his fair share of cigarettes. But he has never taken advantage of people. He’s just your friendly, helpful, humble, store owner. I hope that the new owners are at least a shadow of Paul.
    He will be missed. I know its odd, but Paul and Fred’s Market are one of the great assets to our neighborhood and I will miss his presence.

    If you are in Romeo in the next few days, drop in and thank Paul for his service to this community.

  • Saturday Tunes

    Saturday_tunes_2It’s kind of a slow Saturday. Hot and sticky in Romeo. The kind of weather that just makes you want to do nothing outside. So, without any further introduction here are the next 10 songs piping into my ears. No cheating, rating included.

    1. God’s Gonna Cut You Down, Johnny Cash ***** (Little shout out to my earlier post today)
    2. Tell Me Who, Chris Tomlin ***
    3. Enough [Acoustic verion] Chris Tomlin ****
    4. I Will Not Be Silent, David Crowder Band ***** (Can’t get this song out of my head)
    5. Made to Worship, Chris Tomlin *****
    6. I Saw the Light, David Crowder Band *****
    7. Peachy, Family Force 5 *****
    8. Heal Yourself, Ruthie Foster ****
    9. Our God Reigns, Tomlin/Crowder/Redman *****
    10. Wonderwall, Oasis *****

    Um, I think I need to shake my iTunes or something. That’s quite a string of songs from Six Step Records.