Month: August 2009

  • Weekend Review

    I’m still amazed at how much fun we can have in a weekend. It’s been since high school that I’ve had weekends off so consistently. Love it!

    Friday night, we stayed home and rested. With temperatures in the 100s most of last week, the kids had been stuck in the house a lot. I’d even say that by Friday night they had a bit of cabin fever. Saturday morning, I got up early, did a little reading and writing, then took Megan and Stoney to dog beach.  It’s amazing how much fun we can have there. Stoney loves to play with his ball, but really he loves to socialize with other beasts. You forget that dogs are a pack animal until you let them hang out with other dogs. Stoney would like to be a dominant male… which basically means that he spends his time at the beach trying to get other dogs to submit to him. On Saturday, the funniest part was when two springer spaniel puppies spent 10 minutes messing with him. These 7 month old pups knew some of the rules of being submissive/dominant, but like adolescents, were playing with the rules. Stoney would chase one down and he would roll over to submit to some sniffs. While Stoney sniffed his belly, his brother would jump on Stoney’s back. Stoney would snap at the other and chase the other puppy. It was a riot. In the meantime, Megan and I enjoyed wading in the San Diego River. The crystal blue warm water was perfect. We could have stayed there all day… if Stoney didn’t want to chase and play with every dog on the beach we could have.

    After a couple hours of beach time with Stoney, Megan and I took him home. We rested for a little while, had some lunch, then packed up the truck to go to the beach as a family. It was hot at our house when we left. Close to 100 in San Diego is twenty degrees warmer than normal. As we headed west towards the Pacific anticipation built up. To be honest, it was a tense drive! Megan and Paul were snippy with one another the whole way to the beach. Mom and dad were in that “head down, focus” mode! When we finally got to Torrey Pines State Beach we were ready to pour our energy into the waves.

    As we gathered our stuff out of the truck to take to the beach Megan and I decided to lose our sandals. This is pretty normal and isn’t usually a big deal. But about 200 yards from the truck we were really in pain. It was so hot that I could feel the bottom of my feet burning, literally. Mom was able to swoop up Megan and carry her the rest of the way to the beach while I tried to trot there. It felt like I was walking on glass the whole way. When I finally made it to the beach the pads of my feet were covered in first degree burns. It’s hot! (They are now blistered up, yuck!)

    We spent the next four hours playing hard in the surf. The water temperature was refreshing! And the waves were awesome by the shore and a bit scary at the break line. I had fun getting Megan and Paul on the boogie board by the shore. They caught little 2 footers and would ride effortlessly to the beach… like 50-75 feet in total. It was awesome! When they tired of that I’d head out towards the break line where the waves varied from 5-10 feet. With surf that big I got plenty of practice ducking the big ones. It felt so good to be in the water! I was able to watch the surfers from close up, chat with fellow boogie boarders, and catch the occassional big wave. It’s hard to describe the joy of catching a wave. It’s a lot scary as the wave is way more powerful than you… but completely exhilarating when you catch it just right and zoom along with the wave breaking behind you while you dodge tourists.

    Exhausted, we left the beach about 4:30 and went out for pizza. It’s taken us a while to settle on a favorite pizza joint. Truth be told, San Diego has a lot of good cuisine but pizza is not their thing. When we go to Pizza Port, the pizza is good enough, the surf feel is awesome, and the kids love that they have machines to dump quarters into. While enjoying our pie we watched the local Chula Vista Little League team pound the Texas team to take home the U.S. Championship, it was good fun. We drove home, full and tired. Everyone was sound asleep by 9 o’clock!

    Sunday morning, our small group decided to bring a little rejoicing to the church by hosting a surprise tailgate party. That was a great lead in to worship. I’m still lost in the idea that we celebrate sports figures but not religious leaders… it was fun to mix those two things up intentionally for a morning. I think it was a success.

    After church, we went home and chilled for a while. We watched Chula Vista win the Little League World Series (woot!) and then went to Maddie’s 3rd birthday party. All of the church staff has kids about the same age, so it was a blast to see all the little kids party and dance together. Megan and Paul… were awesome in playing along with a “little kid party.” They really did have a good time. And it warms my heart to see that they feel like they fit in. The whining about leaving Michigan… finally dissapating.

    From there, we went home and embraced the quiet. The kids convinced mom to allow them to camp out in the living room. They were in bed early and mom and dad retired to read and go to bed early.

    I think it takes someone who never really got weekends off to really appreciate the simplicity and joy of a weekend off. Then again, I think everyone loves weekends and I’m just finally getting to join in!

    Next weekend, college football. That makes me super happy.

  • Harbor Tailgate Party

  • Megan’s New Skills

    DSC_1174It’s been a big summer for Megan. At eight years old she has visited 19 of the 50 states. (By her age I think I had been to 3 states.) She got to go to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York City, and Philadelphia this summer. Since she is my road trip girl she took all of this in stride. Hadly a complaint along the way. Long car rides, plane rides, ferry rides, and train rides don’t really phase her. They just make her hungry to learn more, see more, and explore more. She is like her mother in that she can quietly take everything in or read a book to pass the time. Her intelligence amazes me. I hope that we are broadening her horizons fast enough to whet her appetite.

    Back home it has been a big summer for her, too. This has been a summer of reading. She reads everything. We make multiple trips to the library every week to feed her habit. She got an LED reading light for her bed and now it’s not unusual for her to go to bed at 8 and stay up until 11 reading mystery novels. When she isn’t reading books, she is reading on the computer. She has been using Google for a couple of years now and can generally find what she is looking for. But in the Spring I introduced her to Wikipedia and her eyes grew massive. I’ve caught her a number of times going to Wikipedia to learn more about something she read in a book. Usually an animal or a country.

    DSC_0582My girl also has a spirit of adventure. While timid at first, she likes to go fast and isn’t afraid of skinning her knees. Both of our kids amaze me with their adaptation skills. Mom and dad have this crazy idea that they want their kids to grow up embracing diversity and looking eye-to-eye with the urban working-class poor. So it shouldn’t have surprised me that Megan loved our day with Jeremy Del Rio on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She played games and enjoyed a street fair there as if she’d lived there her entire life. Back home, we sent her to day camp with folks from the church where, again, she just jumped in and enjoyed the experience. On a more personal note, she proved that she is becoming a California girl… (1/4 of her life here, by the way) At the conclusion of day camp she went to the beach and learned how to surf. A couple weeks later she shocked up by learning to ride a bike in a single day. Then yesterday, the waves were perfect at Torrey Pines and she must have riden 25 waves in a row before giving up in exhaustion.

    3rd grade is now just two weeks away. I have no doubt she will impress her teachers once again. With the move now firmly in the rear view mirror we hope that 2009-2010 is a year where she can get better established and settle into a life rthym that will carry through the rest of elementary school. My only fear is that she won’t be challenged enough.

  • 5 Free Business Tips for Facebook Pages

    facebook-for-business

    How do I use Facebook to enhance my company, church, organization, or club?

    As a person who utilizes Facebook in the repetoir of how I make my living, I get this question a lot. With hundreds of millions of Facebook users out there, and huge growth in the adult demographic, it makes sense for people to shift marketing efforts to Facebook. The trick is doing it without looking like an idiot.

    What do you recommend? Here are my  5 things with Facebook. It’ll be the best marketing you can do in the next 1 hour, trust me. Just like anything else… nail the basics and everything else is just gravy.

    Preamble: You need a page, not a group. If you only have a group right now… go create a page. Facebook is not investing in making the group experience better. All of their efforts for businesses are focused on pages.

    1. Secure your URL. Once your page has 100 fans, you can go to facebook.com/username and secure a unique URL. This will help you on a lot of fronts. First, it’s easy to remember. Tell people, “Like our product? Become a fan on Facebook at Facebook.com/yourcompany.” I’m seeing this everywhere! I was at a golf course a couple weeks back that had a fan page. Hotels have it. Designers have it. Even dive bars have fan pages. Second, this helps your company on the Google front as well. It’ll make it easier for people looking for you and your products to find you… not your competitor. If you are a company that has brands/products it’s a good idea to also add a fan page for your top products.

    2. Add FBML. With the page application FBML, you’ll be able to build a landing page for your fans. Here’s an example of mine from Youth Specialties. Here’s another one from Coke. FBML allows you to design HTML code and drop it into your page as a tab. Then in the page settings you can select which tab is the default landing page. With both the Coke and YS pages you see that it introduces the brand and products pretty strongly, right away. If you aren’t a web guru, I’d still add FBML and have your web designer pimp it out. (Or send me $500 and I’ll do it for you.)

    3. Embed video or audio. Up until recently, Facebook has not allowed applications like FBML to embed stuff. It basically stripped out <embed> and <script> tags in the coding. But if your brand has some great audio/video that you think could help you sell your products, here’s a little hack.

    Bear in mind you need to host these files on your own host, but that’s cheap and easy enough.

    For video, you can embed FLV files using this code: <fb:flv src="Flash_Video_URL" height="###" width="###"/>

    For audio, you can embed MP3 files using this code: <fb:mp3 src="URL HERE" height="###" width="###" artist="artist" title="title" album="picture"/>

    That may not be a beginners option, but if you can pull it off it looks fantastic!

    4. Connect your company website/blog to your Facebook page. If your website was designed in the last 3-4 years it probably has RSS feeds. It’s simple and easy to import an RSS feed from your website onto your page. Here’s the link.

    5. Add your Facebook page Fan Box to your company website or blog. Complete the circle. You are sending your content to Facebook, allow your customers to see your precense on Facebook from your website.

    That’s it. Those are the basics. Nail those 5 things down and you are off to a good start. In fact, I wouldn’t add much else to a Facebook page. Just make sure to update your status from time to time.

  • Still Crazy After All These Years

    Yes, I am a Paul Simon fan. I can’t explain it, other than the fact that my mom introduced me to him as a high school kid and I listened to the album The Concert in the Park nearly every day when I lived in Germany. This particular song has always made me think.

    Here I am at 33 years old. Still crazy after all these years. Some days or weeks I’m crazier than others. With adolescent fervor I am still crazy enough to want to change the world. I remember 15 years ago, in freshmen orientation at Moody Bible Institute, being told by someone that I was just young and idealistic… “Everyone wants to change the world but no one really can.” I think over the past years I’ve shown otherwise. Sure, I can’t tilt the Earth on a new axis. But there’s been some change. And I wake up each day excited about more changes.

    The converse is also true, you know? Instead of being young and idealistic I could be old and pessimistic. I know plenty of curmudgeons in the world who live for bad news and think the best days on this planet are in the past. That’s an easy path. I chose to think that the best spins left on Earth are still out there.

    I chose to be just crazy enough. More importantly, I want to encourage others to be crazy enough to recognize that they can change the world. I believe each one of our roles in the world is important. I believe that every effort we make invest in life change with a person or positively changing an institution matters– lots of little impacts make a big impact. While it’s true that I cannot tip this busted world on it’s access alone as my butt just isn’t quite big enough. I wonder about a co-ordinated army of world-changers– is there is an army of people just crazy enough… together could our butts be big enough to change the world?

    I’m still crazy after all these years. Are you?

  • Fears of a new venture

    What does youth ministry in this neighborhood look like?

    That’s the big open question in my mind this week. A week ago I met with a couple of leaders of Harbor and let them know… I think I’m at a place where giving my energy to lead something makes sense. I’ve completely enjoyed stepping back– forcefully– and spending time in the pews. And yet it’s clear within my soul that I need to help Harbor figure out what is next with student ministry.

    Replication is my fear. Honestly, that’s it. I am fearful that I’ll help lead them a direction towards “adamisms” and things that I’m comfortable with. I’m fearful that I lead them to replicating stuff that other practitioners are already doing without being sensitive to the needs of our church and community. I’m fearful that we’ll be too ambitious or not ambitious enough. I’m fearful that in our zeal to meet the tangible needs of students we won’t be Gospel-driven enough. I’ve lived in cities for half of my adult life, but all of my ministry experience is with suburban kids. I’m not fearful of the kids. But I am in full knowledge that I don’t know how to identify with their struggles. So that’s an over-arching fear mixed in there, as well.

    Fear. It’s where I’m at. Not the trembling kind of fear before embarking on an unknown ministry for the first time. Thankfully, I’m not that 21 year old kid grabbing the mic for the first time. On the one hand this is a more carnal fear. Some fear is based in the success of my past and present ministry. What if I screw it up and everyone looks at me and says, “Doesn’t he work for Youth Specialties? Isn’t he supposed to be an expert? How come he sucks so bad?” On the other hand, this is fear based in saying to Jesus… “OK, I’ll try something completely out of my experience and culture. I’ll go where you want and do what you need done. I’ll swallow pride and embrace not getting it right and risk the humiliation of starting over.” It’s a fear based in a life dedicated to saying to the Lord, “I want to change this world, help me be that leader that changes things in my world.”

    I’ve learned a thing or two. I’ve lead enough stuff to know that fear can be useful. Fear ultimately forces you to the core of what you’re trying to do. Fear forces you to look at the proposition of failure with a knowing grin. I may be afraid of failure but I’ve got enough experience to know what makes a success too.

    3 life lessons I’m applying— If you are in the same boat– I’d suggest these things.

    1- This is no one man show. Not that I’ve ever really run a one man show, per se. But from the onset of this I want to be clear that I’m no more than 1/4th the leader. I wish I had set this rule up 10 years ago!

    2. This is about developing leaders for influence. If I’m going to invest my time in developing leaders, it’s not going to be so that they can be the shift supervisor at Starbucks. This is going to be about something much more important than this.

    3. No more babysitting complacent teens. Since I’m not drawing a paycheck on this thing, I feel less-than-zero pressure to entertain. I want to invest in students, I want to invest in developing leaders. I want to teach God’s Word. And I have the ability to say no to the rest. Fun is always part of the equation. But watching kids be bored with the most exciting stuff on the planet… not my cup of tea.

    More coming on this, I’m sure.

  • New blog feature, verbal comments

    You know me. I like to try out new things. One of the new things I’ve been testing out is Google Voice. I’ll talk about it more in another post but let’s just say it’s solving a lot of problems for me.

    One thing I’m testing out is to encourage you to leave verbal comments to the blog. Let’s face it, some things are best said verbally. You can hear intonation, you can hear passion, your voice is fun, and you can sing a comment! Plus, and this is big for a lot of people, you can leave me a comment and make in personal to me and anonymous to everyone else.

    Feel free to test it out! Even if you try it just to try it and not really leave a comment, that’s OK!

    How it works:
    1. Press the “call me” button. Go ahead, do it now, it just shows you the next step.
    2. Enter your name and the phone number you’d like to be called at. Not my number, not a secret password, the number of the phone you’d like to use to leave me a comment. If you chose “keep number private” that means it will still use that phone to connect you to leave a comment, I just won’t be able to see that number.
    3. Click “connect.”
    4. A random phone number will call you, pick up. That’s Google Voice calling. That’s not my Google Voice number, it’s just random.
    5. You will get a special greeting from me, saying hello and telling you what to do. This will not ring my phone, it’s basically a voicemail box.
    6. You leave a comment or message. If it’s a private message or comment between you and me, please let me know.
    7. As soon as you hang up, Google Voice alerts me that I have a new message. Depending on the time of day I may get a text message or an email or the Google chip embedded behind my retina will flash.
    8. I listen to the message, read the message in email, or get a text of the message. Google Voice, using black magic, converts your message into text and gets it to me. I receive it right away though I may not get to it right away.
    9. If its relevant, I post the verbal comment on the blog. Obviously, if its a personal message or something you’d like to keep anonymous, that’s just between me and you.

    Got it? 1-2-3… GO!

  • the 50th Episode

    I can’t believe it’s already been 50 shows. Fifty! One thing is obvious, Ian Robertson is a complete saint to put up with me for a year. Producing a weekly show is a joy, a challenge, and a discipline. It’s insanity and fun wrapped into one. I’m especially happy with how this episode turned out. This may be our best show yet. Ian worked really hard on it. And the segment with Wayne Rice is brilliantly shot. Like, holy cow… our show has Wayne Rice in it!

    The show has introduced me to a lot of stuff. I’ve met an amazing amount of people. I’ve shared deep moments as they shared what was on their heart. There have been many goofy moments as well. A year ago I was completely intimidated by Ian’s camera. Now I know what a little bit about things like frame rate, aperture, focus, lighting, sound, framing, and working with talent. Being a part of this podcast is one of the best parts of my job. All I can think about when I think about the first 50 episodes is joy. It’s hard work. It’s not always pretty. But it’s a labor of joy.

    Here it is, episode 50.

  • Crazy talented young rap artist

  • Sunrise over Rolando




    Sunrise over Rolando

    Originally uploaded by mclanea



    Because of the marine layer, we don’t get many sunrises in San Diego. When I looked out of my bedroom window and saw this today I had two thoughts. First, I need to capture this moment on film! Second, it’s going to be a hot one. No marine layer also means that it’s going to get super hot.