We got a call today that my class for Thursday has been cancelled. Not sure of the reason, but I will gleefully accept this present.
This will give me a chance to relax a little tonight. In case I haven’t mentioned it yet this week, this is a disaster of a week.
In golf terms, this is a person who isn’t performing at his best but still manages to finish the job “good enough” to make the cut or maintain his spot.
On tour, there are guys who never have ups and downs… Who just grind it out. They relish in the term “he’s a grinder.” It’s not that they are losers because they finish in the money all the time. Those who grind it out keep their card all the time. By nature, grinders don’t take risks. They play it safe right down the middle, aim for the middle of the green and make two putt pars. For a grinder to win the field has to come back to them or they have to have some nice “misses” that end up close to the pin.
On Tour, being a grinder is a good life. Risk-takers win a lot of tournaments but they also miss a lot of cuts. For those guys it’s feast or famine. Sergio Garcia is a risk-taker. Kenny Perry is a grinder. If you aren’t a grinder, you want a grinder on your team since they are always going to post a nice score. In a scramble event you always put a grinder with a risk-taker. While the risk taker will occasionally get you an eagle he also makes plenty of mistakes… So you end up with a lot of safe steady birdies and a couple of chancie eagles.
On the golf course, I am a risk taker. In the last year I’ve been teaching myself to grind it out when things don’t go well. In fact, as I reflect back I can remember late in the summer being mad at myself because I had developed into a grinder. I hit irons off the tee instead of hitting the big stick. Consequently, while I was making nice scores or 39-42 every day I wasn’t having any fun. In fact, my low round of the season happened like this. For 8 holes I was grinding it out. Opened with a couple of bas shots so I went into safety mode. But on the 9th hole I hit a great drive and was just to the left of the green with my 2nd shot. I got up and down for a rare birdie on 9. I was happy that I ground out a respectable 40 when I deserved a 42.
Then, still in safety mode, I parred 10-11-12 then bogied the long 13. When I played safe shot on 14 I got angry with myself but still managed a “safe bogie” to get to +6 after 14 holes. On 15 I walked to the tee box thinking I had a nice round, but a safe one in hand. It was going to be another boring 80. I remember having one of those risky business moments, I said to myself “why not just go for it and have fun?”
The 15th hole at Romeo is a 110 yard par 3. My safe play there is to hit a little pitching wedge. As long as I take a shortened swing I almost always hit the green. I love to hit my lob wedge that far but sometimes I lack control. While I could easily hit the ball pin high I could chunk it and leave it 20 yards short or blade it and lose it in the bushes. I pulled the lob wedge out and laughed at myself as I made my practice swings.
Then I took dead aim, swung hard and knocked the ball to within 2 feet. That left me +1 for the back nine.
The 16th hole at Romeo is a very short par 4, 320 yards, with trouble left and long. The safe play is to hit an iron 160 yards or more. Generally I say to myself “anywhere in the fairway is fine.” I almost always hit a 6 iron… So I pulled my driver. “Why not have some fun and go for the green?” I ripped it hard down the right side of the fairway. The ball hit the top of the downslope and I wasn’t sure if it had hopped into the stream or popped onto the green. To my delight I found the ball about 10 yards short of the green on my side of the stream. It looked as though the ball had been placed there. I was left with a very simple chip, almost all the way uphill. I could expect to hole 1 out of 10 of these shots. So I confidently lined up, and chipped the ball to within about a foot for an easy birdie.
This left me even for the back nine, 4 over for the round heading into 17.
Seventeen is a short par 5, 490 yards. But it is a 3 shot hole as the majority of the landing area for a driver is a pond. The pond comes into play at about 240 yards from the tee box… Plus it’s downhill into the pond and the ball never stops. Again, 9 out of 10 times I hit an iron off of this tee just to get it into play. Most players can’t hit anything longer than a 4 iron on this hole. So I pulled driver.
I knew that I couldn’t fly the ball 290 yards. So in order to hit driver I would have to aim into the right rough and hope it didn’t draw and definitely didn’t want to push it right. I hit it perfect again well down the right side, and long.
I was left with a routine 150 yard 8 iron. It was uphill, but I like my 8 iron. The flag was in it’s typical Sunday location. In the left center, just off the slope and 10 feet right of the bunker. The safe shot was to aim right of the flag so if I missed short or long it would still be on the green. I took dead aim at it. While the shot was online, it was short by about 15 feet and left me with an ugly left-to-right hanger. I’d have to give it enough to get up the slope, but still not too hard so it would catch the break. As I lined up I thought to myself, “you’re 1 putt away from being 2 under.” That thought usually screws me up, but not this time. As soon as I hit it I knew it would go in. It dropped.
Laying -2 for the back nine and +2 for the round on the 18th tee box felt great. But I still had quite a test left on 18. 18 is a 520 yard par 5. It plays longer than that as the narrow landing area makes for a scary tee shot. Right or left into the trees makes for a hard par! I always hit driver here but rarely hit the short grass. This time was no different. I got cocky and wanted another bomb down the right side. I ended up with a driver that went short and barely got past the last set of trees in the left rough. Eagle was out of the question, birdie was a dream.
In grinder mode, I would have hit a safe iron shot to try to leave it at 100-150 yards for my 3rd shot. But since I was in risk-taker mode I decided to hit a 3 wood since I could technically hit it that far. I had about 250 yards left. As I lined up I was both confident and Leary at the same time. If I hit it perfectly it would blast out of the rough and draw nicely down the fairway, maybe even trickle up the fringe onto the green. But if I didn’t strike it crisply anything could happen.
On that swing I swung a little too fast and the ball came out hot. It left me with an awkward shot, awkward distance, awkward lie. I had about 30 yards left, clump of trees at my back, carry a gravel cart path, down and right green, pin left and over the bunker. With the overhang of the oak tree I couldn’t hit a high shot. My preferred shot there would have been to chip it… But that was too high of a risk as if I left it short I was in the bunker and even if I hit it perfect it would probably scurry past the hole 15-20 feet for an ugly downhill snaker. So I was forced into the safety shot… The bump and run. No chance to get it close. Only hope I could get it within 15 feet… But it would give me a putt for birdie.
I lined up and hit the shot crisply. It was a nice shot. But I wanted it to be closer. I walked up figuring that I would 2 putt from there. To my surprise, I raked in the long uphill putt for a nice finishing birdie. 33 on the back nine, 73 overall. For the last 4 holes I was 5 under par! It felt good to strut off the course that day. I couldn’t wait to get on the course the next morning to hurt the course some more with my new found prowless. (Of course, it didn’t happen… That’s golf!)
I wouldn’t have felt that way if I had not taken the risk. If I had been a grinder those last 4 holes I would have had a nice round, but not the feeling of exhilaration I felt on the 18th green.
Like the old song says, “you’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when fold ’em, know when to walk away, know when to run.” I had played those holes as good as anyone could and it was because I had taken some risks.
That’s how I feel sometimes in ministry. I am a risk-taker by nature who has spent a year and some change grinding it out. It’s taken a lot of pride swallowing to become a ministry grinder… But I’ve also learned that in playing it safe I can still get a lot done.
It’s not that I’m a flashy guy on the job, I just like to be an innovator. I cannot wait to get this place back to the point where we can afford some risk. Likewise, I loved it when I was the safe guy and the SP was the big risk taker. I hope that happens again soon. I recognize that in order to really transform the culture of Romeo we must step out of grinder mode and take some risks.
It’s not like I dislike my job or disdain where I am at ministry-wise. In fact, I’ve learned a lot and even learned to appreciate the grinder mode… But I can close my eyes and imagine this place in the fast lane. Our community desperately needs a fast lane church and I want it to be Romeo.
I’m walking off of the 14th green and wanting to reach for the lob wedge. Will I grab it?
With the launch of lightforceministries.com I have started to wonder how I can possibly start using the internet in a more effective manner in communicating with my students, parents, and web passerbys.
I wonder:
Can we use marketing techniques to draw interest to our ministry?
Can I better inform people of what we are all about?
Can I draw the curious without spooking them?
I’m trying this on a limited basis now and plan on trying it some more as time goes on. There is even a sign-up for the LF newsletter below. If it goes well I plan on creating one for the church as well. More on this to come.
As I reflect on this post, I am amazed at the millions of different direction my job takes me on any given day. Absolutely amazing.
It kind of feels good to be at work this morning. Even though I didn’t get the week long vacation that a lot of others took and I didn’t even get to take 2 consecutive days off, I still feel refreshed and happy to be here today.
I am trying hard not to come up with new goals for 2005 since I already have so many for the 2004-2005 school year. I like to take the summer to reflect and rebuild for the year to come.
Along the lines of a good start for 05 is that I finished half of my reading for grad school this week. I completed the first 15 chapters of A History of Christian Education last night. I’ll get started on Church History in Plain Language later today.
I’ve also got a running start on Sunday school for this week, as well as a syllabus for the whole Winter quarter. I’ve even got the summer schedule put together for Sunday school. Don’t tell anyone, but the youth guy might be the most organized guy in the whole church! Ssshhh!
Light Force is a little less planned. The worship team will be practicing music on Tuesday afternoon. (Way late!) I’d also like to get a schedule for talks for the whole series on Revelation but that may get done while I’m down in Huntington. It would be nice if I could come up with a clever title for the series and everything. (That part would need to be done before Wednesday.)
I do know that I’ll be interrupting the series to do the love and dating and infatuation series in February… But beyond that I don’t anticipate any interruptions.
There is something so cyclical about the calendar. Perhaps God designed us for the ups and downs of the lunar calendar or perhaps we’ve merely adapted ourselves? That’s a good question not worth exploring right now.
Ever discover an old pile of books or something? I have them all over the place. I’ll read a book and then just put it on the bookshelf. If you do that for a few years you end up with quite a little collection of books!
Well, I’ve decided to start unloading some of that old stuff. Within a few minutes I had listed 20 items on Amazon.com’s marketplace. All you have to do is put the ISBN number and your selling price and wham-O… It’s for sale.
So far I’ve sold 2 books and made about $15.00. It’s not much, but it is turning dust collectors into greenbacks. Not bad, eh? I highly doubt this will ever become some sort of income… But there are a lot of little things you can do or sell that if put together do amount to something.
It’s a tiny bit, but it is profit. I’ll take any kind of profit I can get these days!
As much as I had fun with the 8 Crazy Nights theme… I am very happy to see everyone get back to the routine of going to school. Likewise, I’m fairly pleased to have the Light Force schedule scale down to 2-3 events a month outside of regular meetings.
Oddly, I am also looking forward to the self-torture of school myself. I’ll never get over the irony of paying someone to torture me with more education. Why don’t schools pay me to take classes? It seems only fair… Unless you are a teacher.
It seems the number is going up all the time. The scope of this tsunami is so large it is hard to contemplate a number that large. 120,000 people is about the size of the city I grew up in, South Bend, Indiana.
As this article notes, the news from Southwest Asia put a major damper on celebrations throughout the globe and certainly in the U.S. It was very noticeable that the major TV networks were downplaying the New Year’s celebration. Likewise, there were no major celebrations mentioned on the local TV channels.
Somber start for 2005.
