I know, I’m a dweeb for mentioning something I did and calling it great. But this weeks bulletin cover turned out really nice.
What does God want for you? Um… guess you’ll have to come Sunday morning and figure it out. I’ll complete the dweebness with a shameless plug… www.romeochurch.com
On June 21st, 1997 Kristen and I got hitched. Hard to believe that we’ve gone a decade and are still going strong.
Since we already had our big anniversary trip, tonight isn’t going to be that special. But if you see her… tell her thanks for putting up with me for 10 years.
10 years? Where did it go? Fast!
There are two oddities floating around the internet. Both are completely real and both make us all laugh a little and scratch our heads.
Exhibit A: Ted Nugent and David Crowder Band team up for their next album, Remedy.
Exhibit B: Someone snagged this picture of Snoop Dogg reading an Andy Stanley book.
As I was typing that last post something quite funny happened in my neighborhood.
Two adults are slowly driving around my neighborhood in a minivan yelling for their cat. They are coasting around the block saying "meow!" "ro-ooow!" "phoenix!"
It makes me wonder… "How many cats would be willing to run up to a minivan?" "Why wouldn’t they just walk?" This is living proof that some Americans are so lazy they literally won’t even walk around the block to look for their cat.
I can’t lie. Sitting here on the porch I openly and loudly laughed at them.
Tonight is the first Middle Madness for Light Force: Summer Style. What that means is that starting at 7 PM, I’ll be running around and playing crazy games with middle schoolers.
We started Middle Madness a year ago to try to help a glob of incoming 7th graders get acclimated to Light Force.
I liked it so much that I decided that we would do the same thing with this year’s glob of incoming 7th graders.
Now, I’m not a middle school expert like Jason Raitz, Mark Ostreicher, or the rest of the virtually insane people whose lives are "Middle school-centric."
What I like about middle schoolers is something I’ll call "zealous stupidity." I mean that as a compliment actually! Call an adult that and they get all huffy. But call a middle schooler that and they get it. They are like something launched out of a rocket. Going a million miles per hour and don’t care what gets in their way, laughing all the time. They have passion for things that makes no sense and they have energy for things that makes no sense. (Which is why some 9th graders are convinced that they are superheros and can handle playing 2-3 sports simultaneously.) They’ve not been refined to the way adults try to do things reasonably. And the laziness of high school has not set in. Middle schoolers are 1000% passion.
In that regard, middle schoolers are just like God. God goes after people with zealous stupidity… a love that makes no sense. A love that goes all the way to the darkest corners of our lives and brings light and hope and a smile when someone realizes that there is no use, no resisting, no reason… just giving themselves over to him because they’ve been overcome with His zealous stupidity for lost people.
A couple weeks ago, a person got upset with my use of the word "stupid." He felt like since I was calling students to a "stupid faith in Christ" that I was calling them to a life of unintelligence. He was particularly annoyed that I told the group that God would take 90% passion and 10% brains over 90% brains and 10% passion. He said, "Christians ought to be intelligent. There are Christians with brains."
I seem to remember Jesus encountering a bunch of religious people with 90% brains and 10% passion a few times. It’s pretty clear from his choice of disciples that he’ll take passion over brains 25 times in a row.
This is why I love middle schoolers. Passion, passion, passion.
It’s been exceedingly dry here in Romeo for close to 3 weeks. On the one hand everyone loves nice weather. It was hot all day and cooled down at night. But it was starting to look drought-like around here. Grass was turning brown. Dirt was cracking. Plants withered. It was time for some rain.
This morning we woke up to darkness and a cool breeze. I can’t tell you how refreshing the damp air of rain is after a long spell of dryness. It’s a breath of fresh air. No… it’s better than that. I’m struggling to find the right comparison.
It’s like ______________.
p.s. If you haven’t been to weather.com and seen their new interactive map…. you should check it out. You can pretty much zoom down to see the weather on your block.
It’s no secret that I think Kiva.org is super cool. The idea of little people like me giving microloans to people in developing countries so that they can improve their business… that just rocks.
A few months back we started talking at YMX about forming an investment club. Not the type of investment club that invests money in stock… but an investment club that seeks to help people in developing countries get ahead.
So today the investing began. Here’s our homepage and here is our Kiva portfolio. Any YMX member can join… send me an email and ask me how.
Not a YMX member and interested in starting an investment club with Kiva? Shoot me an email!
Here’s the video we used for yesterday’s service. Of course, the message of the video is pretty straight-forward… "I like being involved because…"
I just love it when people are willing to cut loose a little. Perfect example here.
Today was a great day for our church as we asked people to step up and get involved. For those already involved… I hope they heard the message clearly, "We want reinforcements."
I am especially excited that several people indicated that they want to be a part of restructuring Light Force.
Here’s the starting point of the revisioning of student ministry at Romeo. "What we’ve done to this point has missed the vast majority. What we are doing now is great… just not good enough."
I am geeked that people want to be a part of developing something for Light Force that is attractive to those currently not coming.
p.s. I sarcastically thought to myself… "How do I get ‘less involved." Ha! I think we all looked good in our "involved." shirts. It was a win for little Romeo.
I made a big decision for the family this afternoon. I turned on the air conditioning. We had been trying to hold out as long as possible. But with temperatures here in Romeo climbing towards 90 again the ambient temperature in the house is finally too warm to be comfortable.
Up until this point the house has been able to cool off enough at night to last most of the day and stay pleasant. I think we’re at the point where the house is just going to hold the heat now for a while.
I even put the little air conditioner up in Megan’s room and cranked that up. So far… it feels SO MUCH BETTER.