Category: hmm… thoughts

  • Chirp!

    ChirpRight now our house is a little annoying to be in. You need to know that we live in an old house, built in 1871. For those of you outside of Romeo I’ll explain our town to you like this. Have you ever driven through and old town, gone down Main Street and slowed down to admire the Victorian homes? I live in that neighborhood. Romeo is one of those towns with homes dating back to the mid-1800s.

    Over the years our house has acquired a bunch of smoke detectors. I think there are 8 smoke detectors and a carbon monoxide detector. And every single one of them takes a 9v battery. Our house is annoying to be in right now because 3 of them need their batteries changed. And they remind you… chirp.

    An annoying warning sign. Think about this. The chirp that is annoying me is annoying me by design. The batteries are low on those 3  smoke detectors to warn me that if I don’t change the batteries soon they will go back to the silent way there were before with one important difference: They would be dead. They won’t protect my family.

    What are the chirps in your life? What are the things in your life that give you constant reminders that you learn to ignore?  

  • Beware of Cabs

    Some news stories need no explanation. This is one of them.

    Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

    Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure…

    “But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent, (said Kinshasa’s police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko.) To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it’,” he said. link

    And people always want to know why I’m not a touchy kind of person? Now you know, you just never know when or where you’ll bump into a sorcerer. You never know.

    Be careful out there.

  • MegaThoughts

    The first part of my week I am spending at Harvest Bible Chapel. It’s a little odd every time I hang out with folks who work with big churches because their mindset is completely different from my mindset. In the end, we do very similar things. We both invest in, disciple, and dream about world changing stuff. We just happen to do it at two completely different scales. I work with 15-20 students and they have several hundred. Major scale difference! Likewise, the problems that we encounter are completely different. So it’s cool. I have great respect for the people whom I have interacted with here. They love the Lord, are great at what they do, and I’m happy to receive their wisdom.

    Speaking of big churches, yesterday we visited a church that makes “Megachurch” seem like the wrong word. It wasn’t a big enough word. My friend Jason Raitz was kind enough to show us around his church, Willow Creek Community Church. Size-wise it’s hard to describe how big Willow is. Some numbers that stick out as we walked for two hours, dragging our jaws through half of it after seeing their amazing new worship center. 24,000 people attend a service on the weekend. 1900 of them make it to a middle school small group. The new worship center seats 7800. I think Jason told me he oversees 250 volunteers. There are about 500 employees at Willow. (4-5 times our churches size!) Those are things I remember. It was so nice of Jason to give up all that time to show us around. It was awesome.

    Both Harvest and Willow are great churches. And I don’t mean they are great because they are large. They are great because they do big, bold, and great things in the name of Jesus.  It’s all about God, His Word, and proclaiming Jesus for these churches.

    It’s funny because there are people in our church who will read this and think, “Great. The pastors want Romeo to be a megachurch.” Nah. We’re so far from “mega” that we’re only thinking “We want to be a great church.” Size doesn’t make something great.

  • Youth Ministry & Risk

    I’ve been thinking about successful youth groups vs. unsuccessful youth groups. And truth be told the exact same thought holds true for churches.

    • Successful youth groups takes measured, bold risks.
    • Unsuccessful youth groups take few risks.
    • Successful youth groups generate excitement both internally and externally.
    • Unsuccessful youth groups are boring.
    • Successful youth groups have a two-fold reaching/teaching mode.
    • Unsuccessful youth groups have a one-fold teaching model.
    • Successful youth groups have the support of the church leadership.
    • Unsuccessful youth groups aren’t sure they have the support of church leadership.
    • Successful youth groups have intentional event planning.
    • Unsuccessful youth groups have events that are based on what kids want.

    Of course, all of this comes down to “How do you measure success in youth ministry?” How do you answer that question?

  • Random Warning

    Do you ever feel like your mind is cluttered with a bunch of random thoughts and you can’t seem to focus on any of them? That’s how I feel this week so far. Here’s a rundown of the things going on.

    • It’s a blast having a full house. With 8 people (Patti‘s family is here) laughing, playing Wii, and having a good time its really fun to be home. If I had one word to summarize our time together it would be: Laughter. There have been some moments where everyone just erupted into laughter… that’s a very good thing for us.
    • Taxes are done and submitted. I finally finished the taxes last night and submitted them at 10:12 PM Eastern Standard Time. Why the delay? When you have to pay what is the rush?
    • Street teams are underway. Yesterday I talked Bob and Jimmy into helping me hand out flyers for our concert at Romeo High School. I’m headed to Romeo Middle today to do that same. Wanna join me?
    • There are lots of more cool things headed our way at YMX. In case you didn’t know… we’ve somehow survived the first 2.5 years of existence and suddenly find ourselves one of the largest independent youth ministry sites out there. [insert head shaking, I have no idea how it happened. It’s so obviously a God thing.] And there are some fun opportunities coming.
    • Speaking of YMX, Patti and I collaborated on a news item last night. It’s a cross between a product review and a sneak peek at a September release. Check that out here.
    • Today I’m going to help Bob do his first ever vlog. One of the things I love about Bob is that he’s always game for a crazy idea if we think it’s going to help us reach people. Bob is not “the safe pastor” and with 96% of people to reach in our area… that’s exactly what we need.
    • Spring has broken out wildly in Romeo. It may hit 70 today. I think the last time we saw 70 was October or early November. It’s time to change the oil in the mowers.
    • We had two really ugly, mean cats outside of our house last night causing trouble for Explorer and Lovely. (Explorer was wildly scratching to be let it) They were howling at our cats from outside and being generally annoying. A bucket of water took care of them.
    • I’m really, really, really, really excited about the next sermon series at church. It starts this week and is called “Change Without Compromise.” We’ll be teaching through parts of our doctrinal statement. Someone asked me the other day, “When will Romeo stop changing?” Never. A living organism changes constantly. When your body stops changing they plant you in the ground. I’m not quite ready to get planted.
    • Paul started karate yesterday. He’s got some new moves. They worked on punching yesterday… he’s not a good height for that.
    • Next week I’m headed to Chicago for some continued education. If you are in the northwest burbs and want to hang out, let me know.
    • I ordered the replacement lamp for the projector. We joked on Sunday that it was like a Polish joke… “How many pastors does it take to change a light bulb?” Turns out the answer is 1. And about 6 trustees and 1 deacon.
    • Kristen just got back from taking Megan to school and the coffee is about to be pressed. Wednesday has begun.

  • Holy Travel Schedule Batman

    scheduleThis is more of a confessional post than anything else. I can feel my travel schedule getting out of control. In 2007, Kristen and I carefully managed our schedule to maximize our time together. It was fantastic spending so much one-on-one time with the love of my life.

    Then reality struck back. Here’s a quick rundown of what I’m currently trying to jam into the next 12 months… these are the temptations of a networking-crackhead. A true one-week family vacation. A YMX getaway. Two or three National Youth Worker Conventions 08. Internet Ministry Conference 08. National Youth Ministry Conference 09. Shift 09. Staff retreats, Light Force mission trip, and of course… more family trips. Did I mention that next week I’m headed to a 3 day conference? Yeah.

    Every single one of those are good things. Great things! I love every one of these opportunities. I love that at each one of them I get a chance to be a friend to people, learn new things, and hopefully minister. The challenge is that I don’t truly have the ability to travel that much. Every one of those opportunities comes at a cost, doesn’t it? And sometimes the cost has nothing to do with money… it has to do with the time away from family.

    I’m not the only person in the world with more opportunities than time. How do you balance it all? 

  • Ron Jeremy on Christian Music

    ron jeremyI’m a big fan of Craig Gross and the ministry of xxxchurch.com. (The #1 porn site for Christians, by the way) Which means I’m not a huge fan of Ron Jeremy. (Old school porn star) One of the craziest things going on today is that xxxchurch.com and Ron Jeremy are traveling the country together to hold, what they call, The Porn Debate on college and university campuses.

    This video is self-explanatory. Ron & Craig were in the car together and they were talking about music. Listen in on this discussion between them about Christian music and worship music. Then watch what happens when Craig and Ron talk about going to a Christian concert together.

    HT to Craig

  • A Satanic Wii Title

    Wii-JiHere is a little insight into my strange sense of humor. During today’s message Bob talked about Ephesian believers who, as an act of obedience, burned their magic books. To apply that to our people Bob suggested that believers not read horoscopes, got to tarot readers, or use Ouija boards. When he said, Ouija boards… my weird sense of humor thought, “I wonder if that’s a game for the Wii yet?” Obviously it isn’t so I made this mock-Wii graphic in Photoshop just for kicks.

    Speaking of today’s service… there was a major difference between the first service and second. In between services I heard a loud “bang” come from the projector. The bulb had exploded and we didn’t have the time to change it before the 11:00 AM service. Believe it or not, we actually had a plan for that because we knew it would one day happen. I was very proud of our team who adapted to the problems and managed to deliver a fantastic service. Bob and Jimmy earned some stars. Kudos to them as they reacted beautifully.

    For me, today’s service was a reminder that it isn’t about how well you use technology. It’s about bringing a heart of worship. I know that in my mind… today was a tangible in-your-face reminder from God. I love it when God does that!

  • Zloop: Is this the next social network?

    zloopLast night I had the chance to talk to Brent Myers, an evangelist for Zloop. Zloop is a new social network that is built around two general concepts:

    1. Security. Your “loops” are private to whom you invite.
    2. Mimics real life. You can control which loops see which side of you.

    If you are looking for a more detailed description, here is Zloop’s description: About zloop
    (pdf file)

    Last night I got an invite and created a few loops. At this point, it’s clear that zloop is in a late Alpha, maybe early Beta testing mode. There are some cool features to this idea and some weaknesses. Here’s what I like/dislike so far.

    Like

    • General concept is cool. Kind of like a combo to Facebook/Linkedin. I like being able to manage different
    • File sharing ability. Yup, attachments are cool.
    • Privacy. Cool idea.
    • Loops. Like that I can keep relationships separate, as needed.

    Dislikes

    • Missing some obvious components. Web 2.0 site with no RSS? No ability to search loops? No ability to find friends? Weird.
    • No rules. There is no TOS statement… can’t believe it! There’s nothing that stop hate groups or hate loops. Major problem here.
    • It is another profile to manage. Who needs that?

    If this were something I could install on my servers, run it as my brand, and manage it within a terms of service… this would be an incredible tool for YMX. But it’s not. As cool as it is I really wonder if it will take off as the current version is not significantly better than Facebook. It has potential, it’s worth checking out, but right now… it’s got some “cool factor” to inject.

    Don’t take my word for it, try it! Leave a comment and I’ll send you an invite.

  • Crud be gone

    crudFor the last 48 hours I’ve had some sort of crud latching onto my life. I don’t know if it was the flu, a killer migrane, or food poisoning… but it has now past.

    It started on Tuesday at work. I got a headache, like a nasty one. So I took a couple Tylenol and started drinking some water. Within 30 minutes I started shivering uncontrollably, and got dizzy. So I went and laid on the floor in one of the classrooms at church so I could kind of regain my composure. Things got worse quickly.

    I ended up coming home by about 11:00 on Tuesday morning and basically laid around for the next 24 hours. Now, a couple of days later, I’m about back to 100%. (Though the headache isn’t completely gone.)

    The worst part was that I had all the pressure of MainStreet on my mind. Would I be able to do it? What would happen if I had to drop out at the last minute? What would happen if I tossed my cookies during a scene?

    Of course, MainStreet came off without a hitch. I wasn’t 100% myself but the rest of the crew did a fantastic job. More on that later.