Category: hmm… thoughts

  • Exhausted

    Since I don’t get sick very often I don’t know how to respond “the right way.”

    I probably could have milked being sick to take off 3 or 4 days and no one would have said anything. I took a half a day.

    I had a pretty full schedule and a bunch of deadlines I could have pushed off a few extra days, but I didn’t.

    I told a friend I would help him move, and with being sick and everything else he probably would have still been my friend had I bailed on him. But I didn’t.

    It seems like there are people who can get away with being sick, taking time off, and properly recovering. They get sick with style. But the rest of us struggle to get a moment just to rest before life forces us into a tired dirge of recovering while working.

    The result? While I feel better, I am exhausted. With next week being even busier than this week… I need a break.

  • Brick and mortar vs. Digital media

    barnes & nobleTonight Kristen and I spent an hour walking around our local Barnes & Noble. Each time I go there I have a recurring vision for what I am supposed to do with my life.

    I’m a messenger.

    I believe God has placed me on this planet to convey a message. And the most important part about being a messenger is that you need your message to be heard.

    What’s that got to do with the bookstore? 

    Imagine all the very important messages stuck in books you will never read? People walking around a bookstore pick up books for random reasons. The jacket design. A catchy title. Because the worker turned it out instead of in. Because someone picked it as something interesting to read.

    The point is, with 50,000 titles at the local bookstore… if you’re life’s mission were to convey a message… a bookstore sucks as a place to spread it.

    In my case, that translates into “find a better method to spread your message.“

  • Happy Birthday to Kim

    If you are like me, you are a friend of Kim Porter. And today she is really stinking old, 32. (OK, 5 months older than me.)

    If you’ve got a couple of seconds warm her day up a little and wish her a happy birthday.  Even if you don’t know her, she’s the sweetest person in the world so just stop by to wish her a happy birthday!

  • Lamentations 1:3

    Lamentations 1:3

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  • Who am I?

    adam mclaneI caught this on my vanity search this morning. It came from here. Since I don’t speak that language I have no clue what it means.

    But I am dead sexy, aren’t I?

  • Sick

    sickI don’t think anyone relishes being sick. I hate it. I have so many things to do and I’m sitting here freezing to death in 3 layers of clothes, a stocking cap, and my slippers trying to pound out some stuff I need to get done. I hope I feel better for Sunday and Monday but I have a sinking feeling that I’m just headed into this cough and not coming out of it for a while.

    In other news: I installed Joomla 1.5 today for the first time. I am a huge Joomla junkie. Almost all of my sites either use WordPress or Joomla and switching from version 1.0.13 to 1.5 is a pain in the neck. For example, you have to completely delete your existing site. Which scares the snot out of me when it comes to the church website and YMX.  I spent most of the day installing a site for a friend, getting the template all pimped out, and starting to look for the components he needs.

    easy buttonI have to say that I really like the new version. It is going to rock once I get past the migration issues. I am going to put off migrating YMX for as long as possible. I’m really hoping for an easy button but I don’t think one is coming.

    To make matters more fun, I still have stuff to do to get ready for the services tomorrow. Which means in a few minutes I’ll be making my weekly late Saturday night trip to the church get stuff done.

  • Mercy: Some practical theology here

    Last night at Light Force small groups we talked about the difference between mercy and grace.

    Grace = Getting something you don’t deserve.

    Mercy = Not getting something you deserve.

    I could see the students wrestling with this. Here are students completely covered in both. They have parents who bathe them in both on a daily basis. Yet they don’t see it. I think it goes back, for them, to a fundamental misunderstanding of what “deserve” means. They think that they deserve mercy and grace.

    I left thinking that most of the students expect to deserve grace and mercy. (By their birth they feel they have merited favor with others and even God) And I wondered how I could communicate that they don’t deserve to deserve grace and mercy better?

    What are some practical areas of grace and mercy the students in your life experience but fail to acknowledge?

  • What a day!

    I was having a good day. Really, my new toy arrived and the installation has gone very smooth. I had a good day at work and got a lot done.

    Then I got totally flattered by a post over on the MailChimp blog. (MailChimp is the third party email handler we use for the YMX newsletter)

    Not that they don’t use technology. Youth Ministry Exchange is taking full advantage of a bunch of MailChimp features to spread the word. Here are some things that impressed me:

    * They built an archive of all their past newsletters here. It’s a page they host on their website, then they use MailChimp’s Archive Generator to embed that list. It gets automatically updated whenever they send out a new issue. Learn more about MailChimp Archive Generators
    * They’ve created their own signup form, then pass the data over to MailChimp (insteading of using our default, hosted signup form). Our signup box designer is pretty nice, but it’s always nicer when you host your own.
    * On their signup form, they’re using MailChimp’s Interest Groups feature, which allow subscribers to sign up to receive only specific types of content. Learn more about MailChimp Interest Groups…
    * They’re using MailChimp’s HTML email designer, and they’ve really customized their newsletter design to fit their brand. The content in their newsletters is actually useful! Tips, free downloads, and commentary. Nice.
    * In their newsletters, they link to their blog, and to an RSS feed. More ways to keep your members updated.

    Wow. A Christian ministry getting mentioned as using a lot of technology. I love that.

  • The K List

    The following was posted on Facebook in a group called “Kasper Rocks.” It’s a group dedicated to a beloved high school English teacher. If I can write anything at all it is because of his influence. When I screw up it is due to residual muck from the other 10 years of public school I did not take Dan Kasper. (Coach K)

    Here is his list of writing rules: I’m 31 years old and I still refer to this list. I was happy to find a digital copy as mine from 1994 was getting ugly.

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  • What does it mean to love someone no matter what?

    between the eyesbetween the eyesbetween the eyesOur adult small groups are wrestling their way through the beatitudes. It’s an interesting study because so much of it hits me between the eyes.

    I’ll tell you one thing I struggle with as a pastor. I fight to not become self-righteous.

    Here’s what I mean. In my area of ministry expectations are a killer. Students and parents expect me to be and do and approve or disapprove of certain things and I in turn have certain expectations for what I expect out of my students and parents.

    And that creates an inborn battle– because both of us are expecting something we are not: Perfect. And expecting perfect responses and actions from imperfect people leads to the ultimate buzz kill in any type of ministry: Disappointment.

    Juno posterToday Kristen and I went to go see the movie Juno. I loved this movie because of its Juno posterJuno posterhonesty, frankness and utter lack of the traditional hollywood glamorization. What Juno does is capture the true heart of what it means to do life with one another. It shows real life comedy, drama, heartache, and redemption all in the search of love while wading through the stupid ideals we all encounter and discover to be false.

    It’s about a girl who messes up and gets pregnant. In her innocense I could squint and see many of the young ladies I’ve worked with over the last decade making the same mistake and getting into the same predicament, wondering where to turn. She wasn’t dating the guy and she couldn’t even admit to herself that she liked him. From a “pastor’s perspective” I could feel myself giving this girl “the judgment look.” You know, the look of disappointment we glare at a person when they don’t live up to our expectations of purity, innocense, and all that other stuff. It’s not limited to pastors but I suppose we are famous for it. (Yes, we did learn how to do that in seminary. With no partying what else was there to do?)

    I was ashamed of myself for thinking I would give this girl “the look.” (Even in my imagination!) Why? Because that’s not an appropriate response. That’s a self-righteous response. It’s me thinking that I am better than a 16 year old who gets pregnant. In actuality I am no better than her. I am just as guilty of 16 year old stupidity as she is. It’s something Jesus would have glared at me about. In fact, it was precicely that type of response that drove me so far from Christ as a high school student myself.

    And now I felt myself wanting to do the same thing. Shame on me.

    I want to be the type of person who is there for students like Juno. I want to be the person Juno calls when she’s done something stupid. (I love how the movie depicts her waiting for people to tell her it was a mistake, as if she didn’t know.) And I want to have the honest response that even though she’s done something really stupid that it’s going to be OK. I want to lead a ministry that lets people know that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done… that God is a God of mercy and grace and forgiveness and… and opportunity.

    There are no mistakes with God. He doesn’t screw up. He doesn’t allow terrible things to happen for no reason. He doesn’t allow our 16 year old mistakes to turn into living breathing babies accidentally. He can turn every “bad thing” we’ve done into something good. He can make all things new. He can allow us to learn to discover love, forgiveness, and grace as we deal with the consequences of our stupid mistakes.

    Jesus said— “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. Revelation 21:5-7