That’s the question Seth Godin wants to know.
Are your efforts at work, school, or church aimed at reaching the most people or at reaching specific individuals, audiences, or people groups?
Some places require an egalitarian approach. (such as a public school) But in the church world there are two specific and important audiences… the lost need to be reached and the found need to be taught.
What about in the business world? Are you more interested in keeping customers or reaching new customers?
This video is both funny and shocking. Maybe I’m getting old, but I think this kid needs some discipline.
HT to Craig Gross
Check out this video. In it Derek Webb says that the Christian market talks about 2% of life while ignoring the 98% of “stuff” in the real world.
What do you think? Should more Christian art reflect the themes Derek mentions?
I just saw a commercial against legislation called “Right to Work.” (Here’s the “anti-right to work” to be fair.)
From what I understand, the legislation will allow individual employees to decide if they would like to be in union or not. (If it’s a union shop) So let’s say you are a teacher… this legislation would allow you to opt out of the teacher’s union and remain being a teacher. Or if you work at a plant and would like to leave the union, this would allow you to do that and still keep your job.
I can’t lie. I think this is a good idea for Michigan. Take a look at the map. Southern states are the ones attracting businesses. Even places like Boise, Idaho have made the list so there is hope for Michigan! Check out Forbes Magazines “Best Places for Business” list and you’ll see that almost all of the top 10 are located in right to work states. (8 out of the 10.)
I’m not saying “let’s stop the unions” and I’m not a union hater. What I am saying is that there should be legislation that allows employees to chose what is best for them. Employees should have the ability to chose if they’d like to pay into a union, accept union benefits, or otherwise opt in or opt out without threats.
Would right to work negatively impact unions? Probably. As I talk to people in my life who are in unions most would opt out if they could. The one protection they appreciate most, job security, hasn’t worked in Michigan or protected jobs. Companies simply haven’t been able to afford union workers and remain profitable in this new economy. There is a general assumption among pro-union people that the buying public is willing to pay more for products produced in union shops. Wal*Mart, Toyota, and Honda have blown that theory out of the water. The American people may say that they will buy “American made” or “union pride” products… but they don’t care. Consumers are driven by value, price, and how a product makes them feel.
Why am I so suspicious of the “anti-right to work” ad campaign? Um, follow the money trail.
Today was our first real day in the office since Christmas Eve. It felt good. It’s nice to have vacation time, but man… I was a bum.
This morning I was talking to the kids about today’s date. Megan knew that we started 2008, and she knew that it was now January. But she didn’t know what made a day. She knew who made today, but not what a day was.
A rotation. It happens so many times in our lifetime that we miss the wonder of billions of pounds of matter spinning. Like a child spins in my living room, the earth spins. And each time there is one rotation we mark its passing with the simple term: A day.
A year is one rotation of that spinning billions of pounds of matter around the sun. This takes 365.25 days and is equally amazing.
Today there is a lot of talk about 2007 and 2008. A lot of lists and a lot of dreams. I wonder if those same people will take a good, honest look at the last 365 rotations of the earth, the last rotation around the sun, and ask themselves, “What could I have done better? What can I learn from? How can I start doing better today? What will God have me do today, on this rotation of the earth?”
There are no guarantees in life. I’m trying hard not to take this rotation for granted.
Kristen suffers from cold hand disease. While not a real disease, it is annoying because Kristen likes to take her frigid fingers and try to touch me. (I am built like a human furnace and rarely get cold.)
So when Kristen is typing on her computer, the aluminum keyboard gets her fingers extra cold.
So here is the solution. For $22 she can get a pair of gloves that plugs into the USB of her iMac and warms her hands up! Though 125 degrees F may be a little too toasty.
HT to Make Magazine
I start each day pretty much the same way. Here’s a list of things I try to do in the morning. The days of grabbing a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper are long, long gone.
How long does all this take? It depends on what I’m doing, how much time I have, and a lot of other factors. (Like getting picked by Megan to take her to school.) I can do all of this in as little as 5 minutes… or if I’ve got a lot of time, it can last all morning.
What about your morning routine? What do you do?
Without sounding overly dramatic, K Mart saved our Christmas day. After the service last night I took a gander at our food situation. Let’s just say the cupboards were bare and the day had been so insane that we hadn’t had the chance to get groceries.
A quick search on Google maps determined that every grocery store in our area closed at 7:00 PM. Unphased by that reality and in search of anything that could be assembled into a Christmas dinner I started driving around.
If you’ve never had to shop on Christmas eve, plan on doing it in 2008. It’s a trip. A lot of gas stations are closed. Any type of grocery store is closed. Most pharmacies are closed. Specialty stores are closed. Pretty much everything closes on Christmas eve at 7:00 PM. (I know, I checked!) Wal*Mart. Miejer. Kroger. Vince & Joes. Sheenah’s. Everything.
So this left me with two choices. Liquor stores or KMart. Every liquor store in Michigan was open late last night… but I figured that my hopes of getting mashed potatoes, ham, and other items for a Christmas dinner were slightly better at KMart. (Serving the kids Slim Jim’s and Molson Ice for Christmas seemed a little like child abuse. I wasn’t quite that desperate… yet.) So I pulled into the KMart parking lot at 23 & Van Dyke at 8:45 PM.
The place was packed!
And it was filled with tons of people just like me. Did you know that KMart has a grocery section? They don’t have much of one… but they have one. It was getting tribal in the grocery aisle as we were all looking for the same thing, meat! As I contemplated spam and ham cold cuts for Christmas dinner… the aisle filled with people looking for “one thing” they forgot to purchase. A conversation quickly erupted of the places we saw that were open that might have sour cream, yams, or fresh
fruit. I settled on pot roast and mashed potatoes then walked around looking for other things. After double checking the store for a spare ham in a can and walking around to snag some last minute stocking stuffers, I headed the check out where a scantly clad checkout girl scanned everything and I headed home. (She must have thought it was Halloween. Brrr.)
I just want to add. Had a grocery store stayed open until 10 last night they would have done quite well. While I had fun trying to put together “something” for a Christmas feast… it would have been so much better at a grocery store.
I kept thinking about Charles Dickens’s Scrooge. Where did he get that goose and all those presents on Christmas morning? It must have all come from KMart– open until 10 on Christmas eve.