• Remember what it was like when this was fun?

    I absolutely loved what Francis Chan said in LA a couple weeks ago. (about :43 into this video) He reminded us- me- youth workers… to stop taking ourselves so seriously, find a way to laugh again, remind yourself that you’re just a stupid kid, mistakes aren’t that big of a deal, we all went into ministry because it was fun. It was the pep talk a lot of us needed to hear among the stress of our lives.

    Let’s get back to just being children of God.

    That’s a good reminder for this weekend, isn’t it?

  • Schlepping through a data schmutz

    At work I’m doing a data smash. That is a tech geek way [I made up the term myself] of saying I’m taking all of our pipelines of customer web data and pouring it into one bucket to see if there’s anything interesting I can learn.

    It’s an experiment. There’s no guarantee it’ll tell me anything!

    Lately I’ve felt like I should put my lab coat on when I go into the office. And I find myself telling data jokes that people just stare at.

    It’s a very interesting experiment from 30,000 feet. But in the course of doing it, at ground level, it’s pretty flipping boring. As I trudge through spreadsheets, cleaning data, and merging terms like “church” and “organization” and “account” from various databases into one consistent term– I try not to let my mind wander. Consequently, at the end of the day I’m completely mentally exhausted. And you thought my job was just playing on YouTube, Facebook, and podcasts?

    My little experiment makes me think of real scientists in  real lab coats doing real experiments. These folks test a hypothesis with their hard work, ingenuity, intuition, experience… and money. Like my little experiment at work they don’t know if their hard work will ever pay off or if they’ll have to admit that their hypothesis failed despite all of the hard work, ingenuity, intuition, education, and money.

    And yet some of them work years and years, day-after-day, on the mundane unsexy experiments that change the world in big sexy ways. They invent new medical devices, develop vaccines, make sure the stuff we use is safe, on and on. Our society is dependent on nerds in lab coats.

    They are often the quiet heroes of our civalization. And yet we never learn their names.

    Better find my pretend lab coat and get back to work.

  • Unleash the Power of Observation

    observation

    Life is full of surprises. Unexpected things happen. People do funny stuff. But you’ll never notice the good stuff until you train your eye to look for it.

    Every week I see something that completely blows my mind. Sometimes its hilarity. Sometimes its tragedy. Sometimes its awkward. Sometimes its a persons moment of accomplishment. And when I share these things I always get the same response… how do you notice all that stuff?

    Observation is a skill. I don’t have special eyesight and I don’t think I live somewhere that especially strange things happen. OK, living near a university gives me the advantage that strange things probably happen more often than in other places. But I will make this promise, if you develop your observation skills you will see the art of life unfold before your eyes.

    Step one: Pop a squat. Define normal.

    The first thing you need to do is get to know your environment. If you’re new to this, go to a favorite coffee shop with a legal pad of paper or your laptop. Then, start writing everything you see down. Don’t talk to anyone. Just observe who is there, what they are doing, what they are talking about, what they are wearing, what they order, what they do after they order… write it all down. When it’s slow, map out the floor plan of the the coffee shop. Start noticing where people’s eyes go when they first walk into the shop. Start tracking foot traffic. Start noticing who stays how long. Start noticing how other people chose a seat. Once you’ve done this for a couple hours you will know what is normal about that shop.

    Step two: Contrast everything. Ignore the normal to notice the abnormal

    Once you get comfortable with the normal behavior of people in the coffee shop, you’ll start to notice the abnormal. (aka The Good Stuff) Notice that a guy sits in a certain place to check out female customers. Notice that people drop their change when the cute person is taking orders. Notice that the same person is meeting multiple people in a day. Notice the woman who cries quietly by herself. Notice the guy in the suit rolling his eyes while on the phone. On and on.

    Once you are used to a single environment and you get good about noticing what is abnormal at one place… it should start to come naturally with things in your every day routine.

    Most of the interesting things I observe happen when I’m in my routine. Riding my bike to the trolley I know what sprinklers are on, which direction cars typically come from at the intersections, which people are normally waiting for the bus, who are the regulars outside of Starbucks, that Tuesday’s are light traffic days at SDSU, who gets off at my stop, and which cars are parked on the side of the road as I work my way from the trolley to the office. Once I know that stuff– I only notice things that aren’t normal.

    The more you do this the better you get. I think I observe things a little better than most people because I do it in my routine all the time. Airports are easy “next steps” as typically most people behave about the same in all airports. But just know this.

    You can observe great things about the world simply by training your eyes to look out for it.

    The irony of this post? I notice obscure things but often miss the obvious.

  • Bring Soul Train to Church!

    Thank you Andrea for pointing this one out. Oh how I long for a little Soul Train moment at my church during the offering! Come on Harbor, represent!

    What if giving to God were this fun? Would people give more? Or would more people give? I dunno, but we’d all be better dressed!

  • Is God Still in Charge?

    who-is-in-charge

    It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? We live as though we are in charge. As if we decide and determine everything. Do we put the Bride of Christ into a cheap box and make it seem as though church is just a company?

    – Church growth can be boiled down to a formula? You need training for that. 4 easy payments of $19.95.

    – Church boards decide who is the leader? They pray at the beginning and end of each meeting.

    – Want a thriving church? Follow these 6 steps.

    – Want to experience life-changing worship? Hire some great musicians.

    – Need to reach the community? It’s all about your marketing strategy.

    – Want to change people’s lives? You need a gifted preacher to do that.

    Jeremiah 17:5

    This is what the LORD says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD.”

    Romans 9:14-16

    What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

    Colossians 2:8

    See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

  • Americans Love to Hate Winners

    celebrity-plotline

    We have a fascination with the little guy. Foundational to American storytelling is the little guy overcoming adversity to make it big. Americans love happy endings. The movie credits roll when Rocky raises his fists to the sky. Or when the young lawyer wins the big case against the mean corporation. Or when the nerdy sales guy finally marries the hot receptionist.

    A storyline of a champion successfully defending his place in the world would never make it on TV. You’d never see a TV drama about a big law firm protecting their big clients assetts in a positive light. It would be offensive to our American storyline to celebrate the big guy keeping the little guy down. Our culture isn’t wired to believe that is a valid storyline.

    We, collectively, hate the perennial winner. When the Chicago Bulls finally won the NBA Finals we celebrated with Michael Jordan. But when they won 3 in a row that seemed a bit much and everyone was fine with MJ going to play baseball for a few years. We were sick of his winning ways. The good guy needed to go wear a black baseball hat for a while… so we could welcome him back as he overcame being down to come to the top one more time.

    We love the process of becoming a winner. But actual winners become the enemy in about two seconds.

    This plays out painfully in politics. Collectively, we loved Bill Clinton as president. Then we hated him. We loathed his sleazy ways and couldn’t wait for him to leave office. People loved George W. Bush. It’s almost embarrassing to say that publicly– but the people loved Bush! Then they hated him. As time wore on everyone looked forward to him leaving office. Not even Republican nominees for his office wanted him at their events in the last year of his presidency. And now the tides are turning against Barack Obama. Just 12 months ago more than 60% of Americans chanted “Yes We Can” as they cast their ballot. Many cried along with the thousands at Grant Park when Obama won. Many lined up for days to proclaim his innaguration as the greatest day in our lifetime. But now he’s not the little guy, is he? The little guy has become the man and there is something in our collective DNA that must learn to loathe him.

    It’s a little surreal when you look at it like that, isn’t it? Maybe its just hip to hate the President?

    Sports? Same thing.

    Celebrity? Same thing.

    Business? Same thing.

    Churches? Same thing.

    Pretty much anyone or any thing which rises from obscurity to some notoriety is immediately loathed once they make it to the top. People hate Microsoft. They hate Dell. They hate AT&T. They hate the Yankees. They hate CNN. They hate Rick Warren. They hate Miley Cyrus.

    I don’t know about you. But I’m ready for a new storyline in our culture. I’m sick of the hatred. I’m bored with making celebrities awesome in order to just tear them down. The plot is disgusting to me.

    How about we start celebrating the everyday champions? The ones who never gain notoriety for coaching a freshmen basketball team. Is it possible for our culture to celebrate the Jack & Diane’s of the world? How about celebrating longevity? How about focusing on long term success instead of a parabola of success?

    Of course not. We love creating superstars for the sole purpose of destroying them far too much.

  • Alone in the Wild

    wide shot ed walking

    Last night I watched a fascinating documentary on the National Geographic Channel called, “Alone in the Wild.”

    It was difficult to watch. Here was this outdoorsmen named Ed Wardle. He wanted to test himself to see… can I live completely independent of others and survive in the Yukon wilderness? He intended to make it 90 days. He made it 50. And the last few weeks weren’t pretty. As time wore on, as hunger set in, as the reality that he could contact people but was choosing not to set in, the pain set in. It was agonizing TV. He cried a lot. He dealt with a lot of emotional pain. And of course he documented his unraveling. With the pressure of shooting a film on his mind all the time and the reality that he was lonely– he was paralyzed. He was in the wild, all by himself trying to prove that he could do it on his own, and he realized he needed people. He could technically do it but he chose to give up.

    Deep exhale on that. He needed people. He had the skills to do it on his own. But we just aren’t wired that way. We’re hardwired to need one another.

    And so he quit. He couldn’t do it. Check out what he said:

    The isolation was the most difficult element of this adventure. With no contact I immediately began to lose direction and reason. Without food I lost concentration and the ability to think straight. I worked hard from week one to keep myself motivated and keep going and by the end I was spending hours every day just convincing myself to carry on one day at a time. When I was travelling or doing something physically hard I had a military voice superimposed on my thoughts keeping me going and getting me organised, other times I had a female voice that would tell me to be sensible, breathe and take it easy on myself. They helped and I could feel them getting stronger and more necessary as time went on. link

    I doubt Kristen would remember saying this to me but when we were dating in college she wrote in a letter, “I love you because you don’t need anyone but you chose to let me into your world.“ True– I was raised to be independent. One of my parents goals in raising my brother and I was that we’d be able to take care of ourselves. (I don’t think they ever meant this emotionally, but physically we knew how to take care of ourselves with food, laundry, cleaning up, and stuff like that pretty young!)  When things got rough in high school and college I took that desire to be independent to an extreme. In my dysfunction I translated “you can do it on your own” to “I will do life with no ones help, I will muscle through anything, I don’t need to depend on anyone.”

    Kristen was right. Back then, I didn’t need or want anyone in my life. It was amazingly fulfilling to find my own way, take care of myself, and go from absolutely nothing to paying my way through college. But it was also dysfunctional. And it took someone I loved calling that spade a spade to motivate me to change.

    This is where Kristen has completed me in a powerful way, though. She reminds me, in words and deeds,  that we need others in our lives. We need good friends. We need the wisdom of our peers. We need to be open in these relationships. She has taught me that while we don’t “need” others to survive… life is infinitely better with people than without.

    Doggone it if she wasn’t right, too. Life is way better surviving in the wild with friends.

  • The Truth v4

    HT to Chris

  • Let’s Clarify our Relationship

    Dearest blog reader,

    It’s tough for me to write these words. Yet our affair is such that I think we need to clarify our relationship. It’s been pretty muddy as of late and I feel as though you are beginning to disdain me. And my ambivalence towards your disdain may not be helping matters.

    I write this blog. I invite you to read it. But it is important you know it was never about you. It’s about me. I don’t mean that to sound narcisistic, the way professors try to write off all social media as narcisism. See, I was blogging before we called it a blog. This thing you are reading started way back in high school– in journals. Then, in college, I got more sophisticated about it and would write this on my first Macintosh– in 1994. After that, I learned that my words could be more portable so I carried this around on Zip disks that I popped into computers all over the place… writing on the go! If you see the first post on this blog, from 5.5 years ago, you’ll see that it refers to other involvements online. (Seriously, I’ve been doing this online thing in one form or another since 1994!) It’s about me and my writing, not you and your reading.

    I consider my blog a form of art. I’m not that creative in the traditional manner, I can’t paint or draw. I suck at singing and dancing… this is what I have to work with. This is my studio.

    Long ago bloggers wrote in secret. (Think about the movies– how many of them are based off of journals found after a person dies?) I hid behind names I created for myself and never associated my name with what I posted online for fear that people would know what I was thinking in real life. The secrets weren’t because I was ashamed of what I wrote. It was because it was clear that I was keeping a journal and it was more for me than it was for you. I was fine with people reading it. I knew people read it. Back then it was more about the style of “hiding” than the hiding itself. Everyone did it.

    In the last 3-4 years styles changed and people went public about blogging. I’ve owned and blogged here at adammclane.com for almost 3 years. I was intentional about chosing this domain because I wanted to be transparent— I was tired of people whispering, “I found your blog, is it OK if I keep reading?”

    I don’t even blush anymore when you walk up to me and tell me you read about something on my blog. It’s just part of my life. Some people are strong verbal communicators– I like to think I am a stronger written communicator. It’s what I do and who I am. The fact is I love it when you walk up to me and say, “Are you Adam? I’ve read some stuff on your blog.” That’s great, it’s always fun. You’re welcome here. Please continue that. Please let me know how I can help you if you are learning to blog.

    What isn’t so great is when you put words in my mouth. Or when you steal my work. Or when you correctly quote me but misspell my name. Or when you take my ideas and thoughts and claim they are your own. Or when you want to take my ideas and make money for yourself. Or when you ask me to work for free. [There’s a whole rant to this one– for another day] Or when you blog/Facebook about my ideas negatively and don’t have the balls to at least send me a link to invite me into the same discussion that kicked off your rant with your friends. I could go on. But the point is made, right?

    This relationship is about trust. You trust me to write something worth reading. And I trust you to treat me with respect.

    – If you want to discuss something with me, I’ve given you 100 ways to contact me or leave a comment right here.

    – If you want to quote my blog, please spell my name correctly. (How do you get the link right and the name wrong?)

    – If you want to put a blog post on your website or in your denominations newsletter… please ask me for permission. I’ve never said no.

    – If you want to start a conversation about me, that’s totally fine… please allow me to defend myself.

    – If you want me to give you advice on how you can make money (or raise money for your ministry), don’t be annoyed when I ask for payment.

    I live a pretty open and public life. I’m totally fine with that. It goes with the territory. But living my life before you doesn’t mean I am open to being robbed, misquoted, mislabeled, and written off as some kind of jackass to be taken advantage of.

    I’m not angry, I’m not thinking of quitting, I’m not even a little bit ticked off— I just thought it was a good time to clarify our relationship. I live my life before you. I share my thoughts with you. I trust that you respect this relationship as much as I respect you. I invite your response. If I’m off base, let me know.

    Thanks for reading,

    Adam McLane

  • Thoughts on Disney on Ice Princess Classics

    Last night, our family went to go see the Disney on Ice show. It was great family fun. I remember when I was a kid wanting to go, the kid across the street always getting to go, but being disappointed that I never got to go. So I was a little surprised when Paul said he wanted to go because he is definitely not into princesses. In fact, we had a nice chat earlier about what kinds of wild animals it would be fun to release onto the ice to chase and eat the princesses.

    With all of that pessimism in me– it’s worth noting that we had a good time. No, really. It was fun.

    Some random thoughts.
    1. I’m glad we told the kids in advance we weren’t buying anything. It’s not that we’re cheap, it’s that we don’t want to blow money on $15 light up Disney princess spinning toys. And we ate dinner before going so no one needed a $12 Disney funnel cake. Overall, we got out of there with just paying for parking. I feel like somehow I earned $100 in bonus money.
    2. It has two acts. One was plenty. Seriously, we thought the thing was over. The kids were cheering. All of the dead princesses had been kissed by their princes and were back to life skating around in their costumed glory. It was over when they announced, “we’ll be back after this intermission for the second half of our show.” The second half ranked up there as the longest hour of my life.
    3. Now I know what happens to Olympic skaters after they reach puberty. They get jobs with Disney on Ice. I always said that skating didn’t prepare you for actual life skills, I was wrong.
    4. “Are those real men daddy?” Paul, sitting at the edge of his seat asked me this question when a troop of men in tights skated to the center of the ice rink. “It’s complicated son. Complicated.”
    5. Dress your kid like a princess, you spend $300 at Disney on Ice. Seriously, 75% of the little girls in the audience wore Disney dress-up clothes to the show. You could hear the vacuums from parents wallets as kids begged for matching kitsch.
    6. Big kids, too. Looking around, there were lots of kids who weren’t into in nearly as much as their parents. That’s the awesome part of Disney’s business model. Don’t introduce too many new characters– think about generations of kids who want to be Snow White, Belle, and Ariel when they grow up. There was a lot of sing-along from the parents. Reminds me of the McDonald’s business model. Hook ’em while they’re young!
    7. Megan was very satisfied. Like a lot of 8 year olds, Megan loves fantasy. She’s very interested in reading and stories. So this was right up her alley. She told me last night, “I just hope I can remember the order of all of these princesses for my journal.”
    8. Did you know you can watch streaming video from ustream.tv on your iPhone? I learned that last night during the second half of the show. I watched some puppy cams, kitten cams, and some strange show about people who want to pay to travel to space. No, they aren’t going to allow you to travel to space on your credit card. Pay cash up front. Makes sense.
    9. I have fun going places with my kids no matter what. Hey, I drag them to football games so putting up with 2 hours is no big deal, right? It was way easier than 2 hours of a princess birthday party.
    10. I love being a dad. There’s no other way to say that. It’s full of life lessons as I try my best to teach life lessons.