Not only is it cool how this artist creates his craft, I think his message matches the theme of this blog.
It is possible…
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Loop Artist
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Saturday Tunes
It’s amazing how fast the last few weeks have gone. It just seems like every time I turn around I’m here talking about what I’m listening to on a Saturday morning! Last night, we took the kids to Gio’s in La Mesa for our family date night. Then, they came home and everyone crashed by about 9:00 PM. This morning is normal Saturday morning stuff. We had waffles and coffee and in a little bit I’ll take Stoney over to dog beach so he can run around and play with other dogs. Kristen is pretty occupied thinking about our move, which starts in just 8 days!Here are the next 10 songs I’m listening to this morning. Completely random, my ratings included.
1. We All Want the Same Things by Kevin Michael ****
2. I Will Not be Silent by David Crowder Band *****
3. Lose Yourself by Eminem ***** (Shout out to Cathy N. on that one!)
4. Change Me by Brae **** (Romeo peeps, this is Brandon’s album)
5. When I Come Around by Green Day *****
6. Bye Bye Blackbird by Joe Crocker ****
7. Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes by Paul Simon ****
8. Ballad for the Lost Romantics by A New Found Glory ****
9. Amazing Grace My Chains are Gone by Chris Tomlin ****
10. Hard Sun by Eddie Vedder *****
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We’re Moving
Big fun for the McLane family! In a couple of hours I will drop off the deposit on a new rental house. When we moved here in August we knew that the house we landed in was too small. Coming into it we only had a few days to find a place when we visited in July. We did the best we could with the time we had. Fortunately, it was a 6-month lease and you can survive just about anything for 6 months.
The new place is pretty close to where we currently live. As the crow flies the move is about half a mile. So nothing significant will change for us. Same school for the kids, we’ll shop at the same places, so on and so forth. We’re a little closer to work, a little closer to church, a little closer to San Diego State.
What’s awesome about the new place? Going from 2 bedrooms, 1 bath to 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bath!
The kids will each have their own rooms. Their new rooms are, by far, the biggest rooms they’ve lived in. They are understandably excited about their new rooms. Megan likes that her closets doors have huge mirrors. Paul is excited that above his closet is a cubby hole that we’ve convinced him will be his bed. Mom and dad are excited too. It’s a house much more conducive to hosting people which makes us happy. Nice living room, a dining room, a kitchen with a breakfast nook, a half bath off the kitchen, (and the master bedroom) a two-car garage, and a bigger backyard with fruit trees. It’s less money in a slightly more desirable neighborhood. Also fun for us is that it’s fully carpeted… ahhh.
What’s not so awesome? Well, since it’s less money it’s a small step back in condition. The appliances are a little older, the kitchen floor is hilarious in its 80s awesomeness, the main bathroom wreaks of powder blue, and I have to take care of the yard. (No more gardener!) We’re also going to live next door to our 80 year old landlord. He seems like a nice enough guy, let’s hope he turns into more neighbor than landlord.
It looks like we’ll start moving around March 1st. Since we don’t have a ton of stuff we hope to fully be out of the current house by March 7th. (A little rental overlap… so we can take our time!)
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And you thought our housing market fell?
Check out this story too… 3000 abandoned cars at the Dubai airport with the keys in the ignition!
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A Day in the Life of Abbey Road
Check out this time lapse of a day of tourists re-enacting the cover of The Beatles album, Abbey Road. Both the joy and annoyance of living near a tourist photo opportunity is on display! Kristen and I have learned that if we dare to take our camera with us to Balboa Park we will be taking pictures of tourists all day!
HT to Cory -
So Long American Idol Season 8
I watched most of the American Idol audition shows this year. I love the auditions! And I gave Hollywood Week a shot… and it was fun. But after last nights show, I’m out. I’ll come back in a few weeks when the quality of musicians starts to shine through. It’s one thing to have the occasional bad singing… and they had that covered last night. (The woman who went first probably killed their ratings; horrible outfit; she butchered that song. Someone please tell the 95 pound woman she can’t pull off an Aretha Franklin song, need I go on?) But I’ve seen and heard enough to know that they are merely hyping the “most talented group ever.” And the judge who is Paula’s stand-in just in case Paula falls off the wagon one more time… she was a complete Paula Abdul clone last night! What exactly did she add to the panel?
I’ll be back for the finale. But I don’t think I can sweat it out all season with this cast.
Then again, there isn’t a lot else on so I’ll probably just whine and watch next week. Yeah, who am I kidding? I have a love-hate relationship with the show.
And I voted for Danny Gokey 25 times before going to bed. Man, that guy can sing.
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One-Two Punch of Leaders
I’ve been thinking about leadership a lot lately as I reflect on the type of leader that I tend to follow. More to the point, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the type of leader I aspire to be.
Let’s start with what I hate.
I hate the Donald Trump-type of leader.The ego driven type A-aholics that thrive on their own power. As Trump himself has proven time and again, it is a losing style of leadership. Trump’s leadership style is bankrupt across many layers.
I hate the Mr. Rogers-type of leader. These leaders are so afraid of expressing their will on an organization that their team feels unlead. These leaders make you feel good but often lead failing organizations. This leadership style makes you feel good but fails to produce results.
Rather than go any further into this metaphor, I’ll get to the point. The type of leader I love and aspire to be is actually a combination of both. When I look at the landscape of “what’s wrong with leadership” I often see one type of leader or the other leading an organization. But I think it’d be more healthy if organizations intentionally had a little of both. You need a strong leader to get things done and cast vision. But you also need people who are insanely compassionate. And since it is nearly impossible to be both Donald Trump and Mr. Rogers… I think the best style of leadership is to have both.
It’s way better to have the tension of plural leadership than it is to fail.
Observation #1: Women seem to be better at this than men. I’m not one of those Christian men who buys into the lie that men are better leaders than women. I’ve got too much experience with excellent female leaders to believe that for a second. I’m astonished that churches openly discriminate against women who are strong leaders… but that’s another post for another day. I am not saying that men can’t do this, I’m just observing that when it comes to sharing leadership for the strength of the team… my experience has shown me that women do it easier than men.
Observation #2: The best leaders have an equal and opposite sidekick. I jokingly refer to this as “Good cop, bad cop.” I’ve played both roles in leadership… but it’s way more fun to be good cop. When this works well it gets an insane amount of stuff done. It’s an efficiency machine!
Observation #3: Everyone is happier with a one-two punch of leaders. Ultimately, there is the boss. But having a one-two punch of leaders allows people of various personality types to have someone to gel with.
Application: I’m still working through this. Let me know your thoughts.
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Sunday Normalness
Pretty much every Sunday is the same for our family. It’s our new normal and we love it. For the first time in my adult life I have weekends off… and I’m still enjoying the novelty of it. Here’s what a typical Sunday looks like.7:00- Everyone up. We don’t set alarms, but we all get woken up by hungry animals.The pace of our morning is extremely slow. With 3+ hours until church we hang in our PJs for as long as possible. The kids usually play quietly while mom and dad enjoy coffee and just enjoy the morning.
8:30- Dad and Paul head over to Yum Yum Donuts about a mile away to hunt & gather some donuts. Typically, we get 6 donuts and a bag of donut holes.
10:00- We leave for church. Old habits die hard… so we’re always there a little too early. (Californians are notoriously late for church; the cool kids come late.) This is the part that astonishes me… I just go to church. It took some intentional pulling back but I now do nothing on Sunday mornings but attend services.
12:30- We leave church and head for home. Sometimes we go out sometimes we don’t. But there’s no hard and fast rule for going out like before. We’ve been to Chili’s exactly once since moving to California! (In Romeo we went almost every week.)
2:00- We’re done with Sunday running around. No evening meetings. No youth group. Nada. We have the rest of the day to ourselves.
When it’s warm outside we are in the habit of going to the beach after church. We run home, grab a quick lunch, and pack up the car with all of our stuff. But that hasn’t happened since October. We’re hoping for the beach routine to come back in April!
It’s taken us a few months… but I finally feel like we’re hitting a healthy stride for Sunday’s. From the donut routine, to “just going to church,” to doing something simple and fun. Our family is actually starting to look forward to Sunday coming again!
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Two Kinds of Medium Sized Church People
Here are some more thoughts on the medium-sized church crisis. My post the other day attracted a fair amount of comments and attention… and I was pretty frustrated that people jump to the issue of money.
I only think that the money problems of current are bringing the Medium-sized church crisis to the forefront. At the end of the day I’m meeting two types of churchoers. Once you cut past the nice fluff they say about their churches and preacher they are really either small church people or megachurch people.
What does this mean for medium-sized church? My experience in medium-sized churches is that there is a tension between these two types of people. One is resistant of anything “small church” so stuff that is appealing to the small church is annoying to them and visa versa. Eventually, misguided and unaccepted tension results in hurt feelings, bitterness, disappointment, and a range of other typical medium-church angst.
And that angst is why I’m saying the medium church is in crisis… Eventually, church leaders must chose to lead their church one direction or the other: Lead towards smaller environments or toward becoming a megachurch. The cultural division is causing this squeeze. The financial crisis merely accelerates the trend.
A Personal Example
In Romeo, we mislabeled these cultural issues as a “personal preference issue” instead of a cultural issue. Big mistake! Our small church folks didn’t mind if the worship team wasn’t professional sounding or if the church basement was a bit too homey for potlucks. Small church people find those things endearing… maybe even spiritual.
Meanwhile, the megachurch people wanted everything to be like the megachurch they used to go to and they wanted the church to become. Everything was compared to the megachurch down the road or the stuff they saw on TV or enjoyed at a conference or read about online. To the megachurch people, the failure of the small church people to realize all that Romeo could become was an abomination… a spiritual failure at worse and a lack of vision at best.
See… this isn’t about money at all. Maybe I’ll be called a heretic for this? But, I will tell you what 10 years of church ministry has taught me about giving. Giving has 0% to do with what people are taught from the Bible and 100% to do with whether or not they feel that their money will further a cause they believe in. People are just sophisticated like that. They see right through the pleas for cash to your motivation. When motivations converge they give. When they disagree they give somewhere else. Christians are extremely generous… but they won’t give to a church simply because they go there.
Next, let’s talk about money. I’ve only hinted at it, lets hit it straight away next time.
Then, I want to talk about the superiority of small church and megachurch missions in our culture. This is the core reason for the crisis.
