• Tragic News from Alaska

    My mom forwarded this to me. I thought it was good for a giggle this Christmas Day.

  • If Santa were a Calvinist

    If Santa were a Calvinist, we’d all be on the naughty list!

    For non-church folks, here is a link to help you understand the Calvinism joke. [Total depravity] Seeing that we now go to a Presbyterian church, this seemed to fit right in.

    HT to Paul R. for the idea

  • The Anticipation of Christmas

    A shared experience most of us have is waiting for Christmas morning. Wait? Waiting sucks! Christmas may be the one last great place we all wait for something… in a “now” culture, to have something to wait for is a lesson waiting to be taught.

    I remember that my family wasn’t very consistent with Christmas morning. Some years we woke up at the buttcrack of dawn to tear all of our presents open before collapsing for an 8 AM nap. Other years we woke up and had to stay in our rooms while my dad and stepmom made breakfast and made us eat a big breakfast before opening presents. Pure evil torture! My mom only seems to remember one Christmas in relationship to growing up. Her first year as a single mom… she refers to this Christmas a lot as the tree with one strand of lights. We had nothing. I think it broke her heart to know that we had almost nothing to open. But as a kid it wasn’t a big deal! Even as a young married couple, there was a time when the anticipation of Christmas was too much and our “just one” present on Christmas eve turned into opening everything under the tree. We totally ruined Christmas morning in a moment of guilty tearing! Something tells me, as a newlywed couple, that we’d had enough waiting that year! “Forget waiting… we’re free!”

    But I think having kids finally has helped me understand gift giving as anticipation.

    Two thousand years ago the people of the earth yearned in anticipation for the Messiah. Paul captured this feeling of waiting vs. anticipation quite well in Romans 8:

    We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

    Christmas and gift giving are integrally tied to the anticipation of the moment we discover what we’re receiving. It’s emotional and it’s physical, isn’t it?

    Everyday our kids ask me, “How much more (sic) longer until I get to open my gifts?” and “Tell me what my gifts are!” This is our kids groaning in anticipation of present time!

    The anticipation of Christmas is really a flashback physical experience of the anticipation of 2,000 years ago. The earth groaned for a Messiah… they waited in anticipation. They longed for the Chosen One. The moment of his arrival was precious.

    Silent night, holy night
    All is calm, all is bright
    Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
    Holy Infant so tender and mild
    Sleep in heavenly peace
    Sleep in heavenly peace

    Silent night, holy night!
    Shepherds quake at the sight
    Glories stream from heaven afar
    Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
    Christ, the Saviour is born
    Christ, the Saviour is born

    Silent night, holy night
    Son of God, love’s pure light
    Radiant beams from Thy holy face
    With the dawn of redeeming grace
    Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth
    Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth

    I love experiencing Christmas through the eyes of a 5 and 7 year old. Each day they wake up and carefully examine the tree and their stockings to see if anything new has appeared. They each count how many gifts have their name on them. Their anticipation is more than mental, it is physical! They literally groan. “Is it here yet?” On Wednesday night they won’t be able to sleep as the anticipation will be too much! On Thursday morning we will torture them by making them lay in bed while we prepare the living room. In those last few moments it will be real, emotional, PHYSICAL anticipation.

    It’s our job as parents to remind them of that moment. That moment is the real meaning of Christmas. God answered the earth physical anticipation and groaning with the Child.

  • More than a web guy, a lesson for church staff

    There are times when I realize that I’m not showing a ton of depth. Or maybe, it is that I get so pigeon-holed into being the person someone needs that I don’t get to exhibit depth.

    I feel that way right now.

    I’ve gotten ingrained here in San Diego as a social media geek. Within my world that may be true. But I recognize that within that skill is a tie to lifelong passion. But the passion itself is much more important than the method I’m trying to master. At work this is perfectly natural. I have no doubt that people there value me beyond my skills because I know that, in turn, I value their friendship beyond their skills or positions.

    Let me restate what I’m saying. I care a lot about building community online. I care deeply about networking people and ideas. I have learned best practices, nuance, and supporting skills to make it easier to convey my passion in more effective ways. Ultimately, that’s a skill set that could be applied to a lot of genres and businesses. But my passion is for working with middle and high schoolers and encouraging/networking/sharing life with those who do the same thing.

    Take the passion out of what I do and I don’t want to do it. I may be able to give some sage advice or share a few things about what works… but if you’re out there trying to network with me so I can help you build a social networking strategy, I’m probably not going to be that useful to you. I know you are just using me.

    At the end of the day, I’m good at social media only because I care so much about the message I’m trying to convey.

    The frustrating thing is that I think I am only interesting to some of the new people I’ve been getting to know in San Diego because of those auxiliary skills and not because of what I’m passionate about. It’s as if my only value is tied into some skills I’ve learned and that feels really, really shallow. It’s a slight that I see right through. Asking me about my kids or my hobbies to try to get me to share some tricks of the trade is lame. I don’t ever want to tie my value as a human being into the fact that I can build a website, or develop a brand, or tie that into a social media strategy. Lame. Lame. Lame!

    I don’t think this is unlike people who become fake friends when you work at a church. You kind of know they are fake but you’re so desperate for friendship that a fake friend is better than no friend at all. When we worked at churches there were plenty of people who valued our friendship because of a socialogical positional thing. 24 months ago if I had written down a list of people who would be our friends if we stopped being their pastor and I would have have been 100% correct. Not to sound emo, but the shocking thing is how sincere people pretended to be all those years. You’d be surprised by how few people we hear from after nearly 10 years of full time ministry friendships. 10? 15? 20 tops.

    For church staff, this is one shallow nature of relationship that makes the job so hard.

    But, now that we aren’t there anymore we have no value to them and we’ll never hear from them again.

    The flip side for church staff is simple. Open your lives up to those who are legitimately sincere in their friendship. Trust your gut. Just like Kristen and I have found real friendship over the years… a couple of bad apples shouldn’t catapult you into a life of keeping people at a distance.

  • Merry Christmas

    From our family to yours, Merry Christmas.

  • Parentizzle like Snoop-dizzle

    You know I think this is funny when I show a Martha Stewart clip on my blog. I can’t stand Martha… but I do like Snoop Dogg. (Dee-o-double-gee)

    HT to Abby

  • Beyond the Zoo: Feedback wanted

    As I’ve been mentioning, Kristen and I are working on a new website. We’ve settled on a launch date of January 1st… which puts us deep into preparations.

    To be honest, today was the first time we really sat down to map out the plan for this site. Up until now it’s just been something we talked about every once in a while. Now it is really, really happening! It’s going to be fun! And it’ll probably be a great excuse for us to check out a billion new places in San Diego.

    Long story short, this is the design I created based on our meeting today. I’d really like to hear some constructive criticism. How could we make it better?

  • Saturday Tunes

    I am far from chilled out. This is the first day of my winter break. There’s plenty to do. Starting Christmas shopping would be a good start. In a couple of hours we are going to go look at a new place to rent. We’re just starting to think about this as our current place is too small. Kristen and I are going to sit down and hammer out ideas for Beyond the Zoo. (launching January 1st, ahhh!) I have a couple lingering work projects that I need to take care of. I really want to get some reading done. Yeah, lots of other things to do.

    Anyway, I’m taking a little timeout right now. Cleansing breath in. All that jazz. So here are the next 10 tunes flowing through my cranium. As always, this is a completely random shuffle. No cheating, my rating is included.

    #1 A Distant Episode by Till Bronner ****

    #2 Anthem for American Teenagers by Jon McLaughlin ****

    #3 Homecoming by Kanye West *****

    #4 Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down *****

    #5 Two Lights by Five for Fighting ****

    #6 Migra by Santana ****

    #7 Broken Wing by Thousand Foot Krutch ***

    #8 Sucker by A New Found Glory *****

    #9 Take It to the Limit by The Eagles ****

    #10 Call in the Calvary by Astoria ****

  • 2200 miles away

    It’s been a few months, but Romeo is on our mind a lot. Today we had some friends send pictures of their big snow storm. I thought it would be fun to contrast the two. Can you figure out which is which? Romeo or San Diego? (Both of these were taken today)

    Picture #1

    Picture #2

    Wanna guess?

  • Weekly Column Ideas

    Over at Youth Ministry Exchange I’m going to be starting a weekly column. The question is, what should I write about?

    I don’t think it should be just general youth ministry stuff. Let’s face the fact that right now I don’t have a lot of up-to-the-moment experience that is going to be useful.

    For a long time I’ve wanted to do a “Dear Adam” kind of thing where people sent me ministry-related questions and I had fun replying to them. Kind of like Dear Abby for pastors.

    I could do something on adolescent trends. I could do technology stuff. I could do interviews with ministry people.

    But mostly I want to know what you think it should be? Please share your ideas in the comments. My hope is to write a few of these between now and the end of the year so the column can begin the first week of January.