• Normal isn’t news

    I was just listening to a radio broadcast on the way home from church. In it the host and his guest were talking about the many shake-ups in the White House. The host wisely commented after the guest went on and on about how significant these changes are to the various departments cabinet members oversee.

    The comment was, "Isn’t this normal?"

    To which the guest went on, to great lengths, that it is normal in the 6th-7th year of a two term president to see many cabinet changes. Those are tough jobs with short tenures. The important word is that it’s "normal" through out various two-term presidents his original cabinet members tend to head off into retirement, the academic world, or private enterprise.

    Imagine a news story on NBC. "In breaking news, the Attorney General steps down… but it’s pretty normal."

    See, news agencies are driven by what’s hot.     In order to secure their audience they need to "out-sensationalize" their competitors. It draws an audience, which draws advertisers, which pays the bills. And the American audience could care less about "stable" or "normal."

    What is the marketing in your world, you church, your school, you job driven by? Does "normal" go noticed or should you do something that may be perfectly normal but is talked about as being remarkable?

    Think about it. Thoughts?

  • 2 More Reasons I Love Being a Part of Youth Ministry Exchange

    Sometimes I am just in awe of the group of people God has put together at YMX. Patti and I were chatting tonight about it and two words come to mind… "amazing" and "humbling." It seems our little place on the internet… a virtual world… is bringing about real results in members lives. Here are two things that just make my jaw drop.

    1. Members complete fund raising so a member can adopt a child.
    2. A member needed a kidney transplant… and I think we have a match!

    I’ve always said "you can’t own a community" and so I can take zero credit for this. (I didn’t even know about it until it was mentioned to me!) This is just more proof that YMX is an amazing resource for youth workers. Not to sound too cheeky, but this week we see that YMX brings family’s together and may even save lives.

    It’s my prayer for YMX that we continue being the church to one another. Amen.

  • Dedicated to Michigan Fans

    Since this is Michigan country and I’m a Notre Dame fan. I’d like to dedicate this video to the Michigan football team and the most embarrassing loss in College Football history today as they lost to Appalachian State 34-32.



    They are HOT HOT HOT!

    p.s. The best part for me is that Notre Dame is on television in the Detroit area, but Michigan is not because Comcast hasn’t reached an agreement with the new Big 10 Network yet.

  • Mega-Prank: Well done

    I had to watch this one a couple times to get it. It’s a very solid and well executed prank. Mega good!

    HT to Gman

  • Upcoming articles I’m writing

    Here are two articles I am cooking up that are due next week.

    1. Yesterday I did a phone interview with Erwin McManus. I’m writing two pieces out of the interview. One is a review of his Crave DVD for small groups and the main piece is going to be about his creative process. If you aren’t familiar with McManus, check out the links. He’s the lead pastor at one of the most innovative and create church communities on the planet, Mosaic.
    2. Next week I am turning in an article to Simply Youth Ministry about coordinating teaching messages across ministries in a church. This will be my second article over at SYM, check out my first one, "Left for Dead by the Church."

    Sometimes, writing comes naturally to me. I can sit down and pound out a lesson or article (or even a policy!) in a couple of hours. As a matter of fact, in the right mood I can write several different articles simultaneously and it all comes rather easy. I can’t explain it, it just flows out of me and I try to capture all the ideas as fast as I can.

    That’s not how I’m feeling right now.     I know I’ll get stuff done and I know it’ll be good. But the process is a lot different between "high writing" moods and "normal" writing modes.

  • Today is Friday

    All day yesterday my brain kept telling me it was Friday. I worked like it was a Friday, finishing pretty much everything for the week. At lunch, it was Friday in my brain. Going with Kristen to the Peach Festival 5k and later a high school football game further made me feel like it was a Friday. Even going to bed last night, it felt like a Friday.

    Today is Friday. The real Friday with Friday stuff to do. I even have something extremely cool to do today which I will talk about when it’s done. Something way outside my comfort zone.

    Later this afternoon I am heading over to the Art & Crafts show to set-up the KidsTown booth for the Peach Festival. And all the pieces for that are coming together much more smoothly than for the Armada Fair. The last thing I have to do is sew together several hundred finger puppets.

    So, it’s Friday. Definitely not Saturday.

  • Is being a pastor more or less prestigious than 30 years ago?

    PrestigeI’ve wondered if being a pastor was more or less of a prestigious career choice today versus 30 years ago. "Logic" would tell me that with all the odd things that have happened with church workers over the year that most people don’t look up to clergy anymore.

    According to a Harris Poll released on August 1st, being a pastor is actually slightly more prestigious today than 30 years ago.

    What are you doing with your "extra" prestige?

  • 4th quarter team…

    Yes, I think that describes our church.

    To put it in football terms, since the football season is about to crank up:

    Our team would be judged as average in practice and the first three quarters. (Not bad. Not superb. Average.) But when the game is on the line and we need a touchdown to win… or ever 17 points to win late in the game. We’ve have the kind of team that pulls off the victory. It always makes for an exciting finish.

    Interestingly… we’re also trying to be a team that has a strong finish but also shows signs of brilliance in practice and the first quarter.

    Why? Because a 4th quarter comeback, while dramatic and fun, isn’t always needed. Sometimes a solid first quarter puts you in the lead and makes victories easy. And easy isn’t always bad.

    p.s. That said… for both the Peach Festival and the next MainStreet… it’s the start of the 4th quarter. And we’ve got some cool plays left to call.

  • Crazy & Faith

    Yesterday I had a great conversation with Brian Eberly and his team about KidsTown. They are going through the same process that we went through last summer in re-visioning ministry to children at their church.

    It was an awesome conversation, but I left it with one prevailing thought:

    Holy Discontent + Faithfulness to the Word of God = People thinking you are nuts

    I think our staff is a bunch of raving lunatics! We’re a group of lay people and paid staff who are crazy enough to think that we can play a role in changing a community for Jesus Christ. But instead of us being the agent of change we hope to best position ourselves in a place where grace and mercy and forgiveness of sins can flow through what we are doing… therefore being a conduit between lost people and a holy God.

    What is "holy discontent?" I think Bill Hybels used this phrase but don’t quote me on that. It’s merely the action of being stirred by God to say that what we’re doing isn’t good enough.

    What is "faithfulness to the Word of God?"     Seems like a no-brainer but a lot of people are discontent with what is happening in their lives and in their churches but don’t seek God to find the answers. As our staff stays in God’s Word we are pushed to more and more bold attempts to reach a dead and dying world with the love of Jesus. This isn’t a judgment, but I think most churches are more concerned about keeping the people they have happy than they are being faithful to what God is stirring in their hearts. You hear pastors say it with phrases like "You move a church one inch at a time" or "This is just a trend." Um… what if God is telling you to move a mile in a minute or to chase a cultural trend? I think a lot of people aren’t willing to make moves that God has laid on their hearts and revealed to them in the Bible simply because they want to stay faithful to what is getting them paid.

    What is "People thinking we are nuts?"     Heck, I think we’re nuts too! Demonstrating faith is often doing something that makes no logical sense. Faith itself is a "crazy" concept. It makes no logical sense to put 100% of my faith and trust in an unseen God. But it does take faith. And when you put your faith and trust in that unseen God… doing crazy things for Him seems less and less crazy.

    Here’s a fact about my walk with Christ, maybe it’s true for some of you. "If people in your life don’t think you are crazy… If they think you are completely logical, you’re probably not demonstrating faith."

    Abraham moving was crazy.
    Moses going to Pharaoh was crazy
    Esther talking to the king was nuts
    David confronting the kings was raving mad
    Peter putting down his nets to fish for men was insane
    Peter going to Cornelius’s house made no sense at all, it was a waste of time
    On and on through the Bible we see people taking great steps of faith… steps that made no logical sense and got them labeled as "crazy" by the people around them.

    How are you demonstrating a faith that is crazy?

  • Thunderbird: A brief review

    Thunderbird
    I’m an email junkie.     There, I said it. I have at least 20 different email accounts.

    Why? Well, between the church and YMX I operate a bunch of sites and each one has an "adam" account and a "generic" account for information. Then I have my personal email and stuff like that. So before you know it or can control it… you end up with 20 email accounts.

    How to manage that?
    Thankfully all of them are POP3 based accounts meaning I can have use one resource to manage them all in "one" account. The question is always… how do I keep stuff sorted in the right places?

    In July, our church went to an exchange server system so I lost the capability to have all over my accounts go to my Microsoft Outlook on my laptop. I then tried to use gmail’s POP3 manager to have all of my accounts sent there. While it worked great, I didn’t like that it didn’t use my outgoing server to send mail so YMX email wasn’t coming from my YMX accounts but rather "on behalf" of my accounts. So I started looking for an email alternative.

    That’s where Thunderbird comes into play. It’s made by the same people as Firefox, the best Windows web browser. I’ve now been using "the Bird" a few days and have some initial reactions.

    Setup: Pretty standard and fast. The settings look like and act just like Outlook. The learning curve was actually very minimal.

    Account management: It has a wizard to run through for adding POP3 accounts. That was really no problem if you know all your passwords, addresses, and incoming/outgoing server information.

    Downloading email: Again, this acts a lot like Outlook in that you can either have it go look for mail every ___ minutes or you can do it manually. Just like Outlook you can have email with various subjects or email accounts or subjects sort to various folders. I found this process to be a little easier than Outlook.

    Sending email: Very easy. I like that you can set-up different signatures for different accounts easily. All you need to do is create an html file and point that account to it on your local PC. So YMX accounts can feature this while non-YMX ones won’t. I love that!

    Youth Ministry Exchange

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    Spam: The one thing Thunderbird definitely does better than Outlook is handle spam. It learns the types of things I label as spam and then automatically filter them into a spam filter, deleting them on my schedule. And flagging it is as easy as a click. Very cool.

    All-in-all, if you are looking for an Outlook alternative to manage your email… look no further than Thunderbird. And you can’t beat the price… it’s free!