• Last Day for Dave

    Today is the last Sunday for our intern Dave. He’ll be playing in the services as well as the Bonfire tonight. I’ll have more thoughtful and complete reflections some other time… it’s just not easy to see him go when we’re really just getting used to having him here.

    As a houseguest, he doesn’t seem like a houseguest. We’ve never had someone here long term… so I have expected a Kato Kaelin experience.

    Of course… he did disappear for about 24 hours. But, unlike Violet, he came back. Some kind of crazy story about girls taking him all over. I’m just glad he didn’t elope or something!

  • Leadership Meetings

    Just like when we rolled out a lot of the transition stuff at the Parent’s Meeting, the church leadership meetings were full of great questions and positivity. That doesn’t mean that the next steps aren’t going to be a bit bumpy, but it is very good to know that the majority of people in leadership are excited about what we are doing. So, I’m pretty pumped with how the last 24 hours has gone!

  • Blimpscreen: The New Must Have

    Blimpscreen_1I saw this last night on Pimp My Ride. This is absolutely incredible.  It’s a blow-up movie or TV screen that you can put in your front yard or anywhere. I haven’t decided if we need one for Light Force or if I just need on for myself yet.

    It’s like 10 feet across and very portable.

    It’s the Blimpscreen, and you can get it at their website. This one comes with a projector and is only $4000. Feel free to just have it shipped to my house.

  • Morning Rituals

    Every morning in our house is nearly the same. About 7 o’clock my alarm goes off. The alarm is quickly snoozed… 9 more minutes please. When I finally wake up enough to be coherent, I discover that Kristen is generally off jogging somewhere. Before my first snooze alarm, Paul crawls into bed with his blanket and a stuffed animal.

    The alarm goes off again. Snoozed. The alarm goes off again. Snoozed. Paul lays quietly in Kristen’s spot while I enjoy the fleeting, alarm interrupted, sleep. This is when Megan bursts through the doors wide awake. Each morning she hits the floor sprinting downstairs. When she sees that all is quiet in mom and dads room, she just jumps in bed and pretends to sleep in the morning light.

    A few minutes later and the door opens. "Mommy!" The kids pretend to hide in our bed until Kristen opens the bedroom door. Megan gets snuggles and Paul says "Mommy, what can I eat?" We all chuckle because we know the only reason Paul doesn’t sleep all day is that the boy needs to eat.

    Before the alarm goes off the 4th time, the light usually comes on and our day begins.

  • The Middle Madness Experiment

    Last Spring we decided that we were going to do something a little different over the summer. We wanted to see what would happen if we did something just for a group of people we felt like we often times overlooked. Our middle schoolers. (In the last year… most of our numeric growth has come in this age group even though we weren’t "aiming" to specifically grow in that age group.)

    What we came up with was something called Middle Madness. It met off site all summer on the "off-Wednesday" from Light Force. And I would consider this a big hit. Here are some highlights…

    1. Students came! Only the very first one had a small amount of students. Most of them had between 8-12 students.
    2. Students brought friends. Always a good sign.
    3. It was fun. We played some wild games, some tame games, but we had a lot of fun overall.
    4. Lots of good conversations. Seems like a small thing, but I loved having the chance to talk to the middle schoolers of Light Force without the big pushie high schoolers fighting for attention. This was huge!

    All of this points to a couple of central "things learned." First, I am glad we are going to a small group model. Our middle schoolers need to be heard and need to be challenged. Second, I am glad we did this on so many fronts… it’s my hope that we will continue to value middle schoolers enough to zero in our efforts on them.

  • 3 observations from our last trip

    Over the last weekend I didn’t have time to be very philosophical, but I made a few important observations.

    Michigansucks Most Michigan Fans are Pansies I have been a Notre Dame fan living in Michigan for the past 3+ years, and I thought it was just stuff that happened to me because I was wearing Notre Dame gear… but at Michigan’s Adventure I wore a Michigan State shirt and experienced the same pansy behavior. Here’s what I mean. I was walking around the park with my wife and kids. Time after time some guy with a Michigan t-shirt would look at me and when he was past me but still within ear shot he would say, "We got you this year. We’ve got you." This didn’t happen once, it happened 5-6 times all day long. Only a pansy and desperate fan would say stuff like that.  I don’t like U-M football one bit… and it will cause me great pleasure to know that these guys will suffer another down year in 2006-2007.

    Michigansadventure_1
    Michigan’s Adventure needs a better ticket policy. This bothered me all day. At Cedar Point (same parent company as Michigan’s Adventure) you can add tickets without a problem the day of the event. But at Michigan’s Adventure if you add tickets to your order you get to pay for them at the full price. It wasn’t a huge difference, but it demonstrated why Cedar Point is still the best park in the country.

    Lightforcelogo1_2
    Light Force is going to be better than ever. It’s only been one week or so, but I can already tell that Light Force is going to be fantastic this year. We’re hoping to grow exponentially as the year goes on… and I finally think we are positioned to make it happen.

  • Wow, just wow from Christianity Today

    BillygrahamMaybe I am a prude or maybe I just think this was out of place or something… but I can honestly say this wasn’t the type of article I expected to see on the Chrisitanity Today website (founded by Billy Graham way back in 1956)… not that it’s wrong or anything… but it did catch me off guard. Actually, the content of the article is just fine… just the title is "eye-catching." On my blog reader it was between an article on a new church and "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory!" I mean, what were they thinking?

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  • On Coming Home

    We just returned back from a trip to Michigan’s Adventure and canoeing. Here’s my thought on coming home.

    The only thing more exciting about going on a trip is coming home from one.

  • I don’t think he did it

    Call me crazy, but this guy who has confessed to the Jon Benet Ramsey murder from a decade ago, I don’t think he did it. There are some simple inaccuracies in what he is saying that make me feel like he’s just a crazy guy after some attention. Here’s the case file over at The Smoking Gun.

    It’s just my hunch, I’ve been wrong before. I still think the parents did it.

  • President Bush Impersonation

    If you haven’t seen this yet in it’s worth it. This is the full version, worth every second.