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The New Crowder Album
I had no idea this was coming. My little inner Crowder got all excited. I bought it straight away, such a fanboy.
Did you get it? What do you think?
I’m listening to it for the first time. And I’ve got a big old smile.
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The Bloodless Revolution
In the 4 years that we’ve lived in San Diego I’ve learned to love bodyboarding. It’s one of my favorite Sabbath activities. And while I’m not great at it I love trying.
The concept of bodyboarding is fairly simple.
- You swim out past the break point of the waves. (Just past where they are cresting) Most often for me this isn’t really swimming as you can still touch the bottom. I’m kind of a wimp so I don’t like to go out past where I can touch the bottom.
- You bob around going over small waves and diving under bigger ones, waiting for the right wave to come along that you’d like to ride.
- When you see a wave you’d like to ride, you position yourself by paddling or pushing off the bottom so that you and your board are on the shore side of the wave… then go.
- When you are on the wave you are kind of at the mercy of it. You can steer a little and you can decide when to hop off. But riding a wave is done with the understanding that the wave is really in control and you’re just along for the ride.
When it goes perfect is exhilarating. But when you do it wrong you get beat up, held under water, flipped, and dumped off where the little kids play near the shore. It’s humiliating and painful to get it wrong.
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Rednecks of Sweden
Proof: Being a redneck is not limited to geography.
Lesson: Don’t let your ethnocentricity cloud your judgement.
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3 Mini-Rants for a Wednesday
Mmmm… nothing like hormone-induced gigantic turkey for your families pre-Black Friday festivities. - Don’t shop on Thanksgiving! – This year, in a sign of pure greed, many retailers will open up their stores for pre-Black Friday sales. Target stores nationwide will open at 9:00 PM on Thanksgiving, basically destroying the holiday for their employees. Their employees started a petition to keep Black Friday on Friday. Last week I got several emails inviting me to “secret sales” where I could get Black Friday deals right now. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Making low-level employees work on a holiday so you can make extra money is wrong.
- We all pay taxes! It is true that lots and lots of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes directly. But I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with people saying that most people don’t pay taxes. We all pay taxes, lots and lots of them. And while most of the readers of this blog won’t write a check for federal income taxes we pay taxes in lots of seen and unseen places that our more affluent neighbors don’t. We all pay sales tax, property tax, payroll tax, state income tax, tariffs we don’t see, taxes added into the goods we buy like gasoline. Then there are the taxes we pay not in money, but in situations beyond our control. Can someone in the working poor pay to send their kids to an elite school? Nope… so that’s a tax on them. Can the working poor afford the best access to healthcare? Nope… so that’s a tax on them. What about the best nutrition? Or social access to powerful people. On and on and on. My point is simply that we all pay taxes!
- There’s more to church leadership than preaching! No, really. The more I get to know folks in a lot of contexts the more I realize that what you do off the platform is what makes you a leader in the church. And if you look away from the org chart and walk around seeing who is actually leading, almost all leadership (People leading others where they wouldn’t go by themselves) is happening outside of the preaching person and outside of the paid staff. I’m not talking about redefining what leadership is in the church… I’m talking about recognizing who are the leaders in your church. How can you go to a church, see all that goes on, and say… “Oh, this is ____’s church.” Gimme a break.
OK, I got those off my chest. Time for a second cup of coffee.
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How to talk to parents about parenting
Over the past year or so I’ve had the opportunity to lead an hour-long seminars for parents. In fact, earlier this year partnered with Simply Youth Ministry & Marko to turn the content of my seminar into a book that comes out in a few weeks, A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Social Media.For me, this has meant going to churches and presenting content without knowing a thing about the context of the church. Sure, I can figure out some things just by driving around or overhearing small talk in the foyer.
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We Went to The Summit Together
I’m going to remember 2012. It’s the year the Cartel came of age.
In 2011, we dreamed a lot and casted a lot of vision for what the Cartel might become. We wanted to Instigate a Revolution in Youth Ministry by initiating some stuff, developing partnerships, serving other organizations, etc.
In 2012, we decided to build a lot of stuff to make those aspirations more of a practical reality. We have served more than 20 Christians organizations with marketing, strategy, and internet initiatives. We launched a publishing line which released our first four titles, and we added two additional events for youth workers– Open and The Summit.
Those things are about as easy as it sounds. (As in, not that easy at all!) It was way, way more work than I’d ever envisioned.
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We need less resources, not more
Last week I shared a graphic about decentralizing youth ministry. I thought it’d be fair to unpack that a little more and challenge you to think about where that leads us.
Inverse Relationships
A direct relationship is more like cause and effect. The more I invest in my 401k before I turn 40, the more I should expect to withdrawal in retirement. Or in our bodies, a direct relationship is that if I drink too much water I’ll have to pee more.
An inverse relationship is when doing more of something results in an negative, often unintended consequence. It’s when you think you are doing something good but in effect you are doing something to your detriment. For example, brushing your teeth once or twice per day is good for your teeth. But thinking that if some if good than more will be better is false… you’ll scrape the enamel right off your teeth.
