Search results for: “good news”

  • Football thoughts: Sixth Edition

    Oh baby! Week seven was full of drama as the top teams jockey for all-important position in the first BCS rankings this week. There were significant tumbles at the top as the rest of conference play begins the shuffling which will eventually result in bowl play.

    Notre Dame

    Finally. The Irish proved they could slug it out in a messy, mistake-filled game. In some ways the Stanford game was legendary. Two highly defensive teams slugged it out in the mud until one team finally broke through. Fortunately, it was the Irish who prevailed.

    Manti Te’o continued to show why he’s on Heisman watch lists as a linebacker. His impact on the game was much more than his game-high 11 tackles. He leads the team in every way. The Irish defense is legit. It’s now been 4 games since they’ve allowed an offensive touchdown. (They haven’t given up a rushing touchdown all season!) None of those were rollover teams. Michigan State, Michigan, Miami, and Stanford.

    How far can Notre Dame go? Clearly, if they win out they are in the title game. But I don’t think it’s very likely that they will do that. I’m still preparing to see them stumble in a game… either BYU or Boston College. And I’m pleased if they beat either USC or Oklahoma on the road but I’m not expecting them to beat both. Does a 10-2 Notre Dame team get into a BCS bowl game? Easily.

    San Diego State

    Well, we’re 4-3 now. Ryan Katz has the offense rolling along and the defense looked OK as they sailed to an easy 38-14 win. In truth, this was a very boring game. All of the home games this year have been boring. I love going to the games and the Aztecs are clearly going the right direction. But I don’t think I’m alone in my excitement for basketball overpowering my desire to watch a s0-so team battle for an invite to the New Orleans Bowl.

    Back to football, it is good to see progress on the defensive line. Those guys are starting to create the gaps needed for the linebackers to create chaos in the back field. But its tough to know if this was real progress or if it’s just a measurement of how bad Colorado State is without their starting QB.

    We’ll see how good the Aztecs are over the next few weeks. They need a road win against Nevada or Boise State to have a shot at a bowl game.

    National Title Race

    With Notre Dame in the hunt I’m interested in today’s BCS rankings. I suspect to see them as BCS #3 because of their strength of schedule. (#5 in both polls) I think we’re on a collision course to see a very entertaining Alabama vs. Oregon game in the national championship. But, the Irish included, there are some outliers who have a legit chance of getting there which make the whole thing interesting. I don’t think Florida can get there with their remaining schedule and a potential SEC championship game vs. Alabama. K-State? They still have murderers row on their schedule with road games against West Virginia, Baylor, and TCU. Add a season ending home game vs. Texas and a Big 12 title game? There’s at least one loss in there for them. My outside show at it is Oregon State. The Beavers have a powder schedule leading up to a home game against their rival… the Oregon Ducks. In a rivalry game with everything on the line? Gosh, anything can happen.

    The Big 10

    Now that we’re in conference play its easy for Big 10 fans to think their league is legit. Yeah, right. Let’s not forget that they got ripped in non-conference games vs. ranked opponents. An ineligible Ohio State team does look good. But Michigan and Wisconsin, both allegedly the class of the conference, really aren’t any good. They are both so one-dimensional that they can’t play up and beat teams. I’m still seeing Northwestern as the Rose Bowl delegate to get the loser of the Oregon-Oregon State game.

    My Current Top 10

    (I don’t include ineligible teams. Sorry Buckeyes, at least your players got free tattoos and great deals on cars!)

    1. Alabama (6-0)
    2. Oregon (6-0)
    3. Notre Dame (6-0)
    4. Florida (6-0)
    5. K-State (6-0)
    6. LSU (6-1)
    7. Oregon State (5-0)
    8. South Carolina (6-1)
    9. Florida State (6-1)
    10. USC (5-1)

  • Football Thoughts: Fifth Edition

    Where do we begin? League play took hold this week and we’re starting to see the legitimacy of the contenders. Just like in basketball, the non-conference games can give false positives for teams because they’re playing in weird places, staying in weird hotels, and playing teams they don’t normally play. But when you head into conference play you are playing teams you know, schemes you’ve seen before, etc.

    Lack of Defense

    In watching parts of a number of games yesterday the thing that stuck out to me is that the offenses are way ahead of the defenses right now. Obviously, the West Virginia game was entertaining… but a horrible offensively played game. While fun to watch (kind of) none of these teams are serious contenders as they will all eventually play teams with defense. Geno Smith’s 25,000 yard, 119 TD game was cool. We’ll see just how good he is on the road against Texas in a few weeks. Right now, he’s got Heisman hopes and the stats to back it up. He might be this year’s RG3.

    That trend continued all day as there were lots and lots of high scoring, highly entertaining football games. I think the thing that was so shocking wasn’t just the numbers… but how open some of these receivers were. I think there is such emphasis on stunts and blitzes defensively right now, because that might cause turnovers… that offensive coordinators are just out-scheming these defenses. Find the open man caused by the blitz, toss it for 6 points.

    SDSU

    There better be some panic on the Mesa today. Rocky Long, longtime labeled as defensive guru, saw his defense give up 655 yards last night, 484 last week, and 533 two weeks back. It’s like they aren’t even trying to stop the passing game. Big whoop, you stopped the run. The 3-3-5 depends on having a great inside linebacker which they don’t have. (Miles Burris graduated last year and is starting for the Oakland Raiders now) Time for Plan B defensively. So many times they gave up chunks of 25-30 yards to a completely unguarded receiver. That can’t happen.

    Offensively, I love what I’m seeing from Adam Muema. That kid can play. And Ryan Katz (the QB) has moments when he’s great. But 5 turnovers last night ultimately put the defense in such a hole that they couldn’t possibly keep up. The first pick wasn’t Katz’s fault, but the other 2 totally were preventable.

    Notre Dame

    Nice to have a week off and move up in the rankings. Thank you Stanford. 

    Let’s hope the only news items coming out of next week’s Miami game are…

    A win next week has everyone looking at the Irish as potential BCS game contenders. And another big game by Manti Te’o has him moving up in the Heisman talk.

    Big 10

    Michigan State losing to Ohio State was bad news for the Big 10 on a day full of bad news. I felt bad for ESPN yesterday. How did they get stuck with Iowa/Minnesota and Illinois/Penn State? Gosh, Illinois is bad.

    Nebraska beating Wisconsin put Nebraska on the board and puts Wisconsin on the pathway to the 5th place bowl. No idea where that league is headed… it’s looking like Northwestern is still in the drivers seat.

    Pac 12

    Oregon State is legit. It’s really fun to watch them play… too bad the Pac 12 network makes it so that no one really gets to see them. Oregon is the real deal. The question won’t be if they are good enough to get into the title game, the question will be if their defense is legit enough to not get run over by Alabama in the title game.

    Big 12 vs SEC Challenge

    Have you seen the top 15 rankings? 9 of the 15 are from either the SEC or Big 12. Obviously, there will be winners and losers now that they have to play one another. But its pretty clear that those 2 conferences are this years “top tier” and the other AQ conferences + Notre Dame (minus the Big Easy aka Big East) are second tier.

    Question?

    Who’s “The best of the rest?” Who do you think has a shot at the title that I’m not giving love to?

  • Football Thoughts: Fourth Edition

    This season is beginning to take shape. Some teams are exactly who you thought they were while other teams are emerging for breakout years. Here’s a quick rundown of what I saw and what I think headed into mid-season.

    Notre Dame

    For the second week, the SDSU home game start time prevented me from watching the game. But I followed along pretty closely nonetheless and watched highlights later. What is happening is Brian Kelly’s investment in the defense is starting to pay off in spades. As reported on ESPN, Denard Robinson now has the same Heisman hopes as his left tackle. The Michigan QB, who looked like Mike Vick against the Irish for the past 3 seasons, called his play “the worst game of my career.” There was a stretch in the second quarter where I’m sure Mitt Romney looked at the TV and thought, “Wow, they are having a horrible week, I feel so much better about myself.”

    Also impressive was the noise factor at Notre Dame stadium. It was loud and buzzing and starting to act like a college stadium instead of a church. They retrained their ushers and did some PSAs…  you won’t hear “Down in front” or “Sit down” anymore.

    With a bye week ahead and a gaudy 4-0 record, they’ll be in the top 10 this week. And since they don’t play they’ll have the chance to move up again before playing Miami on 10/6. I expect them to be #9 today and #7 by 10/6. Trust me, NBC wan’t ND vs. Stanford to be as high a ranking as possible on 10/13. 

    All of a sudden Notre Dame looks like they could got 10-2 or 9-3. Either of those is good enough for a BCS bowl bid.

    San Diego State

    Offensively, we did pretty good in scoring 34 points. Unfortunately, the defense continues to suck. So while we enjoyed going to the game and it was entertaining… we won’t win many games giving up so many points.

    Worse than the defense is the special teams play. Just kick the ball out of bounds and give it to them at the 40. Or go for an onside kick. Special teams play lost this game for the Aztecs and exhibited the lack of depth for the team.

    The really bad news is that San Diego fans won’t come watch a .500 team. If it weren’t for the 10/6 Sky Show I’d expect 15,000 fans for the Hawaii game. If we lost a couple more we’ll be in the 10,000 range again very soon. And that’s unfortunate.

    The Big 10 Isn’t

    Central Michigan beat Iowa? Wisconsin struggled with UTEP. Ohio State and Penn State‘s games don’t count. Michigan literally handed– make that tossed — the game to Notre Dame. And only Michigan State and Northwestern handled their business. Those two teams are in the drivers seat. Which will be in the Rose Bowl and will anyone care?

    The Pac 12

    I thought Arizona would play Oregon tough… but I think they are the only team who can give Alabama a run for their money. (Only if its outside of the south, though.) The only team that is impressing me in the Pac 12 (besides Oregon) is Oregon State. Again, with Oregon headed for the national championship game will anyone really care to watch a Northwestern vs. Oregon State Rose Bowl? At least they will have a cool parade.

    Other conferences

    The Big East is a turd this year. The MAC looks like the best mid-major. The Mountain West is somewhere between awful and terrible. And the Big 12 should get an award for not playing a decent non-conference game among all member teams. Seriously, what’s that about?

  • The Machine & The Magician: What you need to know about distraction

    I’ve been learning a lot about the creative process lately. Like you, so much of my life is built around the concept that sometimes I need to be highly productive and other times I need to be highly creative. But, at all times, my work is best when it is both on time and creatively completed.

    The Machine

    Since childhood, we’ve been taught that there are times to sit down and focus all of our efforts on a task. I remember being rewarded as a 6 year old in kindergarten for my ability to sit down and do my work. My teacher had it set up so that each child, during a segment of the day for learning, could work at their own pace. I was really, really good at doing this. But if you looked at someone or whispered to your neighbor or suddenly got up and did a wiggle dance, that was inappropriate & bad.

    In college, you were probably truly challenged academically for the first time– you had to learn how to study and knock hard projects out quickly. Further, you learned that there were times that if you disciplined yourself to focus that you could turn your brain into a task-master machine.

    I knew that I could disappear into the corners of Moody’s library for four hours with a mug of coffee and emerge with a 10 page paper, 25 definitions memorized, a test prepared for, and 2 chapters of a book read with annotated notes for later review.

    The machine is the opposite of creative. It pounds out work. It produces. And when the grades came out the one with the most powerful machine often won the highest grades.

    As an adult I depend on turning on this machine. It takes me a while to get to that “machine” space, but if I put my headphones in with some improvisational jazz, turn off social media, and get into a project I can get there– knocking out a lot in a short amount of time.

    The Magician

    Have you been around babies & toddlers? I’ve had 3 of them crawl around my house in my lifetime. They are born magicians… incredibly creative in what they do. Turn your head for a second and BAM– they’ve done something amazing. Children can take two seemingly unrelated things and tie them together magically. In an instant they can disappear into a pretend world full of adventure, they can create stories out of thin air complete with backstory and plot twists.

    You don’t have to teach a child how to be creative, it’s intuitive. If you allow them to just be themselves they are automatically creative.

    To Review

    The Machine is learned behavior to concentrate hard on a task, it is good.

    The Magician is your natural creative self, the part of you that sees clay and stcks and smiles, it is also good.

    Distraction isn’t bad

    When I am in work mode I tend to think distractions are bad. Positive reinforcement from teachers and success in college taught me that. I get somewhere quiet and predictable. I work very well after the kids go to bed or at my office. Interruptions and distractions feel like the enemy. Phones, texts, Facebook, Twitter, visitors, going to the bathroom… all feel as though they will disturb the machines production.

    But that’s not how it works. Your best work happens because an idea is sparked. When I get peer review of my work and overlay positive feedback with the timing of its production, the things that are most often the best– a creative solution, a breakthrough, an insight, a great paragraph— most often are in my work because the machine got turned off for a time and the magician was allowed to play. Perhaps I was in full machine mode and needed a lunch break? While walking there, my mind still churning on the work, I’ll get an idea or a solution or a insight into that work that I add. But sometimes this happens because a phone rings in another room, or a someone at a coffee shop drops something. Those breaks from Machine mode allow the Magician to play with the thing I’m working with and mix it with something else.

    In fact, I’ve learned that intentionally allowing myself to become distracted can be an excellent way to generate new ideas. Taking a walk, shower, phone call, checking Facebook, listening to a sermon, catching up on the news, pulling weeds in the garden, playing with my kids, goofing off, even doing a small task like packing a box– all of these things allow me to turn the Machine off and allow my naturally creative mind, the Magician, to begin playing with ideas.

    The Machine and the Magician are Playmates

    I’ve learned that the Machine and the Magician are not adversaries. I will not truly be productive if I see the Machine as the winner and the Magician as the loser. (Though many people perpetuate that myth & it certainly seems productive.) My work is at its best when I foster interplay between getting things done and getting things done playfully. My work is best, not when I have hours and hours of uninterrupted Machine time, but when I have concerted time which builds in intentional distractibility so that the Magician has his voice.

  • The upside of fear

    Stupid spreadsheet.

    Typically, I’m a pretty positive– upbeat — and self-confident person. I’m told I’m overly optimistic by my friends. But the past few weeks have brought about unfamiliar emotions. Negativity, melancholy, and anxiety. 

    And since these are unfamiliar emotions I haven’t quite known how to respond. In situations where I’m typically chipper I’ve been quiet. In moments I typically shrug off bad news and instantly turn it into a positive I’ve been silent. I’ve been asked for ideas on things and just not had solutions where I normally have been so dependable.

    It’s not that I don’t have stuff to say its that I think its time to be quiet and listen– I don’t want the wrong words to come out because of my emotional state so I just bit my tongue.

    It all goes back to the spreadsheet.

    The spreadsheet brought out fear I’d never had before. And, like all fear, it’s illogical and stupid.

    The Spreadsheet

    As a small business owner my income and expenses are all captured on a master spreadsheet. This gives me a month-by-month look at my business, where my money is coming from and where it is going. (Very similar to a personal budget.) Heading into the summer my balance sheet was very strong for the rest of 2012… this summer we had some record breaking months and some projects coming this fall which could double, even triple what we made in the same months of 2011.

    Then over the last few weeks I’ve had to revise some of some numbers down. At the same time I had to make these revisions we ran into a normal business cycle where I pay a lot of money out while I’m waiting for a lot of income to come in. (I call this cash poor, invoice rich.) When larger businesses hit these business cycles they take out short-term loans. But we’re small enough where we just float through these times with our savings.

    But it was those normal revisions and that normal business cycle which brought out all of that funky emotional junk.

    Factually speaking, the numbers aren’t even that bad. We will still make more than we need. We are totally fine. But the act of making those changes and seeing all that cash go out planted a seed of doubt in me which grew into fear. “What if the cash doesn’t come back?” “What if it gets worse?” “Why don’t I have ____ in savings for when this happens?” “Why don’t I have a line of credit at the bank in case to cover this better?” On and on and on.

    This is what I know about fear: Fear will make you dumb. Fear whispers lies in your ears. Fear makes you say no to things you should say yes to and visa versa.

    And all of that was true of me in August. Our last camping trip came at a perfect time. Just when I was thinking, “What am I going to do?” We went and looked at the stars and took hikes and laughed and giggled until bed time.

    Those 4 days gave me the perspective I so desperately needed: We are totally fine. 

    Sitting by the fire helped calm my nerves. It helped lower my anxiety. It reminded me that everything would be OK.

    The Upside of Fear

    Sitting in church the other day I think it all started to wash over me. Not all fear is bad. I’m afraid of what a spreadsheet says might happen in 3-4 months? Really? How could I be so stupid? Talk about a lack of perspective in light of all that I know about Our God! Talk about allowing emotions to rule over facts! Talk about putting your faith and trust in something really, really small!

    Here’s my observation: The only good kind of fear is the kind which leads you to taking positive action. 

    Photo credit: James Stark via Flickr (Creative Commons)

  • Football thoughts – First Edition

    I watched way too much football yesterday. 

    My two teams, Notre Dame and San Diego State, bookended the college football schedule. My alarm went off at 5:30 AM to start making breakfast for a 6:00 AM kickoff for the Irish. And San Diego State took on Washington with a kickoff at 7:30 PM.

    My friend Paul came over for the ND game. We had fun making an Irish-inspired breakfast. I bought a few Guinness for the occasion and let me tell ya, I don’t really like Guinness, but they are especially tough to drink at 6:00 AM. I think we each took a couple of sips and that was as much of Ireland as we needed.

    Here are some thoughts on the college football season, in random order:

    • Notre Dame is better than I thought. I know Navy is very weak and Notre Dame is supposed to steam roll them. But the Irish were pretty sharp. They could do what they wanted on all sides of the ball and showed a lot more depth than in previous years. I think we’ve found a quarterback in Golson, he ran the offense well and got a lot of players involved. With a few veteran players coming back from suspensions I suspect they will roll Purdue next week and set up a challenging Michigan State & Michigan back-to-back match-up in a few weekends. Oh, and wasn’t it cool to play that game in Dublin? 35,000 North Americans came bringing $125,000,000 into the country in tourism dollars. A lot of people think Notre Dame gets unfair special treatment. Well… how many schools can get 35,000 fans to fly to another country for an opening game? Not very many colleges can get 35,000 to a bowl game! That’s why the Irish get special treatment. They are special.
    • San Diego State was about what I thought they’d be. We lost a lot of talent to the NFL and graduation and we looked very young. I’ve always liked Walter Kazee and was happy to see him get some big runs. Ryan Katz was OK, he played scared in the first half and then woke up in the second. I’ve never seen a player take so many slides… and for a young man who likes to slide I’d encourage him to take 1-2 more steps before sliding the rest of the season so he can slide us to first down instead of 3 and 2. I wrote earlier this fall about the introduction of Rockyball. We didn’t punt when we had the ball inside the 50, never kicked a field goal, and never kicked a PAT. Rockyball got an F yesterday because none of it panned out. But if it had we’d be celebrating a victory over a Pac-12 team.
    • Penn State. I don’t think Penn State should be playing football for the next 4-5 years. But since they did a deal with the NCAA and saved football… I’ll just be forced to hope they lose a lot. If you watched the game you saw Penn State give up. Ohio (not Ohio State, mind you) man-handled the offensive and defensive line in the second half. The commentators tried to spin it as the PSU players were overly emotional at the beginning of the game and just ran out of gas. I think, what we saw, was the team flat out giving up. For months they’ve tried to hold it together and pretend that what happened had nothing to do with them… and it was almost like you could see it hit them during the physical exhaustion of the game. With all of their best players heading for other programs they just couldn’t compete against a MAC team. And the realization of that has big implications in the Big 10. By the time the game came to its merciful conclusion you had to wonder how many players from Penn State were thinking, “I should have transferred.” They should have. All of them. And just for the record… with yesterdays loss they continued a 14 year losing streak. 
    • Alabama vs. Michigan. I’ve got to give Michigan credit, I didn’t think they’d have an offensive touchdown and they did. Alabama is, by far, the best team in football. What we saw yesterday was an exhibition of just how good they are. I think they’d give a bunch of lower level NFL teams fits. (They’d be #2 or #3 in the AFC East) Alabama’s defense exposed the single dimension, Denard Robinson-focused, offense. Michigan entered the game #8 and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them drop into the 20s. Someone even gave them a #1 ranking… yeah, those days are over. All future opponents saw how Alabama did it and will use that as the roadmap, which spells trouble in Hoke-ville. All of Robinson’s Heisman dreams went out the window yesterday. It was kind of sad to see. He’s make a great NFL tailback, though.
    • Here’s to the wussy schedules. Some of the match-ups this weekend have been horrid. None so bad as Oklahoma State vs. Savannah State. 84-0 and the Savannah State coach said “it could have been a lot worse.” (North Carolina vs. Elon was a close second.) Almost as interesting, though, were how many of these mid-majors and mini-majors hung in there. Northern Iowa almost beat Wisconsin. NIU came up just short against Iowa. Arizona needed overtime to beat Toledo. Bowling Green played toe-to-toe with Florida for 3 quarters. Arkansas State outscored Oregon 24-7 in the second half. And San Jose State almost held on to beat Stanford.
    • Mountain West report. Outside of Nevada beating Cal, the Mountain West underachieved against non-conference opponents. That’ll hurt us down the road. We needed SDSU to beat Washington and Boise State to beat Michigan State. I think this is a weak year for the conference, but I expect Boise State, Nevada, and SDSU to be the top 3 teams at the end of the year. (Which leaves SDSU out of a bowl for the last time before joining the Big East.)

  • The 48 Hour Self-Retreat – How to plan your Fall 2012 Ministry Strategy

    It’s August 1st. 

    For most youth ministries things really kick off in 30 days. That means in the next 30 days you need a publishable Fall calendar, you need to check in with all of your volunteers to make sure they are coming back, and you need to host a volunteer training meeting as well as schedule a parents meeting.

    Plus, you have all your normal day-to-day work. And you still have summer ministry stuff going.

    The Vortex of Doom

    Remember that feeling you had in May? The one that looked at what you were doing through a critical, tired eye? The one that said… “Gosh, this was pretty good but we can do a lot better.” The one that resolved to make 2012-2013 better?

    Remember how you were relieved to have made it through your annual review unscathed? You left that meeting with a sinking feeling that you probably bought another year before people start demanding “results.”

    And now you’re here. You have taken the time to evaluate the past year. You’ve taken a little time away from normality to get some perspective.

    And now there is a lot of temptation in your busyness to just do what you did last year with a few minor revisions and hope for different results.

    I call that the Vortex of Doom. The Vortex of Doom is that rushed feeling you feel right now, anxiety whispering in your ear… “You won’t be ready in time!” The Vortex has gravitational pull to “just get stuff done” and results in you not doing your very best.

    The Promise

    If you give into the Vortex of Doom every August and plan to do what you did last year, just a little bit different and just a little bit better, than don’t be surprised when you get to May 2013 and you:

    a. Feel worse than you did in May 2012…

    b. Get fired because you delivered the same results yet again…

    I promise you this. If you take 48 hours and re-evaluate your 2012-2013 plan right now… you’ll be thankful all year.

    If you do last years strategy with only minor changes you will not see a different result. Why? Because a bad strategy, wonderfully executed and fully funded, is still a bad strategy. Doing it again this year, with gusto, won’t change things. Investing in your past will never lead to your future.

    You work with teenagers… change has to be in your DNA to survive.

    The 48 Hour Self-Retreat

    Here’s one of my little secrets. While it’s really hard to get my team away for a planning retreat, it’s actually pretty simple to identify 2 full days of planning for myself. Then I can schedule some meetings with key leaders as part of my retreat, say have coffee or have them over for dinner, and they are participating in the planning retreat without even leaving home. (Or knowing they are on your retreat. BAM!)

    Tasks for the 48 Hour Self-Retreat

    1. Prayer. Spend an hour or so each day in silent prayer. I’ve found it useful to spend the first 30 minutes just listening and slowing down. Next, I like to spend the first day praying for all of my leaders and students. The second day is spent asking God for wisdom.
    2. Celebrate the victories. I’ve found it really useful to spend an hour or two celebrating what God has done in the previous year. What were wins? Who were the people impacted?
    3. Make some resolutions. What big things need to change? Maybe it’s your target demographic. Maybe it’s what students learn? I can’t answer that for you.
    4. Two-fold research. First, spend 2 hours doing a basic ethnography at 2 different places. Do observation, take notes, etc. (Here’s a link to how to do that.)
    5. Meet with 2-3 key volunteers to ideate. I like to get this to a point of asking, “What if” and “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” statements.
    6. Meet with 2-3 key student leaders to ideate. Same as above. Depending on your set-up you might even do t his with those adult leaders. A dinner is a good way to accomplish that.
    7. Meet with 2-3 “fringe students” to listen, dream, ideate. I actually like to meet with a couple groups of them. Those in the church who should be involved somehow but aren’t. And those truly on the fringe, maybe have visited a couple of times and you see at school, but aren’t engaged at all. Take them out for a coke or go to Dairy Queen… something simple like that works wonders.
    8. Spend a couple hours compiling all of this data, identifying the top 5 learnings. Do this before lunch on the second day.
    9. Have a “So now what” session. Go into a room with a big white board, chalk board, or butcher block paper and just start brainstorming ideas. Look at your data and your learnings and start saying… “So now what?” If you can gather your team for this, awesome. But seriously… this is one of the most critical parts of the process, otherwise you just learned a bunch of stuff but haven’t done anything with it.
    10. Identify 1 measurable difference for the coming school year. It’s not that you are only doing one new thing… it’s that you want to everyone to be able to clearly identify what that 1 thing is and recognize it when they see it. For example, last school year the ministry I volunteer with wanted to dramatically increase the “I know you” factor. So we changed a whole bunch of things so that the group interacted more, hung out more, and got to know one another. At the end of the school year we could all point to that and say.. “Yep, that’s way better.”

    So, how did it go? I’d love to hear how your 48-hour retreat went!  

  • My Sanctuary

    Ugh. Another parking ticket. I think I already had about 10 of them. While I never intended to pay them I was still embarrassed to get ticket after ticket for parking in the women’s basketball coaches spot. She never seemed to use it anyway and the walk from the visitors lot was long. Plus, tickets were for rich kids.

    I dropped the ticket on the ground and got back into my 1978 Ford LTD Station Wagon to begin the drive home.

    It was the Winter of 1994 and I was spending a lot of time in Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library. You might know the building as Touchdown Jesus but I know the building as my sanctuary.

    My senior year of high school was complicated.

    While I did my best to maintain a front that everything was OK, everything wasn’t OK.

    After spending my junior year in Germany with my mom I moved in with my dad for my senior year.

    My hope was to move home and resume my life. My reality was that I’d exchanged one chaotic situation with my mom for an even more chaotic situation with my dad. While his marriage to my stepmom wouldn’t end for a couple more years the volcano of their relationship erupted over and over again. It was pretty rough. I moved in, then we moved out, then we moved back in– on and on this went. I think I moved in and out of that house 7 times in 10 months.

    When we were home I tried to avoid being there as much as possible. And when we lived with grandma I tried to stay out until after she went to bed. I spent as much time as I could at school. But eventually the janitors would ask me to leave and I’d have to go somewhere else.

    Hesburgh Library was on my way home from school. It was both a logical and welcoming place for me to hang out. While I wasn’t a student no one ever asked me if I belonged. As long as I was quiet, doing homework, and didn’t break rules I knew no one would complain. I was good at blending in, knew enough about Notre Dame to fake it if I got into a conversation, and knew they weren’t going to put me in Leprechaun Jail if I got caught.

    So I’d disappear for hours into the stacks to read, research, dream, nap, and explore.

    To graduate I needed to pass gym. So I had little homework. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t learning. I’d grab a novel off the shelf or dig into an autobiography of someone I’d never heard of. They’d refer to a piece of history I wasn’t familiar with so I’d head over to the microfilm and read the New York Times from those days to find out what the author was referring to. Anything to pass the time.

    As the weeks went by I got lost in reading newspapers from the Great Depression. Over time I got pretty good at finding stuff and operating the microfilm… and then I started helping the librarian show students how to find what they were looking for. And that lead to even more time in the library “studying.” (This was a great way to meet female students, by the way.)

    At a time in my life when I didn’t feel welcome at home– or really even have a home to feel welcome in– I felt welcome in the library. More than a place I trespassed at or occasionally got a parking ticket for squatting on the women’s basketball coaches parking spot, it was a sanctuary of comfort and predictability that I desperately needed.

    Do you work with teenagers? Help them find their place of sanctuary. Don’t ever assume that because they look OK or aren’t saying they aren’t OK that everything is fine. Sometimes the best thing you can do isn’t talk… it’s help them find a place where they can just be.

  • Dear Megachurch: Adam’s list…

    Part 1

    Last week, NorthPoint young adult pastor Sammy Adebiyi wrote an article that was published on ChurchLeaders.com which offended some people. In fairness, he was very gracious as comments flowed in pointing out the many flaws in his post. In radio, I’d call this post “shock jock material.” He called a bunch of people names in the headlines of the post and then quickly backed off when the nasty calls for his head came in. (A legit engagement strategy if you ask me.)

    If his post had merely been confessional about why HE used to make fun of megachurches before he worked at one, I could have read the post, shared a laugh, and moved along. Instead, he used inclusive language… “WE“…  to make it seem like he represented all small church voices.

    Here’s Sammy’s list of reasons for why he used to make fun of megachurches:

    1. We don’t know you
    2. We are sitting on the sidelines
    3. We are jealous
    4. We are hypocrites
    5. We are arrogant

    I completely agree with point #1. It is easy to make fun of people you don’t know. I’ve spent most of my life in smallish churches, places with fewer than 500 people. In my mind, people who worked at monster American churches were unknown to me and unknowable. What I found in getting to know a pile of these folks, including ones who work at Sammy’s church, is that they are essentially the same types of people who work in small churches. They work hard, love their work, love the people in their ministry, have problems, have doubts, etc. But at the end of the day I don’t find many differences between a megachurch middle school pastor and an associate at a small PCUSA church who oversees birth-college ministries. People are people. 

    Maybe I’m just sensitive? But it sure felt like the next 4 points were Sammy exhibiting that he doesn’t really know many people who go to or work at small churches. I read those and thought… “Actually, I don’t know anyone who thinks this way!” In fact, by the time I was done reading his points I actually hurt for the hard-working, God-honoring, Jesus loving brothers and sisters I know who give their lives to their ministries.

    Part 2

    But I’m willing to put that all that aside. I’m not really mad at Sammy for saying what he said. Again, had he written the same thing from his perspective instead of “we” than all would have been easily forgotten.

    The real shame here is that Sammy’s post wasted a perfectly good blog title without having any fun! I mean, there really are good things worth poking fun at, tongue-in-cheek-style.

    So I made a little list, which I’m sure will get me in trouble, but why not?

    So, why do I make fun of people who think their megachurch is the reason a cat meows?

    1. You think 20,000 people is big and makes you a big deal. I mean seriously– 35,000 people go to Qualcomm Stadium on a Saturday to watch no-name San Diego State football. 20,000 is a decent crowd for an NBA game. Compared to the relative population of our country, none of us are that big of a deal.
    2. You think it’s cool to have a lion in your services. No seriously, a church in Texas had a live lion and lamb in a recent sermon series. It’s stuff like this that makes me shake my head. Yeah, you have too many resources for your preaching when you think… “You know what would make that illustration better? Let’s bring a flipping lion right into the building!” Jesus could have done this easily– but he choose to cast out demons and heal people instead. Just sayin’.
    3. You think it’s OK to have a security detail, personal assistants, and “people.” The Washington Post ran a story yesterday joking about Newt Gingrich’s Secret Service detail. The candidates campaign is so derailed that he had to take the train from Washington D.C. to New York for an event yet he still has 4 Secret Service agents watching him 24 hours per day. Jesus didn’t walk around with a group of homies watching his back and running his schedule. In fact, I seem to remember him rebuking a disciple for cutting a dude’s ear off in the Garden. If you need people, my assumption is that you might need to spend more time with your people. But I am probably wrong in that assumption.
    4. You think Jesus’ idea of multiplication was a bigger building or a helicopter to get from one campus to another. I’ve had 4-5 conversations with church staff about the lengths their teaching pastor goes through to speak at multiple campuses on a Sunday morning. I know of 2 churches who employ a helicopter for this purpose. A helicopter. Paul only left Timothy in Ephesus because his chopper was in the shop. (Not naming names intentionally on this one.)
    5. You think you created a big organization. My observation is that most of these big churches don’t really know how they grew from a staff of 5 to 50 to 250 or from 200 people to 15,000 people. It kind of happened gradually and because you knowingly or unknowingly made a whole lot of great decisions. It just cracks me up how fast they think they’ve invented an organizational or reporting structure or decision-making processes. In reality, it’s the same thing that happened to every major denomination and non-profit organization.

    Part 3

    All jokes aside, in a post-modern, post-Christian society– it’s going to take all types of churches to make a significant impact. Sure, we can poke fun at one another and have a good time with that. But in the end, we’re all on the same team. The bottom line is we need more churches and all kinds of them. Big ones, little ones, crazy ones, practical ones, missional one, unintentional ones, house ones, prison ones, neighborhood ones, institutional ones… and a whole bunch of churches who don’t call themselves churches!

  • Six new iOS apps I actually use

    I’m assuming you’re already using my 3 favorite apps, Evernote, WordPress & Dropbox.

    Here are sixapps I’ve started using recently that I think you should try out. 

    Wunderlist (iPhone, iPad, and Mac) – I’ve finally found a to-do list app that I love! It has a nice and simple interface, reminders, and syncs with all of my devices.

    Skitch (Mac, iPad) – If you ever need to do a screen capture this is your app. Easily capture, make notes, draw on the screen, and share it with whomever you need to share it with. I love the iPad app… it’s really so easy to use that it’s fun! They just got bought by Evernote, so I expect to be able to sync it to my notebooks easier soon.

    ESPN Passport – (iPhone) This is a fun little app for sports nuts. If you’re watching a game, whether in the stadium or watching on TV, its allows you to talk smack with other people watching the game. It links to your ESPN account so it pulls in your profile and all of that stuff. (You can win badges and stuff like that, too) You can also share your smack talk via Facebook/Twitter. But I just like to take pictures of me and my kids at games.

    Square – (iPhone, iPad) As a small business owner I sometimes have the need to swipe a credit card and charge someone on the spot. Square is drop dead easy and the credit card rates aren’t that bad if you figure in that a merchant account isn’t needed, no monthly contracts, etc. You sign-up for free, they send you a little Square reader, and you’re good to go.

    Redfin – (iPhone, iPad) I’m not really in the market to buy a house but I do like to know what property in my area is going for. This app is sexy. It shows you all the houses available based on your parameters. And then it has a very simple, elegant layout to show you the properties. (And all the really important info, like taxes, schools, comps, etc.)

    Editions – (iPad) An AOL app that doesn’t suck? It surprised me too! This little app is gorgeous. You tell it your news preferences and each day it goes out and aggregates all the news you want. Then it lays it out like a magazine designed just for you. It’s beautiful, too.

    Bonus#1: Mustache Me (iPhone) I blame Brian Berry for this one. Instant fun. Add a mustache to any picture, share, beauty.

    Bonus #2: car2go PRO (iPhone) Car2Go is a car sharing service that is taking off here in San Diego. Basically, they are these little electric cars you can rent for $.35/minute to get around town cheap. The app helps you find and reserve them… which is super easy and fun!

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