"Gee crime, I don't know!"

Why I want to go to Peru

2007-12-03T11:27:00.001-08:00

Renee and I would like to go here for our 20th wedding anniversary.

See more progress on: Peru

To "coin a phrase"?

2006-12-12T14:24:00.000-08:00

What does it mean to "coin a phrase"? Who gets to add something to global lexicon? Do I need to make an entry in Wikipedia, for me to get credit?

Recently I was asked to write an article for the Indiana INTERNnet's newsletter about what we do at the Emergent Leadership Institute. Trying define what you do into the simplest terms is one of the key foundations of branding. So in an attempt to communicate ELI to a state wide readership, I came up with the following analogy. Here is the article I wrote, enjoy.

Community Access Point – helpindyonline.com

As our computers become smaller and our dependence on the Internet increases, we sometimes find ourselves in desperate search for a WAP (Wireless Access Point). These “access points” can be found at a variety of locations. More and more coffee shops, hotels, bookstores and yes, even McDonalds are offering up on ramps to the information super highway along side their normal menu of goods and services.

Similarly, services such as the Indiana INTERNnet provide young people across our state with a CAP (Community Access Point). By providing a central location to find quality internships located in Indiana, the Indiana INTERNnet becomes an access point, not only to the business community, but also to the people and neighborhoods these businesses serve. As students begin to become stakeholders in our communities through the access point of these internships, there is greater likely hood that the networks they form will begin to weave these young people into the ongoing fabric of our state.

Another such CAP is helpindyonline.com. Run by the Emergent Leadership Institute (ELI), a one-year old 501c3 based in Marion County, helpindyonline.com connects high school and college students with meaningful volunteer roles around the Indianapolis area. There are over 100 diverse non-profit partners, listing over 500 volunteer positions on this site. In its first year helpindyonline.com has provided an access point for over 520 young people to become current stakeholders in the Indianapolis community.

Along with its website, ELI also provides a hands-on community access point to young people through it’s HIO Street Teams. And just like WAP’s, these Street Teams can take many forms. They can meet as after school clubs, online social networks, gatherings at coffee houses or a physical ELI staff presence on a high school or college campus. Currently these street teams serve as community access points for the students of sixteen different schools.

ELI recently became a statewide access point for young people to get involved in their community on January 15th, 2007, which is the national Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. Through a partnership with the Indiana Civil Rights Commission and Service for Peace, ELI helped create a statewide online volunteer center for MLK Day service projects at www.helpindyonline.com/mlk.

As mobile Internet usage grows, the need for a variety of strong WAP’s also increases. The same can be said about our community. The more diverse community access points that become available to young people across our state, the stronger their ties to home will become.

So there it is. I searched Google, Yahoo and the Wikipedia and found nothing that indicates there is anyone in the non-profit field, here in the US, that is using this term to describe the programs they run. So I guess I "coined the phrase"?

The Most Important 2 hours of TV, EVER!

2006-10-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

I have blogged many times about watching Tv that can make a difference in your life. This time is no exception.

I currently have two friends living and making a difference in Africa. I respect them for it, very much (You go Kate and Brian!). So when I got home today from U.S. Senator Evan Bayh's Service Leaders Summit and started to flip through the channels to unwind, it wasn't odd that I would stop on the Travel Channel.

Most of the programs on the Travel Channel are usually extremely stunning, but Bob Geldof in Africa takes you into the heart of Africa in much more than just a visual way. The western world has got to stand up, as ONE, to help an entire continent survive through to it's next generation.

Take two hours, just two hours, that you would have spent watching football, skanky housewifes or not-so-reality TV and let the world change you, so that you can change the world. Go buy the DVD or email the Travel Channel to put it on the air again.

"Thinking will allow no man to be your master", Sir Bob Geldof

Are you slightly privileged?

2006-07-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

I'm white. I'm lower-middle-classed. I'm a male. I'm slightly privileged.

"History which keeps alive the memory of people's resistance suggests new definitions of power. By traditional definitions, whoever possesses military strength, wealth, command of official ideology, cultural control, has power. Measured by these standards, popular rebellion never looks strong enough to survive.

However, the unexpected victories-even temporary ones-of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful. In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage men and firemen. These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.

That will happen, I think, only when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see what we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica-expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain control, kill us."

~Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, Chapter 23, page 633

"What can I do to change things?" What can't you do? If Prof. Zinn is correct, the majority of the people I know in my life have all the true power. We have been doped, by the Establishment, into think we don't.

"Okay fine, but what can I DO?" I think the simplest of answers has to be: Cut down on your waste. Debt is wasted money. Cable is wasted time. Car pool to work. Share a meal between two people at a restaurant. The guards of the system live way outside their means. It is the greatest weapon the Establishment has to control us. If we all began eliminating the "waste" in our lives, they would have less control over us.

In all seriousness, "VIVA LA PEOPLE, VIVA LA REVOLUTION!"

It starts TODAY. It starts with ME. It starts with US.

Are you an "open source" person?

2006-06-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

Open Source Your Brain!

Some maybe fimiluar with the concept of "Open Source Software" (think firefox) and even fewer of you still may understand "Open Source Leadership." Well the world is changing. FAST. No matter what you do in life, to truely understand how the world is working and will work over the next several decades, you need to learn what "Open Source" means. So I have compiled a few weblinks that I think could be very useful to people wishing to learn and grow along side the world around them. They are:

Wikipedia
Free Beer For Geeks
Bytes From Lev
Local Open Source/Space Meeting

Now that you have some knowledge about being an "Open Source" leader and what that might look like, do something with it!

"Be the change you seek in the world." Some bald guy from india

Million Dollar Website Idea #1

2006-06-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

www.your-YP-is-toast.com

This would be an internet gambeling site that would take wagers on how long your new Youth Pastor was going to last at your church. You could enter all their biographical information, how they got selected to come to your church and how the last youth pastor left the church. Based on this information folks could enter a betting pool by picking the date they would either leave, get fired or "resign". Think "40 Days and 40 nights" with Josh Heartnet.

Disclaimer: This idea has nothing what so ever to do with my own personal life or the countless friends I have watched get screwed by the church (yeah right! I'm picking 9 months and 22 days for the new guy)

**** After hearing the idea, Renee wanted to add one more dimention to the site. Upon the YP being bet upons dismissel, they would recieve half the pot. The "church" isn't going to take care of them so somebody should.

I'm an every two month blogger?

2006-06-14T08:42:00.001-07:00

MySpace has been running my life recently. Our HIO MySpace group now has over 3900 people in it. ELI is growing by leaps and bounds. We could hire three more fulltime people and still not get all the bases covered. The organization will be featured in the June 19th edition of the IBJ. And our promotional deal with RadioNow93.1 starts this Friday. There are a thousand other things that have kept me from this blog (fundraising, Renee grad, Jamie in Japan, ect.), but I promise to do a better job of posting over this summer.

Bumper sticker of the week: Seen while driving home on I-70. Car was a Honda, with a middle-aged white male driver. Plates where from Missouri.

"Vote Republican: It's easier than thinking!"

I'm an every two month blogger?

2006-06-14T08:42:00.000-07:00

Been a long time since I blog and rolled!

2006-04-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

What's the difference between the people that watch Pro Wrestling and the people that watch Bill O'Rielly?

At least the people that love Pro Wrestling are smart enough to realize the show they are watching is fake and for entertainment purposes only!

Go rent the Documentary "Out Foxed", you'll see what I mean.

The day I knew I was in trouble at my last job, was the day the Senior Pastors 22 year old-no college-no job-still living at home-son came into the pastors office all excited that O'Rielly had used his email the night before. By the way the Senior Pastor responded with so much pride you might have thought his son had. . . I don't know . . . gone back to school or maybe gotten a job or even moved out of the house.

When that voice in the back of your head tells you to run, you probably should!

Too little, much too late.

2006-02-10T10:14:00.000-08:00

I found this in an in issue of Sojomail. (If you don't subscribe you should)

The Prayer of Jabez falls short in Africa
by David Batstone

Bruce Wilkinson, author of the best-selling book The Prayer of Jabez, made a big splash nearly four years ago when he announced his ambitious plan to help children suffering from AIDS in Africa.

Not everything for Wilkinson has gone according to plan, unfortunately. A page one feature in the Dec. 19 The Wall Street Journal captures the sad tale in a nutshell: "In 2002 Bruce Wilkinson, a Georgia preacher whose self-help prayer book had made him a rich man, heard God's call, moved to Africa and announced his intention to save one million children left orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. In October [2005], Wilkinson resigned in a huff from the African charity he founded. He abandoned his plan to house 10,000 children in a facility that was to be an orphanage, bed-and-breakfast, game reserve, Bible college, industrial park and Disneyesque tourist destination in the tiny kingdom of Swaziland. What happened in between is a story of grand hopes and inexperience, divine inspiration and human foibles. ¿[H]is departure left critics convinced he was just another in a long parade of outsiders who have come to Africa making big promises and quit the continent when local people didn't bend to their will."

It is not my aim to gloat at Wilkinson's failure. To the contrary, I mourn what this means for the millions of African children in crisis who apparently will not benefit from his efforts. I also want to honor Wilkinson's desire to help the least fortunate. It would have been easy for him to take the wealth he gained from his book sales and live a life of personal comfort.

This chain of events, however, should not pass without a moment of theological reflection. The "blessed life" that Wilkinson has helped to promote carries with it a number of assumptions about where God is present in the world, and how God acts in response to the prayers of the faithful.

The Prayer of Jabez is based on a passage out of the book of Chronicles, in which a devoted man named Jabez asks God for a favor: "Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!" The fact that God honors Jabez' prayer and blesses him with great riches indicates to Wilkinson a God-principle. If we in pure heart ask God for a blessing - and do so using the very words that Jabez prayed - then God will bring wondrous gifts into our life. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Wilkinson interprets the wild commercial success of his books (roughly 20 million copies sold combined) as yet another proof of the miraculous power of the Jabez prayer. In other words, it worked for Jabez, it worked for Wilkinson, and now it should work for you. With the fiasco in Africa now behind him - and the full Journal report makes clear that fiasco is the appropriate term - I wonder if Wilkinson has reconsidered his theology.

Maybe because I spent so many years in poor regions of the globe I could never accept the prayer-in-blessing-out approach to faithful living. Straight to the point, I have known too many devoted Christians for whom life did not bring them material blessing. Their children still died of infectious diseases that plagued their village. They could not avoid the violence that dictators and ideologues so often use to cow the powerless. Their territory did not expand because their only path for survival was a daily labor with their hands. Yet they did not lose faith, or cease praying for God's blessing.

As I ponder on their lives, I find a more fitting theology for God's presence and action in the world to be laid out in the book of Hebrews. There we are encouraged to have "faith in things not yet seen," and are offered models of individuals who tried to lead devoted lives that honor God. We read that some of them did receive great material blessings, while others ended up in the dens of lions or stoned due to their principled living. We learn, in other words, that God does hear their prayers and loves them profoundly, but it does not always bring them material riches or expanded territory.

Wilkinson's doctrine in fact implies that social structures are immaterial. An individual reciting the right prayer can transcend an AIDS epidemic in his or her village or escape being bought and sold into slavery (like 27 million people on this planet yet today). Perhaps now that Wilkinson has immersed himself in Africa, he better understands that the curse of poverty is not a spiritual punishment, or an indication of a lack of faith. To bring blessings to the orphans and widows of Africa, a dramatic shift in values - political, economic, and personal - will be required. And that challenge cannot be owned by Africans alone; it falls squarely on the shoulders of us in rich nations, who enjoy such great material "blessings."

Just like the next Bible reader, I could pick out individual passages that seem to suggest that God will give us whatever we desire as long as we ask for it with a pure heart. "You can even move this mountain" with such a prayer, as Jesus teaches his disciples in the gospels. I do not summarily discount these passages, nor do I assume that we should never pray for rain in a time of drought.

But the weight of the biblical message balances heavily toward a prayer life that yields courage, love, and compassion to do the will of God. The expectation of material gain and miraculous blessings may even distract us on that pilgrimage. The passage in Hebrews calls us, based on past heroes of the faith, "to run the race in front of us," confident that devoting our lives to God's work is all the reward we will ever need.

I see a rash of North American-Neo-con-evangelicals attempting to make long over due stands on social justice issues. And although some may see this as a "good" thing, I don't. "Isn't them doing something, better than nothing?" I often get asked by my conservative leaning brothers and sisters. The answer is no. Here is the article from the WSJ.

Unanswered Prayers
In Swaziland,
U.S. Preacher Sees
His Dream Vanish

Mr. Wilkinson Hits Wall Trying
To Push 'Orphan Village';
Rodeo Stars, Safari Guides

Feeling Snubbed by the King

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 19, 2005; Page A1

MBABANE, Swaziland -- In 2002 Bruce Wilkinson, a Georgia preacher whose self-help prayer book had made him a rich man, heard God's call, moved to Africa and announced his intention to save one million children left orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.

In October, Mr. Wilkinson resigned in a huff from the African charity he founded. He abandoned his plan to house 10,000 children in a facility that was to be an orphanage, bed-and-breakfast, game reserve, bible college, industrial park and Disneyesque tourist destination in the tiny kingdom of Swaziland.

What happened in between is a story of grand hopes and inexperience, divine inspiration and human foibles. Mr. Wilkinson won churchloads of followers in Swaziland, but left them bereft and confused. He gained access to top Swazi officials, but alienated them with his demands. And his departure left critics convinced he was just another in a long parade of outsiders who have come to Africa making big promises and quit the continent when local people didn't bend to their will.

The setback stunned Mr. Wilkinson, who had grown accustomed to operating on a larger-than-life scale, promising that God would enable him to achieve the impossible. "We're going to see the largest humanitarian religious movement in the history of the world from the U.S. to Africa to help in this crisis," Mr. Wilkinson predicted in June, when he believed his orphan village was about to sprout from the African bush.

Just a few months later, he found himself groping with his failure to make that happen. "I'll put it down as one of the disappointments of my career," he says.

Mr. Wilkinson's life has been all about miracles: He routinely asks God to perform them, and God, he says, routinely does. A solidly built 58-year-old, with silver hair and rimless glasses, Mr. Wilkinson led his nondenominational ministries to explosive growth over three decades, sponsoring thousands of Christian seminars and training battalions of Bible teachers.

But his life took a sharp turn after he wrote "The Prayer of Jabez," a 93-page, $10 tract published in 2000. It is based on a passage in the Bible's book of Chronicles, in which an honorable man named Jabez asked for God's favor. "Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, and that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain," Jabez prayed. In the story, God granted his wish.

The lesson, Mr. Wilkinson says, is that God wants believers to ask for blessings. Those who ask -- by reciting Jabez's 33-word prayer -- unleash miracles. Those who don't ask, don't receive.

Squabbling couples should ask for happy marriages, he writes. Business executives should ask for more customers. Stuck in traffic once, Mr. Wilkinson says he asked God to delay his flight so he wouldn't miss a speaking engagement. He made his plane.

Mr. Wilkinson has recited the prayer regularly since he was a seminary student 35 years ago, and credits it for the fact that world-wide he has sold some 22 million copies of his books, including such variants as "The Prayer of Jabez for Teens" and "The Prayer of Jabez Leather Edition."

Moving to Africa

Riding his global celebrity, in 2002 Mr. Wilkinson took a three-week preaching tour of Africa, where he felt the tug of the continent's 20 million orphans, most left parentless by AIDS. As he told ChristianityToday.com soon afterward: "God ripped open our chest, took out our heart, dug a hole in Africa, put it in, covered it with soil and said, 'Now, follow your heart and move down to Africa.' "

Within months, Mr. Wilkinson, his wife and their teenage daughter -- the youngest of three children -- moved from suburban Atlanta to Johannesburg, South Africa. He launched Dream for Africa, a Christian organization aimed at solving the problems of AIDS, poverty, hunger, orphans and spiritual emptiness.

"We asked the question, 'What does God want done with the orphans?' " he said in a June interview with this newspaper. "We don't set a goal based on resources, but on the need."

So he announced that Dream for Africa's goal would be to dramatically improve the lot of one million orphans.

The first step was intended to defeat hunger. Mr. Wilkinson consulted the Book of Genesis, noting that in Eden fruit grew on trees and grain sprang from the soil. "That's God's answer," he remembers thinking.

He recruited American volunteers, in public appearances and on the Web, who paid their own way to Africa to plant hundreds of thousands of vegetable gardens in people's yards. It was, he said, a simple idea professional aid groups had overlooked. "Because I don't come out of this arena of humanitarian aid, I have a fresh pair of eyes," he said in the June interview.

Mr. Wilkinson then turned his attention to preventing HIV transmission. He enlisted American bible-college students and young African volunteers to travel to every one of Swaziland's 172 high schools and hold weeklong film, musical and dramatic programs promoting sexual abstinence. These teams "are the answer to HIV/AIDS," say the group's recruiting materials.

Mr. Wilkinson felt a special kinship for South Africa's poor neighbor, Swaziland. Years earlier, while they still lived in Georgia, the Wilkinsons had sponsored the training of Bible teachers in the mountainous, nominally Christian country of 1.1 million people, more than two-thirds of whom live on less than $1 a day.

In 2002, a group of Swazi pastors arranged for Mr. Wilkinson to have an audience with the country's king, Mswati III. "How can I help you?" he asked the king, according to people who were there. King Mswati listed the country's woes: poverty, AIDS, orphans and joblessness.

The 36-year-old king is a controversial figure, whose 13 wives periodically draw international attention. Criticism of his polygamy stems in part from the fact that Swaziland has the highest HIV prevalence rate in the world, a situation aggravated by promiscuous sexual practices. Researchers estimate 42% of Swazis ages 15 to 49 carry the AIDS virus.

In response to the epidemic, four years ago the king banned sexual relations among Swazis under 18. This year, he lifted the ban and selected a new fiancée -- a 17-year-old student -- at a traditional ceremony, in which thousands of Swazi women danced topless for him. Despite his unease with King Mswati's marital arrangements, Mr. Wilkinson felt he made inroads with the king over a series of visits.

Perhaps Mr. Wilkinson's most successful venture in Swaziland was a conference in June -- funded by a $108,000 grant his group received from the U.S. government -- aimed at engaging churches in the fight against HIV. He sent buses all across the country, to pick up ministers and deliver them to a fancy hotel near Mbabane, the capital city. Dream for Africa arranged for free medical care and eyeglasses for those who showed up.

The result was that some 400 pastors got together and talked about AIDS. In answer to Mr. Wilkinson's admonitions, several ministers stepped forward to repent their own sexual transgressions. The pastors sent Mr. Wilkinson off to a standing ovation, and the U.S. ambassador considered the event a breakthrough in harnessing the church's influence to fight AIDS.

The triumph reinforced Mr. Wilkinson's sense that his destiny lay with Swaziland. Soon afterward, he signed a yearlong lease on a house in Swaziland's Valley of Heaven, where jacaranda trees drop carpets of purple petals around their trunks. With Dream for Africa's guidance, he decided, the country would become the model for the rest of Africa. "We believe we're called to it," he said in June.

It was a moment of peak optimism. There remained just one final piece, Mr. Wilkinson thought, to complete God's plans for Swaziland: a massive tourist-orphan-industrial complex.

Swazi health officials estimate there are 70,000 orphans in the country, the vast majority left so by AIDS. The number is expected to grow to 120,000 in five years. Traditionally, orphans are cared for by relatives or others appointed by village chiefs. But AIDS has gutted entire families, and the 2002 drought left many so strapped for food that some grew reluctant to take in extra children. As a result, tens of thousands of Swazi children now live in households they themselves head.

In Mr. Wilkinson's view, he was called to step in because village chiefs and traditional aid organizations had fallen down on the job. He bypassed small solutions and came up with one on a grand scale, which he called the "African Dream Village." It would provide homes for 10,000 orphans, who would live 20 to a house, with a volunteer Swazi couple in charge and elderly widows as grandmother figures.

Each home would have a bed-and-breakfast suite where tourists would pay $500 a week to stay, combining charity with an African vacation. Fifty such homes would form a mini-village of 1,000 orphans, built around a theme -- such as Wild West rodeos or Swazi village life -- to entertain guests. There would also be a new luxury hotel and an 18-hole golf course. Orphans would be trained as rodeo stars and safari guides at nearby game reserves.

The idea, Mr. Wilkinson said, was to "try to bring experiences to the kids they could only get at Walt Disney or a dude ranch."

The village would have schools, churches, medical centers and a "Mega Farm" to feed everyone. Mr. Wilkinson also planned a bible college, a cannery, a chicken farm, a bicycle factory and a truck-reconditioning plant, with water supplied by a new dam. "They'll be self-sufficient from the day they move in," Mr. Wilkinson said in June.

A $190 Million Price Tag

Dream for Africa put the price tag for the project at $190 million. His group projected the Dream Village would generate $12 million a year in revenue, and would create jobs for five doctors, nine firemen, 12 masons, one entomologist, two wildlife specialists and 68 pastors, among many others.

To enlist support among Swazi power brokers, Mr. Wilkinson turned to Nan Jarvis, a devout Christian who had long run a local flower shop. She says she had prayed for business success and soon found herself supplying arrangements for the king's birthday, and for cabinet ministers and their wives.

A Prayer of Jabez fan, Ms. Jarvis, 52, put her connections to use to help further Mr. Wilkinson's plan. Her devotion to him deepened last year, when, she says, she died and went to heaven. Jesus emerged from a cloud, she says, and told her, "Your time has not yet come. You must go back...Take care of my lambs." It was, she felt, a sign to press ahead with the orphan village.

Ms. Jarvis and Mr. Wilkinson roamed the Swazi countryside until they found the right property: 32,500 acres near two of the country's best game reserves, home to white rhino, crested eagle, warthog, gnu, lion and other species.

Late last year, Mr. Wilkinson asked Ms. Jarvis to tell the king what he had in mind and what he wanted: a 99-year lease on the land and control of both game parks.

In the following months, Mr. Wilkinson pitched his plan to government officials and, he says, secured verbal commitments. In February, the king invited him to tour the small airport near the proposed orphan village. Mr. Wilkinson said an upgrade was imperative because he required an airport big enough to land Boeing 777 jets filled with Western volunteers and tourists.

It wasn't until Feb. 23, however, that Dream for Africa gave the government anything in writing -- a 34-page proposal.

Mr. Wilkinson gave the government five days to approve the plan. "They knew all about this for a long time," he says, explaining the short deadline. Mr. Wilkinson and his aides sent letters to government officials, threatening to take his orphan village to Zambia or South Africa if the Swazis didn't sign up.

In a letter to the prime minister, a project consultant with Mr. Wilkinson's group wrote, "Given the fact that Swaziland has been placed on the heart of DFA by God through devoted prayer, we believe the country has reached a major juncture in its quest to take ownership of its problems and to embrace God's divine will for Swaziland."

The government let the deadline pass. Mr. Wilkinson didn't make good on his threat to go elsewhere.

In April, Ms. Jarvis secured an audience with the king at the palace, where peacocks wander the grounds. As a sign of respect, nobody may rise higher than the king; Swazis approach him on hand and knee. Ms. Jarvis sat at the king's feet in a reception room, spread a map on the floor and pointed out where the hotel, the golf course and the orphans would be located.

"Your majesty, are you happy with this?" Ms. Jarvis recalls asking the king.

She recalls him raising his hand above her head and saying, "You have my blessing." It was, as far as she was concerned, the green light.

Roy Fanourakis, the king's chief of staff, who attended the meeting, says he doesn't remember King Mswati using those exact words. Mr. Fanourakis says that Ms. Jarvis didn't understand that the Swazi king is too polite to give a guest a definitive, "No." The king's response, he says, was a signal Mr. Wilkinson was welcome to help the orphans, but should consult with the government on how.

Mr. Fanourakis had misgivings about the Dream Village concept, shared by many in the cabinet. "You get to an age of 18 years, then what does Bruce do with those kids?" he says.

One problem, he felt, was that if the orphans were removed from their villages, the chiefs would give away the children's land -- their only security. Furthermore, Mr. Wilkinson was asking for big tracts, some of it already committed to other people, Mr. Fanourakis says. The Hlale game park, for instance, was managed by a Swazi environmental group that had run it for decades.

In May, Mr. Wilkinson tried to win the Bush administration to his side. In a convoy of SUVs, he took U.S. Ambassador Lewis Lucke to the proposed site of the Dream Village. Mr. Lucke had served in Haiti, Jordan and Iraq, much of the time with the U.S. Agency for International Development. He admired Mr. Wilkinson's enthusiasm and altruism, but was wary of groups with little overseas history claiming to know the answers for Africa.

A few days later, Mr. Lucke showed up at Mr. Wilkinson's door and told him he considered it unwise to move orphans away from their villages. "It's laudable that you're trying to do something about Swazi orphans," Mr. Lucke told Mr. Wilkinson, according to both men. "But do it in a way that doesn't conflict with Swazi culture."

Mr. Wilkinson felt the situation was so urgent that the time for cautious measures had passed. Mr. Lucke wasn't persuaded, and he didn't think the Swazi government would be either. "You'll never get the land," he warned.

The ambassador's words seemed prophetic a couple of weeks later, when a Dream for Africa draft plan found its way into Swazi newspapers, turning public opinion sharply against Mr. Wilkinson. Under the headline "British Colony or Dr Bruce Colony?" one op-ed writer in the Swazi News wrote, "Why can't he simply tell us that he wants to be given the whole country so that he can gloat to his friends overseas that he owns a modern day colony in Africa called Swaziland?"

Touching a Nerve

In a country where land ownership provokes deep emotions, Mr. Wilkinson's request for a prime tract touched a nerve. Colonizers offered previous royals mirrors and other trinkets in exchange for land. In the 1970s, a British evangelist won the support of King Mswati's father, promised do-good projects that turned out to be hoaxes and ran off with the money people had donated.

"Are We Really a Nation of Fools?" asked an op-ed in the Times of Swaziland, after the Dream for Africa plan surfaced.

The outrage spread to organizations that Mr. Wilkinson had accused of failing the orphans. "The history of these kinds of grand-scale 'social engineering' experiments is not very promising," Alan Brody, an American who headed the local Unicef office, told the Times of Swaziland. "So I have deep misgivings about Swaziland making itself the guinea pig for this kind of experimentation."

Unicef's strategy is to fund neighborhood stations, where orphans receive two meals a day, six days a week.

The criticism stung Mr. Wilkinson. He considered the attacks evidence that the aid establishment was too self-interested. "From my point of view, they aren't concerned enough about the kids who are living without anybody," he said days after Mr. Brody's remarks.

Swazis even became suspicious of Mr. Wilkinson's other, more popular endeavors. In one town, an American volunteer wore latex gloves while planting a Dream for Africa garden, and rumors spread that the group was intentionally planting seedlings infected with HIV. As many as 100 families ripped up their gardens. The agriculture minister issued a statement debunking the rumor, but it persisted for months.

The government and Dream for Africa continued negotiating in private. "Swaziland takes a massive amount of effort to do the simplest things," Mr. Wilkinson wrote in an email to this newspaper in July.

As Mr. Wilkinson's frustration mounted, Ms. Jarvis tried to arrange a decisive meeting between him and King Mswati during the monarch's visit to New York in September. Mr. Wilkinson, then spending a few months in the U.S., juggled his schedule and flew to New York.

The king's chief of staff, Mr. Fanourakis, agreed to set up the audience, but only at a time that would have required Mr. Wilkinson to wait in New York a few extra days.

The perceived snub was, Mr. Wilkinson says, his snapping point. He left New York without seeing the king and soon afterward let his inner circle know that he was done with Swaziland, done with Africa and done with Dream for Africa.

In October, Dream for Africa issued a press release in the U.S. under the headline: "Dream for Africa Expands its Leadership." It announced Mr. Wilkinson's resignation, and his replacement by a Toronto marketing executive. Dream for Africa would continue "its meteoric rise in popularity" through the gardens and abstinence training, the release said. It didn't mention Mr. Wilkinson's decision to abandon the orphan-village project.

"With the successful launch of Dream for Africa, my family and I feel our work in Africa is complete," the press release quoted Mr. Wilkinson as saying. In an internal email, he told his staff that, to his great regret, God had directed him to leave Africa.

A Dream for Africa spokeswoman estimates the group raised about $500,000 this year, most of it for the gardens and the abstinence programs. Mr. Wilkinson says he put his own money into Dream for Africa projects, but he declines to say how much.

Word of Mr. Wilkinson's decision slowly reached Swaziland, where it dismayed his followers. "I don't know how to handle this," said Rev. Zakes Nxumalo. "People won't understand; to them Bruce is everything," he added. "How can he leave everything in the middle of the road?" asked 22-year-old Gcina Mdluli, who has taken a vow of sexual abstinence and now volunteers full-time in Mr. Wilkinson's school anti-AIDS programs.

Mr. Wilkinson says that he blames neither God nor man. He says he weeps when he thinks of his disappointed acolytes, and is trying to come to grips with a miracle that didn't materialize despite his unceasing recitation of the Jabez prayer.

"I asked hard enough," he added, his gaze drifting upward. "All we can do is ask God what to do, ask him to help us in the doing of it, and work as hard and wisely as we can. Somewhere in this it's got to be all right to attempt a vision that didn't work and not to make it an overwhelming failure."

And that is the problem with most evangelicals, they think they know best. That their vision is the right and only vision. Dr. Wilkinson's flaw was to come into a foreign land thinking he had what they needed. He didn't listen. Not to the people of Swaziland, nor I'm affraid to God. This continued disdain North American Evangelicals show towards the worlds relief community, by starting their own "christian" programs, instead of partnering with those that know best, is as in the case of Dr. Wilkinson, only going to backfire on themselves.

Grammy Recap 2006

2006-02-08T17:44:00.000-08:00

Okay here is my critic of the 2006 Grammy performances

Gorilaz and Magg - I don't know how the heck they did that, but seeing a live performance of the Gorilaz' was absolutly AMAZING. I typically only "mark out" when I watch pro-wrestling, but this performance made me jump out of my seat. Truly a "WTF" moment. Not even Madona coming out from under the stage could stop me from being astonished abouting see the cartoons perform live. The segway into Madona was seemless. I know it's just the first act of the night, but I have a feeling it's gonna be very hard to beat.

Coldplay - Nothing spectacular, but not bad.

John Legend - What a joy to see this artist do what he does best. For his age, he is an outstanding performer. Any chance to see him live won't disappoint.

Sugarland - Yeah no offense to my neighbors out here in Greentucky, but the country artists and awards could be done along side the best polka song. I wasn't that impressed.

U2/Mary J Blige - Wow, what a flop. Not even the Godmother of hip-hop could save this performance. I'm a huge fan, but this was bad. Just bad. Bono seemed like he had forgotten the melodies and the lyrics to both songs. Bono should stick to what he does best at this point in his life, saving the world.

Kelly Clarkson - I don't watch American Idol much, but it seems with the lack of true star power the show has produced since season one (oh yeah girls, Clay is gay) they just got damn lucky with Kelly. She nailed her performance. I am curious about one thing, that girl playing the piano for her looked like she was 11 years old.

Paul McCartney - Some people should just stick to playing their old hits and Paul is one of them. Although I had never heard the first song before tonight, it reminded me of the older Beatles stuff. I'm sure it goes over well across the pond. Oh good, he played Helter Skelter. In his old age he just can't bolt out the rock anymore. His twenty something back up band did a smash bang job of backing him up. They just needed someone about 30 years younger than Paul to sing lead vocals.

Mariah Carrey ~ I'm glad she's gotten over her "crazies". This has been the best female performance of the night. Not sure how I liked the Hezichaiah walker preaching in the middle of the song. Doesn't matter, she did such a great job of fronting the choir I can ignore him and appriciate he abilities.

Keith Urban/Faith Hill - I'm just a sucker for an accustic guitar. Mr. Urban is extremely talented. As Renee said, "Country music artists just have raw talent." This is truly the case for Keith. His performance was outstanding. Mrs. Hill did a fine job as well. What was more impressive about her set was the fact the Urban came down to play lead guitar and do vocals. It was a good pairing.

Josh Stone/John Legend/Matt Hunt/Fantasia/Some Tattoed Freak from American Idol/Maron 5/Ciara/Will.i.am/Joe Perry/Steven Tyler/Robert Randolph/Sly and the Family Stone - This tribute to Sly and the Family Stone had it's ups and downs. Pretty much on the whole this would have been great. It's just the white people that brought down the over all performance. Could have done with out the white people. Well accept for Josh Stone of course. She is a power house. And who was that tattoed freack with Fantasia? Was he on Idol? He was way out of place. Steven T. and Joe P. where equally out of place. The only thing that saved their time on stage was Robert Randolph playing with them. Randolph is freakishly soulful. This was decent, not as good as last years jam to honor Earth, Wind and Fire.

Jay-Z/Lincon Park/Paul Mcartny - I saw Jay-z and LP in Phili during the Live8 Concert. Both experiences where great. Jay is one of the best Rappers of all time. Breaking into Yesterday with Sir Paul coming on stage was a great touch. But I love the smash=up stuff. This performance was different and that works well with me.

Bruce Springstein - In this era of being apolitical just to get by in the entertainment industry, it's always refreshing to hear from a true american story teller. Bruce is the boss. Tonights performance reminds me of his earlier albums like Nebraska. Again I love the singer/song writer combo and Bruce lives up to his image. One of the few performances of the evening I would love to have on my iPod.

Kanye West/Jamie Foxx - Kanye and Jamie are just fun. The step artists where great. It has to be difficult to rap a cappela like Kanye did. I enjoyed this performance.

Herbie Hancock/ Christina Agularia - Weirdeness aside, Christina has proven once again that her talent sets her far above the other bubble gum pop princess. This was an amazing performance. You really can't call this a smash-up duo, because Christina grew up singing the blues. So the combination of her and an incredible jazz pianist like Herbie is more natural than most would think.

Okay, I fell alseep at this point. Thank God for TiVo. Now some time today I'll have to watch Lost.

How to be a good parent when you already have great kids.

2006-02-03T06:36:00.000-08:00

All three of my kids are unique. Each has their own very distinct attitude, world view and skill set. I love them all very much and couldn't imagine a father prouder than myself.

Emily is UBER-intelligent! Some times almost to a fault. She is constantly asking questions about the world around her to gain more knowledge. She is an information sponge. She not only wants to absorb as much information as humanly possible, just to say she has the knowledge, she wants to do something with it once she gets it. She also has a keen sense of her social surroundings. She is a leader amongst her peer group at school and keeps in vigil contact with old friends back in Ohio.

Noah is perfect little man. Well, what man is perfect? But he comes very close and has lots of time to refine himself before making his mark on the world. He plays video games constantly. At times this can be a major distraction from other responsibilities of life. But he is amazing. At eight years old he can tell you everything you never wanted to know about Pokemon. What "type" each Pokemon is. What attacks work on which characters and what attacks don't. It really is mind blowing all the information he can store in his little head. He is also one of the most emotionally well balanced boys I have ever met. He is just as comfortable crawling up in his moms lap for cuddle time, as he is demanding about his "wrestle" time with me. With so many high school and college girls in his life because of my job, there have always been jokes about girls "waiting" for Noah until he is older. Although the girls have been joking, there is some major truth to the fact that one day this little man is going to make some lucky young woman extremely happy.

And then there is Jamie. Oldest of the bunch. And at thirteen she is the one that is clearly most like her mom and most like her dad all at the same time. Her thirst for justice is just as unquenchable as her mothers and she wears her compassion for others the same place her father does, on her sleeve. Yesterday she told me of an assignment for her English class that involves her writing five paragraphs on a current controversy subject. She was struggling what to write on, because for her their are way to many choices. Does she write about the plight of street kids in Brazil? The AIDS pandemic in Africa? Or the forgotten victims of 2004 Tsunami in Thailand? Eventually she decided to write about the oppression of the Tibetan people in China. She wanted to write about Google and their recent decision to cut a deal with the PRC (Peoples Republic of China), that will allow Google to set up shop on the Chinese Internet as long as they filter "sensitive" information from the people in China. She also wanted to write about the upcoming 2008 Olympic games that will be held in Beijing. And how some want to protest the games on account of the Governments cruel treatment of the Tibetan people.

She also decided she wanted to take a personal stance against Google and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) by boycotting both. As a parent I'm trying to teach her that change, no matter in what the context, happens through relationships. When you sever relationships or communication with those you oppose or want to help, you limit your ability to be a change agent in their lives. By Google having a presence in the Chinese market they are establishing a relationship with it's people and helping them gain access to other information. With out this access the sparks of freedom may never be lit in China's people. Asking our US Olympic athletes to not attend the games is taking away from them, not only a life's dream, but a world stage for them to share their views on the PRC's human rights violations.

So we worked on a plan. I helped her set up her first blog. USOlympicTibetInfo. Over the next year she is going to blog factual information about China, it's human rights violations against Tibet, the IOC's reasons for taking the games to Beijing and other information US athletes competing in the games can use to educate themselves about the issue. Then, the following year when members of the US team are announced, she will start emailing and sending letters to team members encouraging them to visit the site and become informed.

I've found over the years with my Neo-conservative friends, that they will respect your liberal views when you have taken action on them. It's much easier for them to respect someone like Bono, who not only talks about ending poverty but puts his own time and money into doing something about it, than it is for them to respect Al Franken who just sits in a studio and flaps his gums all day.

As I have political conversations with friends and family, I am constantly predicting that in our countries future there will be an economic depression that will make "the Great Depression" look like a week at Disney World. I do think this country is amazing, but it has a poor record of learning from it's past mistakes. As a nation we have become producers of nothing and consumers of everything. As I look at my children however, I see a light at the end of that tunnel. So America look out! 2040 will see the emergence of "Team Williams"! Presidential candidate and first woman President Emily Williams-(something), flanked by passionate policy advisor and Secretary of State Jamie Williams (still not married) and Noah Williams international action movie star and Nobel prize winning poet.

A dad can dream, can't he?

In truth, Jamie wants to teach English to street kids in Brazil, Emily wants to be a pastry chef and Noah is still trying to figure out what job in life pays you to play video games all day long. No matter what they want to accomplish in life, my resolution is to help them get there. That's what parents should do!

Yes, I have another blog!

2005-12-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to let those that come here know that I have a new blog. It's called, NoJo Town. It will be a blog dedicated to the model train project Noah and I are starting out in the garage. Come join us as we excperience the joys and frustrations of model training.

"The Ringer" not bad, don't get your panties in a bunge!

2005-12-16T08:22:00.000-08:00

Some of you might have seen previews of the upcoming Johnny Knoxville movie entitled The Ringer. Some might be a little taken a back by what they have seen in trailers and previews. The storyline is about a guy who tries to rig the Special Olympics. The movie is co-produced by the Farrely brothers who brought you such classics as Something About Marry, Stuck On You, Dumb and Dumber and King Pin. With "gross-out" hits like these in the brothers past and the often-dimwitted star of Jackass as the lead character, many might assume that the concept for "The Ringer" is mean and disrespectful of those that maybe intellectually challenged. Well after spending some time with a friend of mine at Special Olympics Indiana this past week I can tell you that this is not the case. Special Olympics are fully behind this movie. In fact the outgoing CEO of Special Olympics (whose family started the organization many years ago) holds co-producing title with the some times rude humored brothers. This movie is intended to help those who don't work with or personally know any intellectually challenge folks to gain a better understanding of these wonderful people. Let everyone you know that might make a snap judgment about this movie being "in bad taste" that is not the case and that if they go see any movie over the Christmas weekend it should be this one.

I have become a snob. A Mac snob!

2005-12-12T06:13:00.000-08:00

I had a bad experience at the Apple store this past weekend. I had to wait in line for 25 minutes to purchase our homes fifth Mac as a Christmas present for one of our kids. I was not happy. Now don't get me wrong, I love Apple. I have been a loyal Apple customer for over ten years. So I'll do what ever it takes to get the product I love. It just pissed me off that I had to wait in line with a bunch of "Johnny come-iPod lately's". It even pissed me off more that the store, knowing how well the iPod would sell over Christmas, had set up an isle for those JUST purchasing iPod's that the newbies weren't even using. It was frustrating waiting in line behind grandmas and watching them fumbling through their limited understanding of technology, trying purchase something so that seven year old Suzie could listen to her downloaded Jesse McCartney mp3 on Christmas morning.

I'm happy for Apple's success. I love their product. They should just create a seperate check out line for five year and older customers. See, it will always be your down fall in life if you forget those who got you to where you are.

And just for the record I did read "Outland" in this Sunday's funny paper section and I thought it was very humorous. I am a snob, but I can also laugh at myself at the same time. Go Steve Jobs!

Got Buddha?

2005-12-07T17:25:00.000-08:00

I do! It's not done yet. I'm going back to my tattoist, Kym, on the 21st so that she can fill in the color. GOLD! Nice huh?

What is your excuse?

2005-12-06T15:33:00.000-08:00

Former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, told John Stewart of the Daily Show that he in fact has TiVo and uses it to watch the show. That guys like really old and even he has TiVo. What is your excuse?

Oh no Kirk, oh no you didn't!!!!!!!

2005-11-28T16:18:00.000-08:00

Gospel Tracts are effective? YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING?

Kirk and his friend Ray were back againt his week. This episode they spent the whole half an hour on the "effective" use of gospel tracts. Holy crap, these guys can't be serious. Has a tract ever been effective in helping anyone in becoming a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ?

During the episode, they constantly tried to hit home the fact that gospel tracts are a great way to, "break the ice." Am I just dumb? If you have to use a tract to break the ice with someone, let's just be blunt, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SHARE ANYTHING ABOUT JESUS WITH ANYONE!

If you aren't strong enough in your faith (what ever that faith may be), to be willing to put your personal relationships on the line, you should be worrying about your own faith, not that of others.

There is nothing effective about tracts. They are not a magic bullet that releases you of the responsibility in sharing your own story. I would wager that no one that comes to this site and hears this challenge could come up with proof that tracts are effective. I'll give $100 to the first person that can comment to this posting with evidence that a tract has ever effectively helped someone in becoming a fully devoted follower of Jesus. Serously, $100! Let the games begin.

P.S. When asked by someone whom Ray was "sharing the Gospel", if he (Ray) was perfect, Ray replied, "Yes, I'm perfect. Perfect in Jesus Christ." UUUUHHHHHG!

525,600 minutes in a year.

2005-11-25T00:30:00.000-08:00

So have you seen it? Have you gone to the theatre and seen the movie? No, not Harry Squatter. I'm talking about RENT! I went to see it two nights ago and was blown away. RENT is by far the best recent-musical-turned-into-a-movie in the past five years. I doubt it will recieve the recogonition of Chicago or Moulin Rouge. But in my book it was a ton better. Sure I maybe bais from the stand point that I was a teenager during the initial AIDS crisis in this country, so the time in which the story takes place intrests me. Sure I may be bias because for some of the same reasons for the previous sentance I enjoyed the music from Rent a great deal. But, I'm most likely biased because this film, as in the theatre production and as in the book, the story is all about community. Now if you are homophobic, this movie may not be the best place for you to learn some of the leasons in life about the need for having authentic commmunity. You may want to watch the Godfather (not kidding, there are great leasons in the Godfather about the value of community and respect). I also strongly suggest that high school and college students that believe they have a "strong" group of friends, go see this movie all together. Afterwords, sit around and discuss the following question: Compared to the group of friends in the movie, how authentic is our community? Do we love each other unconditionally? Or are there strings attached to our friendships? Go see this movie!

Dang it's cold! Makes me want to go to Thailand!

2005-11-20T19:12:00.000-08:00

Being out in the cold weather made me surf the Internet last night. I spent lots of time dreaming about Thailand. The wonderful people I met there. The beautiful water. The amazing scenery. I miss it. I can't wait to go back.

While surfing through Hi Phi Phi's site I found these Ten Commandments for visiting Thailand:

1. Relax A LOT!!! The Thai people are very relaxed; you can’t expect to change that.
2. Turn down your need to express Be quite and subtle in your expressions
3. Observe the Thais Take time to observe how the Thai people interact with each other. Watch how Thai people act in everyday situations. Spend time to build relationships with the Thai people. You may feel like you want to rush in and do as much as you can to help, but taking a little time to observe the Thais and getting to know them is going to make you a lot more productive in the long run.
4. Smile a lot and mean it Even when you say sorry, even when you’re annoyed, laugh at your own problems. This must be a genuine smile: Thai people smile all the time so are very sensitive to false smiles, and it is impolite to give a false smile.
5. Wai Learn how to wai respectfully, and never wai with things in your hands. Use your intuition to know the right situations to wai and how to wai. The more that you bow and the higher your hands when you wai, the more respect that you are giving to the other person. Again don’t give false wais.
6. Be gentle Remember how you act when you are out and about. Thai people will love you when you are gentle in your actions, manner and the way you speak.
7. Accept everything that people offer with generosity Or decline very carefully; white lies are sometimes better than the truth.
8. Be aware of feet and heads Never touch a Thai person on the head, or shoulders. Never use your feet to point or move things around. Take your shoes off before entering a house, anytime that you see a heap of shoes by a door just take your shoes off. Never stand above an elder, if they sit you sit. If you have to sit on the floor sit with your feet to one side
9. No hugging, keep touching to a minimum Sometimes men will hold hands with other men or women will hold hands with other women, but only when they are good friends. You can touch on the elbow if you want to comfort someone who you have spent time to build a relationship with. If you are from a culture that kisses on the cheek, be aware that this will probably offend Thais if you do it to them. Also be aware of the clothes that you wear and how that is seen by the Thai. Women should dress modestly.
10. Be humble and be here to learn

I think these things are important in dealing with people in any situation.

Kirk Cameron is a massive tool!

2005-11-14T21:36:00.000-08:00

I have a new hobby. I’ve started to listen and watch those in the media that I can’t stand. My wife and kids get kind of annoyed with me from time to time when I do this. If I’m in the car it’s not uncommon for me to listen to Sean Hannity or Rush “I’m a big fat liar” Limbaugh. Or if I’m flipping through channels I’ll stop on TBN to see what the heck the guy with both big hair and a reseeding hairline is jumping up and down screaming about. I do this so that I know what these people are saying. So many times no matter which side of an argument you find yourself on, you tend to rapidly discard and not listen to those screaming the loudest on the other side. If I think Bill O’Reily is a raving lunatic and I want to argue that point with my mom, I better know what the idiot is saying, so I can debunk it.

Tonight was one such occasion. Most “Christian” programs fly way under my radar these days. But I had heard that Kirk Cameron was touting some 22 disc DVD evangelism training series. So when I was surfing through channels and came across Kirk and his British friend Ray, I thought I would stop for a minute to hear what they had to say. I was so outraged at what I was hearing I began to take notes. You know it's gotta be bad if I take notes.

The most ironic thing about the program I watched tonight was in its name, “The Way of the Master.” As I break down the show I hope you see how far away from “the Way” Kirk and his friend really are.

Episode – “Witnessing to Loved Ones”

Six keys

1) Pray – Kirk and Ray went out of their way to make sure that the viewer knew that if you have a real passion to see your loved one in heaven that you need to pray for them and for God to intervene. Besides flying in the face of our God given free will, I do not prescribe to the notion that my requests alter God’s plan. I doubt there has been a single instance that after I was done praying God said, “Hey Roger, that’s a great idea! I never thought about doing that.” If God is mutable it is through the obedient act of praying and not the prayers themselves.
2) Be blameless – At this point Kirk went into a whole spiel about not being a hypocrite. His short diatribe about how we need to be careful about the language we use, the jokes we tell and the movies we watch was laughable. His philosophy was based on making the appearance of your life seem blameless. I guess what he forgot was we “all fall short of the glory of God” and therefore are full of blame. So trying to hide that fact with the appearance of righteousness is in and of it’s self is being hypocritical. People will be more attracted to what you have to offer when you, get this, be yourself. Being real is just that. When you try to be something your not people can see through that and will not trust you. Jesus went about his day, doing ordinary things (sure there were a couple of miracles), with ordinary people.
3) Confront – Now this one really confused me. On the one hand they want me to give my testimony (evidence that a witness gives to a court of law) and on the other they want me to confront. In a trial the witness doesn’t do the confronting, they do the testifying. And when you are a witness on the witness stand you aren’t allowed to give any testimony until you are asked a question. Yet Kirk and his friend want me to confront (to come face to face with somebody, especially in a challenge, and usually with hostility, criticism, or defiance) my family and loved ones. That doesn’t sound too much like “the Way” I know. If Jesus was ever confrontational it was with the religious leaders of his time, not with loved ones or people he met on the street.
4) Share Witnessing – This one just blows me away. Their strategy centers on sharing the “witnessing” opportunity with a loved one with a friend. So instead of me sharing my personal faith in Jesus with those in my life that really matter to me, Kirk suggest that I go do it with his dad and then he would come do that same thing for me with my brother. I’m not going to go into great detail on this one. Let’s just say there is no biblical precedence for this at all.
5) Good Works – These guys wanted to make sure that as a strategy you remember to do nice things for people, because once again that will make a good impression on others. WHAT! Your motivation for doing good works should be the pure fact that this is who Jesus calls you to be. If your motivation is to impress or influence others, it will never work. Jesus' own words, "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1 NIV)
6) Be Faithful – This is the Christian equivalent of Nike’s “Just Do It”. If you are “faithful” enough and “witness” to those God puts in your path, God will reward you. How wrong is that, let me count the ways. Oh wait, I think I already have in this post. Not everyone is a reaper, some were made to sow and some to plant. And all of these are equally important parts of the process of others seeing God in you.

Kirk and his friend Ray are the summation of everything wrong in the evangelical world today. If you want to “reach” people for Jesus you need to gain their trust by listening to their story, so that they will ask you to tell them your story, so that you can figure out together where God’s story overlaps with the other two. And in that tiny space you will have the chance to share your witness.

I’m sure that most of the people that read this blog entry won’t know the name Eddie Guerrero. Eddie was one of the most talented pro-wrestlers in recent history. Sunday morning Eddie was found dead in his hotel room in Wisconsin. Mondays wrestling show, Raw, was completely dedicated to the memory of Eddie. Besides clips from some of Eddie’s most memorable matches and special one time only live matches, wrestlers and crewmembers dropped their characters for the night to give “testimony” about their friend. We heard stories of how humble Eddie was, how he loved to make people laugh, how he would lite up when he talked about his family and how he took younger wrestlers under his wing to mentor them with their careers. At the end of the show I found myself envious of these witnesses relationship with Eddie. All I have ever known of him was his in-ring persona. I found myself wishing that I could have known Eddie like they did. That is what a great witness of Jesus should look like. After your testimony people should be jealous about the fact they don't have the kind of relationship with Jesus you do. Not feeling like they have been talked down to, because you have something they don't. In my fifteen years of youth ministry the one of things that would grate on me was when students would say, “My witness is boring, and I don’t have a good story.” Your story is effected by others and by God’s. If you look at others as projects, like Kirk and Ray do, when sharing your faith, I ascertain you neither know “the way” or “the Master.”

What is "Bad Ass"?

2005-11-11T11:37:00.000-08:00

Besides Momma Flynn's Creole Kitchen?

Is there anything more bad ass then; driving down the road in a Jeep, wearing a cheap pair of aviator sunglasses, Foghat blaring from the stereo with an eighty pound German Shepard sticking his face out the back window?

I don't think so!

I love these "internet personality tests"!

2005-11-05T05:10:00.000-08:00

They are so easy to manipulate! If you answer the questions honestly you get dumb results. BUT, if you know what you want the outcome to be, answering them is as easy as slipping across a chum covered poopdeck!

You are The Cap'n!

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any man that stands between them and the mantle of power. You never met a man you couldn't eviscerate. Not that mindless violence is the only avenue open to you - but why take an avenue when you have complete freeway access? You are the definitive Man of Action. You are James Bond in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. Your swash was buckled long ago and you have never been so sure of anything in your life as in your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off their head if they show any sign of taking you on or backing down. You cannot be saddled with tedious underlings, but if one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.

What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

My New Favorite TV Show.

2005-10-31T03:36:00.000-08:00

I typically don't watch the TLC network. It goes back to a mini-ban of the channel I self-imposed on myself. You see, I really like reality TV, but felt that the show Trading Spaces was just crap. I really got sick of all the hype over this show and of all its spin offs. That, along with the gluttony of “A _______ Story” shows they put on, I just wanted to put the parental lock on the channel and forget that it ever existed.

Then, all of a sudden, they put on what could be one of the greatest reality shows I have ever seen. Miami Ink, for me, will go down as one of the best “story” based reality shows of all time. The show centers itself around a tattoo artist named Ami (that's pronounced ahh-me) and the opening of his brand new shop near Miami Beach. The cast is great! From world renowned tattoo artist Chris Garver to shop whipping boy/apprentice Yoji Harada, these folks not only know how to lay down some wicked ink, but understand that every tattoo has a story.

And that is what I like best about the show. Ami, his crew and the shop are truly just a backdrop to the customers and the stories behind each tattoo. I love hearing the why someone would put themselves through so pain. I have seen a woman that wanted to cover the “cutting” scars of her teenage years with a flower blossom. I saw a father let his son write his name on his dad's chest that got turned into a tattoo. I have seen countless people that have lost loved ones come into Ami's shop to get remembrance tattoos. I even saw a couple come in for a consultation about getting matching tattoos to solidify their relationship, only to break up before appointment (the guy went ahead with getting the tattoo).

Story is powerful. It is the most powerful element of communication in existence. But if this is so, why do so many hide from telling their story? Or even worse, why do so many refuse to stay still long enough to listen to someone else's?

If you haven't done it lately, go out of your way to hear someone else's story. Do it in person and do it with out an agenda. You'll be surprised how it will change your story.

What a great week of TV! (or) Moving on. . .

2005-10-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

Three great quotes this week from the world of television:

"It's the church, so you know they will be judging you." Edie Brit, Desperate Housewifes neighborhood slut, made this comment to her archrival Susan's (Teri Hatchers character) daughter, who was trying to decide which woman she would let accomapny her vocal performance at their churches "family" talent show.

"It's Jesus on the phone and he wants to know what color of car you want." This quote from Lost, comes from a flashback scene of Hugo's mom berating him about his pathetic life, while at the same time telling him how Jesus will help him lose weight, find a girl friend and get a better job.

"I'm not a religous person at all. But I'm not going to object to it, that would be stupid. You'ld be stupid to say, like, "You know what guys, I don't want to thank Jesus for this meal, thanks." Because then they would vote me right out." Brian from the Yaxha tribe on Survivor , talking about his experience with his tribemates wanting to pray before every meal and every challenge. Jesus must not have liked his tribe that day. They prayed, but still lost the immunity challenge.

You know it's a good week to be watching TV when the funniest lines about the church just don't come from the Daily Show.

Where is the "church"? (Have I blogged this before?)

2005-08-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

Well it has taken me three weeks to figure out how to write this. With my emotions all over the place it has been hard to discern how to convey where I am right now. But maybe this cathartic exercise of blogging will help straighten these emotions out.

For many years now God and I have been wrestling over the question, "What is the church?" In the Christian sub-culture we tend to reference the "church" by whatever building we happen to wind up in on Sunday morning. I call this iChurch or the Institutionalized Church. It is where the "body of Christ" comes together for corporate worship (singing), hand shaking (fellowship) and trivial information sharing (or gossip). In the Christian sub-culture the more people you can get to come and do these things at "your" building, the greater the success you can boast about. Sure, some bitterness maybe setting in over my current situation (which I will get to latter), but all in all, I doubt very seriously that the time and effort placed towards producing (and I do mean that in the Hollywood form) our Sunday morning experience, is what God had intended for God's church. No, I know it isn’t. Reading the first four chapters of Acts gives a very clear look at some of the things that iChurch is not doing. The first century church was first and foremost not institutionalized. It was however: hospitable, loving, generous, kind and thoughtful.

So where have I seen this church? Amazingly enough it's been in places where most devout Christians would never look. I have found the church on TV. At place called 'Extreme Home Makeover', ironically enough which airs on Sunday nights. During this hour-long program hundreds of people gather together to lovingly and generously take a week of their time to help a family better it's standing in life. This is done by the complete remodeling of their home. It's incredible to see how people without any tie to the family can put so much thought and energy into making someone else’s life a little better. I was honored last spring to see the church at work in Thailand when I went to help with Tsunami relief on a little Island. It wasn't the church because some Christian missionary relief organization had set up shop to help with the efforts. It was the church because hundreds of young and old people from all across our planet came together for one common cause to help others with no benefit to themselves. Neither of these sightings of the church where labeled "Christian", but both fully represent what the church should be.

Maybe that is why I don't see the church in iChurch. Very little of what is done in the name of Jesus on Sunday mornings is done selflessly and, as the book of Acts puts it, "of one accord".

Tuesday morning I awoke to an astonishing email from a youth pastor friend of mine who I will call "Nel". In his short message he communicated that the day before he had been, "let go" by his current iChurch. Nel's background in ministry is very impressive. He graduated from a prestigious southern seminary. He has written numerous articles in "trade" magazines for youth ministry . He is a well-known speaker at local and national youth ministry confrences. And he even has a nationally published book on the market. Nel and I met over the Internet two years ago, when both of us where headed for transition in our then current ministry positions. We laughed, cried and supported each other during these transitions. Nel's took longer then mine. I moved from one position to another, while it took Nel almost eight months to find an iChurch that he felt called too. Nel moved his family literally half way across the country to, at the start, a part-time youth ministry job he wasn't even getting paid for (or at least very little). After three or four months the iChurch started paying him and then four months later told him his services where no longer needed. Nel was told the iChurch needed to "go in a different direction" (this will become eerily familiar soon). When you peel away the excuses, the bottom line reason for Nel's departure was that in less then seven months he had not built a youth ministry of 50+ kids. Instead he had spent that time build relationships, which given the proper time, would have developed into a solid foundation for numerical growth. But in this era of big business iChurches, healthy relationships are sacrificed for numbers, which gives the inaccurate appearance of a healthy growing ministry.

Nel's story is, unfortunately, not uncommon amongst the ranks of youth workers all across this land. At Dead Youth Pastor and other blogs you can hear this same story repeated over and over again. My friend the "Dead Youth Pastor" recently wrote:

"why do you bother to email me at all? I'm as lost as you are, and honestly it would do my head a lot more good if you'd all calm down with the oracle-styled questions about "what do you think of..." and "how do you respond to..." ...

because honestly i'm so under-qualified as far as youth ministry, being the former youthworker of 4 churches in 8 years; that I'd feel better about the climate of professional youthworkers if they didn't trust me as far as they could throw me. Which is not very far, apparently."

iChurch produces this pain, not the true church.

As you can guess where this is going, three weeks ago I was forced to resign from my position at the iChurch I was working at, with the reason being their need to, "go in a different direction". There were a couple of excuses to why I was asked to leave, but nothing so serious that through the grace of God, things couldn't have been worked out. I had suspected that it was coming so in response I wrote my own letter of resignation. It asked for my continued employment for two months, so that there could be a healthy transition for the congregation, students and their parents. The response back form the committee in charge of hiring and firing was, "drop off your keys by noon and have your office cleared out by 4:00pm."

Nel's email made me feel better. It just wasn't me. The iChurch spreads its pain around pretty evenly when it comes to abusing youth pastors. I've known this for a long time, but kept feeling that there had to be an iChurch out there for me. But there isn't.

I'm not bitter. At the base of some of this iChurches excuses and reasons, I was not a good fit there. I recognize this, so I'm moving on. No, I'm moving where I should have three or four years ago. As of September 15th, I will be a full time Executive Team Member of Emergent Leadership Institute. This is a secular nonprofit a long time fellow youth pastor, Neal Gore (not Nel, yet!), Renee and myself are starting from scratch. I've learned a lot about IRS forms over the past three weeks and am looking forward to getting to the meat of what we are doing. But just becuase God "works all things to the good, for those that believe", does not release those that made ungodly and non-Jesus like descisions from the responsibility of their actions.

All that said we are going to be the church, not the iChurch. We are going to care for peoples needs and love them unconditionally, all the while being of one accord. That is where the church is, inside of you and me, and the relationships we have with one another.

The freaks come out at night (refrence to an old 80's jam)

2005-07-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is a NASA image of planet earth, taken at the same time of night. It's very interesting to look at. Here are some of my personal observations: When you think of India you don't really think of it being so industrialized, but you can make out the countries shape very well in the picture. Looking at this picture we can now once again call Africa the "Dark Continent" and still be politically correct. The Nile river is lite up like a single strand of those icicle lights hanging off of your house at Christmas time. I thought South America was more developled than it is. If you look just east of India about an inch you can see Bangkok, it looks like the North Star in an empty sky. How do those people in Japan sleep at night with their whole country lite up like that? Can you find the Trans-syberian railway?

I would guess the deeper the concentration of the lights, the more wealth you can find in that country. This map is a great indication of the world's "haves" and "have nots".

Known the world over. . .not so much.

2005-07-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

This is not a map of where I have been, but a map of where I am going.

create your own visited country map

I'm going to all the white sposts! There are a ton of places in the caribbean I have been too, they are just real small red dots.

Song REDO #1

2005-07-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

Blame Megachurch

(To the tune "Blame Canada!" from South Park)

Church has changed,
Our kids are getting worse
They won't obey their parents,
Or learn their Bible verse!

Should we blame DaVinci, or J.K. Rowlings?

Or should we blame the lack of homeschooling? No!

Blame Megachurch! Blame Megachurch!
With their multi-purpose building
And their WWJD bling,
Blame Megachurch!
Blame Megachurch!
We’ve no use for light and salt,

It's Megachurch’s fault!

No more blame for my own sin,

Conviction is out, seeker friendly is in!

I told the pastor we could feed the poor one day,

But he just smiled and gave me decaf latte.

Well, Blame Megachurch! Blame Megachurch!
It seems the sermons are so stale
Since they’re coming from email
Blame Megachurch!
Blame Megachurch!

They're not even a real denomination anyway.

My son quit school and got his GED,

Now he’s on their staff as head of theology!

Should we blame Joel Osteen? Or blame the Veggie Tales?

Or Sandi Patty’s growing record sales? Heck no!

Blame Megachurch! Blame Megachurch!
Blame Megachurch! Blame Megachurch!

With all that Saddleback Hullabaloo

And that bum Bill Hybels too

Blame Megachurch! Shame on Megachurch!

The vision is wide
But it’s not deep
The wolves will come
And eat their sheep
They put their Bibles on the shelves
There’s no excuse, they’ll have to blame themselves!

I want to go on record by saying I did not recreate this one. You can find it and some other funny stuff at www.sundayschooldropouts.com.

Be the change.

2005-07-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

Well known author Tony Campolo once said, "As an American society, including those of us in the church, we raise our children so that; they get good grades, get into a good university, so they can get a good job, make a good wage and buy good stuff."

Very little in our culture is done to encourage our children, especially those in high school, to be world changers.

Several times this week I was reminded that out of the hundreds of students I have met over the past fifteen years while in ministry there have been a handful that I have motivated to, as Gandhi put it, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I don't say that with pride, but with pure humility. There are many moments in my career that it has been very difficult to see any change in the hearts of my students. For some reason however, God choose this week to hit me over the head with a hammer several times in an attempt to remind me that I have caused many a ripple of change through my life's work.

It's nearly impossible to escape from who God has created you to be. Life works best when you stop fighting that fact.

Do life different!

What a long week!

2005-06-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

That is how life goes. You do something’s for others or things that may not necessarily get you ultimately fired up for life. But then you get to do something for yourself, something you love, and something that brings you a bit of happiness before you head back to doing the stuff of life.

My week is like this. I'm helping the team with VBS all week. It is in my job description and I'm somewhat excited about the curriculum that we picked. However, of a list of things that bring me a ton of joy, VBS would not be on it. So to add a lump of sugar onto my hectic week, I am going to go visit half a million friends of mine in Philly.

One half hour after VBS comes to a close Friday night, Jamie, Michael and myself with start a long over night adventure to Philadelphia, PA. While there, we will be joining over a half a million people in what is sure to go down as the largest show of support to end world poverty in the history of man.

For those of you who have no clue what I am referring to, visit www.live8live.com or watch MTV or VH1 anytime on Saturday. There are real solutions for poverty through out the world that can come about this year, the year 2005.

My Grandparents can tell the story about where they were and what they were doing when WWII ended, my parents can tell me stories of what was happening when they heard about President Kennedy getting shot. And I can tell stories about being in the locker room when I heard about the space shuttle challenger blowing up or where I was when the Berlin Wall fell. All of these are infamous moments in world history, keystones to the building my world view. But as great moments in history, all of them combined could never over shadow the eradication of world poverty.

So what will your story be? When generations look back to the culminating factors that led to the end of hunger and pain in the world, where will you be in that story? Will you be standing by the side with your finger up your nose not even realizing the immensity of the moment? (Which isn't much of a story to tell anyone). Or will you be able to share examples of the things you did to act as a catalyst for changing the world?

Do life different!

If you ever wanted to know my theology. . .

2005-06-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

Here is the results from a "theology" quiz I took online:

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

Emergent/Postmodern

82%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

57%

Modern Liberal

50%

Roman Catholic

50%

Classical Liberal

39%

Neo orthodox

39%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

21%

Reformed Evangelical

18%

Fundamentalist

created with QuizFarm.com

I was disappointed I scored so high on the emergent side, but happy that I got 0% in the Fundamentalist catagory!

Fast in, fast out!

2005-06-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

I'm on the road right now with teenagers on our annual Road Rulz trip. I'm not interested in talking about that right now, but there was a billboard I saw last night at 10:12 after 1200 miles on the road.

It was a McDonalds billboard that had a picture of a value meal and the words "I love you" on it. What? Has the world gone so mad that we equate the greatest emotional force in the galaxy with burnt cow, soggy fires and bucket of carmel water?

Someone stop this planet, I want to get off!

New List

2005-05-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

I have updated my Amazon must read list under "Read Different". Interesting how we change over the years isn't it?

I never do this, but . . .

2005-05-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

Had to prove it to a friend who thought he was cooler than me.

Take that grasshopper!

Culture Shock! But on the way back into my own country?

2005-04-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

Hey gang! Our group got back two days ago from working on Phi Phi Island in Thailand. Things went great! An amazing story going o there.

I have added a Tsunami Relief Different section to the right on my blog. The first sight is my travelblog from the trip. The others are organizations that you can continue to support with your prayers, money or maybe even your hands!

Thanks for all the prayers while I was gone. My life will not be the same. I want to go back with my family tomorrow!

Sa Wat Dee Krup!

VOICES, CHAPTER 1: Columbus vs. de Las Casas

2005-02-13T06:07:00.000-08:00

When discussing American history it's hard not to start from the very beginning, when Columbus first crossed the Atlantic to discover the New World. Our history books tend to depict Columbus as a heroic figure, the grand adventurer who crossed the seas not knowing what he would find on the other side. It is to Columbus the credit is given for finding "America" and letting loose an endless string of Columbus-wannabe's, who in the name of European Imperialism followed Columbus's wake to the new world. To most Americans Columbus can be seen as the Grand Entrepreneur. For some he embodies the "American Dream" of taking risk, expanding your territory and accomplishing your unthinkable goal. Few look at Columbus's life and question what cost was paid by the native Islanders and the natural resources of the islands, by his entrepreneurial spirit.

Columbus knew that his dairy would be of government record, used to justify the expenses of his voyage to the King and Queen of Spain. Knowing this he appears to have chosen his words wisely, like a student requested to keep a diary for their parents when left alone at home while the parents are away in Hawaii. The student may talk about the two friends they had over to hang out, but just happens to leave out the names of the other twenty-six students that also hung out, broke the stair railing and threw up all over the house due to binge drinking. Columbus openly describes the natives as docile and believes them easy to convert to Christianity (which would be important to the royals back home and their theocracy.) Yet Columbus' main goal was to find gold. And as it turns out would do anything to anyone to find it.

Here is the account by Las Casas of the Spaniards actions towards the Indians:
"And never have the Indians in all the Indies committed any act against the Spanish Christians, until those Christians have first and many times committed countless cruel aggressions against them or against neighboring nations. For in the beginning the Indians regarded the Spaniards as Angles from Heaven. Only after the Spaniards had used violence against them, killing, robbing, torturing, did the Indians ever rise up against them. On the Island of Hispaniola was where the Spaniards first landed, as I have said. Here those Christians perpetrated their first ravages and oppressions against the native people. This was the first land in the New World to be destroyed and depopulated by the Christians, and here they began their subjection of the women and children, taking them away from the Indians to use them and ill use them, eating the food they provided with their sweat and toil. The Spaniards did not content themselves with what the Indians gave them of their own free will, according to their ability, which was always too little to satisfy enormous appetites, for a Christian eats and consumes in one day an amount of food that would suffice to feed three houses inhabited by ten Indians for one month. And they committed other acts of force and violence and oppression that made the Indians realize that these men had not come from Heaven. And some of the Indians concealed their foods while others concealed their wives and children and still others fled to the mountains to avoid the terrible transactions of the Christians.
And the Christians attacked them with buffets and beatings, until finally they laid hands on the nobles of the villages. Then they behaved with such temerity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of the islands had to see his own wife raped by a Christian Officer."

What a grave misrepresentation of the Gospel. What de Las Casas describes as the actions of "Christians" has nothing to do with loving message of Jesus. Here is another account by Las Casas that should, if you are a follower of Jesus, leave a painful feeling in your gut:

"When tied to the stake, the cacique Hatuey was told by a Franciscan friar who was present, an artless rascal, something about the God of the Christians and of the articles of Faith. And he was told what he could do in the brief time that remained to him, in order to be saved and go to heaven. The cacique, who had never heard any of this before, and was told he would go to Inferno where, if he did not adopt the Christian Faith, he would suffer eternal torment, asked the Franciscan friar if Christians all went to Heaven. When told that they did he said he would prefer to go to Hell. Such is the fame and honor that God and our Faith have earned through the Christians who have gone out of the Indies."

Las Casas claims that millions of Indians were brutally murdered during this time of "discovery". It doesn't matter to me that his numerical claims cannot be substantiated. The fact that any brutality and oppression is done under the name of Jesus is sickening. That Christians committed these acts is not a generality. In 1560 (only eight years after Columbus first set sail) Las Casas was summoned before the Royal Council of Spain to debate the treatment of the Indians with a priest by the name of Gines de Sepulveda. During this debate Sepulveda, a man of the clothe, a representative of the "Church", declared that the Indians were in fact "sub-human" and in being so did not deserve any rights keeping them from such mistreatment.

This country was not found on the principals of democracy and freedom. As we will see over the course of the Voices of a People's History of the Untied States, much of this nations history was built on the oppression of one people group or another. Understanding what a painful realization this may be to some, I believe it cannot compare to the pain suffered when the realization of this truth is compounded with the fact that the church at best stood by doing nothing about these transgresions and at worst supported them.

The only true way to sum up my feelings after reading this chapter is to quote a great Jewish-American comedian named Woody Allen, when he said, "If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he wouldn't be able to stop throwing up."

Voices of a People's history

2005-02-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

Over the past four decades Howard Zinn has been an author, an activist and a scholar. The body of his work has won him numerous praise and awards. His book, A People’s History of the United States, has sold more than one million copies to date. His most recent work is unselfishly devoted to the voices of people seldom heard when the record of this nations history was written. Voices of a People’s History of the United States, is a collection of letters, speeches, poems and songs of the people mostly forgotten by mainstream historians and media outlets. In the introduction Zinn explains the premise of this book by saying, “What is common to all these voices is that they have mostly been shut out of the orthodox histories, the major media, the standard text books, the controlled culture. The result of having our history dominated by presidents and generals and other “important” people is to create a passive citizenry, not knowing it’s own powers, always waiting for some savior on high-God or the next president-to bring peace and justice. History, looked at under the surface, in the streets and on the farms, in GI barracks and trailer camps, in factories and offices, tells a different story. Whenever injustices have been remedied, wars halted, women and blacks and Native Americans given their due, it has been because “unimportant” people spoke up, organized, protested, and brought democracy alive.” This book is a study of such people, people not unlike you and I.

For fifteen years I have been working with teenagers in these United States of America, from the heartland to LA LA land, and one thing I have noticed is the lack of historical knowledge our young people receive from our public educational system. Reading, of course, is fundamental and vital to any decent education. Writing is a vital part of being able to communicate ones self to the rest of the world. Math, well don’t get me started on math. Besides being able to calculate a waitress’ tip or what the cost of a new DVD is minus the percentage off during a sale, math holds minimal value in my day-to-day life. But history and social studies affects us everyday. The structure of any belief system is built on what we know or perceive to know about history, albeit it our belief in governmental systems or our belief in a supreme being. Only history can answer the questions about social structures, where our traditions come from and what are the meanings behind the creeds we follow (religious or secular). With out history we would not know from where we came and in turn where we are going. With out studying the mistakes of the past we are doomed to repeat them. Over and over again.

Over the next couple of weeks as I read through Howard Zinn’s new collection I will attempt to give a book report on each chapter that I read. The book starts off with a selection from Christopher Columbus 1492 diary and ends with an article by Kurt Vonnegut written in May of 2004 in protest to the war in Iraq. I would encourage all that read this (the few of you still out there) to use the comments section to engage in dialog about what I write. More importantly, this is a must have on your bookshelf. I encourage everyone to read this book and share it with someone else.

The book is 624 pages long, so get ready for one huge book report.

Take My Quiz!

2005-01-29T06:20:00.000-08:00

Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!

Christmas Email '04

2004-12-15T18:25:00.000-08:00

Christmas is such a special time of the year. The holiday season carries with it great symbolism for many cultures and religions. For me it is a reminder that my birthday is a month away and that I will soon be one more year older. Tragically I am rapidly approaching my “middle-age” years. I can remember thinking, “When I turn thirty, I’m dead. No one will want to hire an over thirty year old youth pastor. Certainly no students will want hang out with some pot-belled, middle-aged, weirdo for Jesus.” But now many years after thirty, I personally feel like a bottle of wine, I have only gotten better with age. Sure there are some things that are harder for me like, trying to maintain cultural relevance with teenagers (there is only so much MTV I can take anymore.) Overall though I feel like with every passing year of service in ministry I become better equipped to not only handle the needs of students, but I am capable of dealing with the needs of their parents and those of the congregation members as well.

Even with growing confidence and self-esteem, as I age there are still those moments and situations that make me say, “Dang, I’m old!” It’s the little things that can irk me the most. To the students I work with, the Atari 2600 is an antique, they have never bought their favorite album on vinyl and they cannot remember a time when Blockbuster didn’t rent DVD’s. There are many things in the world that have changed since I was a child. Christmas shopping for my own children is a huge reminder of how things are so different, even from thirty years ago. Technologies are different, entertainment is different and even clothing styles are different (they say leg warmers are coming back, but I can’t see Old Navy promoting them next Christmas season.)

For all the changes however, many things stay the same. Some for the good and some for the bad. I received a reminder of this today as I was downloading Christmas songs off the Internet. At this time of the year I love to listen to music that reminds me what this season is all about. As I was browsing through a list of songs I became somewhat nostalgic of my Junior High School years. There in the play list was the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, sung by a group of British new wave pop stars called Band-Aid. Besides Bono of U2 fame, most of these artist’s are nothing more then a track on a “Best of the 80’s” CD or regaining nominal fame by staring on the VH1 show “Bands Reunited”. During the mid-eighties however, these bands and singers where huge icons in my album collection. So when they sang about World famine, this mid-west white boy stood up and took notice. Here are the lyrics that had such an impact on me 20 years ago.

It’s Christmas time; there’s no need to be afraid
At Christmastime, we let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world at Christmastime
But say a prayer to pray for the other ones
At Christmastime

It’s hard, but when you’re having fun
There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life
Oh, where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?
Here’s to you, raise a glass for everyone
Here’s to them, underneath that burning sun
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?

Feed the world
Feed the world
Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmastime again
Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmastime again

Listening to the song again raised the memories of nightly newscasts describing the incredibly gruesome famine, taking place in Ethiopia. I remember being a fourteen-year old Christian asking myself, “What am I doing so that those people know that it is Christmastime?” The answer was a disappointing, “Nothing.” Sadly, twenty-years later things haven’t changed much, in my life and the world.

I unknowingly downloaded the “extended” version of the song. In this version the performers gave holidays greetings during an instrumental section. The words that hit me hardest came from eclectic rock superstar David Bowie when he said, “It’s Christmas 1984 and there are more starving folk on the planet then ever before.” After hearing this I asked myself, “Had the world changed any in the past twenty years? I realized starvation and hunger still existed in the world. But it had gotten better, hadn’t it?” In 1984 hunger had reached close to 500 million people in a world population of 4.8 billion people (11%). Today, this very day, there is an estimated 850 million people living with hunger. With a world population of over 6.9 billion people, an estimated 12% of the world’s population goes hungry each day. In the past twenty years of technological advancements one would think the world community could have at least lessened the percentage of people that go to bed hungry each day.

Here are some of the things we have done in the past 20 years:

We have launched the Space Shuttles 113 times at a cost of $470 million dollars a shot.

We have bought 84 million DVD players here in the United States.

We (globally) spent $18.5 billion dollars on video games in 2003.

From Budapest to Bloomington we snarfed down $17.5 billion dollars of “BigMac’s” last year alone.

Retail sales during this holiday season alone are being estimated at $220 billion dollars in the US.

Bono from the band U2 was once quoted as saying; “Christ's example is being demeaned by the church if they ignore the new leprosy, which is AIDS. The church is the sleeping giant here. If it wakes up to what's really going on in the rest of the world, it has a real role to play. If it doesn't, it will be irrelevant." The same can be said about the churches response to world hunger and most social justice issues. It is a shame that the church doesn’t do a better job of showing the world that Jesus is it’s light; during the time we celebrate his birth. If 70% of this country claims to be Christian (this percentage has been on a yearly decline for over 10 years), then the church can claim around $154 billion dollars spent on Christmas presents this season. It seems for all our attempts to “Remember the reason for the season” we have been failing at getting out the message of why God sent his Son to us in the first place. If Jesus had delivered, in today’s context, the section of the Sermon on the Mount found in chapter seven of the book of Matthew, it may have sounded something like this: “Not all those who sound religious are really godly. They may call me their Leader, but they will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The issue is whether they did what my father asked them to or not. On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Leader, CEO, we went to conferences and festivals in your name, we bought multiple copies of books about you to raise their sale’s ranks on Amazon and we went and saw your movie multiple times’‚ But I will reply, ‘I never had a relationship with you. Get out of here; the things you did were not authorized by me.”

The same painful lament by Jesus can be found in Matthew 25:41-46:

"Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, `Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his demons! For I was hungry, and you didn't feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn't give me anything to drink. I was a stranger, and you didn't invite me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me no clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn't visit me.'
"Then they will reply, `Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?' And he will answer, `I assure you, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life."

We got off course from where God wants us to be. How we got there? I don’t know. How do we get back on course? I think that is up to each person that reads this. I know for all the Christmas seasons to come our family has made a pledge to not buy any more retail gifts. From now on we are going to work with one of the many hunger relief organizations that allows one to purchase livestock to be sent to those that have great need. We will be purchasing, in the names of our family and friends, livestock to be distributed to the hungry. You may want to join us by giving in this way also, or you may want to donate food to your local food pantry, or you may want to provide and serve a meal in your local mission. The key is we all have to do something different then the little we are doing now.

Our greatest failure as the Church, the living embodiment of Christ Jesus, will be if we allow another twenty years to go by and we do not feed the hungry, help strangers in need, comfort those afflicted with AIDS and visit hurting people in jails. After all when Jesus sent out his disciples to do his work his instructions to them were, “As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:7 & 8, NLT) The Kingdom of Heaven is here. What will you do this holiday season to prove Jesus’ love to someone that may not know his love is true and for all people?

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

BIG NEWS for those 18 to 25!!!!

2004-12-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

I usually don't post short anecdotes or articles thatI find on the net here on my blog. But if you haven't heard about President Bush ordering up a draft, you need to see what I found on the net!

You are such an oxymoron!

2004-12-02T14:10:00.000-08:00

"Mean People Suck!"

Oh how badly I want that to be a true statement. As it may be true in some context, the statement in and of it's self is an oxymoron. How so? By making the statement, "Mean People Suck!" you are stating in fact that you yourself "Suck". Saying someone else sucks is a mean thing to do. Hence being a person and having done something "mean", if the original statement is true, declares the individual saying that someone else sucks, as one that "sucks" as well. Bottom line if I make the statement "Mean People Suck", then so do I.

Darn it! I hate it when people do mean things to others. I hate it when people do mean things to me. I just can't say that they suck. But . . .

I can say, "Anonymous People Suck!"

People that write anonymous emails or comments on a blog in hopes to tear someone else down are mean. I don't do that. You may not like what I have to say on my blog or in my posts on certain forums, but give me credit for not hiding behind the word "anonymous". Yes, I deleted a comment from an anonymous poster today. And in doing so I'm sure to have some people say I can't take critic or that I don't allow others to build into me. A good friend told me once, "If there is no name, then "nobody" wrote it." That was hard for me accept at first, but I understand it more today. If you can't put your name under what you write and accept the consequences for doing so, then don't bother writing anything at all. "Anonymous" receives no credibility in the world. So even if you have valid comments to make, they will not be heard. I'm sure some may question this, but if the person that wrote those mean and ignorant things had left their name, I would not have deleted the post. If they had had the guts to claim the statements they made by putting their identity with the post I would have commended them. Maybe I would have even listened to what they had to say about the post and myself.

"Anonymous People Suck!" No name, no game!

Purple America

2004-11-15T21:24:00.000-08:00

We are a couple of weeks past the election and it is time to take a closer look at how divided our country really is or when the truth is told, is not. There is no right wing conservative Christian mandate for our President to follow. It seems that the left leaning media and the Democratic National Committee have finally stolen a play out of the right’s playbook. I call it “scare the hell out of them.” It appears those with a liberal bias are starting on a fast track with this strategy. Tell America that this election; Presidential, House and Senate, has given the right wing political machine card blanche to force their agenda down every Americans throat, whether they agree with it or not. Hey it worked for the right. The common right wing rhetoric on radio talk shows before the election sounded a lot like, “I’m going to vote for the person the terrorists don’t want to win. You know the terrorists want John Kerry to win?” Or one of my favorites, “John Kerry is going to allow all those gay people to get married.” Well it sure did “get out” the republican vote. A local radio station in my area had a live remote on election Tuesday from a precinct where a 74 year-old woman was voting for the first time in her life. The radio station was running a contest for first time voters to win a limo ride to the polls on Election Day. I’m not sure if this woman voted for the President, but it is highly likely her being from the “greatest generation” and all. So how do the liberals scare up some votes for ’06 and ’08? They tell America all their civil liberties are soon to be taken away from them by the evil theocracy. Will it work as well for them as it did for their counterparts? I hope not. These tactics keep politics as usual. If the two parties just swap this strategy back and forth nothing will ever get accomplished in Washington.

Let me be clear, there is no mandate! How can I say that when the map is clear-cut red and blue? With the majority being “RED”? I stumbled onto this map while surfing the net. It is a much better view of our nation then the standard “red & blue” maps we are accustomed to seeing on news shows and in the publications we have been reading over the past couple of weeks. The nation is more a shade of purple then it is either red or either blue. There are two observations that I did not hear anyone in the media making concerning these maps. First, each of those squares is based on a population density. So even though it appears to be an overwhelming victory for those that attach themselves to the color red, the reality is that red square in the middle Nebraska that looks like such a huge area, has just as many people in it as one of those small blue areas in the north east corner of Illinois (Chicago). On top of that not everyone in those red precincts voted for Bush. Nor did everyone in the blue areas vote for Kerry. The country is purple. Yes, at this point there are only two sides to choose from, but the country isn’t as cut and dry divided, as either side would like us to believe. Second is that those maps only account for the Americans that voted on November 2nd, 2004. There is an estimated 295 million people living in the United States of America. When you subtract all those under the age of 18, you wind up with 221 million potential voters in our country. The total votes cast on Election Day where 115,809,878. This means the margin of victory is actually less than 4% of eligible voters in the United States. To say that the majority of America is solidly behind the President and his moral agenda is not true. President Bush was actually re-elected to office by little more than 25% of eligible voters across the country. Hardly a mandate.

“If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.” I’ve heard this for the past 16 years of my eligible voting life. I'm not complaining about the outcome of the elcetion. I pretty much knew the American people would be screwed no matter who won the election. It's the spin people put on actually facts that makes me mad. Let's tell the truth on why only half of this country votes. Give me a candidate worth voting for and I will. Could that be the reason why only half the country votes? Not because they are apathetic or lazy, but because the candidates we are given to chose from are not acceptable choices. We heard from pundits about why the youth vote didn’t show up for this election. They are experts in politics and I am certainly not. I am an expert in dealing with young people and they are not. Students can smell a fake a mile a way. If you attempt to become a part of their world with outh being authentic you will fail. You couldn’t really call either of the candidates from this election “authentic”. For that matter is there anyone in Washington that is? And the youth of America knows this. That is why they do not vote.

As my friends and I talk, there is a sense that this country is headed for some type of revolution. Whether it comes to us through a political revolution, an economic one or societal one; it is coming. The choice we all need to make is which side of the revolution we want to be on. That is the beauty of the free will God gives us, we get to use it!

I pissed off people with this one too!

2004-10-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

This is something I wrote on a Youth Specialties message board. I got pretty beat up for my remarks. Oh well, the Lord said I would be persucutied for sharing the truth, just didn't think it would come from other youth workers. Here it is.

I shaved my goatee today. Who would have thought that this gesture would be considered a thumbing of the nose at the “system.”

Being the newest youth pastor in a small Midwest town has given me a short chance to observe my new cultural surroundings. Only knowing a hand full of parents and students (I’m working at a mid-sized church) allows me to attend the homecoming football game practically unnoticed.

They were all in attendance last night. Every character portrait that can be painted of a youth minister was at the game. In the past couple of weeks I had met a couple of these youth workers, but after fourteen years of trying to network with other youth workers, some just stuck out to me like a soar thumb. There was the non-married, middle-aged, female associate pastor of a mainline denomination. She was sitting in the parent section ignoring the game while talking to three soccer moms from her ministry. There was the nice, married, middle-aged guy from the almost large non-denominational church. He stood in the walkway between the bleachers and the field, as to get maximum exposure to both students and parents walking by. I saw the young, twenty-something, unmarried, female Para-church worker proudly sporting her organizations name and logo on her t-shirt, sitting smack dab in the middle of the student section.

Then towards the end of the third quarter I over heard a little girl say something to her mom. She said, “Look mommy there’s pastor Jimmy (name changed).” I didn’t have to look to see where the girl was pointing. Up the center isle walked the iconic arc type of the modern day youth pastor. I had heard about this guy from my senior pastor, who had been very jealous and bitter about this pastor’s churches success and ability to woo parishioners from our body. Pastor Jimmy with his slight muscular build wore khaki cargo pants and a button-downed shirt that had the hometowns team logo embroidered on left pocket. His hair was trimmed short with a slight fade running into his inch and a half long sideburns that poointed to his well trimmed goattee. He maneuvered himself into a seat next to his senior pastor. He shook the hands of several well dressed middle-aged men sitting in the senior pastor’s section, made some obviously humorous remarks, patted his senior pastor on the back, and left this group. Making his way past the student section he was stopped by some of his students. When they introduced him to their friends he would promptly hand the student his business card, presumably with his mega-church’s (over 1500 would be considered mega around here) youth ministry information on it. I continued to follow his progress as he moved toward the concession stands where this act was repeated several times, but now with middle school students.

Now before I get slammed by people saying, “the body is made of several parts”, you need to understand at one point or another in my fourteen almost fifteen years of youth ministry I could have been painted in anyone of those portraits. I have been all those people. My point in writing this is to draw our attention to the fact that we have been marketed an image of what we are to be as youth workers. It could be our denomination, the Para-church organization we work for or even, dare I say, YS in it’s publications, conventions or associations promotes an image of what a youth worker should look and sound like. I admit to being the worst offender of buying into the hype. So I’m shaving my goatee.

The other night a friend in ministry was trying to motivate me in attending NYWC in Dallas. He asked, “When was the last time you went.” Well it’s been four years since I went to a NYWC and I don’t see myself going anytime in the near future. When I responded to his question he said, “You are over due.” Why is NYWC the magical cure for what ales me in ministry? Why do I have to sit in ten seminars for my experience to be validated as “continuing education”? Why aren’t we getting “fed” while we are doing ministry? Where I’m at in my walk and ministry life I don’t feel like being around a couple thousand goatees and backpacks.

What if? What if a hundred of those who were planning on attending NYWC this fall, all planed on going to Grenada on the same week to help with the clean up. No national speakers, no video production company trying to sell you their latest product, no goatees, just a hundred people living out the word of God.

So, to quote Tom Cruise for the movie Jerry Maguire, “Who’s with me? Who’s coming with me?” What could be a stronger leadership statement to the students we work with than for us to use our time away from them to serve others? Serve without anything to gain expect for each of us to get closer to God.

I think Yac would have liked for us to start painting a new portrait of what YM is or at the very least recognize that master piece of artwork God paints of us is never finished.

I was called a "Blog Slacker" today! It hurts!

2004-10-14T07:04:00.000-07:00

I have been very busy the past couple of weeks. I had some computer issues, now mostly solved. Last week I got slammed with having to preach on Sunday morning. Sometimes I wish that is all I had to do every week and other times I'm glad I am such a great "cruise director". So to please the person that insulted me so, here is my sermon from Sunday since he lives to far away to come and hear me. Love ya TPA!

"Giving Minsitry Away"

Meetings. We all love meetings, don’t we. Planning meetings. Committee meetings. Board meetings. Team meetings. It’s seems in the world and in the church we can be on meeting overload. Growing up in the Episcopal church I was very familiar with meetings. I use to imagine back then that if some of the adults I knew had gotten small pins the size of a dime to wear for every meeting they had attended they might not be able to walk around. “Hey Jim, where you going?” “To another meeting.” I thought the church was bad, and then between 1991 and 1998 I went to work for Eli Lilly and Company. I’m convinced that down in the basement of their corporate offices somewhere there is a “Meeting Quota Management Specialist.” “Robert, Mr. CEO here. Have we met this months meeting quota yet?” “Let me check sir, no, no sir it looks like we are 54 meetings behind for the month.” “Well by all means schedule some more!” I was talking to with a high level, 24 year Lilly veteran once about the issue of meetings. He said to me, “Roger, do you know how you can tell if a meeting was successful?” “No”, I said. “A meeting is only successfully,” he said, “if by the end of it you have scheduled another meeting.”

Looking back, I don’t think all that time in meetings at Lilly was wasted. I remember a specific time, where there had been a CEO change at the company. The new leader wanted the entire company to understand some of the business philosophies he felt would help take the company to the next level. During an all day meeting we learned that even though I didn’t have direct personal relationship with the customers that bought the drugs the company manufactured, that I was still a part of the “customer chain”. At that time I worked serving breakfast and lunch in the cafeterias to those working in the production end of the company. What we discussed in that meeting is that by our serving fast, healthy, nutritional meals to the production operators, they may be able to do their jobs in a more timely and efficient way, which helped distribution to get the drugs out to market quicker, which allowed the sales people in the field to promote that doctors prescribe the drugs, which the customer then bought. Although I wasn’t dealing directly with end consumer buying the drug, I still had a customer that I needed to serve. We learned the importance of viewing the next person in the supply chain as our end customer. We also learned that no single person can ever be all the links I that chain. The CEO couldn’t be the production operator, the lab technician, the marketing director and the sales person all at the same time. For him to serve the end customer of the pharmaceuticals we produced, he would have to give major responsibilities away to others.

This wasn’t an innovative business tool he had created. It wasn’t even a new management fad the CEO obtained at some leadership seminar (another meeting). No, this form of leadership has been around for thousands upon thousands of years. It can be traced as far back as Moses struggling as the leader of a recently freed nation. He was working all day and all night hearing out his people’s grievances and needs. Seeing how hard he was working, his father-in-law Jethro, came to him said this, “Exodus 18:18-23”. Jethro gave Moses the first pyramid scheme. There was no way Moses could handle all the issues brought before him. Instead of dealing with the all the problems himself, Moses appointed 10 people to oversee 10 people to oversee 10 people and so on. Moses had to give ministry away to others. The disciples found themselves with the same leadership issue. “Acts 6:1-4” The church was growing by leaps and bounds, and the day to day needs of all those people, like providing them food, was falling through the cracks. The disciples had to appoint others to take care of this task so they could continue teaching. But understand this, they didn’t just go out and grab the first warm body they found. What does verse three say again, “Now look around among yourselves, brothers, and select seven men who are well respected and full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” They didn’t want to give away the responsibility to just anyone, but they also didn’t say, “Go find people that can do the job just as good as we can.” They gave away the ministry to those that were respected in the community and that had wisdom. And as we heard this morning in our reading from the Gospel of Luke that Jesus too gave away His ministry, even while he was still on this earth.

It has seemed that during my fifteen years of ministry experience it has been inevitable that during almost every committee or team meeting the conversation will at some point turn to the fact that the ministry is in dire need of more volunteers. After some time had been spent on the topic someone will drop the conversation-stopping hatchet by saying, “Well, scripture says, the harvest is plenty but the workers are few.” And everyone else in the room will agree and move on. When you take that tiny snippet of scripture by itself it can be a damaging piece of self-fulfilling prophecy. Here we have Jesus, getting ready to send out 75 workers to harvest. Now you have to realize, Jesus had already sent out the twelve in chapter nine. As we know these twelve weren’t always getting what Jesus was saying. Let’s face it if Jesus disciples sat in Donald Trumps boardroom, they would all get fired at the same time. Jesus knew they were the cream of the crop because he had told them all you need is the faith of a small mustard seed to move a mountain. So Jesus was taking these twelve sub-par guys and adding sixty plus more just like them to the work force. These workers needed a pep talk from their boss. What they got however was much more than a pep talk. Jesus followed the hard-hitting reality that the workers were few with this, “therefore pray the Lord of the harvest send out laborers into His harvest.” It was His harvest. He was giving them more than a pep talk he was giving them the power of his name to get the job done.

Here’s another self-fulfilling prophecy the church uses sometimes. I don’t know how long this one has been around but I suspect it’s been around for a while. “20% of the people do 80% of the work.” This prophecy tends to be true a majority of the time. But if the harvest truly is the Lord’s why is this true? Who is to blame? Is it the 20% doers fault or the 80% watchers fault? For three years Renee and I were a part of fast growth church start on the northwest side of Indianapolis. This church grew from zero to 500 in five years. Renee and I would often come home from leadership meetings where the 20% doers would complain about the other 80% not doing anything and we would ask each other, “As someone in the 20% what are we doing or not doing that would help the other 80% to get involved.” There are several things the 20% can do to help mobilize, see I just used a word from our churches purpose statement, proof by the way I have been paying attention in those meetings, to help mobilize that other 80%. Here are just a few.

1)Ask – I know this sounds simple, but the 20% needs to ask for help. As the 20% some times we can be misguided that it is easier to do things our self than it would be to ask for help. We disregard asking people for help because we believe no one will. I remember growing up around my father learning the value of asking questions. My father says, “You never know what you’ll get until you ask for it.” I would go shopping with my dad as a young boy and watch him, as the sales people would come up to ask him if he needed any help, my father would quickly reply, “Any of these toothbrushes on sale today?” Or, “Are any of these tools free?” Now most of the time this approach didn’t work. But every once and awhile my dad would hit the jackpot. “Nothing free today Mr. Williams, but I was just about put a 50% off tag on those screwdrivers over there.” One of the best ways we can mobilize others is to ask them to join us in ministry.
2)Mentor – We often here, “It takes time to show someone else how to do all the jobs I do for this ministry.” Or, “If you want something done right you have to do it yourself.” I know to often I find myself falling into this mindset. But that kind of leadership is no leadership at all. Paul best describes mentoring when he is instructing Timothy on how to be a good leader. Paul wrote to Timothy. “2 Timothy 2:2.” This past month during the ISTEP testing, I had several juniors from the high school “job shadow” me during school hours. I’m sure they had thought a day with the youth pastor was most likely going to be a blow-off. All right so we did have some fun, but we also did some work. I took two of these young men to the laser tag facility we are using next weekend during our Mission:Possible event. I didn’t leave them in the car; I took them inside with me so they could see me interact with the sales person. They witnessed the style in which I would ask the gentleman questions. They had a chance to walk through the decision making process for the pricing of the event. And more importantly they watched my personal interaction as Christian leader with someone from outside the church. Neither of those students may wind up in full time youth ministry, but I took them with me so they could see how important it was as a Christian to be kind and courteous during a business transaction. Jesus had also mentored his workers right before he sent them out. Feeding the five thousand, casting out demons and teaching were all done by Jesus in front of seventy-five, to prepare them for the work he would later ask them to do. I don’t care if you sharpen the pencils for the pews, who have you asked, ahhhh ask, asked to come along side you so that you can teach them how to do your task so at some point you may give that ministry away?
3)Say no – It’s okay to say no! If you are in the 20% of doers it’s okay for you to say no when someone asks you to do something. As leaders in ministry we need to stop asking the same people over and over again to help us. Let’s be honest half the time we ask those people to do something, it’s only because we know they will automatically say, “yes”. The reality of the prophecy “20% of the people do 80% of work” is that if we allow this to continue we will have or are going to burn out those people that can’t say no. How many times have you heard this from an over worked church volunteer, “I just need a break.” Well if you haven’t said no to anything in the past five years I bet you do need a break. God demands we be good stewards of all the resources he gives us. That applies to the resource of laborers for harvest just as much as it does to our money. The purpose statement for our church does not say, “Make, Mature and Martyr Disciples.” No, it says, “Make, Mature and Mobilize Disciples.” Listen if I ever ask you to do something for our student ministry and you feel like you have to say no, it’s okay! I will not take it personally. If saying no to helping chaperon a middle school over night means you would have more time to spend with your family, say no. If saying no to helping on Sunday night with youth group means you get to rest a couple of more hours after a long weekend before going back to work on Monday, say no. You cannot be mobilized for the Lord’s harvest if you are out of Gas.

So what if you are one of those that fall into the 80%. How can you get yourself involved in Kingdom building work?

1)Ask – Don’t be afraid to ask if someone else needs help. One of the statements I hear a lot in ministry is, “Well Julie always does that Sunday mornings and I don’t want to step on her toes.” Listen close; Julie is dying for someone to ask her if she needs help. I know it may be hard for some, but you can’t always sit around waiting to be asked for your involvement. Take some initiative. If you believe God is calling you to certain ministry go to the leader of that ministry and ask how you can help. If you ask me if there is anything you can do for our student ministry here at Trinity Park I’m going to find something for you to do.
2)Mentor – Ask people questions about how ministry happens or how an event works. I was talking to Nat Baker the other day and he asked me if adults would have to pay their own way on our summer trips for students next year. I told him no they wouldn’t because we incorporate the cost of adult chaperons into the price the students pay for the trip. He said how do you do that, so I should him. I pulled out a budget work sheet I created and walk him through how I figure up the cost of the events and the price we charge the students. It behooved me to show Nate how budgeting a trip worked. If I mentor Nate in planning trips, I can give away a small piece of my ministry to him, which will free me to do other things for students and their parents.
3)Say yes – It’s simple, it’s fun and it’s free! You may say yes to four or five things before you find the place where you have the most passion to serve, so that means you may have to take some risks. How do you know your going to enjoy carving up a bar-b-qued pig until you try? This strategy for involvement is also a great way to enable you to say no. If you have tried multiple ministries and found the one God is calling you to, when someone asks you to get involved in something else you can now say, “You know what I tried that, and I have found that God has called me to do this other ministry instead.”

No matter which percentage you fall in as participant in this church you have a responsibility in the mobilizing of disciples. Whether it’s mobilizing yourself or someone else.

Ahoy ye lubbers, take heed of this here post or ye be kissing the gunners daughter!

2004-09-26T05:54:00.000-07:00

As many of you know last Sunday was International Talk Like A Pirate Day. This has to be one of the best holidays of all time! My post today is a compilation of multiple internet sources on "pirate speak". I have placed it in my blog to share my joy of talking piratical with you and to also make sure I have this stuff archived for next September 19th. It's long, but fun!

Addled -- Mad, insane, or just stupid. An "addlepate" is a fool.

Aft -- Short for "after." Toward the rear of the ship.

Ahoy -- "Hello!"

Arrr! - This one is often confused with arrrgh, which is of course the sound you make when you sit on a belaying pin. "Arrr!" can mean, variously, "yes," "I agree," "I'm happy," "I'm enjoying this beer," "My team is going to win it all," "I saw that television show, it sucked!" and "That was a clever remark you or I just made." And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of Arrr!

Avast! -- "Hey!" Could be used as "Stop that!" or "Who goes there?"

Aye! - "Why yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did."

Aye aye! - "I'll get right on that sir, as soon as my break is over."

Beauty – The best possible pirate address for a woman. Always preceded by “me,” as in, “C’mere, me beauty,” or even, “me buxom beauty,” to one particularly well endowed. You’ll be surprised how effective this is.

Begad! -- By God!

Belay -- Stop that. "Belay that talk!" would mean "Shut up!"

Belaying pin -- A short wooden rod to which a ship's rigging is secured. A common improvised weapon aboard a sailing ship, because they're everywhere, they're easily picked up, and they are the right size and weight to be used as clubs.

Bilge! -- Nonsense, or foolish talk. The bilges of a ship are the lowest parts, inside the hull along the keel. They fill with stinking bilgewater -- or just "bilge."

Bilge rat – The bilge is the lowest level of the ship. It’s loaded with ballast and slimy, reeking water. A bilge rat, then, is a rat that lives in the worst place on the ship

Bilge-sucking -- A very uncomplimentary adjective.

Black Spot -- To "place the Black Spot" on another pirate is to sentence him to death, to warn him he is marked for death, or sometimes just to accuse him of a serious crime before other pirates.

Blaggard -- "Blackguard." An insult.

Blimey! -- An exclamation of surprise.

“Blow the man down” – To kill someone.

Booty -- Loot.

Bosun -- Boatswain; a petty officer.

Bowsprit -- The slanted spar at a ship's prow.

Brethren of the Coast -- The Caribbean buccaneers called themselves by this name in the 1640-1680 period. During this time, they actually formed a sort of fraternity, and did not (usually) fight each other or even steal from each other. After 1680, a new generation of pirates appeared, who did not trust each other . . . with good reason.

Bring ‘em Near—A telescope.

Briny deep -- The ocean. Probably no pirate in all history ever used this phrase, but don't let that stop you, especially if you can roll the R in "briny"!

Buccaneer -- A general term for the Caribbean pirates.

Bucko -- Familiar term. "Me bucko" = "my friend."

Bung hole – Victuals on a ship were stored in wooden casks. The stopper in the barrel is called the bung, and the hole is called the bung hole. That’s all. It sounds a lot worse, doesn’t it!

Cackle Fruit—Hen’s eggs.

Cap'n -- Short for "captain."

Cat o'nine tails, or just "cat" -- a whip with many lashes, used for flogging. "A taste of the cat" might refer to a full flogging, or just a single blow to "smarten up" a recalcitrant hand.

Chandler, or ship-chandler -- see Sutler.

Chantey -- A sailor's work song. Also spelled "shantey" or "shanty."

Chase -- The ship being pursued. "The chase is making full sail, sir" = "The ship we're after is going as fast as she can."

Chest -- Traditional treasure container.

Corsair -- A more romantic term for pirate. But still a pirate.

Crow's nest -- A small platform, sometimes enclosed, near the top of a mast, where a lookout could have a better view when watching for sails or for land.

Cutlass -- A curved sword, like a saber but heavier. Traditional pirate weapon. Has only one cutting edge; may or may not have a useful point.

“Dance the hempen jig”—To hang.

Davy Jones' locker -- The bottom of the sea.

Deadlights -- Eyes. "Use yer deadlights, matey!"

Dead men tell no tales -- Standard pirate excuse for leaving no survivors.

Dog -- A mild insult, perhaps even a friendly one.

Doubloon -- A Spanish gold coin. At different times, it was worth either 4 or 16 silver pesos, or "pieces of eight."

Fair winds! -- Goodbye, good luck!.

Feed the fish -- What you do when you are thrown into the sea, dead or alive.

Gangway! -- "Get out of my way!"

Gibbet Cage—Chains in which the corpses of pirates were hung and displayed in order to discourage piracy in others.

Godspeed! -- Goodbye, good luck!

Grog -- Generically, any alcoholic drink. Specifically, rum diluted with water to make it go farther.

Grub -- Food.

Gun -- A cannon.

Fore, or forrard -- Toward the front end of the ship.

Flogging -- Punishment by caning, or by whipping with the cat.

Hands -- The crew of a ship; sailors.

Handsomely -- Quickly. "Handsomely now, men!" = "Hurry up!"

Head -- The toilet facilities aboard a modern ship. This will do for modern piratical talk. The toilet facilities aboard an ACTUAL pirate ship do not bear thinking about.

Hornpipe – Both a single-reeded musical instrument sailors often had aboard ship, and a spirited dance that sailors do.

Hornswaggle—To cheat

Jack Ketch -- The hangman. To dance with Jack Ketch is to hang.

Jack Tar, or tar -- A sailor.

Jollyboat -- A small but happy craft, perhaps even one which is a little dinghy.

Jolly Roger -- The pirates' skull-and-crossbones flag. It was an invitation to surrender, with the implication that those who surrendered would be treated well. A red flag indicated "no quarter."

Keelhaul -- Punishment by dragging under the ship, from one side to the other. The victim of a keelhauling would be half-drowned, or worse, and lacerated by the barnacles that grew beneath the ship.

Kiss the gunner's daughter -- A punishment: to be bent over one of the ship's guns and flogged.

Lad, lass, lassie -- A way to address someone younger than you.

Landlubber or just lubber -- A non-sailor.

Letters of Marque -- Papers issued by a national government during wartime, entitling a privately owned ship to raid enemy commerce, or even attack enemy warships. Early letters of reprisal were issued to merchants to make it legal for them to counter-raid pirates! A ship bearing such letters, and operating within their limits, is a privateer rather than a pirate . . . that is, a legal combatant rather than a criminal and murderer. The problem is that letters of marque aren't always honored, even by the government that issued them. Captain Kidd had letters of marque; his own country hanged him anyway.

Lights -- Lungs. A pirate might threaten to "have someone's lights and liver."

Line -- A rope in use as part of the ship's rigging, or as a towing line. When a rope is just coiled up on deck, not yet being used for anything, it's all right to call it a rope.

Lookout -- Someone posted to keep watch on the horizon for other ships or signs of land.

Maroon -- A fairly common punishment for violation of a pirate ship's articles, or offending her crew. The victim was left on a deserted coast (or, of course, an island) with little in the way of supplies. That way, no one could say that the unlucky pirate had actually been killed by his former brethren.

Me -- A piratical way to say "my."

Me hearties -- Typical way for a pirate leader to address his crew.

“Measure ye fer yer chains”—To be outfitted for a gibbet cage.

Matey -- A piratical way to address someone in a cheerful, if not necessarily friendly, fashion.

No quarter! -- Surrender will not be accepted.

On the Account -- The piratical life. A man who went "on the account" was turning pirate.

Piece of eight -- A Spanish silver coin worth one peso or 8 reales. It was sometimes literally cut into eight pieces, each worth one real.

Pillage -- To raid, rob, and sack a target ashore.

Pirate -- A seagoing robber and murderer. Contrast with privateer.

Poop deck -- The highest deck at the aft end of a large ship. Smaller ships don't have a poop; the highest part aft is the quarterdeck.

Port -- (1) A seaport. (2) The left side of the ship when you are facing toward her prow.

Poxy, poxed -- Diseased. Used as an insult.

Privateer -- A ship bearing letters of marque (q.v.), or one of her crew, or her captain. Thus, she can only attack an enemy ship, and only in time of war, but does so as a representative of her country. A privateer is theoretically a law-abiding combatant, and entitled to be treated as an honorable prisoner if captured.

Prow -- The "nose" of the ship.

Red Ensign—British flag.

Reef -- (1) An underwater obstruction of rock or coral which can tear the bottom out of a ship. (2) To reef sails is to shorten them, tying them partially up, either to slow the ship or to keep a strong wind from putting too much strain on the masts.

Rope's end -- another term for flogging. "Ye'll meet the rope's end for that, me bucko!"

Rum (noun) -- Traditional pirate drink.

Rum (adjective) -- Strange or odd. A "rum fellow" is a peculiar person, the sort who won't say "Arrrr!" on Talk Like A Pirate Day.

“Run a rig”—To play a trick.

Sail ho! -- "I see a ship!" The sail, of course, is the first part of a ship visible over the horizon.

Salt, old salt -- An experienced seaman.

Scallywag—A villainous or mischievous person.

Scuppers -- Openings along the edges of a ship's deck that allow water on deck to drain back to the sea rather than collecting in the bilges. "Scupper that!" is an expression of anger or derision: "Throw that overboard!"

Scurvy -- (1) A deficiency disease which often afflicted sailors; it was caused by lack of vitamin C. (2) A derogatory adjective suitable for use in a loud voice, as in "Ye scurvy dogs!"

Sea dog -- An experienced seaman.

Shanty -- Another spelling for "chantey" - a sea song.

Shark bait -- (1) Your foes, who are about to feed the fish (q.v.). (2) A worthless or lazy sailor; a lubber who is no use aboard ship.

Shipshape -- Well-organized, under control, finished.

Shiver me timbers! -- An expression of surprise or strong emotion.

Sink me! -- An expression of surprise.

Smartly -- Quickly. "Smartly there, men!" = "Hurry up!"

Splice the mainbrace -- To have a drink. Or, perhaps, several drinks.

Spyglass -- A telescope.

Starboard -- The right side of the ship when you are facing toward her prow.

Sutler -- A merchant in port, selling the various things that a ship needed for supplies and repairs.

Swab (noun) -- A disrespectful term for a seaman. "Man that gun, ye cowardly swabs!"

Swab (verb) -- To clean something. Being put to "swabbing the decks" would be a low-level punishment for a disobedient pirate.

Swag -- Loot.

Swing the Lead - The Lead was a weight at the bottom of a line that gave sailors a way to measure depth when near land. To Swing the Lead was considered a simple job, and thusly came to represent one who is avoiding work or taking the easy work over the hard. In todays terms, one who swings the lead is a slacker.

Take a Caulk - on deck of a ship, between planks, was a thick caulk of black tar and rope to keep water from between decks. This term came to mean to "take a nap" either because sailors who slept on deck ended up with black lines across their backs or simply because sailors laying down on deck were as horizontal as the caulk of the deck itself.

Walk the plank -- A piratical execution. The victim, usually blindfolded or with bound hands or both, is forced to walk along a plank laid over the ship's side, to fall into the water below. Except this seems to be a total invention; it first appeared in 19th-century fiction, long after the great days of piracy.

Weigh anchor -- To haul the anchor up; more generally, to leave port.

Wench -- An individual of the female persuasion. "Saucy" is a good adjective to add to this, and if ye can get away with "Me proud beauty!," more power to ye.

Yo-ho-ho -- A very piratical thing to say, whether it actually means anything or not.

Chapter 1, Part 3

2004-09-23T05:28:00.000-07:00

After graduating from high school my world and political beliefs began to change. Two specific things happened in my life that pointed me in a new direction. First, I started to pay taxes. You start to scrutinize the person holding the purse strings to your paycheck a lot more, when you stop getting all of your money back at the end of the year. The second thing that happened to me was that I fell in love. During my last semester of high school I began to date a lovely young woman that would eventually become my wife. She too grew up in an upper-middle class conservative home. Unlike myself, who had rejected my right wing upbringing, Renee fully embraced her conservative heritage. Instead of rocking out to Genesis and Bruce Springsteen in her sharp looking Nissan 240SX, she was an avid listener of talk radio and knew that Rush was “always right.” We would have grand debates, I mean dates, where we would discuss various topics of world importance. Slowly I began to be swayed to see her point on many issues. Mostly due to the fact that then and even now I cannot best her in a war of words.

Chapter 1, Part 2

2004-09-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

I became a full-fledged politician as a freshman in high school. That was the year I ran for student senate. I was not extremely popular. I wasn’t a tremendous athlete. Nor did I date the prettiest girl in school. Even with the full knowledge of my sociopolitical status amongst my peers I believed I still had a shot at winning one of the six seats. My campaign manager (my father) came up with a great campaign strategy. We decided to go simple. Borrowing from the British pop group Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s promotional campaign “Frankie Says. . .” , we made posters, buttons and t-shirts with large black letters on white backgrounds that said, “Roger Says . . .Vote For Me” or more humorous ones that said “Roger Says . . . Eat Broccoli or Watch Cartoons”. The humor must have been lost to my classmates, because I lost the election. This began my long stretch of cynicism towards politics.
“Finding” yourself in high school is a daunting task for anyone. Our family has moved back to the conservative Midwest where I attended a high school filled largely with upper middle students. It was the type of school and community that surrounding school systems loved to hate. We won just about every state championship we entered. From marching band to football or from show choir to swimming, it was hard to beat my aulmumater at anything. The students at my school were stereotyped as spoiled rich suburban white kids. And seeing as how I knew three students during my junior year that all drove Porsche’s to school every morning, that stereotype was rooted in some form of truth. To say my adolescent years were formed in the midst of the conservative right would be an understatement. As I searched to find my place among the privileged and well to do, I found myself gravitating towards the students for what ever socio-economic reasons found themselves at the bottom of the social hierarchy at my school. I was a punk. Well, at school I was a punk. While riding the bus or in a friends car to school I would change from my yuppie Izod tennis polo (with collar popped) into bleached out, cut up jeans with my Clash concert t-shirt. I led a dual existence. At home I was a bible study attending, well-mannered, quasi-conservative young man. But at school I was a We Are The World, free Nelson Mandela, damn the man liberal. My parents did have some idea of my political leanings. Our political conversations would always end with my father excusing my viewpoints by saying something like, “If you’re not a liberal at 16 you don’t have a heart and if you’re not a conservative at 35 you’re just stupid.” I don’t think my views at this stage in life could be called true convictions. I was into being anti-, well anti-just-about-everything because I thought it was a great way to meet girls. I remember a specific occasion of me traveling to the convention center of our state capital to protest the appearance of Ronald Reagan (one of our greatest presidents of all time) at an Amway business meeting. I had heard that a young lady I wanted to get to know better was going to be there so I went. I believe the protesters were upset about nuclear weapons traveling across the US by rail car or something like that. Heck, it would not have mattered to me if we had been protesting peoples rights to choose Pepsi over Coke in a blind taste test, I was there for the chicks. About the only activism I remember performing in my high school years that didn’t have alterior motives was my coordinating a mile of people in the “Hands Across America” movement. I sure could talk a good game about being liberal, but when push came to shove I wasn’t acting out my supposed convictions.

Chapter 1, Part 1

2004-09-21T20:40:00.000-07:00

November 4th, 1975 was the date of the first political conversation I can recall having with my parents. I remember sitting in the back seat of the family’s wood paneled station wagon with my brother and sister waiting for my parents to come out of a local church near our home. As we drove off to dinner after their return, our parents explained that they had just voted for whom they wanted to be the next President of the United States. Being six years old and with a limited understanding of the conversation, I asked the simplest and what I thought was the most obvious question, “Who did you vote for?” My father proceeded to give me my first civics lesson. He explained that voting was a private matter and that you don’t have to tell others who you voted for. Looking back I’m sure this was my fathers attempt to not force his views on us, that we might grow up forming our own opinions about life and the world around us.

My next childhood memory of politics came four years later. My family and I had moved from the conservative Midwest to upstate New York. With the American Hostage situation in Iran and what the Republicans called the misery index (inflation plus unemployment) it seemed the chances for President Carter to win reelection were slim to none. During my third grade teacher’s presentation on the presidential elections, I nominated myself official pollster of our class. While the teacher spoke, I quietly wrote both candidates names next to each other on a piece of paper with the word “VOTE” written at the top. I placed a check mark under my candidate of choice and passed the paper around the class. Like the election its self, our third grade classroom straw poll had Ronald Regan beating President Carter by a margin of ten to one. I’m not sure why I voted the way I did that day. It may have been due to my conservative right wing up bringing. Or it may have just been I had some understanding from watching the news and listening to adults around me that what ever was going on in this country wasn’t good and it was time for a change. Regardless of how I voted, it would be the last time I would vote in a presidential election for a long time.

The blog, the blog is back!

2004-09-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

After a long stint away from this blogging thing, I am back. I took some time over the past couple of months to do some healing. I am physically, emotionally and spiritually in a better place now. During some of my "free" time this past summer I started on a book. Over the course of the next several days I will be posting the first chapter of my work. At well over 3000 words, I thought it would come across better to you all in smaller chunks. As always, please feel free to comment and critique what you find here.

"Arm the homeless"

The tribe has spoken!

2004-02-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

Isn’t funny how they gang up on you. Have you ever heard the phrase, “My enemy is my enemy’s enemy and thus my friend”? Last night on Survivor there were some in the tribe that saw Colby as a threat and some that saw Richard Hatch as ultimately their biggest concern. Eventually both sides came to the conclusion that the naked guy was the most cunning and crafty player and if they didn’t join forces to vote him out, they individually were at risk. An “unholy” alliance was formed and Hatch is no more. John’s cries in the wilderness put fear in the hearts of both the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These two groups of religious leaders did not get along. They had been at odds with one another for generations. But as we see in this chapter, there was something John (and later Jesus himself) was saying that threatened them both. If the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand or near, what use would they be in society? When they listened to John’s proclamations to repent and that it wasn’t good enough just to be a son or daughter of Abraham, they could feel their power and jobs slipping away. So they joined forces against John and later against Jesus. Our lives aren’t Survivor. We aren’t playing a game. There are consequences to our actions. If you find yourself making an uneasy alliance with someone to protect your name or image, stop and examine what is really going on around you. You may not be as righteous or as far from being wrong as you think.

Jesus, international man of the people.

2004-02-25T08:14:00.000-08:00

Genesis 2:2-3 "On the seventh day, having finished his task, God rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from his work of creation."

The Sabbath, is the most holy of days. So holy in fact, it is the only day mentioned in God's Ten Commandments to us (Exodus 20:8-11). God took time to rest and soak in all that he had accomplished. He desires for us to do the same thing. We spend so much of our waking hours running around like chickens with our heads cut off. God's original design for our lives was for us to take some time off and explore all the wonderful things he has done for us through all he created.

Jesus respected the Sabbath as a time to benefit God's people. On one Sabbath day Jesus and his followers were walking through some grain fields when his followers started breaking off the heads of the wheat. The religious leaders of the day saw what they were doing and used this infraction of the law as a chance to attack Jesus ministry. Jesus replies "The Sabbath was made to benefit people, and not people to benefit the Sabbath. And I, the Son of Man, am master even of the Sabbath!" (Mark 2:23-28) Jesus also healed on the Sabbath which some would consider work as well. When challenged about this he responded, "If you had one sheep and it fell into a well on the Sabbath, wouldn't you get to work and pull it out? Of course you would. And how much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Yes, it is right to do good on the Sabbath." (Matthew 12:1-14) The disciples picked the grain to survive, just like you would need to rescue a sheep for food. God asked for the Sabbath to be kept holy, by us stopping the work for others and concentrate on his works. What is godlier then taking care of yourself (God's greatest creation) by eating or helping others? Both of these scenarios keep the focus on God and that is what he is looking for us to do on our Sabbath day.

So when is this Sabbath day? Biblically this day runs from sunset on Friday evening to sunset on Saturday evening. To the Jews, sunset was literally the end of the day. Being Jews themselves, Jesus and his followers observed this time period as the Sabbath. It wasn't until after Jesus rose form the grave on Easter Sunday, was there any kind of celebration on Sunday. To the Apostles and the first Century Church Sunday morning gatherings were considered to be "The Lord's Day". (Acts 20:7-12) To them this was not a replacement of the Sabbath. It was a festival to gather and celebrate the Lords Supper. They still held to the law and observed the Sabbath as God's holy day.

It wasn't until fifth and sixth centuries that the Roman and Anglican churches called for they're to be no work done on Sundays. In 690 A.D., Ina, King of Saxons, made it illegal for any one to work on Sundays. If a freeman was caught working on Sundays they could lose their right to freedom. It wasn't until well into the tenth century that the Eastern and Western churches even began calling this day "the Sabbath".

There is nothing sacred and biblical about Sunday mornings. I believe it is very important for us the big "C" church, not the little "c" church I attend, to gather for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. When we do that and how frequently is up to us as body. There is no biblical mandate accept that we do it.

In a twenty-four hour a day society how can we hold in honor the Sabbath as the Lord asks us to do? There needs to be, for each of us, a time when we put all other things aside and concentrate on God. He deserves that much from us when you consider everything he has done. There are people that work weekends and then there is always that weekend sports event you are involved in. I think the key is to be able to keep your schedule during the Sabbath, but as you are participating in something others may consider to be work, that you focus on God through that activity. Do everything you do as you are doing it for the Lord.

Time off!

2004-01-27T23:50:00.000-08:00

The big story!

2004-01-26T08:23:00.000-08:00

What’s the famous bumper sticker/church sign say? “Wise men still follow Him!” Sure they do, but not in threes. One of my biggest pet peeves in Christian culture is how badly Jesus birth is depicted in Nativity sets. A barn, with animals and three kings from the east. I deal with the barn and animals thing in an earlier post, so check out the archives for that one. But what I want to deal with today is these “three” wise guys. Let us just put this into context: They wouldn’t have been so “wise” if it was just the three of them traveling from the Far East! There is a certain wow factor that can be gained from this story, even if you believe it was just three guys that came to see the little baby. That would be impressive in it’s self. But for their own survival they would have had to travel in a large caravan. If the little statues are correct, it would have been easy for robbers and thieves to recognize the fact these guys were loaded. If it had been just three guys they would have been easy pickens for one or two robbers. The journey they took was long and treacherous. There weren’t exits and road stops every three miles like are on our highways. They may have gone days with out seeing anyone else on their route. Besides the journey being dangerous, let’s talk about their encounter with Herod. This was a bad King. The dude was ruthless to say the least. He would have made Saddam look like Mickey Mouse. In my opinion they had to be traveling in a large group, because for some reason Herod seems intimidated by their presence. Not just because these guys were foreigners who knew nothing of the Hebrew scripture but where looking for the Jewish king, but because I’m sure they had plenty of slaves, servants, priest and guards of their own traveling with them. It was a large group of people coming through town and everyone in Jerusalem had heard about them. Herod could have offed three guys with out many people knowing it, but to try and kill a large group of maybe seventy to a hundred people, would have been a hard thing to cover up. The people of Jerusalem know why these guys where in town and if Herod had killed their whole party, it would have been obvious to the people he was afraid of the news these wise men were bringing. So why are there just three “wise” men. Well it of course has to do with the fact that only three gifts were mentioned as being brought to Jesus (gold, frankincense and myrrh.) I don’t know the validity of this story, but someone once told me that it was Martin Luther who made the first nativity set, as a way to share the story with little children. So he must have simplified the story so there weren’t as many pieces. This would help him tell the story quicker and be easier to carry around. Can you imagine your nativity set on the mantel of your fireplace with an additional ten Sheppard’s, a large seventy-piece caravan and a couple hundred (a host) angles? The mantel would fall off the wall. My problem with the nativity set is it takes away from the awe and majesty of what was truly taking place at the time of Jesus birth. This was definitely a huge event. I’m sure if Martin Luther were around today the nativity would look more like a 570 piece Lego set. Ugh, I hate putting those things together! So lets read this chapter of Jesus story and try not minimulize the grandeur of what was happening.

All I really need to know I learned from Toby Keith

2004-01-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

(This is my birthday post, it's my birthday, YEAHHH!!)

making a list is a good thing * go for a little walk *
look up an old lost friend * give your girl a little kiss *
don’t break your back for a million bucks you can’t
take to the grave * raise a little hell * put an extra
five in the plate at church this week *
you can’t compete with super stars (why would you
want to try) * money wont make you happy * aint nothing in the
world like youngens (getcha some) * you should always
seek justice * have a band of brothers * buy at least
one round for your men * and two for your horses *
sometimes you have to draw hard lines *
find a place to gather where every one feels accepted *
even if its in a bar (cause it won’t be in the church) *
revenge is sweet (sometimes) * don’t mess with the U S of A *
thank people that serve in our military * never smoke
weed with Willy * listening to others is good *
but it’s alright to talk about “me” (occasionally) *
you shouldn’t kiss like this, if you don’t mean it like that *
sometimes you need a little less talk *
and a lot more action *
Jesus had long hair * He liked to have a good time *
His friends where poor * He hung around with
non-religious people * the people that crucified Him had
something to hide * when He comes back He is
brining amazing grace * He laid His life down for us *
He’ll forgive you and adore you while He’s hanging
on your cross *

The War on Terrorism: Get the “F” out of our church (Editorial)

2004-01-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

(I wrote this about a year ago in the midst of a flurry of attacks on our ministry and my character. I still stand behind what I wrote. I need it published some where, because I never sent it to the terrorists that needed to read it.)

Terror Alert: High. What color is it these days? Orange? Red? Puce? Over the past months the Terror Alert system our country uses has become the fodder for late night talk show hosts and quips on family sit-coms. Certainly our nation is not gripped in fear. Or is it? I wish I had bought stock in 3M six months ago. Duct tape flies off the shelves at Wal*Mart quicker then the swim suit issue of Sports Illustrated. Honestly, are those saw horse barriers put up in front of the local oil company in my small town truly going to stop any kind of terrorist attack? On September 20th, 2001, just nine days after the most gruesome terrorist attacks the world has ever seen, President Bush addressed our nation during a joint session of Congress. In that address the president said this about how terrorist operate, “These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends.” The chief weapon of a terrorist is not a car bomb or a suicide plane it is fear.

Terrorism is defined by Webster as, “The state of being terrorized or the act of terrorizing; the use of intimidation to attain one’s goals or to advance one’s cause.” The terrorist succeeds not when the plane levels a skyscraper but when thousands are afraid to use our commercial airline system to travel. The terrorist wins when the people of this nation buy duct tape and sheets of plastic, when they certainly provide little, if any protection from a chemical attack. The terrorist rejoices when we trick ourselves into thinking that wooden saw horses are a suitable barrier against his car bomb. Secrecy is the gun that propels the bullet of fear. We live in fear because we neither know who the terrorists are or when and where they will attack next. Americans are accustom to fighting wars head on. Political parties and agendas aside, this country is winning its war on terror. There has not been another attack on our nation’s soil since 9/11. We are winning in part because President Bush in that address to the nation identified al Queda and Osama bin Laden as our enemy. In giving our enemy a face he reinsured our resolve as a nation to confront our fears and fight this war.

Our churches are also in a “War on Terrorism”. As leaders we hear the “chatter” of these small pockets of people that have been sewing seeds of discontent throughout our church body. Some of these pockets have chosen the “hit and run” method of terrorism by delivering emotional suicide bombs and then choosing to worship elsewhere. Although those attacks wound our church, the terrorists that have remained behind are doing far greater damage to the body. They do not attend Sunday worship but show up at committee meetings, use prayer cards in a hateful manner, have stopped giving to the general fund and do little to fulfill the “Great Commission” through our church. Their implements of terrorism include: snide, underhanded remarks at committee meetings, unsigned letters with ministry job postings elsewhere sent to staff members and slanderous gossip disguised in the name of “problem solving.” President Bush’s description of the terrorist he is fighting provided an eerie reflection of what we face in our bodies. He said, “We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.” The terrorists we fight have shown disrespect towards God’s word by their loveless actions against their brothers and sisters in Christ in an attempt to gain perceived power.

Our ability to over come the fear of terrorism can only be derived from a sense of Christ centered confidence. The kind of confidence Jesus instilled in his disciples the day he first sent them out on their own to do His ministry. Jesus’ pep talk to them out of Peterson’s The Message reads like this, “Don't be intimidated. Eventually everything is going to be out in the open, and everyone will know how things really are. So don't hesitate to go public now. Don't be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There's nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life--body and soul--in his hands.” It’s time we get the “F”, fear, out of our churches. We must not be afraid to identify these people for what they are and put them on notice that their behavior against Gods people will not be tolerated anymore. We can no longer function in God’s will as paralyzed servants, in fear of what others may think or say about the decisions we make to advance Gods Kingdom. We can no longer enable these people to build the walls around their Christian ghetto even higher. As leaders desiring God’s will to move His church forward we must embrace faith, hope and love. Embrace them with a Christ centered confidence and a healthy fear of God.

Christmas E-mail '03

2004-01-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

This past year the world of youth ministry lost one of its greatest warriors. On October 30th Mike Yaconelli, co-founder and owner of Youth Specialties (publisher of thousands of youth ministry resources) died at the age of 61 in car crash. If you are unfamiliar with whom Mike is you wouldn't have been able to tell him apart from the person that served you your double latte caramel macchiato at Starbucks this morning. Mike would have liked that. For those of us that have heard the calling to invest our lives into young people, Mike was a profound source of encouragement. Because of his bluntness with the truth, passion for reaching teenagers for Jesus with a “whatever the cost attitude” and with the ability to encourage others in that same direction; for Senior Pastors all over the world, Mike could be a profound pain in the backside.

I had the honor of speaking with Mike two years ago at the National Youth Workers Convention in Dallas. During our forty-minute conversation I found him to be both lovingly humble and confidently strong. These are the same characteristics I see in Jesus. But unlike Jesus, Mike wasn't perfect. The fact that he would be the first to admit this is what I admired about Mike the most. In a speech to youth workers Mike once said, "I hope you realize when Jesus comes, he comes to people like you and me. Who make mistakes. Who don't do it right. Who screw up. Who do the stuff that maybe other people wouldn't do who had more sense."

That's me. I mess up. I miss opportunities to empower the volunteers in my ministry so that they can be all God longs for them. I push people out of my life because I have a tendency to hold others in contempt. I snap at my children when trying to rush them out of the house because I'm late. I don't turn my socks right side out before I put them in the laundry basket. Worst of all I consistently fail to show my wife that she is the love of my life.

I can hear some of your thoughts now, "Thanks for sending me such a joy filled holiday email.”, “I guess Roger is having a blue Christmas.”, or “Do me a favor and take me off the list for next year." In Mike Yaconelli’s book Messy Spirituality, Mike makes a great point that our messes are God’s opportunities. So what better time of the year then Christmas to remind ourselves of the hope that can be found in our messiness?

Let’s break down the messy Christmas story found in Luke 2. To start, there was no Red Roof in Bethlehem. More than likely, Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem for the Roman census only to find every aunt, uncle and fourth cousin occupying all the rooms of Joseph’s ancestral home. The original manuscripts of the New Testament were written mostly in Greek. The English word “inn” found in scripture today was translated from the Greek word kataluma. Like most ancient languages, words had multiple meanings. The only other place we find this word used in scripture is in the descriptions of the Last Supper (Luke 22:11 and Mark 14:14). In both of these accounts, the word kataluma is used to describe a large “guest room” found in someone’s personal home. So, in Mary’s condition, why didn’t they make a place for her in the guest room? I’m sure if you have a pregnant relative come visit with you this holiday that your family will openly show concern for that mother to be. She will be given the most comfortable seat in the house and will be waited on hand and foot. Not so 2000 years ago. Mary was a woman. A very young woman. Even though she was pregnant and about ready to give birth, Mary did not hold any priority over the older men in the family to earn her a place in the kataluma.

So this is when they got sent to the stable? Not exactly. The word stable or barn is never mentioned in scripture. We would expect to find a manger in a barn or stable these days, but in the ancient world small amounts of flock animals were kept inside the home. They didn’t have refrigerators or freezers so the meat was kept fresh by keeping the animals alive until it was mealtime. By storing the animals in one of the ground floor rooms it protected them from the elements and theft. Also the heat produced by the animal dung would rise up through the floor to heat the second level living quarters. So, after traveling four or five days in the sun and having to stay in the nastiest place in the house, Mary finds herself getting ready to give birth to the savior of the world.

Just when Mary was thinking how this could get any worse some shepherds show up. These ragamuffins claimed they had been given the good news of the Kings’ birth by a host of angels. During this time shepherds were a marginalized people. Think of a job, the worst job you can possibly imagine doing for a living and that’s how people looked at the task of shepherding.

How do you think Mary was feeling at this point? Her relatives treated her like junk, she had to give birth to her baby in substandard conditions and now a bunch of Shepherds were hanging around gawking at her baby. One might feel bitter, angry and frustrated, but not Mary. Luke 2:19 describes her reaction like this, “. . . but Mary quietly treasured these things in her heart and thought about them often.” Engulfed in so much mess, all this young girl could think to do was to be humble.

Recently my family and I gathered around the TV to watch Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause 2. While watching this movie it struck me how incredibly lucky we all are that there is no Santa Claus and we aren’t relying on him to bring us presents. You see, the bad toy Santa was right, we have all been naughty and all deserve coal. None of us can make the “nice list” because at some point during the past year we have all fallen short of the glory of God. Mike Yaconelli said, “What landed Jesus on the cross was the preposterous idea that common, ordinary, broken, screwed-up people could be godly! What drove Jesus’ enemies crazy were his criticisms of the “perfect” religious people and his acceptance of the imperfect nonreligious people. The shocking implication of Jesus’ ministry is that anyone can be spiritual.” God’s gift to each of us is a department store gift wrappers worst nightmare. The truth about Jesus is not perfectly packaged in gold lame paper with a pretty red bow. The present of Jesus’ unconditional, forgiving love for us is wrapped in the most common, messy birth of a little boy and delivered to us through His brutal death on a cross. And the Good News is no matter how messy or broken we think we are; this present is available for us to open all year round.

Have a Messy Christmas and a Broken New Year!

Give it away, give it away, give it away now!

2004-01-15T13:41:00.000-08:00

Matthew 20:26,27 "But among you it should be quite different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must become your slave." (NLT)

There is a great quote form the movie Braveheart as William Wallace is trying to get Robert the Bruce to step up and become the leader he was destined to be. Wallace, desperately trying to motivate the Bruce to action, says, "Men don't follow titles, they follow courage." It takes little courage to sit behind a name plate these days. Most leadership positions people assume have a perceived entitlement to leadership. "I've earned this position and now you must submit to me because of my title." This leadership philosophy is widely used throughout the corporate world, the military world, the education community and sadly also in the arena of ministry as well. People tend to demand authority because they were either elected, nominated or given a title.

Jesus fully grasped how the world worked as shone in Matthew 20:25, "So Jesus got them together to settle things down. He said, "You've observed how godless rulers throw their weight around, how quickly a little power goes to their heads." (The Message) Who are our rulers today? Your boss? Your principal? Your Pastor? Your parents? We don't serve at the pleasure of kings anymore, but we do have a multitude of people we answer to. Jesus could see how in a position where a title was given there is a great chance for the abuse of power. Do the people that have "earthly" rule over you treat you well or do they "throw their weight around"? If you are in a position of authority over others, do love them or do you leverage them?

To be great leaders in the eyes of Heaven we must stop trying to use our positions of authority to leverage people or force them into doing what we want. We must become a slave to those we lead. A slave is completely subservient to their owner. Jesus wasn't talking about "prid pro quo" here. This form of leadership isn't calling us to do something for others, so that they will do something for us. Being a slave to someone else is doing what ever they need, whenever they need it. I have a tendency not to be a slave to my family like I should be. If my goal is to be the spiritual leader of my house then I should be a slave to their schedule, instead of them being slaves to mine. It really does pain me when Noah asks me to play with him, but I have something else that needs to be done at that exact moment he asks me. I tend to only read to Emily out of "The BFG" when there is nothing on TV I need to watch. Jamie still has a fish tank we bought her for Christmas, sitting in the box in her room. And my need to "decompress" from my day always supersedes Renee's need for intimacy with me.

We need to stop worrying what we "get" out of serving others and do it out of a love for a mighty God. Jesus himself said in Matthew 22:37-40, that the greatest commandment is to love God with everything you have and that a close second is to love others. My daughter Jamie says it best, "God first, others second and yourself last." She learned the phrase at camp, but I pray she sees it lived out in her home. The more we focus on God and others, the better leaders the Lord will allow us to be. Men don't follow titles, they follow courage. There is nothing more courages, in our times, then abdicating your position of power to become someone else's slave. Do we have the courage?

The house God built.

2004-01-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

I Corinthians 6:19 “Or don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself,”

After my last post I could hear it coming. “But, your body is a temple.” Okay, if our bodies are temples why are we the most overweight nation in the world? Why has it taken over two hundred years of American legislators to finally do something about the tobacco industry? Why are so many teenagers so stressed out that they have to take prescription drugs to cope with the world around them? And why is the church virtually ignoring the AIDS crisis in Africa that has gone beyond epidemic and is now being called “pandemic”?

Isn’t it a good and healthy thing when we take care of the body God has given us? Yes! Is this what Paul was talking about in I Corinthians 6:12-20? No!

Paul wrote these specific words to the church in Corinth because before he had come there with the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Corinthians liked to have sex. A lot of sex. In those days there was a widely held belief called Gnosticism. This is a belief that your body and your mind are separate. What you do to one doesn’t affect the other and vice a versa. We can relate this belief to a bumper sticker that reads, “If it feels good do it.” Before becoming Christians many Corinthians practiced the worship of Aphrodite. To worship this goddess, what you basically had to do was visit her temple and pay to have sex with one of the temple prostitutes. The reason Paul wrote these words was because after accepting Christ as their rescuer and leader the people in Corinth were still visiting the temple prostitutes. Because of this widely held Gnostic belief, having sex (the body) didn’t interfere with their spiritual life (the mind). Paul was letting these folks know that since they had a relationship with Jesus and now that the Holy Spirit had come to them, they had a new temple. And they were to treat it with love and respect.

The society in Corinth sounds a lot like ours. “Just do it.” “If it makes you happy.” It seemed when I was growing up as a teenager that guys where the “Gnostic” thinkers. The media portrayed guys in my generation of not caring about the emotional outcome of having pre-marital sex. We saw this in the TV shows and movies we watched or in the lyrics of classic music like Meat Loafs, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”. Something has dramatically changed over the past fifteen or so years. As I study pop-culture it has become more evident that the young woman of our society are thinking more like the Gnostics of old than ever before. The girls in our culture are much more sexually aggressive then in the past couple of decades. And I’m not just talking about making the first move with a guy by calling him on the phone or asking him out. It goes much deeper than that. Proof? I got three words for ya, “Girls Gone Wild.”

And don’t think for a minute this Gnostic attitude only applies to Spring Breakers and college students in the Greek system. It’s taking hold in our churches as well. Just last year my wife and I had a young engaged Christian couple in our home for dinner. In our small community this couple is looked up to and lauded over as the perfect Christian couple. The young ladies father was a prominent member of the pastoral community in our town. While we were getting to know the couple over dinner, I could see they did not have strong accountability in their lives and I asked them how they were doing with the “purity” issue in their relationship. After several moments of awkward silence they both spoke up about how they had been sexually active together for most of their relationship. My wife and I shared our brokenness about some things in our marriage and graciously offered to council them. A couple of weeks later, a relationship with my wife and I was soundly rejected by this couple. Did this couple wind up getting married? Yes. Will they have a long happy marriage? Heck, I don’t know. But just because you had the perfect wedding day doesn’t mean you will have a perfect marriage. I can say from personal experience that this young couple has taken scars into their marriage that will take years even decades to heal.

Paul was talking about sex. He was talking about the connection between the body and the mind. There are more and more studies being done about the emotional scars left on a women after she gets an abortion. And I’m sure that after the alcohol wears off and those girls see the videotape of themselves flashing for beads, that something inside them is going to feel a little less dignified. The misuse of your body sexually has an emotional price tag. It’s a price not worth paying.

(P.S. Just like we honor the Lords temple by putting up banners and making beautiful stained glass murals, I tattoo my body with things that will please the Lord.)

Tattoo U

2004-01-07T16:47:00.000-08:00

Leviticus 19:28 “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourself. I am the Lord.” (NIV)

In honor of my most recent body modification I will start out this blog with the scripture most Spiritual McCarthyites (those that shame and belittle others for having different theological beliefs then the mainstream evangelical western church) take way out of context when dealing with those whom have chosen to adorn their bodies with art.

Leviticus 19 is a call from God for his people of Israel to be holy. He asks this not as a favor but out of a sense of duty one would have of a King or ruler. (Lev. 19:2) Because God is holy, he asks the people that represent him to the entire world, to be the same. It’s like when you were young and your parents expected you to have good manors while you ate out for dinner. As a parent I can tell you, that request is all about me. I don’t want people thinking I am a bad parent because I haven’t taught my children how to behave. So I command my children to sit up straight, not talk with their mouths full and use their quite voice while at the dinner table.

The Israelites where an earthly reflection of who their mighty God was. So to set those apart as His followers, God gave Moses some rules for the Israelites to live by. One of the many mourning practices of the day was to cut yourself or tattoo a deceased loved ones name on your body. This was an outward sign, pride fully worn by the bearers to show the world they missed their loved one. Through God’s eyes death is an extension of life. Those that believe in Jesus to be their rescuer and leader will spend eternity with their maker. If this is true, why mourn? Why not rejoice? Yes, we physically miss that person and there might be a lot of pain from a close death near us, but God is rejoicing and wants us to as well.

The whole nineteenth chapter is full of does and don’ts for us to be Holy. Here are some of my favorites, see which ones you have failed on doing or not doing this week:

Do not lie. (verse 11)
Always judge your neighbors fairly. (verse 1)
Do not spread slanderous gossip among your people. (verse 16)
Keep my Sabbath days of rest and show reverence toward my sanctuary. (verse 30)
Do not trim off the hair on your temples or clip the edges of your beards. (verse 27)
Do not wear clothing woven from two different kinds of fabric. (verse 19)

Even a small tiny lie I tell to protect a friend is a lie. I categorize and pigeon whole people I see walking down the street not knowing a thing about them. Gossip! Eyes roll! When was the last time I kept the Sabbath seeing as how the biblical Sabbath runs from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown? Sunday is biblically not the Sabbath. I don’t know how many times I have gotten funny looks because I haven’t shaved in two or three days. I think every undershirt I own is made of a 50/50 blend. We all fall short of being as holy as God. That is why he is God and we are not.

I didn’t get my tattoos out of mourning the loss of a loved one, so I don’t see how getting a tattoo keeps me from being any more or less holy than a teacher that gossips with her students all day long or the person that has to eat a medium rare hamburger everyday.

What’s that old saying, “When you point a finger at some one you have three pointing back at you?” Leviticus 19 holds guidelines laid down for each of us to strive for while individually trying to become as holy as God. Not rules for us to interpret so we can try to hold others accountable to them. This chapter is just more evidence of how great the body of Christ could be if each of us concentrated on our own spiritual walks instead wasting our time judging others.