Tony Dungy @ the National Youth Ministry Conference

We had the privilege of having Tony Dungy as our speaker tonight. Here are some notes from Coach Dungy's talk:

"The job we do is not nearly as important as the job you do. You have the most important job in America. And I'm not just saying that."

The design of God for the faith to be passed down in the family from generation to generation is breaking down and that's going to take a toll on us. (see end of Joshua to first few chapters of Judges)

About 4/5 incoming players grew up in 1 parent homes. Who, then, influences these kids? Typically teachers and coaches.

(1) Who reaches the non-athletes?
(2) Who's helping these kids spiritually?

Favorite Scripture: 'What does it profit a man to gain the whole word but forfeit his own soul' -Jesus

First coaching assignment: Help these guys get better, on the field and off the field.

Something we have in common: there will be some losses. And it might be devastating. Some players develop quickly like Joseph Addai and Tony Gonzalez. Other players take painstaking effort like Trent Dilfer in Tampa. Some players develop slowly over time.

Advice (same for us as when he started coaching):
(1) Learn your craft.
(2) Connect. Make it personal, be yourself. Take a personal interest in your people.
(3) Recharge.
a. Rely on Christ. As hard as we work it's not us but God that does the work through us.
b. Stay in the Scriptures
c. Trust the Lord when you experience those setbacks. And many times those setbacks allow to encourage others.
d. "Forget what's behind and focus on what's ahead"

Super Bowl Parties Are Legal!

No worries about getting sued. Yeah.

CLICK HERE

For those of y'all who missed the whole shenanigans last year, apparently watching the Super Bowl on a screen larger than 55 inches in public, that is, a church, and I suppose anywhere else with a large screen, was illegal.

Bad PR for the NFL for sure. So much so that they have apparently reneged and it is now safe again to do what we all did anyway. Have Super Bowl Parties.

Quit now or become a micro-expert

I love Seth Godin's stuff, particularly his little book Purple Cow. This is particularly for real estate folks but I'm banking that anyone who would read this blog is intelligent enough to transfer the principles to music, church, non-profit, teaching, construction, paper delivery, website development or tchotchke hawking.

CLICK HERE

Cutest. Kids. Ever.

of course I am biased.

John Piper is Bad

Love John Piper. Appreciate Michael Jackson but in all honesty am completely freaked out by him.



(HT: Jerry)

I have 2 different socks on today. Unintentionally. Life is good.

Thinking of going veggie? Think no more...

We've all heard about the beef recall. We ate veggie chili last night. Good thing.

I'm not a freak animal rights guy or really anti-meat either but my goodness...If you want to be repulsed by meat watch these videos. Ugh. I might go back to being a vegetarian.

CLICK HERE for a disturbing video about the recall and HERE for the classic "Meet Your Meat"

(HT: Reitano)

Can't stinkin' wait...

Song of the Week

One of the best songs ever by possibly the best pop vocalist ever...

12 Cupid.mp3

Meka's Got a Brand New Car

Free stuff is cool. Thanks to Deb Ruehlman for hooking us up with a sweet new to us, used ride for the Mekster.

Song of the Week // Ash Wednesday

In honor of today, here's my song of the week. Thanks to Scotty for introducing me to Elvis Perkins.

07 Ash Wednesday.mp3

Photograph Roundup

Some random photos from the last few months...

How to say the dog's name

Here was our conversation @ the dinner table tonight over chicken soup:

Me & Cheryl: "Meka, say Dylan."
Meka: "Nah." (That's how she says Dylan)
Me & Cheryl: "Say Dil"
Meka: "Dil"
Me & Cheryl: "Say Lin"
Meka: "Lin"
Me & Cheryl: "Say Dil-lan"
Meka: "Nah."

Laugh & repeat...

The Gospel According to Starbucks

Seems like this blog discusses coffee quite a bit which just reflects on the fact that we love our black juice. My coffee fervor is well known, so much so that one of the students in the student ministry purchased a book for me for Christmas called The Gospel According to Starbucks: Living with a Grande Passion by Leonard Sweet. I have to confess that I am more than sick of any book title including "The Gospel according to." It's really inaccurate and definitely trite.

That being said, Leonard Sweet has been one of my favorite writers and thinkers primarily because he frames conversations of church and faith in unchurchy terms and different metaphors. He loves the metaphor, he loves linking the ancient with the current and the future.

This book is a quick read and might not be as good as some of his previous books but the thing I really did enjoy about it was a lot of the coffee history and facts.

The main premise is that the spiritual experience needs to be EPIC: Experiential, Participatory, Image-rich & Connecting. Here's some quotes & highlights:

Of course, coffee consumption in USAmerica pales in comparison to soft drinks (70 percent of which are carbonated). Soda pop and other such beverages add up to 574 cans for every man, woman and child. But unlike soda's sugar high, java jolts are actually good for you. Historically, physicians have been of two minds about caffeine. When they were not warning of its harmful effects, they were prescribing coffee for healthful impact on an astounding variety of diseases - from kidney stones and gout to smallpox, measles, and coughs. Now that sophisticated studies are being conducted to find out the real impact of caffeine, it seems the harder researchers work to detect the bad things coffee does to you, the more they unearth coffee's health benefits.
It is known, for instance, that coffee delivers more health-giving antioxidants to our diet than fruit, vegetables and nuts. At six cups a day and under, coffee reduces your chances of getting Parkinson's disease, liver and colon cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, Type 2 diabetes and, if you are a fast metabolizer, heart disease. As a bonus, coffee improves male fertility. Caffeine can also protect you against skin cancer - but you'd have to smear it on your body for it to work.

The Bible is right. You can't live by bread alone. You need apple butter on your bread, you need coffee in your cup, and you need a friend.

Coffee talk makes the best God talk.

Jesus, while not a coffee drinker, modeled the life of faith as both a consuming philosophy and a daily practice - a full-life engagement. He showed us that it's a life in which God is as immediate, available, and real as a steaming cup of coffee first thing in the morning.

...the cup of coffee you enjoy in the morning is much closer to a chalice of communion wine than you realize.

The Bible is less a book about how people thought about God than it is a book about the religious experiences of individuals and communities. Experience is the engine room of the biblical and spiritual enterprise.

If faith is not both an engagement and an experience, then it's little more than a good idea. If faith is not beautiful in its practice, then it can easily devolve into an argument and a polemic.

Authenticity is not about being more relevant but about being more Jesus.

Design is no longer optional or just an add on. To qualify for a hearing, the church must convert to beauty and learn the narrative of aesthetics that constitutes the Grand Design. This is not a 'designer spirituality,' but a spirituality of Grand Design.

Beauty is a soul bender. As blemished as we are, we all can be beauty spots for God.

The gospel of Jesus never promises us comfort. When did Jesus get treated fairly? Fair is a fairy tale (and not a very exciting one).

Coffee is a communal drink, the Baptist beer. Coffee connects people, and it helps people connect. Far from the dulling effects of alcohol, the other traditional communal beverage, coffee sharpens our wits. Even decaf has a way of opening our eyes to the day, to what's going on around us. If coffee is a civilizing drink, it's also a clarifying drink. It's easier to think, to ponder, to consider and reconsider with a cup of coffee in hand. That's why coffee and rational discourse have always gone together: coffee sharpens wits, clears minds, and enhances the power of connections.

If the church had known what business it was really in (the connection business), it would have said to this culture: 'Let us be your front porch.' But the church has divested itself of the connection business in order to master the principle business, the proposition business, and the being right business. Its school of thought is now a school of ought. The church is by and large no longer in the relationship business.

Sickos...

So...we're pretty much all sick. I have had a fever for about the last 5 or 6 days which translates into bronchitis with a possibility of a touch of pneumonia. I'm on the antibiotics now so that should help.

Cheryl's got the gunk too. She's on the the antibiotics.

Meka's had a cough since Christmas.

Poor little Eden's got the cough too. It's heartbreaking and cute when she coughs.

Ugh...

My Thoughts on the Super Bowl...

Good.

the wold accordian to sabrina

sabrina's got a brand new bag

and that bag is...

polka?

yep, if anyone needs an accordian or a banjo on their records, sabrina is hoping to be proficient on both sooner than later. i am hoping to see her take banjordian music to the heights of rock n' roll in the '60's. or at least, you know, to the heights of the keytar.

Dylan Hears a Who!

Found this while searching the interweb for stuff for my message on Sunday. Pretty amusing. Dr. Seuss' folks are/were pretty upset about the whole thing. Still trying to figure out how to download the cuts.

I'm not much for knock offs but this is pretty amusing.

UPDATE: more backstory HERE @ salon.com

UPDATE: I took the tracks down for fear of retribution from either Dr. Seuss' lawyers or his ghost.

One Buck Cup @ the Buck

Yeah buddy! This would be SWEET for us manly and authentic black coffee drinkers! Bringing the 'short' cup back. But for a buck? Yeah. I rarely get to the bottom of a Grande anyway. The Tall is about right and the Venti, let's be honest, it sounds communist AND it's ginormous. It's probably easy to drink a 20 oz. skinny, double extra vanilla, one less shot crappaccino in about 17 seconds but to enjoy a BLACK coffee...THAT is where it's at.

CLICK HERE for the NPR Marketplace Story

Some Stuff from Reading

PARADOXES
O changeless God,
Under the conviction of thy Spirit I learn that the more I do, the worse I am,
the more I know, the less I know,
the more holiness I have, the more sinful I am,
the more I love, the more there is to love.
O wretched man that I am!
O Lord, I have a wild heart, and cannot stand before thee;
I am like a bird before man.
How little I love thy truth and ways!
I neglect prayer, by thinking I have prayed enough and earnestly,
by knowing thou hast saved my soul.
Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite,
who sins more safely because grace abounds,
who tells his lusts that Christ's blood cleaseth them,
who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell, for he is saved,
who loves evangelical preaching, churches, Christians, but lives unholily.
My mind is a bucket without a bottom, with no spiritual understanding,
no desire for the Lord's Day, ever learning but never reaching the truth,
always at the gospel well but never holding water.
My conscience is without conviction or contrition, with nothing to repent of.
My will is without power of decision or resolution.
My heart is without affection, and full of leaks.
My memory has no retention, so I forget easily the lessons learned,
and thy truths seep away.
Give me broken heart that yet carries home the water of grace.
~from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions


"Becoming nothing in this world is the condition for becoming something in the other world." ~Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

I found this in the online white pages...

When searching for our former dentist:

Gay Jason DMD
934 Richmond Road, Irvine, KY 40336

Always Christmas in Colbertica

Thanks to Stephen Hendricks for the link.

grandmothers on global warming

i think my favorite quote over the holidays came from the most quotable woman i know.

nana: "how has the weather been in nashville, dear?"

me: "kind of all over the place. unseasonably warm or unseasonably cold - global warming and whatnot."

nana: "oh, global warming has done just wuuuunderful things to michigan! we have had the most looooovely fall that i can remember!"


she is the greatest!!!

what do YOU do to electronic mail?

I heard Neal Conan on NPR's Talk of the Nation ask listeners to "zap" him an email & I started musing how you can do almost anything to an email. If you're a gmail user you can even Google your email. Which is different than googling yourself, which still sounds somehow inappropriate to me. What do you do to your email? Leave it in the comments. Here are some options:
-send
-shoot
-zip
-fire
-throw
-buzz
-draft

Dwight on Spelling

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