Month: May 2005

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episode iii review

episode iii part 1
i’ve now seen star wars episode iii: revenge of the sith twice (once this morning at 12:02 a.m. and once this afternoon at 2:00 p.m.) and i now feel like i can make a few comments concerning the movie.

  • it was a decent movie (much better than episode i and slightly better than episode ii) but it still doesn’t even come close to episodes iv and v (episode vi is too close to call in my opinion).
  • while impressive in technology and story aspects lucas stinks at dialogue. the worst scenes within the movie were when they stopped to talk. i laughed at almost every scene between padme and vader. lucas should never write a love story. it would simply be too cheesy. anytime lucas tried to add “depth” to the film it just sounded stupid. for instance read this dialouge: vader – “if your not for me … you’re my enemy!” obi wan – “only sith deal in absolutes!” hmmmm? is that an absolute that only sith deal in absolutes?
  • obi wan is “the man” of star wars – within the movies he defeats darth maul and darth vader while anakin/vader defeats dooku and the emperor (wtih help from from luke on the emperor).
  • watching a movie with a full theater that is really into a movie is much better than watching it with a crowd that is sort of in to it – last night people cheered and laughed out loud while this afternoon there simply wasn’t much involvement within the movie.

anyhow it was nice to see the story ended.
episode iii part 2

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a good night

sometimes you have services that suck and other times you have services that feel good. tonight’s service felt good. i won’t know wether GOD spoke through the service until later when i see if HE has worked in kids lives or not but i have to say that the service definitely felt good. i like services that go like that.

the night will continue to get better and better because i’m presently watching the episode of “24” that i had to video tape because of a garduation ceremony i needed to be at and then at 12:02 a.m. tonight i’m going to see “star wars episode iii: revenge of the sith“.

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the business of church

church marketing sucks: businessweek goes to church

church marketing sucks has a post on it right now from kevin d. hendricks concerning businessweek’s cover article on the business of church. in that article it is pointed out that the willow creek assocaition ranks among tthe top 5% of 250 major brands. since when isCHRIST’s church every be a marketing empire? since when is CHRIST’s bride supposed to be an organization with so much economic power?

the most telling thing to me is the title of the business week article is its title “earthly empires“. to quote the article:

So successful are some evangelicals that they’re opening up branches like so many new Home Depots (HD ) or Subways.

is this what the modern evangelical church looks like to those outside the church? does it look like we who are supposed to be focused on the things of GOD and HIS kingdom are instead building earthly empires? apparently businessweek thinks so. so much for following the meek and mild suffering servant. the whole thing saddens me.

my wife puts it this way – we CHRISTians are stupid people.

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graduation season

josh & megmeaghan posted the following comment on the blog earlier.

    oh my friend….you are not doing to well on posting are you now?…I beleive this is something you need to work on. So that is why i, Meaghan Myrick, am here to encourage you on your postiginess, so you can become again, my favorite blogger….So…Your doing great but put in a little more efffort! and Keep trying buddy! and Dont slow down! and Im sure your next post will be so totally awesominaciously grandaciously interesting! (i’ve editted some exclamation marks because they were doing something funky with my computer)

meaghan, i’m sorry i haven’t posted in a few days and i hope this post lives up to your expectations. thanks for the encouragement.

the only excuse i have for not blogging recently is that it’s graduation season. for me this basically means watching people whom i love walk from one end of the stage to the other. i’ve been to three different graduation ceremonies during the past week, wasn’t able to go to ea’s graduation because of the 5th grade retreat i was on with my oldest son (which was fun), and i’ll hit another graduation tonight. the positive side of all this is that i’ve been able to see some families whom i love accomplish the goal of reaching graduation with their children. that’s a great thing. the only negative has been that i haven’t been able to post much – which is probably not really negative at all.

thus far the most enjoyable graduation ceremony that i have been to was denham springs high school’s. the main reason for this was because it is the only graduation ceremony that had concession stands open for the service. i’ve been to many a graduation ceremony over 15 years of youth ministry and up until going to denham springs graduation this year i had never seen a concession stand open for a service. i love denham springs. they have the right idea. if you have to sit through a graduation service why not sit through it with a hot dog? in fact, i love this idea so much that when i go to parkview’s graduation tonight i might just bring myself some nachos for the evening.

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moving up in the world

audrey was on the elvis miniseries sunday night. you could only see half of her face but it was still her face that was at least half way visible. it would appear that we have our first celebrity that is actually connected with the youth ministry. that’s exciting even though i guess we now have to turn all snobby and such.

so starting from this point in time i am going to be more selective about who is allowed to read this blog – after all we have produced a celebrity now and we must have higher standards. so before you read this blog i would like for each of you to send me an email answering the following questions:

  • are you better looking than everyone else?
  • are you smarter than everyone else?
  • does everyone else want to be like you?
  • does everyone else’s parents like you more than they do their own kids?
  • do you smell nice even when you sweat?
  • does everyone else’s pet (dog, cat, hamster, etc.) like you better than it does its owner?
  • do your teachers give you good grades just because they think you should receive good grades automatically?
  • do you drive a better car or bicycle than everyone else?

i know these are hard standards but we are now a celebrity producing youth ministry and therefore we have to be careful. just send your answers to me and if you answer “yes” to all the questions i’ll direct you to a more suitable blog for your perfection. if you answer “no” to any of them then please feel welcome here – we’e your kind of people. i love being the youth minister at a church where our celebrity only gets half her face shown in the movie.

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wifi revolution

i am spending the next two days at a local retreat center for a school class retreat. the place is in the woods in between two small cities of about 1,800 and 4,000 people. each of those big, thriving metropolises are 15 to 20 miles away. basically we are in the boondocks. this translates to no cell phone coverage which is not really a bad thing except for the fact that i’m supposed to be on call this week. of course, the irony of this to me is that while i can’t be reached on my cell phone the retreat center campus is covered by wifi. thus i can surf the net in a place that i can’t even use my cell phone in. i think that’s pretty cool.

anyhow here’s the video from the first day of the retreat.

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judson

i’m presently at the judson retreat center (where we old our annual fall retreat – the JESUS project) for parkview elementary school’s 5th grade retreat. i’m am writing to say that they have now rigged the chapel with wifi. how cool is that? we have wireless internet in the chapel so we can now pull resources off the net while we are up here. sometimes i love technology.

i also need to say i love it when people can laugh at themselves. i’ve been walking around videoing kids imitating the principal and assistant principal to make a video for one of the worship services. the kids have nailed them. i started to load the video onto my computer for editting and the principal walked over to see what i was doing. she probably laughed harder at the kids imitating her than any of the kids will actually laugh tonight. she loved what they said. i like it when people can laugh at themselves.