Month: October 2006

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salesmen are supposed to sell

until recently with his retirement my dad was a salesman. ironically the “hobby” that he has developed over the past few years to keep him busy during his retirement is selling used cars. like i said he is a salesman. though i never heard my dad say the title of the post i still learned it from him through being aroudn his business. by watching him i learned that the purpose of a sales person is to sale a product. you do it ethically. you do it because you believe in the product. you do it because you believe that your product really is better for your customer than someone else’s product. still though your purpose is to sale the product. if you can’t sale the product because you’re too worried about your image or too worried about what you might have to do to sale the product (i.e. go out and do a demonstration of the product at 10 p.m. or show the maintence personnel how to use the product, etc.) then you are not going to be a very good sales person.

the reason i say this is because i was dissappointed today. every 4 weeks or so i do the chapel for our preschool. today was one of those days. today i was supposed to talk about how GOD knows and loves us for who we really are. the problem as that i was speaking to 150 4-5 year olds. 4 & 5 year olds are not kown for their ability to understand and remember tough messages. still i figure the purpose of a preacher is to CONVEY truth, not just say true things. i’m supposed to help other people understand the good news of JESUS. if i simply speak the gospel and the people i am speaking with don’t understand what i am saying then i have failed. so if i don’t convey the truth in a manner that those listening can understand then then i have not preformed a very good job. so i decided to use the fact that most of these kids will be wearing costumes tonight to help them to understand that GOD knows who they really are on the inside. so i purchased an elvis halloween costume and did my message in it while slowing removing parts of it to show who i really am. the kids loved it. the teachers loved it. some of the leadership said it was the best chapel they had ever had.

now i will be the first to admit that having the costume was fun. it was fun to see people thrown off and confused when i walked down the hall. it was fun to see my fellow ministers laugh. when i was talking with one of my fellow ministers about the costume they said “i could never do that, i’m afraid no one would ever take me seriously anymore.” of course, this is also why the 4 & 5 year olds squirm and never remember anything when he does their chapel.

the purpose of a preacher is to convey the truth of the good news of JESUS CHRIST. nothing else matters compared to that.

[Listening to: Ants Marching – Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds – Live at Luther College (disc 2) (5:26)]
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random thoughts while waiting for the rush of students

parkview school is about to dismiss for the day and thus a swarm of students are about to run into my study. i’m not complaining about this. afterall, these kids are some of the ones that are the purpose of my job. i just realize that i can’t do anything that requires concentration during this time. so now i’m wasting 10 minutes until they get out and the chaos ensues.

so here are a few random thoughts

  • thanks to my plea and a similar plea by my wife i now have two portrait shoots to practice on. cool. i get to try new things. i like that.
  • thanks to laura p. i’ve been asked to speak at a college retreat for zoar baptist. you guys probably don’t know this but speaking a another church is “gravy” for a minister. all the real ministry takes place with you guys. you know if what i say and do are real. everything that i will talk about with zoar will have gone through the filter of your ears. i’ll know if it connected or not based on how you responded. glen, the college minister at zoar, has to do all the hard work. i just walk in there and talk for a little while. like i said it’s gravy.
  • running in cold weather is one of the greatest things ever. i ran 10.4 miles sunday night and barely broke a sweat.
  • i miss snow. a friend has been blogging about snow and it’s made me miss it.
  • if some of you want to help sunday night at the fall festival we could use it. the youth are doing a dunking booth and serving food to raise money for nicaragua.
  • i love ron tyndal, the counselor at our church. he is ine of the greatest people ever.

okay, the rush is about to happen so i’ll end my random thoughts.

my run for the day
distance – 3.0 miles
total time – 28:45
pace – 9:32/mile

[Listening to: Clocks – Coldplay – A Rush Of Blood To The Head (5:09)]
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the chikcen biscuit

i found out this week that pam and the boys had never actually tasted a chick-fil-a chicken biscuit. i felt as thogh i had failed as a husband and a father. so this morning i corrected this problem. early in the morning while taking adam to school (noah was off school today because of a parent/teacher conference) we went to chick-fil-a and grab a chicken biscuit for pam, noah, and i. the sad thing is that try as i might i could not convince adam to try that small piece of deep fried joy called a chicken biscuit – he settled for hash browns. in the end i was only able to truly convert one of my family members. noah now swears that a chicken biscuit is a piece of heaven that has fried and wrapped in tin foil. pam on the other hand was quite as moved by the awe of the chicken biscuit. she thought it was good but that was about it.

she’s still a wonderful person even though i now know that her taste buds seem to be inaccurate.

my run for the day
distance – 4.8 miles
total time – 46:19
pace – 9:38/mile

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google reader

i do not swap products easily. i need to be very brand loyal. if i find a new program that does something well i will stick with it and try to avoid swapping to something else (i.e my hatred over the downfall of wordperfect within the business world – but hopefully that will change in the future). with all of the above said i am going to take a test run with google reader. i am a bloglines user but i have lately read so much about google reader that i figure i will give it a try. i’ll let you know how things go.

my run for the day
distance – 4.9 miles
total time – 50:52
pace – 10:22/mile

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help me help you

i’m going to use the blog to beg a little. i really want to get better at portrait photography and the only way i know to do that is to practice and have other people critique what i do. this iis where the begging comes into play. i need to take photos … lots of them. in order to do this i need willing models. some of you need senior protraits and other such photos. if you are up for helping a brother out let me take your photos for free. if you like the images then you’ve got images that you can have printed and you come out great. if you don’t like them images then i get to learn why and you can use whoever you were going to use anyway. at worst you lose an hour or two. it’s a win/win situation.

SIDE NOTE – sorry austins i can’t afford to travel down to take your photos. sorry, i would love to because we miss you guys (and all of us are very proud of you).

SIDE SIDE NOTE – weekend at bernie’s has to be among the 50 worst movies ever made. i feel dumber for having spent an hour and a half watching it.

SIDE SIDE SIDE NOTE – basset hounds were not created for running. montana did not respond real well to running with me and adam today. it’s not real easy to run while you are dragging 60 pounds of basset hound behind you.

my run for the day
distance – 3.0 miles
total time – 26:46
pace – 8:55/mile

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nes

i know this is useless but i found i on lifehacker while i was working on some stuff for the JESUS project. vnes hosts all sorts of old nes games. it’s the old original code so the game is the exact same as the original thing because, well, it’s the original thing. while i was on the phone i was able to play 1942. that makes a boring conversation better.

[Listening to: Pass Me Not – Robbie Seay Band – Ten Thousand Charms (3:53)]