nasa is putting a chip in the mars science laboratory rover (heading to mars in 2011) with everyone’s name in it who desires to be a part of the trip. so at least my name is going to mars. woohoo!
you can send you name by going here.
woot.com makes me laugh
happy birthday woot.com!
please, please send me a bag of crap! i just need the dow jones industrial average to end with a “0” and i will be the proud owner of said bag of crap.
excuses, excuses
first let me state something obvious – cousin’s sandwiches suck. some people around here like them but not a ton of people. of course, as the sign shows it is a lot easier to blame the economy for a shop going out of business than it is to blame one’s business model, product, or self. it’s always nicer to place the blame on someone or something else. it makes us feel good.
the same is true with CHRISTianity. it’s easier for us to say that the world is changing or people want a “cafeteria style” religion, etc., etc. than it is to maybe admit that sometimes we simple are doing a lousy job of presenting the gospel. we do like our excuses.
i don’t believe that the “product” we offer the world is a failure (i feel terrible to refer to JESUS as a product but it is merely an analogy). HE never fails but i do think that we fail in conveying HIS message to the world. sometimes we just need to admit when it is our fault and change our methods so as to convey the message of HIS love. rather than making excuses that demand that the world change so it can hear our message, we need to change to convey the always consistent CHRIST in ways that everyone will understand.
excuses may be easier but they don’t accomplish anything good.
rolling in it
with basset hounds it is always easy to determine when something disgusting has died and begun to rot in your yard. if the bassets are joyously rolling in it then it is probably a smell that you do not want to be near or have on them when they come back into the house.
sorry for not posting much recently. life has been a little busy around the terrell household with pam’s back surgery. it’s all good because i get to see the boys respond to helping out and we’ve had some wonderful friends/threads helping out (thanks guys). the report on pam at the moment is that she continues to be on the mend. she has a long road ahead of her in recovery. the nerve pain is gone but she can’t do much because of the surgery’s wound. she can lift the weight of a quart of milk and that is it. no bending, no reaching, etc. this means there is not much she can do other than lay on her side, use the bathroom, walk down stairs to sit up for 20 minutes or so, and then head back to bed. she has come up with some creative methods for teaching the first couple of weeks of her summer course at uwsp. anyhow if you have a second and think of sending her an email or starting an e-conversation with her i’m sure she would appreciate it.
SIDE NOTE – you know how ever family has some crazy uncle, aunt, dad, etc. that everyone says “don’t worry about him. that’s just crazy uncle eddy. he’s just that way”? you love that person, would do anything for her, but you don’t take much of what she says very seriously because the family understands that she doesn’t usually turn her brain on before she speaks. you get a good chuckle out of the absurdity of your uncle’s statements but you also explain to those around that he doesn’t speak for the family and he isn’t really a threat. know what i mean?
i sometimes wish there was a way of saying this to those not following CHRIST concerning some of our CHRISTian brothers and sisters. something like “don’t worry about him, that’s just cousin bob – we think he was dropped on his head when he was a kid.” something to acknowledge that we love a brother or sister as family while agreeing that what she is saying is nuts.
let me specify here that i’m not talking about the actually dangerous people. i’m not talking about the uncle that you wouldn’t leave your kids with. for example – fred phelps (i find it hard to believe that he is a family member – but that is up to GOD to decide) or pat robertson. a family is supposed to protect people from that type of evil. no i’m talking about family members that would be classified as “mostly harmless.”
btw, i’m “looking in the mirror” while i type this because most of the time i am probably the one this would need to be said about. “don’t worry about cousin robert. he just talks that way. we just nod, pass him some more bbq, and leave him in a corner while we do the real work of love”
a couple of photos that make me smirk
i thought i would share these two photos from last night at tapestry. the first is the cover of brad’s music tabs notebook. made me laugh to see tom selleck on it. the second is from the spontaneous game of wiffle ball that started after everything had been taken down and put up from last evening’s gathering. actually i’m not sure how spontaneous it really is when you bring a glove?
this third photo is from the hospital where pam had her pre-surgery mri this afternoon. this is by far the most buff JESUS i have ever seen. “meek and mild” my butt.
the wrong part of her back :)
tonight at tapestry i was telling everyone about pam’s back injury and the pending surgery. before i go any further i need to say that i am tired. as a result my mind isn’t working properly. now back to the story. i started to describe where the surgery was going to be. i told everyone that they would be operating on pam’s cervix.
which, of course, was a big surprise to pam when i told her about it. 😉
i'm too busy for that … really?
there is a big temptation for ministers to determine their value based on how busy our schedule is. if you hang out with ministers enough you’ll hear it. someone will say something about a t.v. show, movie, or book of fiction (these are just examples) and soon one of the ministers will respond with “i’m too busy to read fiction” (or watch t.v. movies, or go fishing, etc., etc.). i was once in a worship service when a minister claimed from the pulpit that he would compare his appointment book with anyone and prove that he was busier. this is a good thing?
the weekly small group study that pam and i belong to is going through “the life you’ve always wanted” by john ortberg. while i think the title and the cover of the book make it sound like an oprah book club item i still think that what ortberg says is fantastic. this past week’s chapter was on servanthood. in this chapter ortberg tells of a time when he was talking to a friend of his about how busy he was. his friend’s response was great, “why would you choose that life?” ortberg continued to try and explain how he didn’t have any choice in the matter but his friend kept asking why he would choose to be that busy.
it was a great point. most times, not always but most times, we choose to be busy for our own reasons. this is especially true for ministers. i know some ministers who i believe choose to be very busy because they feel more important when they are. yes, ministry can eat up a lot of time. yet i have an advantage that so many other people don’t have … i usually get to choose my schedule. if i work late because i have to be at something or i need to go on a chaplain ride-a-long or anything like that, no one begrudges me taking some time off during the day. that’s pretty much true for for every minister i know. it’s not true for most of the non-ministers i know.
it makes no sense for us to say that JESUS should be the ONE WHO determines our priorities and then choose to be so busy that we can’t be interrupted. JESUS didn’t choose to be that busy and therefore as followers of HIM we shouldn’t choose to be that way either.
here’s to choosing not to be busy.
ted style
i love presentation zen. it consistently has great info on making good presentations – which has a lot in common with preaching. today they posted on “ted style presentations.” it’s a good post. my favourite part is the detail of the “ted commandments”. the “commandments” are obvious within most all the presentations (which i think you should watch or listen to if you aren’t already). here they are:
1.thou shalt not simply trot out thy usual shtick.
2.thou shalt dream a great dream, or show forth a wondrous new thing, or share something thou hast never shared before.
3.thou shalt reveal thy curiosity and thy passion.
4.thou shalt tell a story.
5.thou shalt freely comment on the utterances of other speakers for the sake of blessed connection and exquisite controversy.
6.thou shalt not flaunt thine ego. be thou vulnerable. speak of thy failure as well as thy success.
7.thou shalt not sell from the stage: neither thy company, thy goods, thy writings, nor thy desperate need for funding; lest thou be cast aside into outer darkness.
8.thou shalt remember all the while: laughter is good.
9.thou shalt not read thy speech.
10.thou shalt not steal the time of them that follow thee.
pretty good stuff to keep in mind.
online ocr
as a church planter i am always looking for ways to do things without a traditional office. it is all the better when these methods don’t cost a great deal. tapestry is presently working on incorporating and part of the process involves developing a constitution. i9’ve asked several other churches if i could look at their constitution. everyone has been very friendly and helpful. one of the churches sent me their constitution in .jpg format (this is a graphic file). i’m not sure why you would save your constitution as a .jpg but i did now that in order to share this on google docs with the people helping me i was going to have to retype it or use ocr. that’s when i found ocr terminal. online free ocr work. woohoo!
i just thought i would post this for anyone else who might ever need it. it was quick, effective, and best of all free (for 30 pages a day at least – but i will never go over 30 pages in a single day).
training your eyes
today i had a great conversation with a thread concerning seeing GOD do things. this person, who is a great person, has recently expressed how he sometimes has doubts about GOD’s existence and wishes that he could see GOD do things “like everyone else.” well the discussion started off around welcoming him to the club of people with doubts. i have them and i know plenty of other people who do also. doubt doesn’t imply a lack of faith, sometimes it is a part of great faith. i know of people who never claim to have any doubts but i am not one of those people. if it wasn’t for those non-doubters i would probably suggest that doubt is necessary for faith. if there is no possibility of doubt then faith probably isn’t required.
anyhow we eventually got to the point of seeing GOD and i suggested what i usually recommend in such situations … start a daily journal of when you might have seen GOD or when you think you probably should have seen GOD.
“seeing” is something we have to train ourselves to do. it is true in all sorts of “seeing” situations. my sons can watch a skateboarding trick and tell me exactly how many spins the board has done, when all i see is a big blur. andy lickel (a.k.a. the fish whisper) can look at water and see fish all over the place when all i see is a bunch of greenish liquid. jim, my brother-n-law, sees numbers in a way that makes companies want to hire him; if i look at those same numbers i just get sleepy. clint barron can watch a state of the union address and tell me all sorts of political statements that were made and implied when all i am able to see is that the regular scheduled shows were pushed back. why is all this true? it’s because these people have trained themselves to see these things. they have focused their minds to the point that they are able to filter out certain elements and highlight others. due to their diligence and practice they “see” things that the rest of us just gloss over.
if we want to “see” GOD doing things we need to train our eyes to look for HIM. we need to spend some time during each of day considering where HE might have been, what HE might have been peeking behind, and what masks HE might have been wearing during our day. when we do this enough we will slowly train our eyes to “see” and we’ll probably be surprised at all the places we see GOD at work.