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Circus Church

I turned my back for one second Sunday morning during setup for Tapestry’s Sunday morning worship gathering and this was happening when I turned back around. I don’t think having a 2 year old sit on your shoulders while you play the cajon is a typical percussion method, but this seemed to work for Conor and El seems to be OK with the situation.

I know some churches have gone to some extremes in order to attract people to them. Lasers, lights, fog, and concerts. That’s not really the way that we do things but it is good to know that if things ever got really desperate we could always turn to this. Cirque de Soleil church. We’ll have to train Eric to play guitar standing on his head.

SIDE NOTE – If you are looking for a 2018 NCAA Men’s Basketball you are very welcome to join Tapestry’s. Here’s the link (sptapestry.mayhem.cbssports.com)

SIDE SIDE NOTE – I decided to setup my GoPro at Tapestry this past week to see how it would do for videoing the gathering. Conor saw it during setup and decided to turn it on. This is what I found on my GoPro last night when I looked at the recordings on it.

 

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Audio That Is Presently Floating My Boat

Here a few things (a song, a podcast, and an album) that I have been listening to that have been really floating my boat  recently.

The first is Weird Al Yankovic’s 5 minute compilation of songs from the musical Hamilton. It just makes me smile.

 

The next thing I have been listening to that I have really liked is this episode from the Hidden Brain podcast (an excellent podcast that I encourage you to listen to). The episode is “When Did Marriage Become So Hard?” The episode discusses changing cultural and historic understandings of the purpose of marriage. It is really good.

 

Finally, I have been reading “Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives” by Tim Harford which discusses Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies and as a result I have been stuck on Eno’s “Another Green World“. Mhmm so good.

 

If I am driving, walking Clive in the afternoon, or running there is a good chance I am listening to one of the above.

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Jalen Hurts Pays Up on His Bet with Charles Barkley

I am glad he paid up on his bet with Charles Barkley and I am VERY glad he paid up on the bet in the manner that he did. Awesome Jalen. Roll Tide!

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You Are So Good Looking

At the Place of Peace meal tonight I was repeatedly hit on by an 88 year old woman. I’m not sure that I would normally notice if someone was hitting on me but this nice lady grabbed me and told me I had to give her a hug and then told me twice that I was “so good looking”. I have since told Pam that she better treat me nice because I am now a hot commodity on the over 80 circuit.

SIDE NOTE – If you live in the Point area you should try to get by and hear the Scarabocchio Jazz Listening Sessions. Pam and I love them and go by every chance we can. The next one is March 21st.  The video below is just a 10 second clip from yesterday’s session that Pam, Adam, and I went enjoyed.

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Money & Marriage Inventories

Recently I have had the privileged of doing some sessions on marriage enrichment/relationship coaching at one of the companies for which I serve as a chaplain. These sessions are really just meant to be a taste with the goal of encouraging everyone to focus on doing intentional work on their relationships. One of my absolute favorite things to do as a minister is pre-marital counseling and one of the big topics I focus on with couples is how they view and deal with their finances as individuals and as a couple.

The pre-marital counseling that Pam and I went through really helped us to start out on a good foot in our marriage. One of the things that it helped us to consider was how money was viewed and used in both of our families of origin. The counseling helped us to get on the same page concerning how money would be viewed and used in our marriage. Pam and I have gone through easier and more difficult times financially, but never really disagreed on the “meaning” of money which has made how we handle money much easier.

Money can have different emotional values for different people. How much must you have in savings to feel secure? Is using a credit card ever an option? New or used? Eating out or eating at home? So many of the things we do with money have emotional value that we might not recognize and when two people have different associated emotional reactions to the same thing that can be a VERY big deal. Thankfully Pam and I were helped to start our marriage by discussing these issues. Therefore, I like to help others do the same thing.

Tomorrow during the coaching I am leading I will use a couple of modified inventories from Prepare-Enrich (a relationship inventory I use for pre-marital counseling) to help the people in each session consider how they and their significant other view and treat money. I thought I would post the two modified inventories here in case anyone wanted to look at them for themselves.

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4th Sunday of Lent Collaborative Message Prep

Here’s the Google Doc for our fourth week of message preparation collaboration during the Lenten Season. Basically I am asking you to look at the scripture passage for this week’s message and record any thoughts you have concerning the passage. You can also add any images or songs that for you fit with the passage. BTW I created a Spotify playlist of the songs that have been suggested for each week’s message. You can find that playlist here and you are welcome to add any songs to it that help you to connect to Christ during the Lenten season.

Here’s this week’s passage:

14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned,but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

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I’m All For Working The System But …

I regularly tell my boys to work the system. There is nothing wrong with taking full advantage of what is legally, morally, and ethically allowed. Working the system means playing within the rules and not purposely deceiving people. You just know how the system works and you play within the rules of the system as well as anyone can.

This is part of why I really enjoy the story of Elizabeth Swaney the American freeskier who made it on the Hungarian Winter Olympic Team. This CBS Sports article is titled “Meet Elizabeth Swaney, the American skier who scammed her way to the Olympics“, but I disagree with the thought that she “scammed her way to the Olympics.” Swaney read the rules and figure out a way to use the rules to her advantage. She didn’t deceive anyone. She just realized that if she went to every credited event possible and simply didn’t crash, then she would have enough points to qualify for the Olympics. I like working the system like that. That’s smart, not deceptive.

What Clint Arthur has done for people is an entirely different sort of thing. You can read this Wall Street Journal article for more details. The cliff notes of the article are that the “screenwriter, former taxi driver and organic-butter salesman” Clint Arthur rented rooms at Harvard Business School and West Point for events interested people could pay him $5,000 to $25,000 to “invite” them to lecture at these events. The “invitees” could then advertise to that they have been invited to lecture at those schools, and thus gain more repsct. This isn’t finding a way to use the rules to your advantage (i.e. working the system), but purposefully trying to deceive others for your own advantage.

This works to Arthur’s client’s advantage by giving them unearned gravitas. To quote the article:

That helps his clients stand out amid hundreds of thousands of financial advisers offering similar services whose quality is hard for consumers to distinguish.

“In order for a person to give you a lot of money,” Mr. Arthur said in an interview, “they must admire you, like you and trust you.”

There’s nothing there to respect. You didn’t teach at Harvard Business School, you paid someone to let you speak at their fake “business coaching” event that just so happened to be at Harvard instead of a Super 8. This is really not cool. It is a worse version of “diploma mills.” Come on people, if you want the credit do the work.

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This Is How I Husband

How do I husband (“husband” can be a verb, right?)? Well I get tickets for Pamela and me to go see Huey Lewis and the News, as well as Brett Michaels (who neither of us care about), and Night Ranger (who my high school self would have been excited about). Now if Bob Marley and Joe Strummer (so the Clash could reunite) could be resurrected and the Police get back together then Pam could buy me tickets for a concert I would love to go to.

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3rd Sunday of Lent Collaborative Message Prep

This Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Lent so here is the link for Google Doc file that I have setup for my preparation. If you are up for it please consider going by the Doc, reading the scripture, and writing down your thoughts in the Doc. I would appreciate if you mark your thoughts with your name somehow, but you don’t have to do that. You are welcome to write anonymously.

For the 3rd Sunday of Lent we are reading John 3:13-22.

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.