MacItaly!

MacDonalds launched a new product just for Italy...a MacItaly sandwich!

Confederate

Sweet bike filled with carbon fiber. I just checked the price-tag.....$100,000!!

3 on a couch!

Fruit of the Spirit

Sunday starts a new preaching series on Galatians 5:22,23 The Fruit of the Spirit. I have never preached a longer series on just two verses. But these are pretty dense verses, summarizing those nine qualities that should define us and give evidence to what actually lives in us.

The axiom that troubles me is: fruits define the tree. What fruit defines me? What would those closest to you say is the defining fruit in your life? Do we even want to ask?

Confirmation on worship

Pastor as Hunter or Farmer?

Seth Godin wrote a piece on the marketplace today that I thought was a good discussion starter for pastors. It described two types of people: hunters and farmers. All of us who have studied basic anthropology and the story of the people of Israel know how hard it is to shift from nomadic to agrarian, from wandering to stable.

What kind of pastor are you: a hunter or a farmer:

Some ways to think about this:

• George Clooney (in Up in the Air) and James Bond are both fictional hunters. Give them a desk job and they freak out.
• Farmers don't dislike technology. They dislike failure. Technology that works is a boon.
• Hunters are in sync with Google, a hunting site, farmers like Facebook.
• When you promote a first-rate hunting salesperson to internal sales management, be prepared for failure.
• Farmers prefer productive meetings, hunters want to simply try stuff and see what happens.
• Warren Buffet is a farmer. So is Bill Gates. Mark Cuban is a hunter.
• Hunters want a high-stakes mission, farmers want to avoid epic failure.
• Trade shows are designed to entrance hunters, yet all too often, the booths are staffed with farmers.
• The last hundred years of our economy favored smart farmers. It seems as though the next hundred are going to belong to the persistent hunters able to stick with it for the long haul.
• A hunter will often buy something merely because it is difficult to acquire.
• One of the paradoxes of venture capital is that it takes a hunter to get the investment and a farmer to patiently make the business work.
• A farmer often relies on other farmers in her peer group to be sure a purchase is riskless.

Laundry Ministry!isc?

Santa Barbara has a lot of homeless people. MCC's Pastor for Gospel Action, Jon Lemmond, has been connecting with local ministries working with the homeless. One of the consequences of being homeless is that your clothes are dirty and you develop a distinct smell....not a nice one.

In his capacity to discover ministries, Jon just discovered Laundry Love, which focusses on using laundromats for specific hours to clean the clothes of the homeless. How cool is that? Sounds kind of like something Jesus would do.

Pastoral Care 101: return phone calls

I overheard a conversation recently about a pastor who was described in one sentence: "He's the one who never returns phone calls." Ouch! I mentioned that observation to some friends, both pastors and teachers and there was a similar refrain: this generation does not think returning phone calls is valuable.

When I began ministry in 1980 I had a rotary phone and a secretary who answered the church phone and left pink "return call" slips taped to my door with the name, number and topic I needed to call back about. Then voice mail came to the church with the flashing red light that meant waiting voice mails. That became part of "office hygiene" when I arrived in the morning, after lunch and before I left in the evening: unpack and answer voice-mails. Then came the personal cell phones, but the routine was the same: respond to all voice mails. But I observed a growing phenomena: people would look at their phone face as a call came in and then and there determine whether to answer it and return it. Now the best way (notice I said "now") is to text someone. That seems to generate a better response time than leaving a voice-mail.

Some of this is plain sociology. As we are deluged with incoming data, we sift and sort it appropriately. The sheer volume of emails I receive today has grown year by year. And a lot of it is junk.

But here's the pastoral concern: do congregants have a right to expect us to return their calls? I would argue that the only answer Jesus would give is YES. Seminaries and supervisors should teach pastors in training that all calls should be returned as a common courtesy within the day they were received. What do you think?

Mixed Martial Arts: Go Team Cho!

In a zany attempt to reach a young male audience and to baptize the culture of brutality, today's New York Times has an article about a growing number of evangelical churches who sponsor and legitimize mixed martial arts as a way of reaching young men who are turned off by the "feminization" of the church. They cite pastors who say that Jesus was a "fighter" for what was right which allows them to bloody each other with their fists and feet!

Then, midway in the article our own Eugene Cho is quoted as an opposing voice, saying that he does not worship a Jesus who beats people up! Yeah Eugene!

What this article shows is the weak theological underbelly of evangelical attempts to evangelize with the culture, but getting consumed by the culture instead of transforming it. We should commend the intention, but reject the product. Go Team Cho!

Oooops!

Midwinter Reflections

The Midwinter Conference has been a fixed event in my life before I was a pastor. My dad was a regular attendee and would offer me free lodging with him and his roommate whenever I could attend in Chicago. Now I've been going for 30 years pretty regularly. The conference has changed in size, venue and musical style over the decades, as it should.

A friend and colleague, John Notehelfer wrote some thoughts down about his experience this year that struck me profoundly. I asked his permission to cut and paste them here and he gave it to me. Here they are:

MY DAYS AT THE MIDWINTER CONFERENCE – 2010

Experiencing “Midwinter” in Colorado

“Midwinter” – my season in life and ministry

Feeling strangely alone in a crowd.

Colleagues who mentored me - many not here,

Some gone to be with the Lord.

Colleagues I mentored –

Too busy to hang around – to connect.

Strange emotions, having passed the baton

To those who now lead

Why in ministry acquaintances are so many

Lasting friendships so few?

Wondering if relationships are only “useful”

While truly needed;

Forgotten and passed over

Once tasks and calling no longer serve as the glue.

What lingers as I am flying home…….

I am now becoming part of that cloud of witnesses

Watching others run their lap;

Truly in awe of what I have seen the Lord doing

In and through the ECC over the 50 years I have now served.

Rejoicing in spite of my strange aloneness

To be part of the organic, living BODY of Christ;

Always picking up and responding to the promptings of the HEAD;

Realizing anew that the cells in any body constantly replace each other

For the body to stay vibrantly alive and renewed in health.

“Midwinter” always precedes “Spring time resurrections” —

Generations give way… to the next …and the next.

Aging means a lot of letting go,

Being once more eternally thankful – and “Yes” –

Experiencing anew that in Christ I am really never, ever alone….

You, I, all of us – never alone in the crowd!! Yes!! Yes!!

John 16:4b-15

When life changes, we look for direction. In John 16 Jesus promised the disciples and us that the promised Holy Spirit would witness, convict and guide us through times of change into all truth. Pretty cool!

Surprise or Reality?

Seth Godin today wrote an interesting piece on a cafe in Japan called Ogori where a customer gets what the person in front of him ordered and paid for, and who orders and pays for what the person next in line will be getting.

Does that sort adventurous eating intrigue you or scare you away? I proposed that idea as a student ministries event some years ago, and was soundly and instantly rejected. The students I was with were too food-fussy to allow anyone to choose food for them.

But isn't the on-the-ground reality that my life-choices do impact those who come next in line? The way I choose to spend my money and use the environment have a direct impact on my children and grandchildren. The way I choose to exercise leadership in the church as its pastor now has a direct consequence on my successor and future church leaders. We all need to be aware of who is down-stream from us.

Carter Crocket makes the news

Carter Crocket member of MCC and now co-partner with two other men called "Karisimbi Business Partners" based in Rwanda is making news these days.

After the storm

The storms of last week made a major impact on our landscape, especially our seascape. The beach sand has been was down to the rocks and the wreckage of boats remind us of the power of unrelenting waves.

Today was warm and sunny with slight waves, so I went for a long walk. The waters are still too dirty to swim in yet. Just down the beach from where I normally swim was this big hulk of a boat, wrecked. Its hull torn open at the stern and bow. Once a source of joy and pleasure for fishing and cruising, it's now an eyesore needing to be demolished and removed. When the storms come, they do damage.