In Progress...

So as you (should) know by now, we are helping to put on a VALENTINES BANQUET for the church on February 13th.

I would like to shoot a promo video to show on a Sunday morning in January and this is where I NEED YOUR HELP... I need some people to be a part of this video... there are no lines to memorize, just small parts to play...

If your interested... let me know!

Labels: Fun, Future Plans

WHO IS YOUR ROLE MODEL FOR THE COMING YEAR?

Try it without looking at the answers……

1) Pick your favorite number between 1-9

2) Multiply by 3 then

3) Add 3, then again Multiply by 3 (I’ll wait while you get the calculator)

4) You’ll get a 2 or 3 digit number

5) Add the digits together

Now Scroll down …………..
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> Now with that number see who your ROLE MODEL is from the list below:
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1. Albert Einstein

2. Nelson Mandela

3. Abraham Lincoln

4. Helen Keller

5. Bill Gates

6. Mahatmas Gandhi

7. George Clooney

8. Thomas Edison

9. Josh Vaughn

10. Ronald Reagan

I know….I just have that effect on people….one day you too can be like me…. :-) Believe it!

P.S.: Stop picking different numbers. I am your idol, just deal with it!!!!

Labels: Fun

Labels: Media, Team Blog

Labels: Fun, Media

From iPhone.

After the YOUTH SERVICE on Sunday Night, we will be having a Christmas COFFEE HOUSE in the Youth Building from 7:30-9:00pm.

There will be games and music, and a lot of people to hang out with.

See You There!

Labels: Future Plans

Labels: Media, Teaching Series

You really have to be careful out there this holiday season... ugly Christmas sweaters are everywhere!

Labels: Fun, Media

Ninja Stars and Candles - Remix #176. Giving open flames to kids on Christmas Eve.

Imagine if one night a year, your church held a special service and when you walked in, they gave you a Ninja Throwing Star. That would be a nightmare right? Just throwing stars stuck in hymnals and Bibles and legs as far as the eye could see. It would be a bloody mess. But it's not that different from what a lot of churches do on Christmas Eve when they give everyone hand flames.

Singing a few songs by candlelight is honestly a really beautiful experience, but it's also funny. The other 364 days of the year, parents work diligently to keep their children away from torches. We put covers on our electrical outlets, hide matches and lighters in hard to reach places and yell if they get anywhere near a hot oven. But on Christmas Eve, it's fire time.

Here are a few ways to multiply the fun of having a lit Christmas candle in a church setting:

1. Pretend it’s the Olympic Torch.
I’ve always admired the guy that demands to be the last person clapping in church. While the rest of the congregation has gone quiet, he throws in one more clap, as if to say, “There, I put the punctuation on that clapping session. Done and done.” But that guy has nothing on “last man standing” during Christmas Eve service. See how long you can keep that candle lit. Pretend it’s the Olympic Torch. Be the last one standing in the aisle with a proud flame of “refuse to blow this candle out” while everyone else is gathering their coats. If someone asks you to blow it out, say, “We’re out of fire at home, I need to save this.”

2. Get the “Christmas Eve Service Candle” App for your iPhone and hold that up instead.
I don’t know if they have this yet for the iPhone but if they don’t, you’re welcome, I just made someone a billion dollars. Think about it, they already have DVDs that make it look like there’s a beautiful fire blazing in a fireplace on your television. Why not an application that flickers and shimmers like a church Christmas Eve service candle? Then, instead of a fire hazard, you could hold up your iPhone and sing by the light of your app. That’s even better than Festivus.

3. Blow out other people's candles.
I don't think I have to explain this one, but I promise, it is delightful. My brothers and I turned this into an art, because you can't just come on out and blow it. You have to do this weird, breathe out of the side of your face, move in which you send a gust of wind with the accuracy of a sniper at someone else's candle.

4. Play with the wax.
In addition to melting your candle on the shoes of family members, it's also fun to see how long you can get the wax without it breaking off. You have to hold it at the right angle though. It has to be tilted enough to make it all pool like one of those stilagtitesdifficulttospellcorrectly things in caves but not so tilted that the weight of the wax breaks it off.

5. Try to keep the candle.
As soon as that last song is finished, it's like the spell that convinced your parents it was OK for you to have fire in church is broken. And it's nearly impossible to keep the candle. Trick #1 was about keeping the fire, which sounds like a song Patrick Swayze sang in the 80s. I’m talking about keeping the actual candle. I never actually executed this move, it's like the holy grail of candle tricks. There are three people you need to watch out for: Your parents, the ushers and that guy with the box that collects them all at the end. I don't like that guy. I think all that power went to his head. He didn't just consider himself the "guy with a candle box," instead he was always kind of smug and seemed to think he was the "gatekeeper of flame."

Those were my tricks, but I am certain that when it comes to giving kids torches, I have missed quite a few.

Labels: For Discussion..., Fun

#454. Wishing faith was convenient.

When my men’s group leader described our service project last Saturday, I thought it would be like a Coor’s Light commercial. Only minus the beer. I envisioned us all in flannel shirts and Wrangler jeans, raking leaves at an elderly woman’s house, forming a bond of brotherhood in a backyard strewn with fall foliage that was too exhausted to cling against a winter’s sky. There probably would have been a golden retriever jumping around in the leaves and someone would have brought some Bob Seger to play through a small, humble stereo. We would have laughed, shared, raked and walked away better men and friends for the experience.

I was wrong. A few days before the event, I found out that only three of us had signed up for the mini rake-a-thon. Due to scheduling conflicts, most of the group had signed up for a different service project. My first thought was, “It doesn’t matter that barely anyone is coming. I’m doing this to give of my time and learn how to have the heart of a servant. Ahhhhhmen.”

OK, that’s not entirely true. My first thought was, “I was promised we’d be able to grow together as a group by doing this activity and now no one is coming. I don’t want to go unless other people are. And we’ll be driving to this old lady’s house at the same time the SEC Football Championship is being held downtown. The traffic is going to be a nightmare. And it’s not like I have four hours to do something that doesn’t pay off a huge benefit to me a few weeks before Christmas. I don’t have time for this. This is so inconvenient.”

That’s pretty gross thought, right? I mean talk about selfish, but as I realized while quietly raking the monstrously large yard, I only give when it’s convenient to my own life. I didn’t sign up for the service project because I wanted to help an elderly woman keep her yard clean. I signed up because I thought it would be a convenient way to learn more about the guy’s in my men’s group. When the potential for that benefit disappeared, I wanted to as well.

I’d like to say that was an anomaly, that my desire to give out of my convenience instead of out of love was a rare situation, but the truth is I live most of my life that way. All too often, I crave convenience instead of Christ. I want an easy life. I want all the pieces to fall together. I make my decisions based on what will cause me the least possible inconvenience or stress.

But when I look at the life of Christ, who’s supposed to be my model if I call myself a Christian, I don’t find much convenience. If anything, he had perhaps the most inconvenient life possible.

Being born in a stable is not convenient.
Having your friends get beheaded and murdered is not convenient.
Living in the desert without food or water for 40 days is not convenient.
Dying on the cross, for a crime you did not commit, is not convenient.

If you look at His life, none of His decisions seem to be designed to increase His own convenience or comfort. None of His actions seem geared to give him an easy life. So why are mine? Why do I keep wrestling with things like comfort, a topic I've written about before?

I don’t know exactly. I haven’t figured that out yet, but I can’t seem to escape the question, “Can I chase a life with convenience and a life with Christ at the same time?”

I hope God gives us all a renewed desire to live inconveniently. To give when it doesn’t make sense, to love when it isn’t returned, to sacrifice even when the impact of our actions is invisible.

Although between you and me, bring a golden retriever and some Bob Seger if you ever have to rake leaves. Everything in life goes better with a golden retriever and a little Bob Seger.

Labels: For Discussion...

Jesus Saves // Worship Central // Tim Hughes from HTB Video on Vimeo.

Labels: Media

Thursday, December 4, 2008

#450. Breaking the Chains

Recently, a reader asked me if I would write a response she could send all her well meaning friends and family members that forward her Christian-flavored chain emails. She asked if I would help her “Break the Chains.”

I thought that was a funny idea and decided to take a stab at it. But because crazy Christian forwarded emails come in so many different varieties, I felt like the best plan was to write it “Mad Lib” style where you can pick the most appropriate phrase or word to drop into the email if you want to send it. Without further ado, here’s my attempt to break the chains:


Dear (friend, turbo religious relative, lady at church that somehow got my email address),

It’s great to hear from you. It’s been (a month, a week, about 30 seconds) since you last included me on an email forward. This one was (funny, poignant, gross). I was unaware that there was a poem written by a five-year old that answered the question (does God cry?, do animals go to heaven?, were there unicorns on Noah’s ark?).

I appreciate you sharing the (official prayer for marriages, the real meaning of Flag Day, lyrics to the Christmas Shoes song).

Had I known that (Jesus would bless me if I sent this email to seven people, a politician was trying to do that, kitten photos could be combined so perfectly with Bible verses) I would have immediately notified everyone I know as well.

I look forward to (signing that online petition, praying for a hoax that was exposed on snopes.com in 2004, or unleashing the waves of righteous fury you hinted at).

I’m not completely convinced that (a new movie, a new song, a new dance craze) is officially the fourth horseman of the apocalypse but I appreciate your passion to root out that last elusive equine harbinger of the final days.

Thanks again for the email. I look forward to many more. In the meantime, I’ll be reading stuffchristianslike.net. That guy needs some serious prayer and if you read the site seven times you get new rims on your car. I don’t know how he does it, but you’ll be sitting on 20s before you know it and like TI can just live your life.

Side hugs and Razzle Dazzle

(Insert your name)

p.s. I’ve included the recipe for miracles which I found online as an added bonus. Enjoy:

Ingredients:
1 part of knowing who you are
1 part of knowing who you aren't
1 part of knowing what you want
1 part of knowing who you wish to be
1 part of knowing what you already have
1 part of choosing wisely from what you have
1 part of loving and thanking for ALL you have

Instructions:
Combine ingredients together gently and carefully, using faith and vision. Mix together with strong belief of the outcome until finely blended.

Use thoughts, words and actions for best results.

Bake until Blessed.

Give thanks again

Yield: Unlimited service

Labels: Fun

Found this online and thought of a conversation I had with Sarah during church this past sunday...

...I don’t have a Blackberry. I don’t have text or Internet on my phone. When someone tells me something I need to remember, I pull out a moleskine notebook and write it down, which is slightly faster than Gutenberg’s moveable type printing press. At a conference a few months ago, when I handed my disposable camera to someone to take a picture and had to remind them to crank the wheel to advance the film, a friend joked, “That’s it, I’m taking up a love offering and getting you an iPhone.”

I’m just not that high tech, but a lot of you are. A lot of you are developing lightning fast typing fingers and Herculean thumbs as you punch out messages on tiny little devices. In the coffee shop, in meetings, in the grocery store and yes, in church. But I’ve started to notice that when I see someone on their iPhone in the middle of the service, I don’t assume you’re looking up a King James translation of a Bible verse.

You might be. You might not be updating your twitter with a message that says, “Remember how my last tweet said I was in church? Well I’m still in church, update to follow soon.” You might not be posting a photo you just took of you sitting in church to send to your blog to write a post about church for your new site, Isitinchurch.com. You might not be doing a high tech version of the move an old man did to my friend when she came to speak to their Sunday School class during youth Sunday. When she walked in, he took one look at her, said “I’m out,” and then turned off his hearing aid. After sitting there for 40 minutes, he realized she was finished, turned it back on and said, “You weren’t going to say anything I haven’t heard before.”

But unless you let me know you’re actually using your iPhone to go deeper into the sermon and not just googling yourself (never a good thing to do) I’m going to assume the worst and judge you. (Out of jealousy because I don’t have an iPhone? Cause I’m mad someone borrowed my pen? Maybe cause I’m just a jerk like that sometimes? Hard to say.)

It would be really helpful to me, if you could do a few of the following things when you use your iPhone at church:

1. Stage whisper “I’m looking at the Bible”
As soon as you log on to Biblegateway or some app that has a quadjillion versions of the Bible on it during the middle of service, just whisper, “I’m looking at the Bible. Right now I’m looking at the Bible.” I’d appreciate it if you didn’t add some flair and say something like, “If there are any old people in the crowd who at the age of 32 have some how found a way to already be like the grumpy old villain that shakes his fist at those meddling kids in Scooby Doo, please know I am worshipping and reading my Bible right now. On the World Wide Interweb right this second.”...

Labels: Fun, General