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our great pumpkin

erin & i spent last night prepping our front porch and carving our, starting to be, traditional pumpkin for halloween. this years pumpkin is an old school street lantern. we tried some other designs, but they just didn't fit onto this particular pumpkin. this one was a bit thinner and taller than some other designs probably needed. i salvaged it off our pumpkin patch, someone broke the stem and it had a soft top from rain water.. but now, it is reborn and will light up our front porch in our old historic neighborhood. this years design is more complicated than last years. the tip, go buy a cheap carving kit from the grocery store. the best $3.99 i've spent in a long time. though next year we might go dremel tool, i hear that is the way to go. still not sure about costume.. shall i repeat the last two years?

busy time

it's been a busy time.. wish i could even form a thought let alone write. here is a run down of things in my life, should you care... and you are not named "mom" ("nana" for the little kids)

• monday, woke up didn't realize what time it was.. was late for my morning meeting. crap
• got dressed late trying to make meeting, en route i realized i wasn't nearly dressed enough, for the afternoon was a funeral to attend.
• spinning around getting money set from the weekend pumpkin sales.
• made it to funeral late (par for the day). sat in the balcony due to my lax style of dress because of wandering around in morning monday haze and thus, being late.
• forget what the afternoon meant... i think it was working our an email list thing for our church.
• was late (see a theme for monday) for a conference camping meeting. i was so late i figured it would be ending the moment i got there. no.. went on for another two hours.. budgets & fees, stink
• home, watching tv with the lady, cleaning up the house for some guests on halloween.
• tuesday.. watching pumpkins.. why do people come so late in the month looking for bulk amounts for their children? wal-mart is even out (so one of the asst. managers told us today)
• shuffling around trying to get job responsibilities done. tending to my senior project intern
• gotta head downtown for a youth event meeting. hope i'm not late for that, cause i need to get something to eat before it.

trinity videos

don, whom i got to hang with at the emergingumc thingy, does film work when he is not church planting. he has some great stories with that part of his narrative. coming to today, he is has put online some videos of interviews of the various speakers for the upcoming trinity church conference on religion & vilence, uncovering the roots of conflict. it is some deep stuff. give yourself some time to watch

loltheologians

for those that love the lol. this is loltheologians. tip to john

how to avoid burnout

another gem from asbo jesus

commenting gone wild!

this post does raise some great questions.. then it just goes crazy! politics and religion, apparently everyone has an opinion and is sharing. i like kat's simple response of "keep your politics out of my religion"

here's the church, here's the steeple

Here's The Church, Here's The Steeple
Originally uploaded by Sista Smiff.

hey look, someone taking pics of my "little" country church. apparently sista smiff visited the pumpkin patch. good thing we unloaded new pumpkins that day. we actually had some stuff to take pictures of. click pic and follow the photostream for more pics

trying not to be judgemental

i am doing my best to not be judgemental in viewing this story. not quite what i imagine when i think of full inclusion into the church body. tip marko

what to do with all these bibles?

would you give them out for halloween?.. a discussion that is far more interesting than i'd imagined

if it's in people, it has to be true

so far, the funniest thing of my day.. other than singing like a dying cat with a three stringed play guitar to my adoptive 10 year old for the week. that was fun for me, erin laughed.. i don't think the 10 year old liked it too much

tuesday randomness

some random linkage

• tom is not as young as he says he is.. if you have to ask who tom is then you won't get it
• tbn pads its nielsen ratings with a "captive" audience
• my answer for youth choir tour
• women like the idea of love, but they want to win more

i will probably have a job that doesn't exist today

this is a fascinating video by digital ethnography @ kansas state. i couldn't help but think of this talk by sir ken robinson. how archaic is our educational models? do they actually prepare children & young people for the future that we don't know? what responsibility is it of the church to help? i might have some thoughts on the church, but i am thinking reimagining the educational system is going to be harder work than church..

title of the post comes from one of the more striking signs by the students

will samson in nashville

our cohort is teaming up to sponsor some conversations with will samson. thursday november 8th will is going to be our feature person for our conversations at the afternoon cohort (11:30am @ the flying saucer). that evening, to give opportunity for people who have real jobs, he will be featured at saint b's (in green hills) for a "unique conversation." it's a free thing. i have not read his & lisa's book yet, bought scanned the pages & chapters. their framework is very accessible & insightful for the lay person to the clergy. we would love to see some blogger friends make it and help generate some buzz.

update: adam has a review of justice in the burbs

10 commandments of parenting a teen

busy mom has a fun breakdown of the 10 commandments of parenting a teenager. i have to wait for my own teenager. i still see this list as a lot of fun & on target

9. Though shalt not converse with or otherwise acknowledge a teacher outside of school business, even when said teacher is an actual friend for this shall affect the teen's reputation in a negative way.

10. Thou seriously shalt not ask, "Where are they going?" when teen says two people are "going out" for this is not nearly as amusing to the teen and this shall affect the teen's reputation in a negative way.

democrats are zombies

for you buddy

i think i will be using this for a youth min video in the future

tip 2 jay & john

before the weekend ends

before this weekend ends, i have to share this little video that was sent to me. it is a bit of our alabama tradition, the "rammer jammer yellow hammer smack song." when i was there i remember singing it before some games, that never made sense to me, especially when we ended up loosing we looked pretty dumb after doing that. at the end of games it's a pretty cool thing. this guy has a line up of all the videos of this little snippet in time. that's my last bit of blogging on this weekend, football wise.

and it wasn't even close

so i got home to watch the game, a little delayed on dvr, but good enough to see my bama team route tennessee. 41 to 17 final score as jeffrey alluded to. i figured it'd be an ugly game, some low scoring defense fest with a lot of penalties or some high scoring game with lots of turnovers. i was right on the penalties, tennessee had almost 100 yards in penalties, bama had sixty some which are never good for winning games. not much as far as turnovers. scoring was obviously only done by one team. no doubt this will lead to more tennessee fan talk about the ineptitude of phil fulmer and the coaching staff. "fulmer ball" as it is referred to often.

after all that is said and done, i am happy. are you happy like me?

out of church sign ideas?

  Desperate 
  Originally uploaded by Paul Nicholson.

found this sucker via music city bloggers photo group. i don't know about you, but this is much better than, "'chch' what is missing 'ur'" lame sign.

my 3rd weekend enemies

it is that one weekend (the 3rd weekend of october) of the year that i pretty much become the enemy of all my neighbors. lots of youth are ut knoxville people, many friends, even some family are ex-ut knoxville peeps. it's gotten to the point where my hate for auburn has changed over to ut cause i live this weekends game for a whole year here amongst volunteer nation.

my boy kyle and & have an ongoing bet. the loser will fly the others team car flag. that sucked last year for me. the year before, kyle wasn't driving yet, so he got by wearing my team colors for a few days. this year i am expecting not to be handing over my flag to him.

to my neighbors and friends. sorry about this weekend, but you are now my sworn 3rd weekend enemy. but we will be okay on monday (sunday if we win).

to willow creek "duh" or "man, i feel sorry for you"

phil and i were just talking about this new posting about willow creek repenting. to this i don't know what to say, "duh" or "i feel sorry for you." i always had reservations about willow creek & some of their practices, but i never discounted that they were serving God.

n the Hawkins’ video he says, “Participation is a big deal. We believe the more people participating in these sets of activities, with higher levels of frequency, it will produce disciples of Christ.” This has been Willow’s philosophy of ministry in a nutshell. The church creates programs/activities. People participate in these activities. The outcome is spiritual maturity. In a moment of stinging honesty Hawkins says, “I know it might sound crazy but that’s how we do it in churches. We measure levels of participation.”

Having put all of their eggs into the program-driven church basket you can understand their shock when the research revealed that “Increasing levels of participation in these sets of activities does NOT predict whether someone’s becoming more of a disciple of Christ. It does NOT predict whether they love God more or they love people more.”

i suggest watching the videos. in there executive pastor greg hawkins says this of their research findings. "is this just us? or are other churches out there the same way?"

to this pastor hawkins i have to say. "duh. it is all the churches you taught to do things like you."

i don't have much more to say after that. except that i observe they are still approaching things in their old programmatic ways with research & structural analysis. it doesn't look like they are changing in the form of 'we are too big' which would be, in my opinion, a way to "look at this differently." especially since pastor hawkins keeps counting people.

what are your thoughts?

malcolm gladwell, words to youth ministry

i have been pondering this ted talk by malcolm gladwell. the things that i am thinking.. after this new creation of spaghetti sauce (you will need to watch the video to understand that), what happened to how people view church? interesting too, the youth that we minister today all grew up after this shift. so how does that affect the way we do youth ministries? how does this affect youths viewpoint of how church has been done (especially for those that agree with the saying that the umc does church really well for the 1950's)?

ibrick

via techcrunch

which brain are you?

are you right or left brain. this quick test will tell ya.. and then maybe you can switch

i was 'right' brain, then did some work and then became 'left' brain..

the education system has mined our minds : sir ken robinson

i am have been totally enjoying these series of talks provided by the ted conference. mitch was talking about being excited to go to the conference. i can see why now. some fabulous speakers, know & unknown. some wonderful thoughts and creative expressions. my favorite so far is this talk by sir ken robinson. i'd encourage you to make space to watch the whole thing. he tells a lovely story at the end with a great closing, but you might not catch it all if you don't have some of his set up thoughts. he's humorous so it doesn't drag.

erin & i have often talked about how one element of our raising children will be instilling a love of and engagement into the arts. developing not only a creative self, but cultivating a mind that is able to think more abstractly and innovatively. whether it be drawing, painting, song writing, screenplay, theater, music, etc. our hope is that our children never say that they can't or they are no good when it comes to utilizing their creative selfs that God created (something that also extends into our youth ministry).

other talks that might peek the interests.

• malcolm gladwell: what we can learn from spaghetti sauce
• rick warren: living a life with purpose
• dan dennett: a secular, scientific rebuttal to rick warren
• julia sweeney: letting go of God
• richard baraniuk: goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning
• ray kurzweil: how technology's accelerating power will transform us
• peter gabriel: fighting injustice with a video camera
• richard dawkins: an atheists call to arms
• marjora carter: greening the ghetto

how'd you get those bumps on your head?

The radical evangelical Christians of today tend to use the caveman approach of witnessing. Basically they whack their their poor victims over the head with the Bible, and then drag them by the hair kicking and screaming through the church doors. And then they wonder why they get so much resistance!

thanks mark for your open discourse on how many Christians evangelize or share Christ with those who do not believe. we do that, i'd have to say, i have never beaten anyone up, but my brothers and sisters in Christ have a decent history of it and i'll accept them as family. especially atheists or agnostics. i have often asked them how they do not believe. cause there are many times i have my own unbelief, it might be easier to just swear off faith all together, but there is always some whisper in my being that brings me back. then those whispers become a nice conversation & relationship with my triune God.

tip: john

just some randomness.. maybe i am wrong?

just some things i am wondering if my initial reactions are wrong

• proper etiquette for a pastor wife who endures their husbands sermon. anna plays with that stereotype of what the proper pastor wife should be like. my pastor's wife gave me a great compliment a year or two ago when i spoke at one of the church retreat sessions. it was something like "it was really nice to not have to hear his old stories over again"... maybe that wasn't such a compliment?..
• i am reminded of my one time participation in a "hell house" experience. mine was more a haunted woods thing, with some dramatic reenactment of Christ's crucifixion, with all the modern sins of drinking, drugs, sex, etc. visitors were then led into the barn to "make a decision." i was super uncomfortable with the event (i hate scare tactics at all levels, especially in the spiritual life), but i had told a friend i would help so i helped the two or three days i said i would. i never went into the 'decision' room (which my brother said they mostly showed a video), but i heard they got some decisions. also got some pissed off people. me, i got some blistered burn on my hand when i had to chase some tractor, and hay trailer, that someone forgot to put the brake on. maybe that was my punishment for thinking ilk of such a practice?..
• i heard my morning radio talk show host talk very well of joel osteen yesterday. his take, was that the academia folks who put him down get on his case cause they are too irrelevant. i'm not the only one that does not care for mister joel & i am far from academic. i think when you watch his show they always show the same row of people who are all poised perfectly with their bibles on their lap in such a way you can see six or seven bibles in a row (and they all stare smiling and nodding, see bullet point one). strange part, there is no reading of the bible during this sermon. i don't know about you, but unless you tell people "go to book of the bible chapter number" they generally don't open up their bibles. maybe i am just in the wrong church?..

update: ben witherington3 has some expanded thoughts on what is wrong with osteen's prosperity gospel. you want to give yourself sometime to read all of this.

blog action day : send my kids to college

in my contribution to blog action day. i want you to help save the earth & help send my kids to college.

as i have mentioned before. the lovely wife is working for the family biz, all american pest control, a termite and pest control small business here in nashville. her grandfather started it back in the 60's, her dad took over some time ago and has made it one of the outstanding business operations of this type in middle tennessee & the nation.

one of the programs we offer to homeowners is the sentricon system developed by dow agro sciences. sentricon is, simply put, a baiting system that draws away termites to the bait stations instead of your home. then they chew on the bait that prevents them from molting. they can't grow from there and then they die. many of you might have seen these stations before as the little plastic green circles around someones home or commercial property.

this keeps you from contributing to the spraying of more chemical onto the earth while protecting (what might be) your greatest asset. the only maintenance after installation is some periodic checks where our techs monitor and clean out the stations. no pesticides, poisons, sick pets, burned plants, etc that you do not want.

it is effective. we (like i have anything to do with it) used to insure thousands of dollars for repair costs due to the older chemical spray treatments. since moving to sentricon 10 years ago we have only spent around 3k dollars in repair costs. it is pretty amazing stuff.

there are other providers of sentricon around, nashville, the states, the world. but, if you are in the middle tennessee area and/or 1. do not have termite protection for your home 2. dislike your current company or chemical spray treatment, give erin or her dad (though he is on vacation this week) a call.

so, save the earth, help send my future children to college. ps: if you want to have some fun, tell them i sent ya.

all american pest control - (615) 883-8526

so you are anti-social networking? this social network site is for you

you hate myspace? you hate facebook? or live journal, xanga, etc. then hatebook is for you. join in, create yourself a profile of all the things you hate & get connected with people who hate them too.

i registered to see what fun this wasn't. i got a kick out of being called a sucker. saying that i hate my blog.. and other random negativeness. this probably stems from my sarcastic nature.

it looks and functions like facebook, so maybe what i will do is hate on how hatebook copies facebook. sounds like fun!

tip: techcrunch

the gavin college football poll - why not

1. south carolina
2. lsu
3. florida
4. kentucky
5. alabama
6. auburn
7. tennessee
8. vanderbilt
9. south florida
10. usc
11. boston college
12. oklahoma
13. oregon
14. ohio state
15. texas
16. arizona state
17. penn state
18. virginia tech
19. arkansas
20. georgia
21. misssippi state
22. ole miss
23. wake forest
24. hawaii
25. oregon state

getting consideration. notre dame.. why not, they are actually scoring points now.

the way i see it, the current undefeated teams are hard to put at number one. so why not be a teamer and go all sec. seriously, go with the tougher conference to put out the tougher teams. many will whine for ohio state, but i can't forget the same thing happened with this non-team last year. when you don't play anyone (in conference or out) you can't be a serious number one candidate. who says you have to be undefeated to be number one? that is bogus. it wasn't the norm 20-30 years ago. who says an undefeated team under any circumstances is given the right to be number one in the room of one loss teams? the bcs? that's a good voice.

so i see my college poll as being just as good as any submission out there. i welcome your critque? go gamecocks!

on another note: think les miles was a little pissy?

shortest post to tell ya

just so you know, i changed my feed settings to give out the full posts.. back in the day, i think i set up the partial post thing in an effort to drive traffic. the realization i've come to.. i've got friends out there, who gives a crap if you come here to read the whole post or not.

comment quote of the day

I think Hilliry Clinton is a Marxist, thanks in part to her youth minister.

found here

i don't know if this was said more in jest, maybe it struck a chord with my vocation & some recent discussion, but regardless of that.. interesting, why say it. at least one person can do is spell correctly. do you think this person was a republican or democrat? consider this my informal poll..

emergingumc : in the news

that little emergingumc conference thing i participated in last weekend has some recapping articles in via united methodist news service.

• one article focuses on fellow methoblogger dg and his organic small group church community
• the second article is more about the event as a whole, trying to explain emerging church

if you want to hear or see some of what went down

• taylor has posted some of the powerpoints and audio he had.
• carl, recorded to his ipod with a mic attachment which he is plugging into his emerge podcast

this if for my star wars friends

this is for you phil, john, andy and other friends of star wars. you will be amazed. via best week ever

a skit, i liked it

one of the folks from church told me of this video & sent it to me. i also saw it on one of the youth's myspace page. it has some feel of old camp skits, which make me cringe and celebrate all in the same. i liked this one, pretty powerful if don't let your sarcastic self take over (which i am prone to do). check it out, what do you think?

random linkage

just some random links that i am perusing

• my friends at alektor apparently found their new church on craigslist (news video)
• time management tips for the attention deficit disordered youth worker by friend mark devries
• if i wasn't already reading too much, i'd be checking out this book
• ideas for living intentional lifestyle within the suburbs
• sam is so cool he is getting interviewed
• what if a republican said that we are not a christian nation?
• a new video by campaign for real beauty
• my neighborhood is in the news.. and i better clean up my yard

on spiritual practices

.. Christians over the centuries have been notorious for seizing spiritual practices as weapons designed to bludgeon human passions into submission. Less noteworthy but more orthodox views held that human passions were dynamic, God-given impulses, presently distorted by sin and therefore prone to wandering off after the wrong things. Eastern scholars Evagrius and Isaac the Syrian considered the passions impulses "to be purified, not killed; to be educated, not eradicated; to be used positively, not negatively." In the Western church, Thomas Aquinas - while subordinating emption to reason at every turn - stressed that the passions were not inherently evil, and could lead to virtue. In other words, spiritual practices did not eliminate human passion, but refocused it on its proper object: God. Especially among inexperienced Christians, spiritual disciplines became the tools that loosened young people's grip on lesser loves so they could freely accept and respond to the passion of God. These disciplines "detached" human passion from sinful objects that corrupted the self, and realigned human desire with God's desire, manifest in the Passion of Christ.

-Practicing Passion, Kenda Creasy Dean

awareness & a treat for halloween

funny, i knew there was fair trade chocolate. i knew there was chocolate given out on halloween, but i never thought to connect the two. i am glad there are people out there that are smarter than me to do that. this from equal exchange.

Equal Exchange is participating in a coalition of faith-based groups, human rights organizations, and fellow Fair Trade chocolate companies to raise public awareness about the continuing problem of forced child labor on many cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast – source of 40% of the world’s cocoa.

In the six years since these practices came to light the corporations that dominate the global cocoa and chocolate trade have made, and broken, promises to fix the problem. Consequently we are trying to put the problem back on the public radar and raise awareness that there already exists an option – Fair Trade with farmer co-op’s – that goes a long way to reforming what’s wrong. For example, Fair Trade both demands adherence to key labor standards and provides a higher, stable income that directly addresses the otherwise chronic poverty of cocoa growers everywhere.

Unfortunately, the cocoa/chocolate industry has steadfastly rejected the Fair Trade model, even as they have failed to deliver substantial solutions of their design. Therefore we and the other members of the coalition have created an awareness raising campaign for this Halloween called Reverse Trick or Treating. We are offering 20,000 bite-sized samples of our organic, Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate, attached to informational cards, to be distributed to homes nationwide.

If your congregation would be interested in participating click here to sign up.

Click here to learn more about the child labor problem and Fair Trade cocoa.

there is a methodist connection

This Halloween, hand out some fairly traded chocolate and support the United Methodist Committee on Relief Coffee Project at the same time—how sweet! These delicious dark chocolate mini bars are made with fairly traded organic chocolate and sugar and are the perfect size for trick-or-treaters. For the month of October, special informational postcards will be available with every order of minis to help you spread the word about how fairly traded chocolate benefits cocoa farming families.

Click here to order your minis.

 

thinking outloud : re-imagining youth council

in the methodist church we are committee heavy, so it is no surprise that we have gone along with the practice of making a youth council. the council has traditional roots in having a president, vice prez, secretary, etc. i have gone away from using a youth council for reasons of 1. assigning or voting status positions with these labels generally fall into popularity contests 2. there was never a connection that faithfully brought together a hierarchical system within a system that is supposed to be about the whole community, not one person 3. the older kid who was inevitably voted president got a job and stopped being regularly involved in the youth community 4. it perpetuated this sense that being christian was all about being a moral and good citizen.

since these early days, i have dabbled with an open team model, youth who are active at that time can show their involvement by making decisions at the particular team meetings during that part of the year. when they get into their seasonal sports they fade away and come back.. problem with this, consistency in building leadership, decision making. you just never know who will show.

so i have been stuck.. what could work for our context?

this may be the whisper, or the bang on the head. in our youth community we began a process of re-imagining our space. taking what was (and kinda still is) a pretty lifeless & non-inspiring, yet very capable area, and shaping it into a sacred space that will help to shape the spiritual formation of the community. what was born out of all this discernment was what we are calling "the corner." as part of the corner we adopted a fledgling vision of the church; worship, connect, grow, serve, & share. we developed a logo and everything. so i am thinking, why not create a team environment that all aspects of the community life have youth & adults plugged in with that specific focus.

• worship, is charged with the experiential worship of the group. this could be the gatherings on sunday/wednesday evenings, programming (setting themes, picking curriculum), and putting together the worship times for retreat events.
• connect, is charged with the hospitality of the group, the welcome, or as we call it, extending the shalom. knowing who is there & who is not. this group would also be in charge of the bridge building to other youth communities, our own congregation, and other faith communities.
• grow, is charged with the spiritual formation of the community. taking on some knowledge of what that means, they move forward to plan & implement, or make sure that current formation efforts are meeting the needs of the group. they would also be charged with seeing the health of the small groups within the community being fruitful.
• serve, is charged with our mission focus. from picking & organizing our missions experiences local, national, international. they would also be charged with education on social justice issues & ways to become active in living out the mission of the church & bringing it to the community.
• share, is our movement through the community. this team would be charged with helping us find ways and better understand how we share the gospel message within us to others. this might be through outreach events. programming for the youth community to do things for the greater community. urban renewal projects, random acts of inspiration, who knows what a teen would come up with.

from here, we would require a youth participant in the community to commit to serving on only one team. those teams would meet as regularly as they needed (maybe more frequently during the fall to decide on mission experience options, dates, & training). within their team they would vote for a designated youth & adult head. those two would attend to the community meeting to share with the other teams, plus attend to one single issue within the community. this as an effort to bring everyone up to speed, then workout one issue instead of talking about a myriad of issues.

is it possible? i am sure it is not new by any means, no idea of mine is original. still, as i ponder the shaping of our community, this seems real to me. could it be asking a lot? sure is, but why is the church asking things of its members a bad thing? when did that happen? if parents want their kids to be impacted by God within the church & youth say they want the same thing (and they do) then why not ask them to commit to the levels that the other civic/educational organizations ask? wouldn't/shouldn't this youth community experience impact them far past their days of playing high school football? don't many adults reference their most influential days of spiritual formation as happening in some time frame within their youth. many within a youth community...

hmm.. this is just me thinking out loud

wesley getting your buzz on

kat is at it again with this poignant comment

Sure the Wesleys rewrote bar tunes…but that’s slightly different than taking the congregents down to the bar to get their buzz on before the service.

what is all the fun about?

was i saying branding jesus?

my post on my shawshank redemption view of brand communications turned up quite a stir @ music city bloggers. not enough to warrant any visitors from there to here to actually read my full thoughts. still, it is worth seeing the fallout.

my thoughts were more about communication, which can effectively happen when figuring out and using a brand. i think i was pretty clear in saying marketing people for God is manipulative, but communicating who you are as a community is different, yet a still fine line.