Pam and me at Anchor on Super Bowl Sunday.



The worship team. Terry (far left) hadn't donned his Marshall Faulk jersey yet. We're practicing the "We Will Rock You" stomp-stomp-clap, stomp-stomp-clap.



Lots of Colts fans at Anchor.



The kids come wandering through the sanctuary during sermon sequel, learning about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness.

Anchor is a great church for a lot of reasons. Super Bowl Sunday showed some of them.

• We were all encouraged to come to church clad in our Colts stuff, and a good number of us did--jerseys, T-shirts, hoods, jackets. Five of the eight worship team members wore the blue and white.
• To create a stadium atmosphere, we preceded the first song with the greatest stadium song of all time--"We Will Rock You." Stomp stomp clap, stomp stomp clap. The congregation did that four times, then sang "We will, we will, rock you" four times. And THEN we started into the first worship song. At Anchor, we want to rock your world!
• A lot of our people come from dysfunctional family situations. Pastor Tim turned over the sermon to a friend, who gave his testimony of growing up in a dysfunctional home, and of his efforts to deal with his father in reconciliation and forgiveness. Nobody could relate exactly with his situation, but parts of it, I'm sure, touched a great many listeners who also struggle with reconciliation, forgiveness, and what it means to honor parents who, from a worldly standpoint, don't deserve honor.
• In place of an adult Sunday school, we have what we call "sermon sequel." The children leave for an instruction time, but the adults stay put for an informal time of building on the sermon. Almost NOBODY leaves. I doubt that anyone left today. How many churches can say that their Sunday school attendance matches their worship attendance?
  
• Halfway through the sermon sequel, the back doors of the sanctuary opened and all the children came wandering in, led by Tara Hallman and a child carrying a crooked staff. They were being taught about Moses and the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. They wandered down the aisle and out a side door at the front of the sanctuary. Just a fun little interlude.
• When sermon sequel ended and the children had rejoined us, we sang our own version of "When the Saints Go Marching In."

When the Colts, go marching in,
Oh when the Colts go marching in.
How I'd love to be in Miami,
When the Colts go marching in.

Then we sang one final song, and dismissed. It was another great Sunday at Anchor.

I started the year reading four John Sandford novels. Back to back, to back, to back. (Do I need another "to back"? Not sure.)

First came "Dark of the Moon," Sandford's first novel starring investigator Virgil Flowers. I found Flowers to be quite an engaging character, even more interesting that the renowned Lucas Davenport from Sandford's "Prey" series. Flowers actually works for Davenport out of Minneapolis, Minn., and he regularly checks in with Davenport.

I liked "Dark of the Moon" so much--and Flowers so much--that I read the second Flowers book, "Heat Lightning." It, too, was a winner. And I realized I had drawn a very good mental picture of Flowers:

• Tall, lanky.
• Shoulder-length blonde hair.
• Always wears a T-shirt from a rock group (some well-known, like Sheryl Crow or AC/DC, others obscure groups), accompanied by a blazer and cowboy boots.
• He's a preacher's kid, who thinks about God a lot, but doesn't actively practice any religion.
• He's been married three times.

CNN deserves a lot of credit for their sustained reporting on Haiti, weeks after the earthquake actually happened. FoxNews has moved on to their political agenda, and I'm not sure MSNBC was ever much interested in Haiti. But CNN is still there, keeping us informed.

I suspect their ratings are suffering as a result. That's been the experience with disasters in the past. People have ADD when it comes to disasters--they get tired of hearing about it. So rather than lose viewers, TV shows change the subject to appease the fleeting tastes of their consumers. Yesterday's disaster gets left behind. It's still a disaster, still news, but it's not what viewers want anymore.

But CNN has held firm, insisting that Haiti is still an important story.

It's expensive, too, keeping reporters, camera crews, and producers on location. It's much cheaper to let Sean Hannity or Keith Olberman pontificate in suit-and-tie from a studio. By comparison, sending reporters into the field costs big bucks. Though you can bet Fox will spend that money to cover, in force, the upcoming National Tea Party Convention. It's a matter of priorities.

As James 2:19 states, "Even the demons believe--and tremble."

One of my snowblower tires was flat, and I couldn't get it to inflate. So what to do?

Take it to Dad, of course. Because he can fix anything. That's what I did a couple nights ago.

Tonight, after practice, I called Dad.

"Wondering if we can stop by to get the tire, since they say snow's coming tomorrow."

"Or, you could look in your garage," Dad said.

He had fixed the tire, then dropped by today and put it back on the snowblower. Ready to go.

That's one awesome Dad. Which I've known for a long, long time.

The Super Bowl halftime programmers have been real cautious since the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction in 2004. Since then, they've been booking the oldest rockers they can find, assuming them to be safe.

• 2005: Paul McCartney
• 2006: The Rolling Stones
• 2007: Prince (who was surprisingly good)
• 2008: Tom Petty
• 2009: Bruce Springsteen
• 2010: The Who

No young, skin-showing talent. Certainly no rappers.

I'm just wondering who they'll find in the years ahead. Here are some suggestions:

• Three Dog Night? They're still around. Used to be the biggest band in the world
• Alice Cooper?
• AC/DC?
• Chuck Berry? He's still kicking. I could hear "Johnny B. Goode" and "Maybellene" again.
• Aerosmith? (They were there in 2001, with Britney, 'N Sync, and Mary J. Blige)
  

Sometime, one of these rockers is gonna have a heart-attack right there at halftime, live before billions of people. In fact, it could be Pete Townsend.

Wikipedia, of course, has a complete list of Super Bowl halftime shows.

I would really really like an iPad. And I really really can't justify getting one. It doesn't plug any hole in my life. Doesn't do anything that I'm not doing in some other sufficient way.

In the "Tool? or Toy?" category, it would be a toy for me.

But Mark Cuban is excited about it: "You can book it right now that it will be the product that kids of this generation grow up with and look back on with affection just like we did with the first video games. Video games changed how we grew up. The IPad will change how kids grow up."

Wow, that's setting some high expectations.

Gary Anderson, a retired Marine colonel, published advice for US troops doing relief work in Haiti. I posted excerpts from that article. But I left out this one.

Beware of mission creep. Your job is to try to get Haiti back to something approaching the way it was seconds before the quake struck. If the President wants you to do nation-building, he'll let you know. Identify the things that only you as the American military can do and for how long you will need to do them....

Your best people are the ones who will get you into mission creep situations the fastest. Doctors and engineers always want to make things better, and in these kinds of operations, better is the enemy of good enough.

Think about that: Better is the enemy of good enough.

In our culture, we worship excellence. Don't do anything halfway. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. Go all-out. Give 110%. Don't give God second-best. Blah blah blah.

But just to be contrarian, let's think about "mission creep" in relation to the church.

We throw all kinds of money at church stuff, in pursuit of excellence. We hire professionals to run children's ministries, because ordinary volunteers aren't good enough. If your church has the money, you hire musicians, hire people to do pastoral care, hire janitors, hire multimedia people. We professionalize whenever we can, because they can do it "better." We'd prefer not to settle for a "good enough" volunteer, no matter how thoroughly anointed by God. Some people in large churches thumb their noses at the way resource-sparse churches like Anchor must do things (I've seen and heard plenty of such comments first-hand).

Is the pursuit of quality an example of mission creep? I think it often is. Excellence, I believe, can be a church idol.

Likewise with buildings. I admire the Vineyard people who rent facilities rather than erect their own cathedrals. For them, a rented school is good enough. And, for some inexplicable reason, God still uses them. Instead of yoking to a multi-year mortgage, they can pour money into ministry and missions.

The purchase and development of physical properties can constitute mission creep. It's not necessary. The churches of Jesus Christ can thrive without buildings.

Is political involvement mission creep? Does it go beyond the Great Commission? Lots of people feel it is. I don't believe that MUST be the case, but that it's pretty much the current situation in America. And yet, I don't want to restrict what God calls people to do. God gives different people different agendas. It's just that political action is so enticing, so distracting, to so many people.

And I must ask: how much of the stuff I do, for the Kingdom, is just mission creep? I'm a denominational Communications Director. Communication is important. The Apostle Paul used letters. Today we use newsletters and websites and email. But does a denominational Twitter feed really advance the Great Commission? How much effort should go into a United Brethren Facebook page? Where does "valuable communication" end and "mission creep" begin?

I can always do communication better. But when is good enough, good enough?

Obama's lengthy exchange with Republicans yesterday was pretty impressive. You may not agree with his answers, but you have to admit he's got quite a grasp of the issues. He's a smart guy, and has thought deeply about issues long before becoming President (as "The Audacity of Hope" shows). We need more of this kind of exchange. Need to get the Republicans engaged in governing (which the Dems in Congress seem to have no interest in doing).

The ability to pull off an exchange like happened yesterday is not a necessity in a President. Ronald Reagan couldn't have done what Obama did yesterday, but he was most definitely a leader.

All things considered, I think Bill Clinton could have done it even better. He was as bright and obsessively immersed in issues as Obama, but not as...prickly? He would have turned on the famous Clinton charm, which Obama possesses in a smaller amount and which is usually hidden beneath his innate aloofness.