Last night I went to a high school football game for the first time since I was a sophomore in high school, back in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. I never attended a football game at the California school where I attended my last two years of high school, and haven't attended one since. Haven't had a reason to. But last night Pam's niece, Kelsey, was playing the sousaphone in the Whitco marching band, and since Pam's Mom and step-dad were out from California, we all went.

They honored the Whitco team that won the state championship 20 years ago. Probably 40 players from that team, along with coaches and various other personnel, including five cheerleaders, were lined up in front of the home crowd during halftime, and the announcer read off information about each one--name, the person's position/role in 1986, where the person lives now, and where he/she works. I was amazed that the vast majority of them still live in the general area, with a large number still in South Whitley. Interesting. Only one guy was wearing his letter jacket, or could fit into his letter jacket, and he was serving in the military in Alabama.

Beyond that, I have no great insights to share. No wise ruminations about then-and-now, how sports brings a small town together, kids today vs. in my era, and nonsense like that. So I'll stop.

Posted at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have rediscovered Ann Kiemel.

I love Donald Miller's writing. But having finished Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God Knows What, I've been searching for someone else who writes with such authenticity. Searching in vain.

Until, last weekend, I thought about Ann Kiemel, whose books I devoured during my post-college days of the 1980s. She wrote in simple free verse, and mostly just told about her encounters with people and how she shared Christ with them. She was a great inspiration to me, and since we were both single at the time, I felt a kinship of sorts. I remember being genuinely upset when Will Andersen practically stalked her until she agreed to marry him. I saw her doing such amazing things to influence people--not only people in her immediate sphere of influence, but people like me who read her books. Now she was abandoning all of that (abandoning me!) to live on a farm in Idaho and raise a family. She has, indeed, pretty much disappeared from the Christian landscape.

I found two of Ann's books on my shelf, I'm Out to Change My World and Yes! I brought them home. Though her recent years have not been good (I understand that she wrote a book in 2004 airing some dirty linen), there was an exceptional real-ness to those earlier years when she wrote those books which moved me so much. Would her writing still move me? Well...it does. The other morning I read six chapters (they're short) in I'm Out to Change My World, and in each one, I got choked up. The Agnostic, God is So Good, The Taxi Driver, Homesick GI, Ordinary Days, Spinach and Dreams. This heart for God which so captivated me 20-some years ago still comes through, and I find myself, today, again inspired by her words:

I'm an ordinary girl in a big world,
but I'm going to change it--
God and I
and love.

Posted at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (58)

A month ago, Dad chopped off the very end of his middle finger on his left hand. I learned about that this afternoon when I dropped by for a visit. Dad was working on my nephew's house in Willshire, Ohio, when a window pane came down and sliced it off. So he wrapped up the finger in a cloth and drove himself to the hospital in Decatur, Indiana, where he underwent surgery. They removed some skin from his inner elbow and grafted it onto the end of the finger.

And then, Dad drove back to my nephew's house and worked another three hours. I would like to say that my 73-year-old Dad merely suffers from short-term memory loss, and forgot that he had just chopped off his finger. But no, there's nothing wrong with his memory. He told me that since the finger was still numb, he knew it wouldn't hurt. So why not do something productive?

At this point, I realize, definitively, that I am adopted. Because whatever DNA Dad possesses that prompted him to return to work after lopping off part of a finger and undergoing surgery--well, I don't own a speck of that DNA. Heck, I left work early Monday because I felt nauseus. I need to commence searching the internet for my real parents. Is there a Wimps-R-Us.com website?

Posted at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, bummer. Churches are fleeing the part of the city where my church exists. It's not that there are fewer people in our area. No, these churches just want to make their future in a different part of town. A "better" part, perhaps.

First it was Abundant Life Tabernacle, which wants to buy First Assembly's building on the north side of town (while First Assembly moves to the old Calvary Temple building). Just heard about that on Sunday. St. Francis University, right across the street from Abundant Life, will buy that property. So that's one major church exiting our neighborhood.

Tonight I heard that the Wesleyan church, just down the street from us, plans to relocate to the suburbs. The good ol' suburbs. That's where it's at. Forget about all those people living in the inner parts of the city. Sure, they need Christ. But do they have money? No. You can't build a church on poor people. You need bucks. And the suburbs is where you find bucks. Lawyers, doctors, businessmen--they're in the suburbs. Those people deep in the city--they're just a bunch of uneducated, high-maintenance losers. God doesn't care about them nearly as much as he does the people in the suburbs with nicely-groomed yards.

Yeah, I'm ticked. I'm sure there are all kinds of places like our neighborhood throughout the city. But does anybody think of planting a church in places like that? Not usually. No, you plant a church in the fast-growing suburbs, so you can cherry-pick the middle and upper-middle classes, and maybe land a truly rich person or two. That's what my denomination has done for about as long as I've been around--go to the suburbs--and it seems to be everybody else's strategy, too. When denominations talk about planting churches in major cities, what they really mean is plant churches in the suburbs. But there's a whole lot more to cities than rich suburbs. Sure, maybe they plan to have a "mission outreach" into poorer neighborhoods. But to base yourself there? No way.

I'm sure Jesus would go straight to the suburbs, so he could hob-nob with rich people. Forget about the poor and needy. Let them drive to the suburbs. Oh, they don't have a vehicle? Well, maybe they can take the bus. (Okay, Steve, take a breath, chill.)

Posted at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today, with the promise of a free drink at Starbucks, I filled out an online survey about my customer experience. One of the final questions asked my age. The last category was "50 and above." I'm 49. In less than one month, I will be in Starbucks' oldest demographic segment. Ugh.

Meanwhile, in sports:

• The Colts had a tough time with Jacksonville yesterday, yet still prevailed. Lots of people were predicting a Jaguars win. Looks to me like the Colts will do just fine without Edge.
• Michigan State really blew it. They had the game in hand, and let the Irish come back. But I'm happy with the result.
• George Bush, Sr., will flip the coin at tonight's first football game back in the New Orleans Superdome. Then at halftime we'll here from U2 and Green Day. That's Green Day, as in Billy Joe Armstrong singing "Don't Want to be an American Idiot," which skewers a particular George Jr. Interesting.
• When I get home from church on Sundays, I have the choice of watching ESPN's pro football roundup, or the FoxSports pregame show. ESPN has Chris Berman, Mike Ditka, Michael Irvin, and Ron Jawarski. Fox has Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, and Jimmie Johnson. Can't go wrong with either. The CBS team, despite Dan Marino and Boomer and Phil Simms, is a distant third. But hey, the subject is still football, so I'll listen anyway.

Posted at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can barely stomach Fox News anymore. Sorry, Mom and Dad. It's just so blatantly partisan, a rubber-stamping lapdog for all things Republican. That morning "Fox and Friends" show is an absolute joke. Greta is relegated to the Nancy Grace universe, doing "missing white girl" stories. Bill O'Reilly is becoming a caricature of himself; I just don't buy his purported fairness anymore, and it is most definitely a spin zone. Britt Hume has begun trashing anyone who questions anything about the Bush Administration (most recently Colin Powell). Hannity and Colmes just play roles, and their views are entirely predictable. The only thing on Fox that I still like is Shepherd Smith's news hour. He's unique, and that show deals with actual news. Whatta concept.

The whole "fair and balanced" thing is make-believe, like the term "compassionate conservative." Terms designed to fool you whilst they act in ways totally contrary to their own label. Fox News is occasionally fair, rarely balanced (though lightyears from either on "Fox and Friends"). When they assemble several commentators, show me the one who leans left?

CNN has this liberal label, but I don't see it. In general. CNN still aspires to be a professional, objective worldwide news channel, and since they do, indeed, have a worldwide presence, they're probably the only American broadcaster which can lay that claim with any creedence. I certainly trust CNN, as a news source, far more than FoxNews (I trust the ABC and NBC news operations, too). I'll take Paula Zahn over Greta any day (though neither of them most days), and I'm becoming a big Keith Olberman fan, much preferring him to O'Reilly's schtick. Larry King still does his thing better than anybody else. Criticize him however you want (and I've found his show far less interesting than in previous years, and rarely watch it anymore), but he's still a unique TV presence and does his thing with precision.

I also increasingly like MSNBC. In fact, I often turn there first, since it's easier for me to hit channel 14 (MSNBC) on the remote than it is 17 (CNN). There's scientific reasoning for you. Of course, channel 44, FoxNews, would be the easiest to finger, but on my preference list, it's below MSNBC and CNN (though still several pegs above Nancy Grace, who is, unquestionably, The Devil).

As for the major network broadcasts: I like them all. Brian Williams is my first choice. But I like Charlie Gibson, and I also like the new Katie Curic broadcast. It's fashionable to bash her, but I think she's doing okay...for someone who made her career on the Today show. It's just so nice to have Dan Rather out of the picture. And Sam Donaldson, too. Whatever happened to good ol' Sam, he of the ego matched only by Rush Limbaugh? Well, wherever he's at, let's let him remain there undisturbed with the rest of the dragons.

Posted at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over 20 years ago, a church friend told me about Mark Twain's "The War Prayer," a marvelous piece of satire. I found it in a small book and immediately became smitten by it. "The War Prayer" is directed at those who glory in war, and it extrapolates the effects of their prayers for battlefield victory.

"Help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells...
help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, 
writhing in pain; 
help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; 
help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; 
help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended 
the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst...Blast their hopes, blight their lives...
make heavy their steps...
stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!"

Posted at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pam and I have been listening to sermons by Pete Hise, pastor of a highly-evangelistic church in Lexington, Kent. We became aware of this church through someone we met at the ChurchMedia.net conference in June. I wrote earlier about this church, how they've had 1300 conversions during the past seven years. Anyway, we really enjoy Pete Hise's messages. He's very humorous, very informal, very engaging. He seems to have a lot of fun when he preaches.

We listened to three of his sermons a few weeks ago as we returned from vacationing in Michigan. In one message, Hise told about his annual month-long getaway...to a monastery! He eats and worships with the monks, while planning the coming year at his church--vision, sermons, etc. He mentioned one monk whom he described as the Simon Cowell of the monastery, the guy who decides whether or not a prospective monk gets in. Hise asked him, "What are some of the reasons you would not accept a person who applied to become a monk?"

The monk told about one young guy who seemed like a perfect fit for the monastic life. But before becoming a full-fledged monk, you spend several years as a novice (with a different colored robe). You see if the monastic life suits you, and other monks watch you.

As time passed, this novice kept dropping ideas about how to do things a little better. They could turn down the temperature a bit to save some money. During singing, they could bunch of a little to make it sound better. He had a number of such ideas. And when he came to the end of his novice period, he was told, "We're sorry, but we don't think this life is for you."

This puzzled Pete Hise. "You mean you turned him down for offering suggestions?"

"No," the monk told Hise. "He simply cared too much about this world."

The monastic life is a life of denial--of possessions, of ambition, of sex. The monks live not for this world, but for the next world. That is what they set their minds on. This fellow so much wanted to improve the here-and-now. And that disqualified him. Now, you can argue why it's not a bad thing to improve this world. But it does give something to think about.

Posted at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week's Time magazine has a cover story about Iran, with an article about what a war with Iran might look like. Sounds like we're definitely headed toward a confrontation. My opinion? Sure, go ahead and invade. The Iranian people will welcome us as liberators. They'll throng the streets as our tanks drive by, showering flower petals on our troops and breaking out the wine glasses. They'll be swinging, swaying, records playing, dancing in the street. All we need is music, sweet music. There'll be music everywhere.

George Bush can occupy Iran, and then let the next president deal with it. As soon as he/she deals with catching Bin Laden...and leaving Afghanistan...and Iraq...and rebuilding New Orleans...and filling in that unsightly hole in the ground in The Big Apple...and fixing immigration...and health care...and global warming. Okay, our soldiers in Iran might have to wait a few years. But hey, it's not like they'll be in danger or anything. Meanwhile, maybe it's time for some more tax cuts so we can do some more shopping. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Posted at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My church has taken the Natural Church Development survey several times, and it's a useful tool for identifying church weaknesses and strengths. But I've had some nagging doubts. The folks who developed the survey claim they studied healthy churches in all kinds of settings around the world, and that the survey is universally applicable. But when I take it, the questions always seem geared to a white suburban or smalltown American church. Would they really apply to a persecuted house church in China?

In particular, I didn't remember any questions about how the church cares for the poor, the dispossessed, widows, homeless, prisoners, etc. The Bible is pretty clear that these are things a church must do. So how can a church be "healthy" when these areas are totally ignored?

Today I looked over an NCD questionnaire, just to see if my suspicions had any basis. There are 91 questions, and number 82 does ask you to give a response to the statement, "Our church does something about hunger in the world." (A few lines down is the statement, "Despite my church activities, I still have sufficient time for my hobbies." How about a statement like, "My hobbies get shorted, because I'd rather give my time to church work"? Isn't that a better indicator of health?)

But beyond that reference to world hunger, the survey makes no attempt to measure whether the church is doing anything for poor people, for people with AIDS, for single-parent families, for the homeless, for people in prison, for social justice, for immigrants, etc. There is not even anything about race, like whether or not your congregation contains people of other races and ethnicities. These issues may not matter (sadly) in American suburban churches, but they certainly matter in most of the non-Western world. Yet, if your church does help poor people, fight injustice, and seek racial integration, the NCD survey won't give you any credit for it. But at least the survey shows concern that our hobbies get the time they deserve.

If this survey were truly international in scope, there would be questions like:

• Our church remains strong in the face of persecution.
• We lovingly reach out to victims of AIDS.
• People of various races feel at home in our church.
• We are an advocate for social justice.
• We help people around us who live in poverty.

Posted at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the speakers at the MinistryCOM Conference, Scott Evans of Outreach Inc., focused on outreach communications. He talked about "proximity," saying that people are more likely to come to your church if they are "close" to you. But he described three different types of closeness, or proximity.

• Geographic proximity. This is what we normally think of. People within a five-mile radius of your church are most likely to come for a visit.
• Demographic proximity. What is the make-up of your church? Lots of seniors? Lots of singles? Lots of kids? Young families? Whatever you have a lot of, you're more likely to attract more of. A young family that visits a church with lots of other young families is more likely to conclude, "This is the church for us," than a single who visits that church and doesn't see other people his/her age arriving or sitting alone (and, therefore, probably single).
• Spiritual proximity. This one intrigued me. Most churches are probably populated mainly by active and inactive believers, and that's the type of person most churches attract--people who want to get involved, or people who want to merely attend and inhabit a pew. But is your church welcoming to nonbelievers? Do your pews contain unbelievers who are either neutral to the Gospel, or who are seeking? My own church has a number of nonChristians who seem to enjoy hanging out with us saints. That's a pretty cool thing.

The speaker stopped with those types of proximity. I'm playing with a couple of additional ones, both of which pertain only to Christians looking for a church.

• Theological proximity. Before settling on a new church, I would check out the church's doctrinal beliefs. Seems like a no-brainer.
• Style proximity. This has to do with preferences regarding how the church does worship or church in general. For instance, if I were looking for a new church, I wouldn't pick a liturgical church, nor a church still using just a piano and organ. I want a band. A band that rocks. Other persons, though, may look for something liturgical in style.

Evans also said something that we should all think about. He said only 1% of people are believers looking for a new church. And yet, that's who we seem to target in our promotional materials. We talk about the programs we offer, our beliefs, where we fit in the theological spectrum ("conservative evangelical," "charismatic," etc.), our style of worship, etc. But none of this will necessarily attract nonbelievers. To do that, we need to climb out of our boxes and get creative.

Posted at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Saturday the hotel sent me a 4:30 a.m. wakeup call so I could get to the Phoenix rental car terminal, return my rental car, take the shuttle to the airport, check my bag, wade through security, and make my 8:00 flight. Which turned out to be way more than enough time. A 5:00 wake-up call would have done it.

On the flight from Phoenix to Chicago, a guy was talking on his cell phone as our plane taxied onto the runway. A passenger a few rows up turned around and told him to turn it off--"It's dangerous," he said. He hung up and said he was turning off the phone. But as the plane began rising from the runwway, become airborne, I looked back (he was just behind me, across the aisle), and he was leaning down in his seat talking on the phone again. He thought if people couldn't see him, they wouldn't hear him. Wrong.

"Hey, turn it off!" I instructed sternly. Another passenger told him the same thing. He kept talking. "Don't mess around!" I said, sternlier. "The other passenger said the exact same thing. And the guy finally hung up. Jerk.

Posted at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's something of extreme cosmic importance which I just learned and feel an urgent need to record on my blog to alert the world's English speaking population and Trivial Pursuit players everywhere. It concerns the "Happy Birthday" song. Seems someone holds the copyright on it and makes $2 million a year in royalties. Whenever it's sung on TV (like the Tonight Show) or in a movie or some other public venue, they get some money. Which is why, in restaurants, when waiters and waitresses (annoyingly) sing to people with birthdays, they use some other song. The song was written by two sisters in the 1860s, was first published in a songbook in 1893, and was finally copyrighted in 1934. Are you not excrutiatingly grateful to Yours Truly for telling you about this?

Posted at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Steve goes back farther than any other friend I have--back to junior high youth group days in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. His dad and my dad were good friends at the United Brethren church there. Steve and I quizzed together on some championship quiz teams. He went into the ministry, and in 1989 followed my dad as pastor of the UB church in Fountain Hills, Ariz., also part of the Phoenix metro area. He left there a couple of years ago, and is now doing what he's always had a passion for doing: planting a new church.

Steve and Donna asked me where I wanted to eat. I said, "Something local. Anything but a chain." Donna said, "We don't have any chains here." Which is fascinating. There's a Dairy Queen, but that's it. Cave Creek doesn't allow street lights, so the place is kind of dark at night; that, too, is fascinating. They suggested a variety of places, and we settled on a steakhouse called The Satisfied Frog. The hysterical part is that The Satisfied Frog is just down the road from a restaurant called The Horny Toad.

We talked and talked and talked, which is what Steve and I always do when we get together. He's a truly independent, unconventional thinker, and I like to fancy myself that way. This is a friendship I greatly cherish, and which has endured strong for 30 years.

Posted at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On my flight from Chicago to Phoenix last Wednesday, I sat next to an early-twentysomething couple who spoke to each other in a language which I tentatively guessed was Italian. Which turned out to be right (I asked the guy at the end of the flight). The guy was an American from Chicago, but he and his wife now live outside of Milan, and she's Italian. She read an English magazine during the flight, and he helped her with some words.

At one point she stopped reading, turned to him, held up the magazine while pointing to a paragraph of text, and asked, "What does 'the heebee-jeebies' mean?" He had an immediate response in Italian. I couldn't come up with a response in English. The willies? Something that freaks you out?

Posted at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kem Meyer was my favorite speaker at the MinistryCOM conference. She is on staff at Granger Community Church, just a couple hours west of me near South Bend, Ind. That's a fascinating, innovative church of 5500, and Kem is a remarkably engaging, competent person. I took gobs of notes from her keynote session and from a seminar.

In the keynote, she said that whenever someone comes to you wanting to do a brochure or website, you need to ask three questions.

1. Is it a tool, or is it just cool?
2. What problem is this solving?
3. What will happen, or won't happen, if we don't do it?

All of this addresses the matter of purpose. Over the years, as we've created new ministry groups at the denominational level, they (very predictably) tend to want to create whatever communication tool is in vogue at that time. In earlier years, they always wanted a brochure and a newsletter. They didn't necessarily know what they wanted to do with them, but just thought they should have them. So I would design a brochure and a newsletter.

Now, they're more likely to want a website and an email list. A few years ago, the Youth Task Force asked me to develop a website for them, so I did. But they never gave me anything--I mean, not one thing--to put on it. They thought they should have a website, but more because it seemed "cutting edge" than because it accomplished a purpose for them.

Currently, to be really cutting edge, you need a blog. It's the cool thing. A blog is a huge, huge commitment which people don't realize until they start one. I've created three blogs for the denomination. One I never implemented, because I didn't feel the group would be committed to making it succeed. One I discontinued because it wasn't living up to its original purpose, and I combined it into the third blog, which was struggling, but is doing fine now that we've expanded it. A fourth blog request I simply said no to.

We really need more intentionality about our communications pieces, making sure they accomplish our purposes. Since I'm the communications guy, I guess I shouldn't throw stones.

Posted at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Though I loved the MinistryCOM conference, my first impression was a groan.

When I registered, I was directed to choose one of four colored badge holders based on my church's size. Blue for churches of under 1000, green for 1000-3000, yellow for 3000-5000, and red (I think it was) for churches above 5000. I, of course, took the blue one. Reluctantly. I hate pecking orders, and that's what this sounded like.

Throughout the 1980s, I attended the Evangelical Press Association's annual convention, a really big deal which brought together editors and staffs from several hundred evangelical publications, incuding all the biggies (like the Christianity Today family, Moody Monthly, Decision, Focus on the Family, etc.). I then edited a denominational magazine with less than 5000 subscribers. Denominational magazines were at the bottom of the pecking order, and 5000 subscribers was peanuts. Now, I had invitations to move to large, status publications, but I always felt God wanted me to remain with the United Brethren church. So I just sucked up the general disdain from the snooties.

But after a decade, I grew tired of being looked down on. The final straw came when I talked over lunch with an editor from The Banner, a prominent, award-winning denominational magazine for one of the Reformed denominations. The lady asked me who I worked for, and I told her. What's your circulation? Five thousand. How large is your staff? It's just me. Then she said, "Well, it must be very rewarding work." While what I read between her words was, "Loser." She then seemed bored talking with me, and turned her attention to others.

In reality, I knew I could write circles around her. I had three EPA writing awards to my name. I'd sold freelance articles to over 40 Christian publications. But because of size issues--denomination, circulation, staff--she considered herself a cut above me.

The editors from the big publications hung around each other, they ate together, they formed circles during break. Meanwhile, we little guys scattered around the edges, drinking coffee by ourselves, waiting for the next session to start. At meals, we filled in at tables with an extra chair.

I went to one more convention and stopped. I'd had enough with the status positioning, the snobbishness of the Big Boys (and Girls).

So, when I picked up my MinistryCOM name-badge holder, those old feelings came back. I represent a small church in a small denomination. I wouldn't be considered a person with much to offer, just a peon coming to learn from the Biggies.

I asked one lady what church she was from, and her instincts immediately went to size. Her response was a chagrinned, "We're not a large church." Amused by her seeming sense of inferiority, I told her, "My church has 120 people. We're a land-locked church plant." She perked up and said, "Oh, we have a thousand people." She paused, then said with a smile which humbly recognized the silliness of our dance, "I guess you win."

So, I probably had the distinction of representing the conference's smallest church (though I actually came representing my denomination, which was as big as two Christ's Church of the Valleys).

But joy of joys, I experienced none of the snootiness I experienced in the Evangelical Press Association. Nobody paid attention to the color of your badge. We were all communications professionals serving the Lord. And I found that so extremely refreshing.

Posted at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was "Back to School Sunday" at Anchor. The worship team did nothing but children's songs--"Give Me Oil in My Lamp," "The B-I-B-L-E," "The Lord's Army," "Zacchaeus," and "Father Abraham." What a blast watching the adults do the motions!

Tim preached sitting on the platform with kids around him. He used a tree as the metaphor, and his message concluded with everyone going outside to plant a tree between the church and the youth center building. He let the kids plant the trees. Then the kids went to the door of the youth center (which is just a house we bought) for a bag of school supplies.

We did that in each service. It was fun and different. But I'll be ready to do some rocking next week.

Posted at 06:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Thursday and Friday I attended the MinistryCOM conference in Phoenix, Ariz. I hadn't heard about this organization until I received an email about it. It's designed for church communications professionals, which is my gig in life. This was their second annual convention. I'll plan to attend every year.

Most of the attendees came from large, large churches which actually need someone to work fulltime in communications. Some had entire communications departments. This takes in a bunch of areas: marketing, graphics, the internet, public relations, information technology. The focus was more strategy than techie.

The level of competence, creativity, and commitment (three C's! I should write sermons!) was extraordinary. I gained something from every keynote session and every seminar (most conferences throw in at least a few losers).

We met at Christ's Church of the Valley, a 10,000-person church in Peoria, on the northwest side of the Phoenix metro area. My goodness, what a sprawling campus! The property at CCV, as it's known, featured many buildings; this being Arizona, you don't need hallways and enclosed walkways. The church holds four services each weekend--two on Saturday, two on Sunday. They promote them as "identical services." Off of the sanctuary was a bookstore, a nice coffeehouse (with wireless access), and a scramble-system food court. Scores of tables sat outside, most under umbrellas or open-sided enclosures. Southwestern architecture is my favorite, and this church uses it beautifully.

When MinistryCOM attendees identified themselves, they usually gave the size of their church, not in a pecking order kind of way, but for context. I concluded that churches below 2000 round off to the nearest 100 (nobody said, "We have 1750 people"), churches above 2000 round off to the nearest 500 (so there's no 5300, just 5500), and somewhere around 7000 or so, they begin rounding off to the nearest 1000. My size of church rounds off to the nearest 5 (do I say we have 120 people, or 125?). I didn't meet anyone in a church with less than 1000 people, but my experience, in our denomination, is that they round off to the nearest 50.

I learned a lot, and I'll inflict it upon my blog in the days ahead.

Posted at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm sitting in Chicago's O'Hare airport, waiting for my 50-minute flight back to Fort Wayne. I've been in Phoenix attending the MinistryCOM conference, a really wonderful event. I haven't flown since November 2002, just after the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) took over all airport security. My, a lot has changed in that time. Here are some of my observations and experiences from this trip.

• I used etickets for the first time. Booked everything through Orbitz by myself. Very nice. Orbitz sent voicemail to my cellphone with each leg of the flight. For instance, after arriving in Chicago, an Orbitz voicemail informed me that the Fort Wayne flight was on schedule, and told me the gate number and time of departure. I never had to produce tickets anywhere. Nice.
• I loved the self-checkin stations. Swipe a credit card, and the machine identifies you. Put in your flight number, and it calls up your itinerary. Indicate how many bags need to be checked, and then the machine prints out your boarding passes for each leg of your trip.
• In Fort Wayne, I set off the alarm several times, and the TSA guy waved me over to a section for wanding and frisking. At that point I was in my socks, cargo shorts, and polo shirt. No watch. No cell phone. Nothing metal in my pockets. The guy asked me if I had a prosthetic implant, like a fake knee. I said no. A few seconds later, he asked again, "Are you sure you haven't had a surgical implant of some kind?" I think I might remember something like that. Anyways, a guy came and explained exactly what he would do, and said that when he frisked me, he would only use the back of his hand. Which, of course, made it perfectly okay for a guy to run his hands over my body. The problem turned out to be the multiple snaps in my cargo shorts. Fortunately, I didn't need to remove my shorts.
• The TSA employees were very professional and friendly. In Phoenix, the guy in front of me handed his boarding pass and a photo ID to the TSA guy at the head of the line. It wasn't a good photo. The TSA guy asked if he could provide his driver's license. The man pulled it from his wallet and said, "The photo doesn't look anything like me." The TSA official looked at the driver's license, looked at the man, and then said, "Now I know why you gave me the other photo." We all chuckled.
• The boarding passes have a group number on them. Instead of boarding by aisles, as they once did--"Now boarding aisles 23 through 35"--we board by groups. Group one is always frirst class, and they board first, the snooty elites. On the last flight, I was group two, and we were the rows in the back. So they don't go in order, from front to back of the plane.
• On the flight to Phoenix from Chicago, a three-hour flight, all of the flight attendants were guys. One, if he colored his hair entirely gray (it was already partially gray), would have looked like Taylor Hicks from Americdan Idol. And I would have asked him to show us a dance move.
• I had no trouble finding bin space for my carry-on laptop bag. In the past, people lugged aboard massive garment bags and anything else they could carry. I would get aboard early, lest all bin space be taken. But now that they've clamped down on carry-ons, I can board last and still have no trouble.

Posted at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Paula, my niece, highly recommended the book Adventures in Missing the Point, by Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren. Each chapter deals with a different topic--Doubt, Sin, Women in Ministry, Homosexuality, the Environment, Evangelism, etc. The two authors each wrote half of the chapters and briefly commented on the other person's chapters.

Since Paula recommended the book, as we stood in the Christian bookstore where she works, I bought it. I finished the book a few weeks ago.

Last night, I had supper with an old friend, We were talking about postmodernism and how much we bought into the assumptions about the fundamental attitudinal change which postmodernism insists is upon us. And so it's inevitable that Brian McLaren's name arose, since he's the guru of postmodernism. My friend, Steve, suddenly asked, "Am I the only one who thinks McLaren is a boring writer?"

I thought I was alone. I breezed through Campolo's chapters in Adventures in Missing the Point, but found myself continually bogged down in McLaren's chapters. The contrast was spectacular. I ended up reading all of Campolo's chapters first, checking them off in the table of contents, and then forced myself to read McLaren's chapters, like downing cough syrup. Steve, my friend, had exactly the same experience.

Campolo's chapter on homosexuality was some of the best writing I've seen on that subject; many of my questions found answers that lined up very satisfactorily. His chapters on women in ministry, the environment, and eschatology were also very good.

Sorry, but none of McLaren's chapters seemed particularly insightful, though my copy of the book does show occasional underlines in his writing. And they certainly weren't fun to read. (Paula found the chapter on "Doubt" very helpful to her, which is great.) Part of my problem with McLaren is that he looks at everything through the filter of postmodernism. I don't think he could go to the bathroom without pondering how the urinal design reflects modernity. Since I don't necessarily buy some of his basic assumptions, and yet he examines every subject in the book based on those assumptions being correct...well, that obviously creates a problem.

So do I recommend this book? I recommend half of it. Campolo's superb. Skip the rest.

Posted at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'll turn 50 next month, and I'm giving myself a gift. Actually, I've been working on this gift since early May, and I'm hoping that by the time I actually cross the Great 50 Divide, I'll have a good sense of what the gift looks and acts like.

The gift is authenticity.

At this point in my life, I feel confident enough about my place in the universe that I don't feel the need to impress, to protect, to defend, to spout the party line. No longer do I want to play games, trying to seem better at this or that than I really am, whether it's an issue of occupational competence or spiritual vitality or intellectual knowledge. It's not like I've been a big fake, a phony, a political games-player. Over the years I've been pretty open and honest. And yet, streaks of embedded inauthenticity run through my daily life, which I've discovered (with dismay) during the past few months as I've been trying to excise falsity from my deeply-ingrained habits and tendencies.

I want to grow in being honest, transparent, vulnerable, genuine, open. I don't want to tell people what they want to hear, or what they expect to hear from me as a denominational suit. I don't want to only voice sentiments that are safe, whether at work or church or in general relationships. I don't want to play the part of an all-knowing, all-spiritual church elder, when my knowledge and spirituality fall way below allness. I want to stop playing Christian one-upmanship games, end the reign of pretense in so many nooks and crannies of my Christian character, and slay the remaining dragons of insecurity which give rise to self-justification, defensiveness, and excuses. I want to have no inhibitions about saying, "Wow, I really goofed that one up," or "I was wrong, and you were right."

Authenticity doesn't require that I turn into a blunt jerk who dumps critical crap on people and says things like, "You know, you've got really ugly ears. Hey, I'm just trying to be honest." There is still a matter of appropriateness and discretion. But you get the idea. Writing regularly in this blog is actually very good practice in being authentic.

So that's my birthday present to myself. I'm working on it every day, trying to flesh out what it means, though I keep encountering bastions where genuineness remains locked out. But that's where I'm headed. And so far, I've found it quite liberating.

Posted at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last night we took our annual pilgrimage to the Van Wert County Fair. Pam and I have been going for, we figure, 18 years now. At least. Started before we got married. Last night we went with my brother Rick and his family.

Food is the main attraction. Always the same stuff from the same places, in the same order. I got two sandwiches from Ragers--sausage, and bologna. Fiske fries came next. Then a funnel cake. Then a bag of roasted almonds at an outrageous price. And finally, the famous cherry ice cream. Everything is always in the same place as the year before. Mom says the cherry ice cream stand is located in the same place it was located when she was a kid, which goes back at least, uh, 20 years.

I climbed over a bunch of tractors with Cameron, Rick's son, who must be four or five at this point. I can never remember. One old, restored tractor still had a key in the ignition, a mistake by the owner, I'm sure. Cameron, who routinely pulled every lever and flipped every switch on every tractor, was quite surprised when he turned the key and the engine turned over.

I have gobs of relatives in the area, but didn't see a one of them. Did see Ed Gebert there, the guru of Attention Span.

People complain about how slow churches are to change. Well, I've got news for you. Nothing changes more slowly than the Van Wert County Fair. And despite all my progressive harpings, I like the fair that way. Should I appreciate slowness-to-change more in church? I'll have to think about that.

Posted at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm an advocate for taking care of the poor, underprivileged, and dispossessed in our midst. Or am I?

These people are definitely on my conscience. Have been since 1981, when I heard former UPI reporter Wes Pippert speak at a press convention. Pippert, in addition to being an ace reporter at the top of his profession, was also an Old Testament scholar. A brilliant guy whom I first heard speak when I was a student at Huntington College. At this convention, he explained how, throughout the Old Testament, God's judgment or blessing on a nation was usually tied to how well it took care of its poor people.

Pippert's words planted a seed in me which has grown, slowly, ever since. Until then (I was two years out of college), despite having grown up in wonderful evangelical churches, the poor were not on my radar. Which makes me wonder why the heck we United Brethren have this huge blindspot regarding something central to God's heart. Whatever the case, during the past 25 years the poor have been on my radar with ever-increasing pings, and Pippert's words have been repeatedly reinforced. It's now something I believe strongly.

But has it made any difference in my life, beyond self-righteous, idealistic sniveling about the need to care for the poor? Mark Driscoll writes in Radical Reformission, "Ideals become values only if they are lived out." Well, it would be fashionably humble to beat up on myself, but the truth is, my behavior and attitude have come a long way. Yes, I live in a nice house and blow a lot of discretionary income. And yet, there are things I do and don't do that demonstrate a change from ten years ago.

Through my current church, I hang out with people on the lower end of the economic scale. They are my friends, and I care about them in a hands-on way. I've gone beyond just writing checks to someone else who works around poor people. What started when Pippert plucked my conscience has blossomed into something that really matters. But not nearly as much as I'd like it to matter. And as much as it will matter, I hope, next year, and the year after that. I'm still more of a talker than a doer. But I'm glad to be more than an idealist, too.

Many fundamental attitudinal changes take years. Wes Pippert's message wasn't a Damascus Road experience for me, where I suddenly turned 180 degrees. Rather, it started me on a really long journey. And now, after 25 years, I find myself way way down that road. And I should take some pleasure in that. I can look at other areas in which change has come not through a crisis experience, but through a steady progression. Like my thinking regarding how Christians should view the environment, gays, politics, spending habits, war and peace, and much more. I'm also learning to be patient with people who are also on a journey of attitude-change, and not expect any amount of harping on my part to transport them to the place it took me 20 years to reach.

Posted at 03:02 PM | Permalink