The Anchor worship team has a gig on Friday night. We're playing for a couple hours at the Grind coffeehouse in Fort Wayne. I've not been there before. Interestingly, we're required to do only our own original music. The Grind doesn't want to purchase the BMI license needed to legally perform live music written by other people.

Fortunately, Tim (left) and Terry (right), our guitarists, have written gobs of music, most of which we've done at Anchor. Some songs are part of the regular song-package rotation, others we've done as preludes. We're also doing a few songs written by Chris Kuntz, our former worship leader. And then you can throw in a few songs using someone else's tune (like "Who'll Stop the Rain" and "Mustang Sally"), to which Tim and Terry have written their own lyrics. I even contributed a song in this category, writing new words to Coco Montoya's "Clean Slate."

Put it all together, and we've got two hours of original music. Pretty impressive. I'll be there, along with Terry's son Joe (drums) and Tom, our outstanding bass player.

Tim and Terry are very talented. They recorded several songs. I've included them below, along with cord charts. I think you'll enjoy them. I particularly like "I Don't Believe in Luck," perfect to accompany any sermon dealing with gambling or money in general.

Posted at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My brother Rick wrote an interesting piece on his blog called "Why I Don't Want Hillary as President." I gotta agree with him.

But there's more: the Bill Factor. The guy just can't help himself. He loves the spotlight, and can't discipline himself to stay on-message with his wife, who happens to be The Candidate, in case he's not aware of that. Bill's gonna sink her chances, whether it's in capturing the nomination or winning in November.

I just read an article in the current Newsweek about some of Bill's business dealings with shady people since leaving office. We had eight years of Whitewater, a minor scandal that Republicans drew out insufferably. I'm afraid there are a bunch more Whitewaters just beneath the surface. And they would be inflicted on us throughout a Hillary presidency.

While I think she's qualified and capable, a real sharp lady who knows policy and could make a decent president (despite whether or not you agree with some of her views), I think her husband is just an enormous turn-off for too many people. A big liability. Kudos for hanging on to a marriage when lots of people thought she should divorce the guy. But Bill, who would most definitely be co-president, is the main reason I can't imagine voting for her.

Posted at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not a Rudy fan, and would not vote for him. I don't see that he has much of a moral base, and I've read too much about the bad ways he treats people (which speaks to his character). His ego is astronomical, and he doesn't tolerate anyone else taking even a portion of his spotlight. Plus, he's playing the fear card, straight from the Karl Rove Handbook. I detest that.

And I see him continuing and even expanding the imperial presidency which George Bush spawned--a presidency which is not accountable to Congress, views itself as above any checks and balances, that does what it wants in the world without getting anyone else's approval. And that, to me, is dangerous for our country. George Bush has left us without friends in the world who would come to our aid should we need it. In that way, it endangers our national security.

So that's how I felt until I read the "Old Habits," an article about Giuliani in the January 7 New Yorker magazine. The New Yorker has written some fabulous, in-depth articles about the various candidates, all of which provide new light. This article focused on Rudy's record as mayor, the good and the bad. While he did a lot of good, he left mountains of scorched earth.

He mistreated people. He left few friends. He picked fights out of pure capriciousness. He let his ego run amuck. The city's largest policeman's union and the largest firefighter's union won't endorse Rudy. "Rudy Giuliani is not the individual he portrays himself to be," said the head of of the city's fire officers' union.

"Rudy was a good mayor in the sense of delivering services," says former mayor Ed Koch. "He was not a great mayor, because he didn't respect people."

Jerome Hauer, who set up Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management, said this: "From my perspective, Rudy would be a very dangerous President. And I think people need to be very frightened of him. When you look at the way he picked battles unnecessarily as major, imagine if he's got nuclear weapons at his disposal."

Posted at 05:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm horrified. Ashamed. Smitten with self-loathing.

Last night, as Pam and I drove home from working out at the YMCA, I realized that I had committed a terrible faux paux. After 20 minutes on the arc trainer, I left...without wiping it down. All of that sweat just left to marinate. The guy beside me probably reported me to the Y authorities. I well remember the Seinfield episode about this.

Dare I show my face there again?

Posted at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally got around to reading Mitt Romney's December "Faith in America" speech, in which he talked about religion. It's very good, and I fully respect what he said. Christianity is kind of the "dominant" religion of the US, and when you're "in charge," you don't need to ask many philosophical questions about your place in the scheme of things. But as a Mormon, a minority religion, Romney has had to defend his faith and think deeply about religious issues as they affect citizenship.

Here are a few excerpts. Nothing earth-shaking, but good stuff. Good stuff for us evangelicals, who became addicted to political power when the Moral Majority came to power (though I think we're getting over it).

Let me assure you that no authorites of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.

There are some for whom these commitments are not enough. They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it.

Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.

No candidate should become a spokesman for his faith.

I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life's blessings.

The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe's churches. And though you will find many people of strong faith there, the churches themselves seem to be withering away.

Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me.

There are a few points which invite quibbling. One is his line, "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom." I agree with the first part, but not the second. Religion has often thrived--or, at least, shined with the most genuine of light--when officially banned. But I suppose it makes sense in the context of the Mormon religion; Brigham Young and Company migrated west to find a place where they could freely practice this new religion.

Posted at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The worship team, as a special, did the song "Get Together," from the 1960s, as a way to celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. While the band played, a series of photos from King's life and from the civil rights movement appeared on the screen behind us. Last night, as I searched the internet for appropriate photos, I came across several of King's speeches, and I was impressed with what I read.

One sermon is called "Loving Your Enemies." King preached it in 1957 at a Baptist church in Montgomery, Ala. It's quite a sermon. He quotes the verses from Matthew 5: "Ye have heard that it has been said, "Thou shall love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy." But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven."

Then he says the following:


Now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command; he wasn't playing. He realized that it's hard to love your enemies. He realized that it's difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. He realized that it was painfully hard, pressingly hard. But he wasn't playing. And we cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole, just a sort of exaggeration to get over the point. This is a basic philosophy of all that we hear coming from the lips of our Master. Because Jesus wasn't playing; because he was serious. We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words, and to discover how we can live out this command, and why we should live by this command.

What would happen if we actually lived by this? If we took it as seriously as King took it? What are the implications for us Manifest Destiny Americans? "Jesus wasn't playing," King said. And we know from Jesus' life that he, indeed, lived by this--as did King. So for us to take this seriously, what does it require of us as a nation, and as citizens of the world's dominant nation?

Posted at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year, on the Sunday prior to Martin Luther King Day, we showed a clip from the "I have a Dream" speech in church. That was really neat. We're not doing that this year, but last night at music practice, we pulled out a song from the 1960s that goes along with the Civil Rights movement: "Get Together," by the Youngbloods.

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now.

We decided to play it as part of the service. So we practiced it last night, and it came together real nicely. A fun song to do.

And yes, it took me back...back to my days dropping LSD, smoking weed, the constant sex, cruising the country in a VW van, sticking flowers in soldiers' guns, wearing hideously unmatched (and probably tie-dyed) clothes, getting wasted at Woodstock while Jimmy played....

Oh wait, I must be thinking of somebody else. I didn't even wear my first pair of bluejeans until 1972, a radicalizing turning point which left me awash in euphoric sensations of counter-cultural rebellion. Wearing bluejeans and listening to the Carpenters (my first album, "Close to You"), are about as rebellious as I ever got. I sure missed out on a lot. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for raising such a boring kid.

Posted at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mike Dennis pointed me to an article about the mindset of Mac buyers, which is perhaps the only minority group WASPs like Mike and I can claim to be part of. According to Mindset Media, a group I know nothing about, people who are "highly open-minded" are 60% more likely to buy a Mac. In addition, "These purchasers are also more liberal, less modest, and more assured of their own superiority than the population at large."

More liberal? Less modest? I don't know about that. But being a Mac user since 1988, and therefore obviously equipped with enormous foresight, I have no problem attesting to my own superiority.

Posted at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

And now, a lesson in coffee preparation technique.

I use cream, and I always put it in first. That way, when I pour in the coffee, it automatically mixes. You don't need to find one of those cheap plastic straw-things to stir it up.

Starbucks, being upscale, doesn't condescend to using plastic tubes. Instead, they provide wooden sticks to elevate your stirring experience. They're like popsicle sticks, but skinny and longer. Of course, I never use them, because my first stop when I enter the store is the cream counter. I pour Half & Half into my travel cup, and then go get my decaf. When they ask, "Leave room for cream?", I say, "It's already in there."

I did that today. When the girl brought my coffee, she said, "Are you saving the environment one little wooden stick at a time?"

"What?" I asked. I had no idea what she was referring to.

"There's another guy who always puts cream in first," she explains. "He says he is saving the environment one little wooden stick at a time."

Hey, it's something.

Posted at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A very interesting post on what I've discovered is a very interesting website: Swerve, by Craig Groeschel, pastor of the highly innovative Lifechurch.tv. Groeschel is writing about humility. He says it is dangerous to not only take all the credit when something goes well, but also dangerous to take the blame when things don't go well.

For example, when a ministry struggles, some totally blame themselves: "I must not be doing a good job. If I were, then this would grow and thrive." If we blame ourselves for the hard times, we’ll likely take credit for the successes, too.

I'm certainly not one to avoid self credit. Just being honest.

How does this work theologically? Can we give God the credit whether something bombs or triumphs? We certainly do deserve the blame for failures. At the same time, we may deserve all the credit for the success--because we pretty much pulled it off in our own strength, without wrestling with God's desires and praying. Heavens, during my lifetime in the church, I'm sure I've done many things for God's glory without seeking his help.

Posted at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

• Two questions floating around with reckless abandon: Is the country ready for a woman president? Is the country ready for a black president? My answer to both: yes. However...is Hillary that woman? Probably not. Is Obama that black? I think the country could elect him. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Alan Keyes were most definitely not the black that the country was ready for, but Obama could be.
• Morning Joe has become my favorite, uh, news show. Unfortunately, I can only catch about 45 minutes of it, and then only if I'm willing to sacrifice the extra sleep. Love Mika and Willy. Reporter David Shuster, a regular, is hilarious.
• In fact, MSNBC now dominates my news-watching. I like Hardball, when there's not too much yelling. I like Keith Olberman, the anti-O'Reilly. Tucker is interesting. Abrams not so much. MSNBC's big strength is the ability to draw star-power from the NBC stable--Brokaw, Russert, David Gregory, Brian Williams.
• Keith Olberman is an acquired taste. He is unabashed in his disdain for the Bush administration, which is okay with me. He's also an incredible wordsmith, the most literate of the TV commentators. And he is wickedly funny, delivering much of the show with a sly twinkle. But I totally understand if you can't stomach Olberman.
• Who will be the nominees? I suspect Obama for the Democrats. Once Edwards drops out, the majority of his votes will probably swing to Obama, rather than Hillary. Maybe not. The question is: will Edwards drop out soon enough for it to matter? On the Republican side, I'm hoping for McCain, but Romney or Guiliani could be that person. Maybe even Huckabee.
• I thought Hillary did fine on Meet the Press this Sunday. I was impressed with her answers, for the most part. She's definitely a policy wonk--knows her stuff.

Posted at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh crud, the Colts lost. Peyton didn't have a good day--lots of tips. Looks like I'll be rooting for the Packers from here on. Can't possibly favor San Diego or New England in the Super Bowl. So it's gotta be Brett & Company.

Posted at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Excellence is over-rated," the speaker at MinistryCOM said.

My generation, the baby boomers, is mightily smitten with excellence. We need to give our best to God. We wear bluejeans to church, but everything we experience there—the music, the message, the multimedia, the publications—must be top quality. If it's not, we complain about the affect poor quality will have on visitors, when really, we just demand excellence for our own pleasure.

At MinistryCOM, the worship team from People's Church there in Nashville opened the sessions. They were great. I sat there basking in those remarkable worship experiences—the superb leader, the tightness of the music…everything. When Pam and I went on vacation in October, we spent one Sunday at People's Church, hearing the team on a regular Sunday. Superb again. Likewise at Quest Church in Lexington. I thrilled at being part of such high quality worship experiences, and have no criticism to level at anybody.

My attitude was: enjoy it while you can. Because that's not what I'm called to on a week-to-week basis. My calling is to a church of 120 people, many of them poor, uneducated, culturally untrained. We can't pull off excellence. The worship team was pretty good for many years, but now we lack a strong worship leader and good singers. I know that musically-savvy may declare us woesomely insufficient. But hey--we are what we've got. We're the willing, and we do our best. Meanwhile, at large churches across Fort Wayne, musicians and singers much more capable than we are go unused, because they aren't needed. Or because their own abilities, though far beyond those of us meager musicians at Anchor, fall short of the "excellence" their own churches demand.

Daniel Schantz wrote an amazing article on the ChristanStandard.com website called "Recovering from Excellence." He says that the quest for excellence can be:

• Elitist. Average people need not apply. Average buildings are unworthy.
• Expensive. Excellence costs money. I've said for a long time that churches "buy" excellence in the form of music ministers and other professionals. "Nowhere did Jesus emphasize having fine things as the mark of superiority," Schantz writes. He notes that Jesus rode a fishing trawler across the Sea of Galilee, not a yacht.
• Exhausting. Schantz says people who demand excellence are just perfectionists, and "Perfection is a disorder."

Sometimes people accustomed to excellence take a condescending attitude toward those of us who must "settle" for what they view as mediocrity. We, on the other hand, view them as uppity, or as as insubstantial fluff. Stereotypoes.

But what about excellence? Should we at Anchor strive for excellence? Should that be a goal for us, and for the other small churches who make up 90% of my denomination? Because though every small church has at least some quality people who could "make it" in a large church (for instance, my wife would make an incredible treasurer), in the end, we just can't compete. We lack the personnel, we lack the resources.

I'll come back to this subject with comments on Schantz's "Alternatives to Excellence."

Posted at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

At work, we're well along in experimenting with Plaxo, an online resource for managing your address book, calendars, and other things. One of the founders is the Napster guy. It's a very cool resource. If a minister is a Plaxo members and updates his/her Plaxo contact info, that info is updated in our records and filters back to the Address Book. When we added our address book (over 1000 names) to Plaxo, we discovered that 29 of those persons were already Plaxo members.

Plaxo works very nice with the Mac Address Book, and also interfaces with Gmail, LinkedIn, and many other popular sites.

Speaking of LinkedIn: I also have a profile there. LinkedIn is very cool, and enables you to build a thorough profile. There are 17 million members so far, putting it just behind Myspace and Facebook. But unlike those sites, LinkedIn is designed for professionals, and particularly for networking.

In LinkedIn, you can find connections with people based on colleges and high schools you attended, plus organizations you're part of. In Plaxo, you can import your LinkedIn connections.

I invite you to sign up for either of these, and then link up with me.

Posted at 04:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Slate magazine has a fascinating slideshow of megachurch architecture, including good commentary. You'll find photos from Lakewood Church (Joel Osteen's stomping ground), Willow Creek, the Crystal Cathedral (which is the only one which inspires awe), and others. Including the 21,000-seat Mormon conference center in Salt Lake City, the largest religious assembly place in the country. Really interesting stuff.

Posted at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pam and I bought Delicious Library, a $40 Macintosh program for inventorying your library of books, videos, and music. You can buy a scanner (which we did), for scanning bar codes. It then transfers the info via bluetooth to your computer, looks up the item on Amazon, and downloads info about it--publisher, cost, synopsis, thumbnail photo, etc. Real slick. So far, I've scanned in over 700 books. Still got three bookcases to go. Plus all of our videos and music CDs. I love this program.

BTW: No, we don't own Kill Bill. That screenshot is from the Delicious website.

Posted at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tonight was our monthly tournament night in the Three Rivers Table Tennis club. I never do well in these tournament. One two and lost one tonight. I left just after 9 p.m., and on the radio, John McCain was just starting his victory speech. I listened for about ten minutes, then found myself drifting off. He just wasn't holding my attention. I'd come back, then drift away again.

Finally, after about 20 minutes, my mind went back to the radio and I mused, "Is he still talking?"

I'm a McCain fan, and I'm delighted he won. But I tell you--his speechmaking abilities don't exactly qualify as captivating. Maybe it was better on TV.

Wednesday morning postscript: On Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough, they savaged McCain's speech. A clip showed that it definitely was not better on TV.

Posted at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I always get Vermont and New Hampshire mixed up. Is New Hampshire on the right, or the left? Every four years I care, but don't bother cementing the answer in my mind.

Posted at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Saturday I went to the Fort Wayne Gun & Knife show. Bought five bayonets for my collection, which now numbers 43. Added bayonets from Chile, Egypt, Italy, Siam, and Spain (though I already had a couple Spanish bayonets). I now have bayonets from 23 different countries, nearly 20 of them from the 1800s. My first one was Grandpa's Civil War bayonet.

It's a fun hobby. I like bayonets because there's nothing fragile about them. You can drop them, or even throw them, and no damage. They're made for the battlefield, after all. And you wonder: what kind of action has this blade seen?

My favorites? The pristine Danish sword-bayonet with the leather sheath, dating to 1860. The US Spanish-American War bayonet, with six notches on the wood handle. And the mammoth Swiss sawtooth bayonet. Oh, and the little Uzi bayonet...and the German WW1 sawtooth...and the French Lebel.... Oh, they're all neat.

It was interesting, at the Gun & Knife Show, to see two booths for political candidates. Any guesses no who those two candidates were? They were John McCain and Ron Paul. The McCain booth was makeshift, but the Ron Paul people really had their act together.

Posted at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That was quite a speech by Obama. I like him. Rudy can be quite a speaker, too. I don't like him. Can't imagine Hillary or Mitt giving a speech that stirs me in any way. Way too scripted, cautious...boring. And yet, both might make decent presidents.

I'm still hoping McCain charges forth. In recent years, he seems to have softened, to be compromising, certainly to be backend-kissing George the Younger. And yet, at the core, McCain is still a maverick. He's a man of character and conviction. I'd love to see him in the White House. But it'll take some doin' to get him there, and I don't think it'll happen. And besides, when it comes right down to it, I might prefer one of the Democrats anyway.

Huckabee? Interesting guy. Slightly more experienced than Obama, slightly less articulate. More than slightly, actually, but still can talk circles around most of the field. Obama, Huckabee, Rudy, and Edwards know how to move crowds. We've not had a real orator-president since Kennedy. I can't imagine sitting through a State of the Union speech by Hillary or Mitt.

I'm definitely in the independent camp right now. Living in Indiana, I'm also irrelevant, because the state always goes Republican. But I could easily vote for Obama or McCain, somewhat easily vote for Edwards or Huckabee. Rudy, man of no morals, makes me wretch (and thank you for endorsing him, Pat Robertson, on behalf of Christians everywhere).

The blogosphere is the cyber equivalent of Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park, a place where any idiot can stand on a box and spout silliness. I have a blog. Therefore I spout.

Posted at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are some photos from my family's get-together on New Year's Day. Click on a thumbnail to get a larger version.

	Benjamin (right) and Cameron.
	Benjamin watching Anna and Cam open presents.
	Cameron giving his irresistible puppy pose.
	Dorene (Rick's wife) with the hyper Daphne.
	Mom and Dad opening presents.

Posted at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tom and Paula

My niece, Paula, told me that she and Tom are planning to become foster parents (something in which Paula has had an interest for many years). They live in Convoy, Ohio; Tom is an electrician, and Paula manages a Christian bookstore in Van Wert. Paula valued my opinion about the idea, and that made me feel good. Having taken in Allen and Carolyn and Connor for a year, I suppose, gave my views some credibility. I told her I thought it was a great way to make a huge impact on some kids' lives. But I said it would definitely change their lives. Gone is privacy. Gone is a lot of freedom and spontaneity. Gone is...self-centeredness?

But the Christian life isn't meant to be convenient. If your life is lived in such a way that you don't have to be bothered by stuff, that things don't get in your way, that you don't have extra demands on your time and money, that you don't need to be unduly troubled by other people's troubles, that your discretionary time and money is at your own beck and call, that you can do what you want when you want--well, then, your life is very convenient. Congratulations, it must feel nice.

But Jesus talks about having no place to lay your head and all kinds of other unsavory demands of being a disciple. Your life, as a Christian, is not supposed to be convenient.

Posted at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)