I've worked pretty much alone for 30 years. At MinistryCOM, I discovered lots of fellow professionals who do the same stuff I do--writing, graphics, video, web--and they do it in the context of the local church. Mostly megachurches. I work from the perch of a denomination's national office, but still in the service of local churches.

This year I'm doing a workshop, and I'm jazzed about it. The title is "Writing: Different Media, Different Techniques." The idea is, you don't write something for the church newsletter, then throw the same text, unchanged, onto the website and into an email and the Sunday bulletin. Different techniques and principles apply to different communications vehicles. You need to edit your well-crafted copy to fit the needs of that particular medium.

At heart, I'm a writer. I've been doing publication layout for 30 years, computer graphic design for 20 years, web design for 10 years. Today, I spend more time in Dreamweaver and Photoshop than I do in Word. I've developed some strong competencies in graphics and web design. But when you scrape everything away, you find a writer. I miss the opportunities I once had, in editing a magazine, to write lengthy feature articles (something which, in what is now ancient history, won me a couple awards from the Evangelical Press Association).

So it'll be nice talking about writing, with a focus on how the new media affect your wordsmithing.

If you're a communications professional in the Christian world, I encourage you to consider attending MinistryCOM. And if you register by July 31, you're eligible to win a free iPod Nano!

But as we sang one hymn, I found myself cracking a smile. It was "The Lord's My Shepherd," a hymn I hadn't heard before. It uses the text of Psalm 23, but contorts sentence structure in the an obsessive and sadly desperate search for a rhyme. It's like a Pennsylvania Dutch version of Yoda.

Here the first two verses are:

The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want;
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.

My soul He doth restore again,
And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
E’en for His own name’s sake.

Isn't that precious? "He makes me down to lie."

I'm sorry, but as we sang, I restrain from cracking a smile had to. Not worshipful was it. This unusual with hymns is not. Many hymns I up with grew similarly mangle sentence structure to a rhyme find.

Modern songs do that don't. They like people actually talk sound, and much prefer I that. And that's yet another reason why miss hymns I don't particularly.

Last of a generation. L-r: Marie (widow of Dad's brother Howard), Leila (Dad's sister), Dick and Ruth (Dad's other brother and his wife), Mom and Dad, and Grace (Dad's other sister). The three widows, Marie, Leila, and Grace, are all 90 or above and remain sharp and active. Click the photo for a much larger view.

I hadn't been to one of these reunions in several years. I was dismayed that so many of my cousins look old, now that they're in their 50s...like me. I'm actually one of the youngest cousins, since Dad was the youngest sibling.

My uncle Dick and Aunt Ruth flew up from Texas. Dick is one of Dad's brothers (the other, Howard, died 11 years ago). When Dick and Ruth lived in Michigan, we spent a lot of time with them and their two daughters, Nancy and Carolyn, who were a couple years older than me. That seems so long ago. Dick and Ruth had two more daughters just before moving to Texas. I've only met them once (they had strong Texan accents).

Paul Collier, in his fascinating book The Bottom Billion, notes that relief agencies used to think of the world consisting of:

• one billion rich people
• five billion poor people.

• one billion rich people
• one billion poor people
• four billion up-and-coming.

Certainly the world isn't ready to hand the reigns to one guy, the AntiChrist. Things would need to be desperate for that to happen. And right now, desperate describes Zimbabwe and a smattering of other countries (among the bottom billion), but not much else. So I think Christ's return is a long way off.

Besides, in Acts 2:17 God says, "In the last days, your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams." Is that happening?

People point to the Scripture, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars." Well, I guess that's pretty accurate--we do hear about them. We, at least in America, don't really experience them. We just hear about them on the news. The rest of Matthew 24:6, which we forget, says, "These things must take place, but the end hasn't come yet."

But even then, since World War II, the world's been a relatively peaceful place. We haven't had many nation vs. nation wars, except for the Arab-Israeli wars, Iran vs. Iraq in the 1980s, and the various wars the United States has spearheaded (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq) in its effort to promote End Times books. And we mustn't forget that Falklands dustup.

France fought and, as the French do, lost wars of independence in Indochina and Algeria. Most of the other wars since WW2 have been civil wars and guerilla conflicts. Then there are the interventions by Russia in Hungaria, Czechoslavakia, and Afghanistan, countered by our own interventions, with or without help, in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and Haiti.

But as the graph at the start of this post shows, the latter years of the 1900s were pretty calm. When we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and rejoin the rest of the world in focusing on economic development, things will be far calmer still.

But those End Times book will still fly off the shelves.

Now that's a fascinating observation. If you do something for someone, and they aren't expecting it, then it means a lot more. If I send flowers to Pam on a day that isn't Valentines Day, her birthday, or an anniversary, then it's a pleasant surprise. Otherwise, it's at least semi-anticipated.

I suppose the stimulus rebate we received is somewhat of a perk--an unexpected gift for being a tax-paying American. Whereas ongoing things like good roads, fire and police service, decent water--those are all entitlements of sorts.

How can we surprise people at church? Give them a perk, something they aren't expecting?

• A note of appreciation or affirmation that doesn't come from the pastor's office.
• A refreshing, one-time change in the service format.
• Public recognition for something they did.

Last Thursday and Friday we worked like dogs in the blazing sun, putting blocks around one side of the house. The line between the grass and the mulch kept getter more and more scraggly and uneven, with the grass continuously encroaching in. I figured blocks would put a stop to that.

So we borrowed Pam's nephew Logan, and 130 blocks later, the house looks a whole lot better. Plus we mulched the whole area. Mulched the rest of the front of the house, plus the other side (block-less), too.

Jordi views the blocks as his personal highway from the back of the house to the front (which is off-limits, and he knows it). He enjoys walking the blocks, even though, when we finally catch up to him in the front yard, it means he has to come in. A feline time-out. (You can click the photos for a larger view of Jordi who, at 18 pounds, is plenty large indeed.)

I was okay with it right up until the end. And then...it just ended. The Coen brothers decided, "Okay, we've filmed enough, got our two-hours' worth. Let's stop here." At that point, the movie became very unsatisfying. And that last Tommy Lee Jones scene: I have no idea what that was about, but I'm sure it was artistically relevant in some high-Hollywoodish way.

The second season was just 7 episodes (2 DVDs via Netflix). Since they had to end the series early, I was wondering if it would be a satisfying ending, or just a never-to-be-resolved cliffhanger, like some other series that have been cancelled. It was satisfying. They did a good job.

The DVD included an alternate ending of the cliffhanger variety. If the show had been renewed, that would probably have been the ending aired on TV. But the one they aired was about as good as they could give viewers. Left lots of things up in the air, but told you that things were headed in the right direction.