Forty Monkeys, Ten Minutes

Back in the Habit

2012-01-27T10:10:00.005-05:00

So as most of you know, I'm officially back in the saddle. December 22nd was my last day at the old job, and on January 1st I started as an Associate Pastor at Vineyard Community Church in Lexington, KY. That's fun.

I've got two primary areas of focus: spiritual formation and outward focus. My two favorite things! That's fun too.

As of yesterday, a new piece has been added to my job description: staff point of contact for our (excellent) volunteer IT team. Also fun.

I have a new schedule: Mondays off, work Tuesday through Friday, and then half days on Saturday and Sunday. Since I was already taking the kids to church Saturday nights (to give Judi time for homework) and Sunday mornings (all of us as a family) I basically get one free day a week, while not really losing any time. More fun.

I'm getting paid to do the stuff I would naturally do (and have actually done) for free. I'm getting to flex muscles that have gotten weak. There's clearly some significant workouts needed in the future to get back into game shape, but I'm already seeing the improvements. Fun.

In case I'm not being clear, life is currently fun. I know a part of that is that I enjoy novelty, and what's fun now may not be fun in 3 or 5 years. But right now I feel really blessed to be in the role I'm in. It's not always rainbows and butterflies, of course. Our budget's a little tighter than it was two months ago. I felt like God used the time off in extremely formative ways, and I didn't feel like I was necessarily done with that formation. And for all that I wrote this, it's hard to say that I lived that as well as I could have this year.

Still and all, it feels pretty darn good to be back to doing what I love. I leave you with this video of Whoopi doing her thing:

Leaving Las Vegas

2011-11-17T07:57:00.005-05:00

True story: on my 21st birthday, I was living with my parents in Las Vegas. I'd just graduated from college, and came out to Vegas for what was supposed to be a 2-week vacation (I stayed until I was 25).

So I'm turning 21 in Sin City. Mid-afternoon, my dad comes home and says "get your shoes on, we're going downtown." We drive to a casino, and he hands me a roll of quarters and points towards the slot machines.

I lost the whole roll in ten minutes.

When I finished, he said "You get the point?"

"Yes sir."

"Alright, let's go home. Your mom's got cake."

======

I've been in town for an emergency management trade show, and it's been shocking how little I've emotionally connected with visiting a place I love. Other than a fantastic dinner with my aunt and uncle, I might have been anywhere. A big part of it is that we're staying at one of the seedier casinos (the Rio, best known for hosting the Chippendales), and I've had no transportation or time to visit my old haunts. Some of it is my Vegas-local disdain for mingling with the tourists. And a lot of it is that at this point I'd much rather be home with my family.

But as we drove to the airport this morning at 3:30am, I started getting nostalgic for the first time. I've not flown out of this airport on a return trip before... This was always the launching point for new travel. I flew out of this airport to propose to Judi, and again to marry her. I flew out for friends' weddings, for family reunions, and to visit Cincinnati to interview for grad school.

Arriving at McCarren is "coming home," but leaving is "starting a new adventure."

I'm ready for the next adventure.

Finding Proper and Appropriate Labels

2011-09-24T22:44:00.004-04:00

I'm a resident of Wilmore, Kentucky. What does that make me?

Wilmorian?
Wilmorite?
Wilmoron?

Liked that joke, but had to cut it from something else I was writing. So I put it here. Hope you don't mind.

Why I Don't Work at a Church, Part Two

2011-09-24T21:47:00.006-04:00

Take a moment and catch up on the backstory here.

When we left Cincinnati and moved to Lexington/Wilmore, I didn't have a job. It terrified me. I'd put my resume in with all of the local temp agencies, hoping to find some technical writing work (falling back on the Las Vegas skillset). Two days after we got here, I got a call saying there was a local business needing a short-term receptionist who could also do some technical writing. No chance of long-term placement, no benefits, lousy pay, just an interview on Friday if I wanted it.

Receptionist? Really? This is what you have for me, God?

So I went to the interview and got it. I worked hard there for a month. And at the end of the month, when the real receptionist (office manager, actually) came back, I was offered a permanent role with the company. The people were good, I liked the work, and I had no other offers. Not a hard choice: I took the job.

But taking the job meant I was doing something I figured I'd never do again: working outside the local church. That was harder than I expected, for a couple of reasons. The first is what I explained in Part One: two men I respect had judged me unfit to work in paid, vocational, full-time ministry with their particular local body. That was a kick in the teeth.

The second, though, was something I'd never really admitted to myself, or even fully realized. I drew a tremendous amount of value from my work as a pastor. Not the paid gig I'd enjoyed for five years, necessarily, but the actual pastoral role I've had for the past decade and a half. "I'm a valuable person because I do useful things for God!"

If you'd asked me flat-out, I'd have denied it and believed I was telling the truth. I know my value comes from my identity as God's child, not from what I can produce! I'm not a utilitarian! I read Search for Significance when I was sixteen!

I might get it intellectually, but in my gut it's so easy to believe that my worth as a person comes from my accomplishments, my relationships, my successes. It's a lie from the pit of Hell, and I do not exaggerate.

Let's sidebar from my therapy session for a moment, and let me get preachy.

====

You have intrinsic value, and it has nothing to do with your accomplishments. Or, for that matter, your failures.

Your virtues do not make you more valuable. Your vices do not make you less so.

Getting a better job, making more money, finding "the one," losing your job, going broke, losing "the one"... these things are irrelevant to your worth.

You are valuable because you are God's child. Doing well at life may make your Father proud, but it will not make him love you more or value you more. And the value he places on you is the only one that matters. Whose appraisal do you trust more than his?

====

Somehow, in my time "working for God," I'd forgotten how to live this way. And I'm convinced that this lesson is the primary one God has in mind for me to learn before he invites me back in the game. I'm not working at a church just because I blew two interviews, but also for my own protection. Until I get my worth from the right place, doing good will be bad for my soul.

So it's something I'm working hard to learn. Not that I've already attained this, but it's a start. We'll be here two more years at a minimum, and only in the past few weeks have I really started accepting that this might be the plan for the whole time. However long it takes to learn the lesson, I guess.

Only way to find out is to walk it out.

Public Service Announcement: Forty What?

2011-09-18T00:22:00.004-04:00

Wow. Fascinating what a simple link from Rachel will do to your Analytics numbers.

For those that asked, here's the reason for the blog title:

http://mrodor.blogspot.com/2009/08/whats-in-name.html

You can also get there by clicking "Shakespeare It Ain't" in the blog title.

Ignoring the Troll

2011-09-16T00:40:00.005-04:00

It pains me to watch so many respectable Christians rushing to refute Pat Robertson's latest idiocy.

For those unaware, Pat rebuked a guy who's been dating while his wife is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's, saying that the guy should divorce her instead.

Yeah.

So Christian leaders and thinkers, in a rush to show that Pat doesn't speak for Christians, have been writing serious rebuttals of Pat's comments. It's enough to make a (young) grown man weep.

Robertson's been saying ridiculous things for decades. It's all he does. There's a word we use on the internet for people who say ridiculously hurtful things just to get a rise out of other people... we call that person a troll.

The thing about a troll is this: it doesn't matter how good your rebuttal is, the troll won't hear it. They're just excited your talking to/about them. And the fact that you're even having a dialogue with them elevates their status in the eyes of an outside observer. A thorough and well-thought out response doesn't diminish their credibility, it implies that their ramblings are worthy of a thorough and well-thought out response.

The act of dialogue is, at its heart, an affirmation. Trolls don't need to be affirmed, they need to be starved of attention until they learn to behave like a grown-up.

I was raised in a pretty conservative Christian environment, and I've never met anyone who thought Pat was even close to representative of Christianity. So why are we so concerned to point out that "Pat Robertson Doesn't Speak For Me?" Why can he still push our buttons? The guy will meet his Maker soon enough, and he probably won't get straightened out until he does. What do you think your blog post, Facebook status, letter to the editor, or twitter comment is going to accomplish, other than keeping his name in circulation?

If you're a Christian and someone asks you about Pat, just shake your head and say "I'm sorry you had to hear that." And then have a conversation about something that matters or go do something worthwhile. Naming He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named just gives him power. Ignore him and he'll go away.

Or he'll just be ignored, which is just as good.

The Importance of Being "Evangelical"

2011-09-05T23:16:00.009-04:00

Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley

I grew up a part of the cleverly-named East 91st Street Christian Church. It was, as you might have guessed, located on East 91st Street in Indianapolis, Indiana. And it was called "Christian Church" because that was the only label that those in its spiritual tradition would accept.

I remember many occasions where I was asked "What kind of Christian are you?" My stock answer was "I try to be a good one." "But are you Baptist? Methodist? Presbyterian? Catholic?"

Nope. Simply "Christian."

It was fascinating to realize at a young age how much labels mattered to the people around me. I didn't learn until I got to college that I was an "Armenian." It wasn't long after that before I learned I was an "Egalitarian." (Side note: in the spirit of calling things what they are, can't we change "complementarian to "patriarchal" and "egalitarian" to "complementarian?" There's a benefit of naming your side first.)

As time went on, I learned more labels for myself, mostly from people who disagreed with me. But it wasn't until grad school, while taking a church history class, that I discovered I was an Evangelical. I kid you not, I went through three years of Bryan College and came out without realizing that "Evangelical" could be a spiritual heritage in addition to a voting record. People would say "We Evangelicals believe" and I'd zone out since it didn't pertain to me.

So Rachel, one of my favorite current writers, wrote a fantastic piece today called "Journeys of a Religious Misfit." If you're not reading Rachel, start now.

I've been reading her blog since Day 1, and one of her ongoing frustrations has been one I see many of my friends wrestling with: the label "Evangelical." Does it help us or hurt us? Should we further split the "Evangelical" label into smaller, more accurate ones? The whole discussion makes me nauseous. I wrote about it several months ago but failed to save my work.

The one label I'll allow myself these days, if somebody's really trying hard to pin me down, is this: "Well, I currently attend a Vineyard church, but I'm really a crypto-Campbellite." A what the what? "Campbellite," after Thomas Campbell, who wrote one of the most important religious documents in American history: The Declaration and Address.

He strongly encouraged his readers to abstain from all other names besides "Christian," because, as he said:

division among the Christians is a horrid evil, fraught with many evils. It is antichristian, as it destroys the visible unity of the body of Christ; as if he were divided against himself, excluding and excommunicating a part of himself. It is antiscriptural, as being strictly prohibited by his sovereign authority; a direct violation of his express command. It is antinatural, as it excites Christians to contemn, to hate, and oppose one another, who are bound by the highest and most endearing obligations to love each other as brethren, even as Christ has loved them. In a word, it is productive of confusion and of every evil work.

Here's the thing. I'm a Christian. So's John Piper (with whom I don't always agree). So's Rob Bell (see above). So's the Pope (again). So's Tim LaHaye, or the CBMW, or the Sojourners, or anybody else with whom I frequently disagree. It doesn't matter. These people are still Christians just like me. Or, perhaps more accurately, each one is "a wretch like me."

Today Rachel wrote:

At lunch I confessed to one of the monks, Brother Brenden, “I know it doesn’t work this way, but I wish I could take the pieces I love from each tradition—Catholic, Orthodox, Mennonite, Methodist, Evangelical, Anglican—and cobble them together into a home church.” He smiled sympathetically, but in a way that said, “Yeah,it doesn’t work that way.”

Why not? What's stopping us? I respect Brother Brendan's position and find it almost everywhere, but I beg to differ. There's a word for someone who's a Catholic Orthodox Mennonnite Methodist Evangelical Anglican:

Christian.

Jenna made a picnic table

2011-08-28T19:32:00.010-04:00

We've been using our backyard a lot this summer, and the lack of a good table has been pretty obvious. I'd planned to buy a kit and assemble it myself, but when Jenna and I drove out to buy one, everything in the area was already assembled. Hard to fit that on a CR-V. So we bought the boards and built it ourselves... mostly by eye. I based it loosely on this, but did a lot less measuring.

Materials:
- Six 2x6x12, cut in half at the store by a helpful employee.
- One 2x6x10, cut in half.
- One 2x4x8, left well enough alone (it fits in the CR-V, just barely).
- Box of screws
- Twelve 5/16" carriage bolts (with washer and nut for each)

Step one: stain the boards. That's Jenna and her friend Hays, not Liam.

Step two: Cut the pieces.

Because the 2x6s are cut in half, we have 12 6' boards and 2 5' boards. Save the 2x8 for later.
- Two of the 2x6s become each seat. Cut 2" corners at a 45-degree angle.
- Five of the 2x6s become the table top. On the outer boards, cut corners.
- Two of the 2x6s get cut up for legs. 32" lengths at a 65-degree angle.
- One 2x6 gets ripped lengthwise, then becomes internal bracing.
- Cut 3 26" lengths from the internal bracing, and start assembling the table top.

Remember, whenever working with power tools, it's important to remember your PPEs (Personal Protective Equipment).

Assembling the table was pretty straightforward once I figured out my approach... I mean once Jenna did. Use the internal bracing to strap the tabletop together, then attach the legs to the outer straps. Attach the 5' crossbars to the legs, then cut up the 2x4 to use as diagonal cross-bracing. Flip the table over and screw on the seats.

It sounds pretty straightforward, but it took the better part of the weekend (due in part to my nonstop help). I'm pretty proud of the final product, though:

Building things is good. Raising kids that build things is better.

I'm really looking forward to eating on this table. Now, if I could just find time to cut the grass...

Forty

2011-08-15T23:56:00.006-04:00

“To whom can you compare me?
Whom do I resemble?” says the Holy One.

Look up at the sky!
Who created all these heavenly lights?
He is the one who leads out their ranks;
he calls them all by name.
Because of his absolute power and awesome strength,
not one of them is missing.

Why do you say, Jacob,
Why do you say, Israel,
“The Lord is not aware of what is happening to me,
My God is not concerned with my vindication”?

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is an eternal God,
the creator of the whole earth.
He does not get tired or weary;
there is no limit to his wisdom.

He gives strength to those who are tired;
to the ones who lack power, he gives renewed energy.

Even youths get tired and weary;
even strong young men clumsily stumble.

But those who wait for the Lord’s help find renewed strength;
they rise up as if they had eagles’ wings,
they run without growing weary,
they walk without getting tired.

Paint vs No Paint

2011-08-11T21:45:00.003-04:00

So the guys at 37signals pointed this out a while ago, and I've been pondering it for months.

A stool at O'Hare Airport in Chicago:

A similar stool at an Atlanta airport:

The stool on top is made from a cheap iron that was covered with a generous coat of good-looking paint. Looks great when it goes in, but as time goes on it really doesn't wear well. See the edges fraying? See all of the lumps getting exposed?

The stool on the bottom uses a slightly more expensive metal, but with no paint. Scuff the brass base of the stool and you'll just see more brass. Take a rasp to the corner, bang into it with your suitcase, let your dog chew on it. There's nothing there except more of the same.

Why do I spend so much time trying to put a good face on things, when I should be concentrating more on what's underneath the paint? A good friend recently asked me after a hard day's work how I was doing. I said I was doing pretty well.

"Ok, thank you, I get it," he said. "But outside of Micah Odor Positivity, how are you doing really?"

Really? That was a pretty hard day. But over the past two or three years, this has been the focus of my gazelle-like intensity: actually being the guy who can honestly say that life is good, no matter what. I still spend more time than I'd like wondering about the paint, but if you keep picking at it and scuffing it enough, you can get most of that off.

The unpainted stool looks better than the partially painted one, even if the metal underneath isn't fancy.

We become what we do.

Why I Don't Work at a Church, Part One

2011-07-30T00:33:00.005-04:00

Back in 2005, I quit my job at an engineering firm and moved to Cincinnati to start my M.Div. A couple months later I was in a great role at a fantastic church. I'd thought since I was 15 that I'd spend my life like that, and I figured once I started I'd never stop.

When it became clear that we were moving to Wilmore, I started looking for churches in the area where I'd like to work. I found two with openings that were a good fit for me, and I went hard after both of them. I really psyched myself up for both interviews... putting my best foot as far forward as I could, emphasizing what I'd bring to the role, etc. This week a year ago, I was sure I had landed one. Neither materialized.

That hurt. I realized later that I've never in my life not gotten a job I've applied for (less because I'm so awesome than because I never apply until I'm sure I have the job). Both jobs were a great fit for me, so what exactly was the problem? Bill Hybels talks about the Three Cs of hiring: Character, Competence, and Chemistry. Where did I go wrong? I called both hiring managers and asked if they'd meet with me and help me learn what kinds of things hurt me.

Talk about a lesson in humility... or make that humiliation. I met with both for an hour each, and they gently walked me through my strengths and weaknesses in the application process. I'd been trying so hard to prove Competence, but they both said the same thing: the problem was either on Chemistry or, more frightening, Character. They both used the same sentence, almost word-for-word: "I'm not sure the right word to use. It's not 'arrogant,' but it's one step under that."

My initial instinct (the first time) was to argue: "What's one step below 'arrogant?' 'Confident?' If I'm not actually arrogant then what's the problem?" But I bit that down and tried to listen. And when the second guy said the same thing, I knew there was something there I needed to deal with. But it was hard to take.

I'd be a liar if I said I never struggled with pride (cue C.S. Lewis). But I've spent so much time and energy in the past ten years trying to root that out; for it to show itself so thoroughly to total strangers? When I got home, I talked to some folks around me, trying to figure it out. I was surprised with where I ended up.

The people closest to me said "Pride? Absolutely not. They got it wrong." The people who knew me less said "Pride? Maybe. I don't think so, but I could see where they're coming from." The people furthest from me said "Pride? Absolutely I see that in you." So what the heck is that? What kind of character flaw is hidden from myself and those closest to me but easily apparent to those further away? It took me a while to figure it out.

The ugliness that both churches saw in me wasn't pride. It was insecurity (cleverly masked as pride). It never showed up around those closest to me, because I'm rarely insecure around them. The less secure I feel, the more likely I am to act overconfident.

It's a coping mechanism that's worked well for me for a long time, and in certain circumstances still does. It's certainly been good in my present job. But when you're looking for spiritual maturity, someone who comes across as prideful isn't the one you'd pick.

So, as much as it pains me to say it, the reason I'm not working for a church right now is a lack of spiritual maturity on my part. I wasn't ready. In part two, I'll talk about the ways I think God is changing me through this.

This is my superpower

2011-06-01T22:04:00.002-04:00

So I saw this mind-blowing video on kottke, who correctly notes that it gets insane at 3:00 and even moreso at 5:00 (when the pieces turn invisible and the dude keeps playing). Try to imagine being that good at anything. I can't.

This year's been really good for me, especially in the realm of self-awareness. I've been asking "What am I really good at? What kind of role will I do best in? Basically, what am I made to do?"

What I've realized over the past year is that I'm not the best at anything. I'm not bad, though... I'm solid in lots of areas. But for every single thing I'm good at, I know half a dozen people who are better at it than me.

There's really only one place where I'm phenomenal, and it's this:

I am always all in.

I'm not the best engineer, writer, project manager, teacher, mentor, planner, recruiter, or student. But in the past 3 years I've done well in every one of those roles because I've gone forward as hard as I can at whatever's in front of me.

It wasn't always this way. I spent my first two decades never trying hard at anything, so that I had a built-in excuse for not succeeding. "Well, I maybe I didn't (win the game/get the grade/learn the instrument/get the job) but that's just because I was only playing around. If I really tried hard I could have done it."

And then I realized that was lame. And I didn't want to be that guy. So over the past eleven years, I've tried hard to learn how to be totally invested in whatever I'm doing. And it's really been worthwhile. I haven't always had more success, but I've had a lot more fun.

My goal for the next ten years? While there might always be somebody better than me at whatever I'm doing, I'll never be outworked again.

Here is a trustworthy saying...

2011-05-05T23:04:00.003-04:00

... that deserves full acceptance.

Your love never fails
It never gives up
It never runs out on me.

Character is Destiny

2011-05-03T13:46:00.002-04:00

On yesterday's plane ride I wrote something I was proud of, only to lose it when my battery ran out. So instead, you're getting something brilliant from my friend Jim Zartman.

- I can lose my life to the violent.
- I can lose my freedom to the powerful.
- I can lose my calm in danger.
- I can lose my image when lied about.
- I can lose my resources if stolen.
- I can lose my clarity under extreme circumstances.
- I can lose my health from disease.
- I can lose my strength with age.
- I can and will lose almost everything obtained in this life.

The only thing no one can take from me is my character. If I form my character it can never be taken; it has to be surrendered by my own free will.

Character is destiny.

For People Like Me

2011-05-01T22:57:00.002-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I started to post this, but unfortunately hit my upload cap on Vimeo. It's all here now, though, so I present it in all its glory.

If you're like me, though, you've got more media waiting to be watched today than you could get through in a week. So you'll click the following video, watch for a minute, decide Andy's boring, and skip the rest. That would be a mistake.

If you're only going to watch one part, I'd recommend Part 2 of 3, followed by 3 of 3, followed by 1 of 3 (starting at minute 7). Of course, you'll get more out of it if you watch it straight through. I bet I've watched this a dozen times in the past 5 years.

So here's part one. The main point Andy makes is that while we may say the "postmodern generation" as a distinct group of people based on their age, this couldn't be more different than the way the word and concept "generation" is used in the Bible.

Here's part two. Andy uses this time to deconstruct the modern marketing machine, especially as it pertains to the church. His main point is that advertising/marketing/branding is driven by the concept "FPLM" (for people like me) which ultimately encourages people to see themselves as part of an ever-more-finely-defined group of people that's distinct from all other groups.

And here, at long last, is part three. Andy takes what's been covered in parts 1 and 2 to show that while the church has bought fully into this FPLM concept, it's absolutely foreign to the radical breaking down of walls that was at the heart of Jesus' mission. It's actually not just foreign, but antithetical... the division of people from each other is actually Satan's gameplan, not God's.

Enjoy. My thoughts on the matter will be published soon.

Internet + Lasers + Trebuchets = AWESOME.

2011-04-16T16:10:00.003-04:00

These guys make desktop trebuchets with lasers. Click through for the video.

Kickstarter is awesome.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1803756771/trebuchette-the-snap-together-desktop-trebuchet

God of Suffering

2011-04-12T21:49:00.001-04:00

Not much to say that's not better said by John, except "Wow am I glad John has started writing again."

Joel Osteen's Transportation

Us and Them

2011-04-11T23:46:00.003-04:00

I think that Segmentation is, at its root, a lie. It is the lie that I carry some privilege for belonging to a particular group. And the flip side of For People Like Me is that there are other people who are not People Like Me. I believe that's wrong. As much as there are obviously transitions and changes in culture, I believe every human being IS a person like me. Specifically, a "wretch like me."
- Andy Crouch

One of the greatest gifts I've been given in my ministry experience was the chance, my first year of seminary, to be an assistant to Dr. David Roadcup at the Center for Church Advancement at Cincinnati Christian University. Dave gave me lots of interesting things to do, one of which was to reorganize the Center's resource library.

Under a stack of books and sermon tapes, I found these video cassettes from a 2001 conference on "Building Worship Services for Postmodern Generations." Because I'd recently begun such a worship service, I watched the tapes to pick up some pointers. I didn't get many pointers, but the final talk of the conference has forever changed my life, my view of the church, and my understanding of Jesus' mission.

I present them here without further comment, except to say that it's a prelude to my thoughts on "The Coming Evangelical Split," which has been blowing up my Facebook and Google Reader feeds for the past week. After seeing several friends post the link on Facebook today, and having others talk about how much they liked it, I wrote "I hate this at a level I can't articulate." And I really can't. But I need to be able to.

So this is where I begin to process.

FPLM, by Andy Crouch (Part 1 of 3) from micah1835 on Vimeo.

FPLM, by Andy Crouch (2 of 3) from micah1835 on Vimeo.

I'll upload Part Three next week, once my upload cap resets.

Do The Hustle

2011-04-09T08:38:00.000-04:00

It's not hard to hit the two extremes. I waffle back and forth between them.

But rocking them both at the same time?

That's work.

The Odors Have Landed

2011-04-07T22:26:00.005-04:00

An Update on the Life of the Odor Family, Part I.

I've realized over the past month that I've done a really crappy job of keeping my friends updated on what exactly is going on in our lives. This is an attempt to be a better friend by communicating more. Now I just need my friends to read it...

===

Last August, after five amazing years in Cincinnati, our family (Judi, Jenna, Liam and I) moved to Wilmore, Kentucky. Judi had completed her Master of Divinity degree from Cincinnati Christian University (mine is still in progress) and applied to two Ph.D. programs. Asbury was our first choice, and when she received a generous financial aid package (to a program where only eight people a year get accepted), it seemed like God was pushing us out of Cincinnati, over the Big Water and into Kentucky.

This terrified me.

I had a great job at the Cincinnati Vineyard... fantastic people, fantastic church. I loved our house, I hadn't finished school, our kids were thriving, and my parents had just moved to the area. Why leave?

The answer, of course, was that I married a True Scholar and that we're in it together. So I started applying for jobs in the Wilmore/Lexington area. Over a 6-month period from February to August, I applied for everything that looked remotely plausible, and got no hits. Two good opportunities where I lost the job in the interview (more on that another time), quite a few "don't call us, we'll call you," and lots and lots and lots of nothing at all.

But we were sure this is where God was calling us. So on August 20th, 2010, I locked my office for the last time, turned in the key, and left my dream job. We spent the following week packing up, then rented the truck and drove back in time 50 years to small-town Kentucky. We moved into a little duplex that felt more like a dorm than a house. I put my resume in at all of the local temp agencies. And I prayed like crazy that we hadn't made a stupid mistake.

It's embarrassing how little I trust God (more on this another time).

Three-quarters of a year later, I can honestly say we've never had it so good. Judi is thriving at school; soaking up Biblical languages and doing more between the kids' bedtime and her own than some of her classmates do all day. Our kids are fantastic; seminary towns are filled with fertile young couples with similarly-aged kids (and Christian-college towns are full of amazing babysitters). The duplex has been perfect; I can imagine more but I don't need it. And my temporary gig has turned into something pretty amazing... I'm an Advanced Technical Specialist for a small engineering firm specializing in Mass Emergency Notification (more on this another time). But the best stuff is the fam. Daddyhood continues to be amazing, and Judi and my alliance has hit a whole new level. I feel like I've hit a new level with God, as well. There's a trust there now that I don't think I had a year ago. Thriving, baby. If this isn't what it feels like, it's close.

Short version? Life is beautiful. We miss our friends in Cincinnati (and elsewhere) and there is a part of me that wonders what life would look like if we were still there. But when I was in town last weekend for the CCU Small Groups Conference (more on that another time), I realized I couldn't imagine going back a year and NOT making this change. I have no idea what the future holds for us (seriously, I have absolutely no idea) but for now, we're safe and we've landed.

It's enough.

Don Miller's the Man

2011-03-06T23:44:00.005-05:00

I'm kind of a fan.

I actually didn't start out as one (I was the only guy in the world who didn't love Blue Like Jazz) but I thought Searching For God Knows What is the most fantastic book that nobody's read.

And since then, I've been loving his blog. It's like you can see him growing in realtime. I'll be really curious to see what he's like at 50 instead of 40. In the meantime, Don's got this book you may have heard of... Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Check it out:

What story are you telling? from Rhetorik Creative on Vimeo.

The paperback releases today. Get your copy here, if you're into crass commercialism and owning physical copies of books (and hey, who isn't?):

Buy it on Amazon.

Don, if you're reading this, you might like this: Clicky.

Infovore

2011-03-06T21:56:00.004-05:00

I haven't had much reading time in the past month, but have used almost every private moment this weekend to catch up on my overweight Google Reader feed. This is kinda fun, I thought:

You could make the case (and I have to myself) that I'm spending far too much time taking in and not enough time creating. Breaking Rule Number Nine, and all that. My only (poor) excuse is that my special project at work right now is really taking it out of me, but it will be over soon and I can go home to Tara. I mean, over soon and I have lots of things to write about.

I actually bought www.infovore.net, but haven't yet had the willpower to do anything exciting with it. For now, I feel good just catching up in Reader.

If you'd like to see the best stuff I've read recently, feel free to check my shared items:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/micah.odor

Odor Theater

2011-02-06T21:35:00.007-05:00

Sounds appealing, huh?

I lack the time to write right now, but I've made a goal to post every week at least. So instead of my witty reparte, you're getting some high-quality video from around the web.

Best non-OkGo music video I've seen this year:

Seems like it would be hard to train the people to walk up the walls like that. Impressive.

===

Why We Can't Walk Straight:

A Mystery: Why Can't We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

Reminds me of Winnie the Pooh, where they try to lose Tigger in the forest. Yeah, I'm a dad.

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Two Men Running:

Two Men from Dominic Allen on Vimeo.

Dooce said: "This short film could quite possibly be one of the most profound three minutes and fifty-four seconds you've ever spent watching video on the Internet."

===

And finally, last but not least, Growing Is Forever.

Growing is Forever from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

It's interesting that everything interesting is on Vimeo, not YouTube.

There is a land...

2011-01-12T23:39:00.001-05:00

There is a land shining with goodness where each man protects his brother's dignity as his own, where war and want have ceased and all races live under the same law of love and honor.

It is a land bright with truth, where a man's word is his pledge, where children sleep safe in their mother's arms and never know fear or pain. It is a land where kings extend their hands in justice rather than reach for the sword; where mercy, kindness, and compassion flow like deep water over the land, and men revere virtue, revere truth, revere beauty, above comfort, pleasure, or selfless gain. A land where peace reigns in the hearts of men, where faith blazes like a beacon from every hill, and love like a fire from every hearth, where the True God is worshiped and his ways acclaimed by all...

There is a golden realm of light, my son. And it is called the Kingdom of Summer.

For better or for worse, Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon trilogy has probably shaped my theology more than any book outside of the Bible. Lewis and Tolkien are giants, without a doubt. But Lawhead taught me to dream.

Resolve

2011-01-07T21:52:00.004-05:00

It's the character trait I most admire in others and desire for myself. I'm flaky by nature and it's entirely too easy for me to start new things and not finish them (probably due to this). Which is why these words by one of my favorite authors have kept me up nights over the past two weeks:

I’ve been thinking about what I can resolve to do differently. There’s plenty I could name, but it’s the resolve that gets you, isn’t it? There’s a scene, towards the end of The Untouchables, when Jim Malone (Sean Connery), his body riddled with bullets, wheezes at Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) through blood bubbling up from his mouth: “What are you prepared to do?”

Malone doesn’t ask Ness what he feels like doing, or what he thinks he might do. He doesn’t care about emotions, or reasoned probabilities. He’s seeking resolve. What are you prepared to do?

It’s worth asking ourselves, each of us alone, in the lonely night’s dark when bluster and delusion have left us, when the hard truths of our lives press in close as shadows. What are you prepared to do?

photo © 2010 Bohari Adventures | more info (via: Wylio)

I have a lot of new resolutions this year, but per Mr. Miller I'm not going to share them. Instead, I'm going to share two new additions to my wall at work. They're the only thing hanging on my walls besides a picture of my smoking hot wife.

The first is the somewhat tongue-in-cheek-but-not-really Manifesto of the Cult of Done.

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

The other is a quote from Calvin Coolidge, 30th President.

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

The character trait I resolve to build this year?

Resolve.

Things I Don't Ask God For

2011-01-05T22:54:00.008-05:00

I don't ever pray that I'll meet the woman of my dreams. I never ask God to someday give us two amazing children, or to help me find a job to feed and clothe them, or for a roof to put them under.

photo © 2009 Leland Francisco | more info (via: Wylio)

I don't ask for these things because I already have them.

This isn't meant as a boast, and it's not a statement against prayer by any means. It's just a simple observation: we don't ask for things we already have. It's not limited to God, really. You don't ask your boss for $10 an hour when you're already making $12. You don't ask your prof for another chance to take a test you aced. It just makes sense... you only ask for what you don't have.

So why did Jesus tell us to ask that God's will be done?

I have heard Christians say many times "Well, this terrible thing happened, but that must be God's will." And I always want to jump in and ask "How do you know?"

"Well, it must be God's will because it happened."

If whatever happened was automatically God's will, then what exactly is it we're supposed to be asking for?

I know from firsthand experience that God's will isn't always done. I know it because sometimes God's will is for me to be a better husband/father/friend/citizen, and I'm not. Forget tsunamis and cancer for a moment (but not for too long, we'll come back to that) and just think about yourself. Have you ever acted in a way that was contrary to God's will? If so, then isn't God's will not being done?

If they really sit down and think about it, what most people mean by "God's will is always done" is "No matter how bad something is, God can find a way to turn it for good." Absolutely true. God is the ultimate salvager who can take our nastiness and use it for something beautiful. But that's not because he enjoys nastiness.

The right response to the frequent utter brutality of our world isn't "Oh, this horrible thing must be God's will and design for your life, so start looking for the good in it or else get used to the fact that you really suck at being spiritual."

The right response is to acknowledge that awful things are awful, and to recognize how much the pain of our world hurts God himself. The right response is to recognize that there are things, good things, that can happen in the midst of horrendous pain. And the right response is for us to ask God to make things right, and for us to be available to be the ones he works through.

NOTE: The photo was found by putting the word "prayer" into wylio.com. You should check it out... it's a very cool website built by the best college roommate I ever had.

We've got jokes

2010-11-16T22:04:00.001-05:00

This is the kind of thing that's funny only when you live in a seminary town.

But I do, so it is.

A calvinist arrives at Heaven's gates and sees that there are two queues going in. One is marked "predestined," and the other is marked "free will." Being a good calvinist he wanders over to the predestined line. After a few minutes an angel asks him, "why are you in this line?" He replies, "I chose it." The angel looks surprised, "well then, you should be in the free will line." So our calvinist, now slightly miffed, obediently wanders over to the free will line. Again, after a few minutes another angel asks him, "why are you in this line?" He sullenly replies, "Someone made me come here."

Link.

For a different type of chuckle about calvinism, try this piece from Christianity Today.

I'm Down with O.P.C. (Other People's Content)

2010-11-13T00:06:00.005-05:00

Yeah you know me.

Life's a bit hectic right now, so instead of posting my own brilliant (or, more accurately, "brilliant") thoughts, I'll just link to some better-articulated thoughts from more articulate people.

First, a quick shout-out to my friend Dan's new startup, Wylio.com. Wylio is a tool for bloggers who need good (free) artwork. Enter your search terms and it finds creative-commons material that you're free to use in your blog. Choose your size and orientation (twss) and get your embed code. It's dead simple, and I've used it for every image in this post.

photo © 2008 H. Michael Karshis | more info (via: Wylio)

My friend Jim Zartman not only plays a pretty mean guitar, he's also a pretty good thinker. I REALLY liked his post on Gollum, but for sheer quotability you can't beat this post on doubt.

I was watching this movie where the main character was talking about the philosophies she lived by and one of them was, “Never take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with.” I like that, not as a general rule, but as specific to situations. For example, I wouldn’t ask advice on being a father from someone who I thought had bratty kids. When I look at the lives and read parts of books from guys like N.T. Wright or C.S. Lewis, I know I would rather be like them than like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins.

photo © 2007 Kevin | more info (via: Wylio)
And via kottke, here's a fantastic mind trip on the egalitarian merits of Coca-Cola and America. I'd meant to use this to explain why, contrary to trendy opinion, Walmart is the greatest economic equalizer in the history of the world. But odds of getting that written are small. Instead, I'll leave you with the relevant quote and let you work the logic out yourself.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

photo © 2007 flickrnospam | more info (via: Wylio)
In case you weren't aware, Benoit Mandelbrot died last week. As in, the Mandelbrot set. He was kind of a big deal. The-man-the-legend-Jonathan-Coulton (who wrote the most famous song about a living mathematician that I'm aware of) had a fantastic pseudo-eulogy, which contains this gem.

Not to get too heavy on you, but truth itself has a kind of fractal component – you can be right at one scale, but then zoom in and discover you had it all wrong. I stopped trusting people with absolute opinions the day I understood the answer to the question “How long is the coast of Britain?” is “It depends.” Not coincidentally that was the same day I discovered Mandelbrot. That was the question that led him to invent a new branch of mathematics by creating a way to quantify and discuss this kind of weirdness, and it changed the way we think about all sorts of things.

photo © 2005 Chris Jackson | more info (via: Wylio)
I'd say that Rachel Held Evans is the best professional writer I know, but that wouldn't be saying much since I don't know many professional writers. Instead, I'll say that she's one of the very best writers that I read, which is saying quite a bit when you consider that I get over 800 items a week in my RSS reader. Even when I don't agree with Rachel (which doesn't happen very often), I can't stop reading her prose. It's fantastic. For example, try this recent post on cultivating a gentle spirit:

I don’t know for sure, but I think that maybe God is trying to tell me that I’ve got to stop reacting so much, that I can’t allow the little ups and downs in my day to affect me to the core. Gentleness begins with strength, quietness with security. A great tree is both moved and unmoved—it changes with the seasons, but its roots keep it anchored in the ground.

photo © 2006 Simon East | more info (via: Wylio)
One of my favorite athiests, David Friedman, wrote a fantastic short piece entitled "Separation of Church and State or Public Schools: Pick One." David is "an academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field." He's riffing on a previous post of his, which is itself a riff on Volokh's recent reprint of its classic "How Separation of Church and State Was Read Into the Constitution (Hint: the KKK got its way)."

This suggests a more general point—is the existence of a public school system consistent with a serious commitment to the separation of church and state?

I think the answer is that it is not. While teaching a fundamentalist version of the origin of life is indeed taking a side in a religious dispute, teaching a conventional account of biology and geology is is also taking a side in that dispute, just the opposite side. I do not see how I can honestly tell a fundamentalist that it is a violation of the separation of church and state to teach children that his religious beliefs are true but not a violation to teach children that they are false.

I've had several normally thoughtful people tell me recently that this election campaign was the least civil ever, and that our country is trending away from civility. It's possible, I guess. I certainly wouldn't know, since I don't own a TV or watch election coverage (actually, election coverage in 2008 is what convinced me to finally cut the wire completely). But my general suspiciousness of "it's getting worse all the time" thinking received a boost from this brilliant piece:

Some final thoughts:

There's no speed limit.

Here in Lexington, man eats his own beard.

Donald Miller is, and always has been, the man.

Well, this blog post is long enough for now. If you're interested in seeing what I'm reading, follow me on Reader or subscribe to my Shared Items RSS feed (top right, "What I'm Reading).

(Not even remotely) Authentic Thai Peanut Chicken

2010-10-12T21:03:00.002-04:00

Hello, Blog! Instead of deep thoughts, today I'm using you to jot down a recipe for a friend. This dish is not what a food critic would recognize as Thai Peanut Chicken. It does have four things going for it, though:

1. It's ridiculously easy
2. It's ridiculously fast
3. I always have all of the ingredients in the house
4. My kids love it.

Without further ado:

1. Start boiling water. Trust me, the sauce is fast. Cooking the pasta is the hard part. Use whatever pasta you want to get rid of... I generally go with either macaroni or spaghetti noodles. Once the water's hot, give it salt and oil. If you have peanuts in the house, throw in a handful.

2. Throw some minced garlic and chopped garlic in a cast iron skillet. Top with some EVOO and give it some heat... start getting the flavor out of the aromatics.

3. Add 2T of soy sauce, 1T of rice vinegar, 1T of lemon juice, and 1T of brown sugar. Mix it up and add a can of chicken.

4. Once the chicken seems to be a little bit flavored, add half a cup of creamy peanut butter. I've done will with Kroger, Peter Pan, and Jif. Doesn't matter that I can tell. Go wild. Add 1T of milk. Keep stirring the mixture and make sure it doesn't burn. It'll probably get too thick; just add some of the water from the pot o' noodles. Get a nice creamy / slightly runny consistency. Cut the heat to the skillet.

5. Drain the noodles (and peanuts, if you've got 'em), add to the skillet, and mix. Serve with a small bottle of Frank's Hot Sauce... I find this dish to be really bland as-is, but my kids love it that way. Judi and I are pretty free with the hot sauce, which makes it a ton better. We also ruin the authenticity even more by mixing in peas. Sounds odd, but it tastes fine and it gets the kids a vegetable.

Enjoy! If you make any improvements, I'd be glad to hear about them.

Profession, Vocation, Occupation

2010-08-19T10:32:00.009-04:00

Preface: This was written but not published when we were getting ready to move. Now that I do have a job, I came on to blogspot for the first time in a month and realized I'd never actually sent this out. So here it is, in its time-warped "glory."

===================

One of the most common questions I've been getting about the move (and I've been getting this from my grandmother, some high-school acquaintances, and everyone in between) is what I'll be doing once I get to Lexington. When I give the honest answer ("I have no idea") the followup question is always the same: will I be in professional / vocational / occupational ministry. I don't usually play the deconstruction game, but let's check this out a bit. Imagine this conversation between myself and a hypothetical friend.

HF (hypothetical friend): So, Micah, are you looking for a role in professional ministry in Lexington?

MrO: Let's talk about that word "profession." We take it to mean a line of work or a trade. But if you check it in the dictionary, you'll find that it's actually a matter of allegiance... we profess vows to a religious community, or profess a faith, or profess a belief or opinion. Only one of the four definitions given by Messrs. Miriam and Webster has to do with economic activity, and my understanding is that even that was once a matter of allegiance... I profess allegiance to a guild or a trade.

I used to joke that pastors are professional Christians... they get paid to do what we're all supposed to be doing anyway. But that's not really the right word on my part. The reality is that ALL followers of Jesus should be professional... we should "Hold firmly to the faith we profess." So in that sense, any ministry I do should be professional.

HF: You know that's not what I mean. What I mean is, are you looking for vocational ministry in Lexington?

MrO: That's a funny word, "vocation." It's from the latin voca, which means "to call." Your vocation is your calling. It's what people are talking about when they're "called" into ministry. Eugene Peterson, though, has an entirely different take on it.

During his seminary education in New York City, Peterson worked with a group of artists. They were dancers and poets and sculptors, and they all worked blue-collar jobs as taxi drivers, waiters, and salesmen—whatever they had to do to pay the rent and put food on the table. Soon enough Peterson realized that “none of them were defined by their jobs—they were artists, whether anyone else saw them as artists, and regardless of whether anyone would ever pay them to be artists.” That is to say, being an artist wasn’t a job for them, but a vocation. Their jobs simply kept them alive so they could pursue their vocations. “Their vocation didn’t come from what anyone thought of them or paid them.”

So if I'm getting paid by a church, that might mean that my ministry is NOT my vocation. Not saying that's definitely the case, of course, but the real question is "would I do this even if i wasn't getting paid for it?"

HF: That's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is are you looking for an occupational ministry in Lexington?

MrO: You know, "occupation" is another funny word. We use it to...

HF: Your being needlessly pedantic, and it's really annoying.

MrO: Hey man, you're just a literary device that lets me order my thoughts. It's a pretty well-established one, too, started by Plato. I mean all of the Socratic philosophy we have is just Plato pitting Socrates against...

HF: Dude.

MrO: Right. Anyway, there's two ways you can take "occupation." It could be a trade, but it could also mean holding territory for an invading force. And that's what we believe about the Kingdom of God... that we're the beachhead of a Kingdom that is breaking through into this world. It's fully present but not fully realized; both "already" and "not yet." Right now it's only here in part, but soon it will be here fully. The dam is currently bursting... right now there's a trickle of water at the ankles but before long there will be a wall of water that sweeps a new Kingdom into existence. It's a Kingdom entirely without borders or even governments, except for one King.

And so for the next season of life, my next occupation is Lexington. That's the beachhead I'm occupying, that's the territory I have my eye on. That's where my ministry is, and that's what it means to do "occupational ministry."

HF: What. Are. You. Going. To. Do. To. Make. Money.

MrO: Oh, my job? I have no idea.

Cleaning out the hard drive...

2010-08-17T16:51:00.004-04:00

It's my last week at work, so I'm getting ready to give back my work laptop. I've found lots of stuff on here that I'd forgotten, but here's my favorite. Little jab at all of my friends on Twitter.

Venn Diagram of Personality Disorders and Social Media

Of course, since this blog auto-feeds to my Facebook account, I'm probably well into the "Narcissism" category.

Expect to see a torrent of blogging this week, as I publish all of the little things that I'd stashed away to share "later."

That Martin Luther King, Jr... he's not bad

2010-08-17T15:28:00.007-04:00

Everybody knows MLK, right? Everybody knows he's a good guy who did good stuff. But I've never actually been exposed to his writing before. I've heard lots of things ABOUT King, but until recently I've never actually read his own words.

This guy was a force of nature.

If you've never done it, you should go read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I'm working through it for the first time, and I'm staggered by the guy's depth of thought. This man wasn't just a good orator, he was a great thinker. The whole thing is quotable, but this part was big for me right now:

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever... If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides--and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.

I'm not an oppressed minority. But I do sometimes think "I shouldn't feel this way." I think I should force myself not to be discontent.

News flash: it doesn't work that way.

Instead of trying to force myself to feel differently (or just happily wallowing in my discontent), it's far more constructive when I identify positive behaviors and channel any discontent towards those behaviors. MLK figured it out over 50 years ago, I'm figuring it out today, and you may have figured it out years before me.

But if it's new to you, or if you've forgotten, now is a pretty good time to start.

Happy Belated Father's Day!

2010-07-03T06:56:00.006-04:00

Here's another gem from Team Vegas. This was produced a couple years ago by my friends at Canyon Ridge Christian Church. I meant to post it on Father's Day, but I was out of town. Better late than never, I guess. My new brother-in-law sent me this gem, though, so I figured I'd post this video in retaliation. I've shrunk this to fit on my blog, but it's really worth watching full screen. Multiple times.

Little-known fact: at one point, the folks at CRCC asked me to leave my job at the Yucca Mountain Project to come be the Director of Communication for the church. I was slightly underqualified, but they didn't have a ton of applicants. Then, out of nowhere, a new guy named Adam burst onto the scene and got the job. My discomfort with that lasted until I met him, at which point I knew that the church had made the exact right decision. He was way more qualified than I, on multiple levels.

For example, he's the one who drew this video.

Scary pictures

2010-07-01T18:18:00.004-04:00

I just realized that the "About Me" picture on this blog is a little bit frightening. I jokingly attached it to my Google profile 4 years ago, and I never got around to changing it. Don't be afraid though... I'm really not a crazy television preacher. I just play one on TV.

This is really old... early 2006. I shot it late at night with Andrew Stephens, Clara Uwamu, and Jonathan Capelle. In case you can't tell, we were a little bit slap-happy by the end. Good times, good times.

Knowledge Acquisition Through Comic Books (Homeopathy and Vaccination edition)

2010-07-01T08:45:00.002-04:00

This is cool. This guy writes explanations of scientific issues. Lots of people do that. But this guy does it with comics.

First up, Homeopathy. It's really good. After that, try Vaccination and Autism.

The vaccination one was especially interesting to me, since we had a lot of questions about vaccination with our kids. Here's a couple extra links:

Alison Singer, executive vice president of Autism Speaks, stepped down to form a new autism research group. Her reason for leaving? Despite study after study that showed no link between autism and vaccination (some of those studies by her own organization), Autism Speaks insisted on continuing to look for a link. Every dollar that goes towards this non-link is a dollar that won't go towards actually finding a cure.

Here's a study showing autism numbers aren't actually going up. Instead, what used to be diagnosed as "mental retardation" is now being more accurately diagnosed as autism. Actually, combined rates of retardation and autism have decreased in recent years, possibly due to better prenatal care.

More information on Wakefield here if you want it.

Validation

2010-06-29T15:36:00.004-04:00

This is one of the cleverest things I've seen in ages. So great, so sweet, so smart. I want to be this guy.

Even people without cars need validation.

And now, your moment of the opposte of zen

2010-06-25T20:11:00.003-04:00

Earlier today I was leading an outreach at VCC's Summer of Service. Before long I realized the group I was with was from Indianapolis, Indiana... the ancestral Odor homeland. A quick conversation made me realize they lived just a mile or so from where I grew up. This conversation followed:

ME: That's awesome. I lived right by there. Went to Lawrence North High School.

KID: Cool. That's where I'm going to go next year.

ME: Go Wildcats, right? I wonder if the teachers I knew are there... I graduated in 1998.

KID: I was born in 1998.

Here Comes Some Change

2010-05-25T22:44:00.007-04:00

So, two big things happen tomorrow morning.

First, I turn 30. The Big Three Oh. I'm now no longer a twentysomething. Can you be a thirtysomething? Is that a thing? Anyway, that seems like a big deal. Another decade, take stock of life, etc.

The second thing that's happening tomorrow? I turn in my letter of resignation at my work (Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, OH). My last day will be no later than Friday, August 20th. I say "no later" because we may end up moving earlier if I get a job that wants me sooner.

Yes, you're reading that correctly... I have not yet found a job. I'm leaving my current one without having anything lined up. Not that I'm unhappy at the Vineyard. Quite the opposite, actually. I love the church, love the people I work with, love the work, etc.

Nope, I'm leaving VCC because it won't be realistic to commute from Lexington, KY, where we'll be living when Judi starts her PhD in the fall. Not only did she get accepted to Asbury Seminary's Biblical Studies doctoral program (they only took 8 students this year, presumably 4 New Testament and 4 Old Testament), she also got an amazing scholarship. I'm ridiculously proud of her... she got into a VERY competitive program and will be going to school for free. Again.

No word yet on what I'll be doing. Corporate trainer? Chik-Fil-A manager? Bank teller? Manager at an Amazon warehouse? Work at a church? I have no idea.

I see the next chapter of life rapidly approaching, and it looks like it's gonna be a blast. But I'd be a liar if I said that change didn't make me nervous.

Fixing the wireless on a Revo 3600

2010-05-17T16:58:00.006-04:00

Keywords: Acer Aspire Revo AR3610-U9022 Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Wireless Chipset Realtek RT2860STA

Both of my regular readers can safely ignore this. I've traced down an annoying problem and can't find the solution posted anywhere. This post is to document the solution for future Google searches.

I'm playing with a cool net-top box called the Aspire Revo 3600. It's a $300 desktop computer whose entire box is about the size of a large paperback. It's strong enough for general desktop use, packs a great GPU that lets it drive a high-def display over HDMI, uses almost no power, and is dead silent. Oh yeah: and it runs great with Linux.

Only problem is that there's a bug in the recently open-sourced wireless driver code, so when you boot it up for the first time you won't be able to find any wireless networks. Searching forums will lead you to download the source code for new drivers, recompile it, rip it out, try a different patchset, recompile it again, etc. Don't do that... you'll hate yourself. Instead, do this as root (sudo -s):

mkdir -p /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA/
touch /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA/RT2860STA.dat
service network-manager restart

That's all, ladies and gents. Try the veal, and don't forget to tip your waiter.

It's great to make mistakes

2010-05-10T07:28:00.008-04:00

Or so I'm told. If I was ever to make a mistake, this might be relevant to me.

“We must expect to be making mistakes all the time. We must be content to fail repeatedly and to begin again to try to deny ourselves for the love of God…

We want to shake off the hateful thing that has humbled us. In our rush to escape the humiliation of our mistakes, we run headfirst into the opposite error, seeking comfort and compensation.

And so we spend our lives running back and forth from one attachment to another.

If that is all our self-denial amounts to, our mistakes will never help us.

The thing you do, when you have made a mistake, is not to give up doing what you were doing and start something altogether new, but to start over again with the thing you began badly and try, for the love of God, to do it well.

(Merton, Journals, Oct 7, 1949, II.372)

Actually, I make mistakes all the time, and I tend to do exactly what Thomas Merton says I shouldn't. I avoid the mistake and either seek comfort instead in people who tell me it wasn't really a mistake, or I go do something I'm good at so that I can feel good about myself.

Resolved: After doing something badly, I will do it again and try, for the love of God, to do it well.

I need some Growtivation

2010-05-10T00:44:00.003-04:00

While cleaning out my neglected Reader feed (sidenote: holy cow does that stack up if you leave it alone for half a week), I found this gem:

Satire should cause readers a little pain, instead of nudging them to laugh at people they already hold in contempt.

In the spirit of true satire, then, I offer this:

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

It hurts because it's true. Observant and/or culturally savvy readers will be aware that this video is shamelessly stolen from a far more well-made piece of work:

So... the church video is an inferior rehash of a pop culture phenomenon? I don't think I've ever seen that happen before.

Still hurts because it's true.

Signs of the Apocalypse: Slap Chop Rap

2010-04-22T23:07:00.002-04:00

Hey, it's not every day that you get to reference the culinary genius that is the Slap Chop while you're talking about the book of Revelation. Good times, good times.

Here's the video:

And here's me:

http://www.theliftcommunity.com/4-22-10.mp3

Correction: I said that the idea of the Rapture started in the late 1800s, but as soon as I got off the stage, Jim Zartman pointed out that it was actually 1806. Way off.

Poly Ticks

2010-04-21T22:59:00.006-04:00

So our Hot Topics (Topix?) series continues apace. Last week (4-15) we talked about politics, it being tax day and all. I figured my message would frustrate some people, but I didn't get many nasty letters. Either the people able to be frustrated have already bailed on me or it went better than I thought. Judge for yourself.

http://www.theliftcommunity.com/4-15-10.mp3

Then, in a curious twist of fate, right before I posted this I saw one of the guys I highly respect wrote something similar in his blog. I know great minds think alike, but I'm not sure what that has to do with Joe and I.

http://rebelpilgrim.blogspot.com/2010/04/lets-talk-politics.html

My main point was that getting too interested in politics is tricky because politics is ultimately an expression of power, and it's impossible to chase after power while also chasing after a servant's heart.

I really wanted to make this joke during my talk, but I figured only one person in the room (Doug) would get it, so I left it alone. I need more hardcore nerds at the Lift.

EDIT: My clever introduction got cut off by the recording equipment. Just pretend that I said something witty.

Go Team Vegas!

2010-04-14T19:42:00.003-04:00

A great video to go with a great song.

Actually, it's kind of a weird song. The primary line ("You give and take away") is taken from the book of Job, which is always an awkward place to pull theology from (since God disagrees with most of the statements in the book). I don't believe that every apparently bad thing in life is God "taking away" or that every apparently good thing is his "gift."

That's beside the point, though. The core issue expressed in the song is one I can get behind: loving my God no matter what my circumstances. For better or worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, my love is not based on my situation.

EDIT: And once again, Blogger cuts off half of the video. If I posted on here more frequently I'd probably have already moved to Wordpress or something. Click through to see the whole thing or to see an absolutely great video channel.

Literally Ironic

2010-04-09T00:20:00.008-04:00

So I get home from the Lift, where I taught on the Bible (what it's for, why it's important, what the main story is, etc). I also talked quite a bit about why I don't like the word "literally" especially as it relates to the Bible: the word's so misused and misunderstood that it doesn't help us be clear in what we're saying. I don't believe that Jesus was a literal person, I think he was a historical person... he actually existed in history, not just literature. Nobody says that Abe Lincoln was "literally" President.

AAAANYWAY. I got home and checked my Reader, and what do I see? Perfect synchronicity!

NOTE: This doesn't display well in blogger. Click the picture to see the whole thing. Or subscribe in Google Reader or something.

http://xkcd.com/725/

If you've not browsed the entire archives of the brilliant webcomic XKCD, you should go do that right now. Or maybe just watch this a few times and hum it for the next four days. Whatever. I'm not here to judge.

Incidentally, if you want to hear the rest of my crusade against the word "literal" you're welcome to give it a listen:

www.theliftcommunity.com/4-8-10.mp3

Now if I could just convince a few people that rain on your wedding day isn't actually an example of irony, I could consider it an evening well-spent.

Easy 5-Minute Pecan Monkey Bread

2010-03-22T09:58:00.002-04:00

We had this for breakfast and might make it for dinner too. Grands Biscuits are on sale for a dollar this week, meaning I should be able to grab half a dozen for free (with coupons).

Ingredients:
1 pie pan
1 roll of Grands biscuits
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
cinnamon (whatever looks right)
Pecans (I have no idea how many)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Put butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar in a bowl and nuke for 20 seconds. Mix.
3. Crush/dice pecans into bottom of ungreased pie pan. I didn't really measure, I just kept adding until the pan had a thin layer across the bottom. Pour in the butter/sugar concoction.
4. Open biscuits. Using kitchen shears, cut each biscuit into quarters and add to the pie pan. 1 container of biscuits should fill pie pan almost perfectly.
5. Bake at 400 for 11-13 minutes. Let cool slightly, then invert into a cookie sheet.

Enjoy!

Regret Minimization

2010-03-19T21:34:00.002-04:00

Insert witty and/or sappy introduction here.

This is the dude who started Amazon... he's kind of a big deal.

My blog, now with 80% less content!

2010-03-04T20:30:00.002-05:00

Hey, at least I'm actually updating. So what if I'm shamelessly stealing the most amazing stuff on the internet.

The Church is On The Move

2010-03-03T14:42:00.002-05:00

Somehow that statement will never quite have the same meaning ever again for me.

This is a great little piece of moviemaking... the well-set-up shots, the heavy use of tilt-shift, the awesome choral number, the fact that the church actually drives in front of the lyrics, etc.

The theological issues are more troubling, if you care to think that way: moving the "Church" (I'm ignoring the building/body issue because it's too obvious) over a hundred miles just to "keep it safe for eternity." Nothing about mission, nothing about engaging the culture, nothing about anything except "keeping it safe." Yowza.

But if I'm really being honest, I have to admit I don't care about the theological issues. It's just a good excuse to show a great video.

Competence

2010-02-24T07:47:00.006-05:00

Everyone has things they're good at and things they're not.

Everyone's list is different.

I'm strong at problem-solving (among other things) and weak at delegation (among other things). You're strong at some things and weak in others. The process of moving from weak in a skill to strong in it--the process of moving from incompetence to competence--has four stages. It might sound simplistic, but it's been a useful approach for me.

1. Unconscious incompetence - You're bad at this and don't even know it.
2. Conscious incompetence - You're bad at this but are aware of it.
3. Conscious competence - You're good at this because you're aware of it.
4. Unconscious competence - You're good at this without thinking about it.

There are plenty of things you do where you're a 4 already... you're good at this without thinking about it. What about the stuff where you're a 1, though? What do you do about that?

As I said, delegation is hard for me. It's not something that comes naturally... my natural approach is to do everything myself. That works great if you're trying to lead 2 people, or 20. 200, not so much. For 2000 (the number of individuals hypothetically under my care) it's a train wreck. So this is an area where I'm really trying to get better.

After 4 years in this role, I've finally moved solidly out of stage 1. I'm not good at delegating and I'm aware of it. It doesn't come naturally, but at least I'm no longer in denial.

I've begun, over the past 18 months or so, to move well into stage 2. Now I'm conscious of my lack of competence. I've begun to have times where I'll think to myself "If I was good at delegating, this is probably something I'd delegate." I've begun asking myself the question "If I was good at delegating, what would I do in this situation?" Sometimes I know the answer and sometimes I don't. When I don't, I try to find out (by reading about it, my sitting and thinking it through, by experimenting, or by talking to someone who IS strong in this area). Once I have an idea of what someone might do who's good at delegating, I try to do those things, no matter how unnatural they feel. It's not natural for me to give away anything critical, but that doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do.

I have faith that at some point, my awkward attempts to delegate will begin to bear some fruit. By mimicking the behaviors of competence, I will at some point begin to look (from the outside, at least) like someone who can delegate effectively. Internally, of course, it still won't be natural. I'll be like the kid shooting a free throw for the first time, standing in front of the hoop and repeating to myself: "Feet on the line, shoulder-width apart, two dribbles, line up my hand on the seam, deep breath, bend my knees, ball to the shoulder, straighten up, shoot, motion in the wrist, follow through." But if the ball goes in the basket then it's a success, no matter how unnatural it feels at first.

Eventually, the pattern of behavior will become so ingrained that I'll be able to do it without thinking. Like a muscle memory whose steps are programmed into my brain through repetition, I'll just think to myself "delegate this" and the steps will come naturally. I'm not anywhere close to this yet, but I know I'll get there someday.

So what are you good at (a natural 4)? And what things could you be better at? This progression really works in a wide variety of settings... from cooking to conflict management. Give it a try... the behaviors of competence can be learned, and you can learn them.

Getting my head straight: It's really an honor

2010-02-21T15:30:00.004-05:00

Today I tried to walk (with a new friend) from the Atrium at church to my office. I bet I got stopped 20 times by people I know, and almost none of them were just "Hey Micah good to see you." Over half where "Thanks for your voicemail I'll call you back tomorrow" or "Hey did you get my email" or "Are we still on to meet this week" or something like that. I've kind of taken for granted the number of people I interact with in a given week, but as I walked with someone who barely knows me, I was absolutely stunned at how bizarre this must look. It felt like every person in the hallway wanted to talk to me.

Recently I've felt burned out by the amount of communicating I've been doing. My level of connection is the highest it's ever been. I've always been the crazy extrovert in my social circle, so it takes a lot to max me out relationally. Recently, though, I've been there. That's a big part of the reason this blog has been neglected... I didn't want people to think "What, he has enough time to blog but not to respond to my email?"

This afternoon, as I sat in my office and tried to catch up on email, voicemail, and messages of all kinds (I've gotten a dozen calls or texts since getting to my desk), God really pushed home the point that it's an honor to be involved in the lives of so many people I care about. I've been badly behind on my communication for a month now, which makes me feel like a failure for big chunks of my day. And I'm not denying that I need to do a better job at keeping everything going.

But for the rest of the day, I'm going to forget all of that, and just focus on what a privilege it is to have so many people care about me, and so many people allow me to be a part of their lives. It's really amazing that someone as awkward as me can have so many people in my life.

Now, back to that email. Let's see if I can clear out one more folder before I go home.

Much better than Transformers

2010-02-16T20:04:00.002-05:00

Oh. Yeah. Baby.

It might even have a decent script, but I won't care. And I usually care about such things. But it's not like the original series wasn't a WEE bit formulaic itself. So I doubt the reboot will suffer much.

Free as in Freedom

2010-02-10T08:17:00.000-05:00

Working my way into our next teaching series.

This is from Hafiz, a Sufi poet from the 14th century.

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.

Bookkeeping

2010-01-17T20:51:00.002-05:00

I recently checked my list of drafts and discovered that I have over a dozen brilliant posts that never got quite completed. Apparently I'm better at starting projects than finishing them. Shocking.

A couple of bookkeeping points, and then a question for both of my readers. First point: I have a new post up over at The Theology of the Tweak. Check it out. Second point: my lovely wife has ended her old blog and started a new one. Check it out.

So, I've got two rants ready to go. Which one do you want? The one about how Pat Robertson and the Emergent Village are exactly the same? Or the one where I dismantle the "Merry Christmas is better (and more spiritual) than Happy Holidays" meme?

Fine Dining with Oreos

2009-12-22T22:05:00.006-05:00

I know, dear reader, I've been neglecting you. It'll continue at least until Christmas. In the meantime, here's a little something you might like.

OREO TRUFFLES

- 18 oz Oreos (~54 cookies)
- 3 tablespoons of pulverized candy canes
- 8 oz Philly Cream Cheese (1 package)

Throw the Oreos in a blender, a few at a time. Pour the resulting crumbs into a mixing bowl along with the candy canes. Mix, then add cream cheese. Squash together until it's evenly mixed. You should have a sticky ball of chocolate mint cream cheese.

Take a tablespoon measure and scoop out as many scoops as possible, then roll each one and place on a cookie sheet. The resulting truffles will be sticky; you can give them a nice edge by rolling them in unsweetened cocoa powder and then (once they turn dark brown again) rolling them in supergranulated sugar (which you can get by putting half a cup of regular sugar into a food processor).

Lay 'em out on wax paper and stick 'em in the fridge. Serve and eat!

OREO RUM BALLS

Same basic idea, but with no cream cheese.

9 oz Oreos (~27 cookies), pulverized
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1 cup finely chopped pecans
3 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tablespoons of pulverized candy canes
2 Tbsp light karo syrup
1/3 cup rum

Mix the dry (first 5 ingredients) then add the wet (last two). Finish them just like the truffles: scoop with a tablespoon, roll into balls, roll in cocoa powder, let sit, roll in supergranulated sugar, refrigerate.

Enjoy!

EDIT: I should mention that if you want to do these "properly" (especially the truffles) you should melt some chocolate, dip them in, fish them out, and lay them out on a piece of wax paper. But my devotion only goes so far, and I didn't have any more chocolate in the house. I used it all up making Chocolate Chipotle Candied Almonds.

The Wisdom of Solomon

2009-10-30T00:26:00.001-04:00

Awesome.

Stuff I found interesting

2009-10-22T23:25:00.006-04:00

I've been drowning under the amount of information that comes at me in a given week. Tomorrow is blocked out for clearing my email inbox, but tonight I multi-tasked by clearing out my Hulu queue in one tab while pounding through my Google Reader items in another. The only problem was that I had so many cool shared items that it would have absolutely overwhelmed my Shared Items feed. So here's a punchlist of stuff I found interesting between 10 and 11:30pm on Thursday night. Skip a link at your own uninformed peril.

THIS is COMMANDMENT. A 10 Commandments move "in the style of 300."

Atheists offer to care for Christians' Pets After the Rapture. Now there's a great idea for a new business.

"Nocebos": Like Placebos, but for bad stuff. Learning about the side effects of medication can give you the side effects even if you're on a sugar pill.

Niki's Choice: Here's what happens when you make Christianity "Jesus plus X" instead of just "Jesus."

The Surprising Truth About Shepherds: Margaret Feinberg argues that they're always drawn from the weakest members of society. Spiritual application seems obvious.

Fun (fake) interview with J.Edwards: Who, by the way, is not my homeboy. First three questions are absolutely great, though.

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule: If only I could figure out which one I am.

An interesting take on flu vaccine. I'm pro-vaccine in general, but I never get the flu vaccine. Now I don't have to feel bad about it!

The latest Pomplamoose cover is out! Go watch it immediately unless you've not already watched Single Ladies, Mrs. Robinson, and My Favorite Things.

I'm not linking to Regretsy.com because who knows what will be on the front page when you click the link. Search at your own peril. Let's just say that it's hilariously awful and leave it at that.

Learning with Lawrence. Start watching now so you'll be able to say "I watched those guys when they were still on YouTube!

Tim Keller (one of my current favorites) says I shouldn't spend more than 6-8 hours per week on preaching. Glad I got that one right, Tim!

And, to top it all off... weirdest ad campaign I've ever seen.

I think it goes without saying that you're missing out if you're not on Reader. For extra credit, try following my shared items. Why would you watch CNN when you could be getting real news instead?

You keep using that word...

2009-10-18T22:52:00.004-04:00

I do not think it means what you think it means.

The sky calls to us.

A still more glorious dawn awaits: not a sunrise, but a galaxyrise. A morning filled with four hundred billion suns: the rising of the Milky Way. The cosmos is full beyond measure: elegant truths, exquisite relationships and the awesome machinery of nature. We float like a mote of dust on the morning sky.

When I was a kid, Sagan was a guilty pleasure. I loved the guy but knew he was a big believer that the earth was billions and billions of years old, which obviously meant he didn't believe in God. Obviously I couldn't take his word for anything! (New readers: that's sarcasm. Check the archives). I still read his novel Contact, though, which was amazing. It contained all of the science/religion dichotomy of the movie it was made into, with one twist: it ends with a (fictional but possible) proof of God. The ending earned Carl some scorn in "legitimate" academic and scholarly circles and was cut from the movie, but it was his only way to resolve the amazing nature of the beauty he'd found in the universe. With such an amazing Creation, there must certainly be a Creator. Changing the ending changed the meaning of his book, but the movie was written and produced after his death.

And when viewed with that backstory, the autotuned video mashup takes on a whole new meaning.

The sky calls to us. A still more glorious dawn awaits.

You weren't wrong, Carl.

"Sufficient" Depravity

2009-10-13T19:09:00.004-04:00

Alternate title: Confessions of a Zero-Point Calvinist

I read an amazing quote while cleaning my office today. If you don't get a laugh out of this you're not a theologian.

That's not intended as a compliment, but you're welcome to take it that way.

====

From Ortberg's recent article in Leadership Magazine:

Somebody asked Dallas Willard once if he believed in total depravity. His reply was that he believed in "sufficient depravity." Never having run into that doctrine before, the interviewer asked for clarification. Dallas said "I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved so that no one will ever get into heaven and say 'I merited this.'"

Absolutely priceless. I love Ortberg and Willard both, so this a duofecta (almost a trifecta).

I'll leave a lengthy analysis of Calvin's shortcomings as a theologian to more patient persons, choosing here only to note that he, alone of all the Reformers, was not trained as a pastor. He was a French lawyer. That doesn't mean he can't be a good theologian, but it does go a long way towards understanding the theological position he constructed.

So long, William

2009-10-08T15:40:00.002-04:00

I've been meaning to put this out for a week, but sick kids put everything else on hold. William Safire passed away last week, and it simply didn't seem right that the popular press focused on things like his political opinions instead of his greatest contribution to the English-speaking world: William Safire's Rules of Witing. Without further ado:

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
6. Be more or less specific.
7. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
8. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
9. No sentence fragments.
10. Don’t use no double negatives.
11. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out or mispeld something.
12. Eschew obfuscation.

This is why women should be pastors.

2009-09-23T23:35:00.001-04:00

Exhibit A: My friend Karin Maney. You rock, Karin.

The Peace of God from Recycle Your Faith on Vimeo.

The myth of "quality time."

2009-09-12T21:34:00.004-04:00

There's no such thing as "quality time" with your kids. Or rather, there IS, but it's worthless. The phrase doesn't have a long history... it came to prominence in the 80s with the idea that you might work 90-hour weeks, but could make up for it on the weekend by taking the kids to theme parks or the beach or something. Work hard and play hard. Make lots of memories in a short amount of time. Worthless.

Kids don't care about quality time... they care about QUANTITY time. Would Jenna love it if we went to the beach every weekend? Sure. But she also loves sitting in the backyard throwing a ball back and forth. What matters isn't that we do amazing things together, but that we do them often. My being home as many nights as possible is a much bigger deal than whether we have huge weekend plans.

That said, she and I have developed a weekly tradition... on my day off, we get up early and make waffles. Since finishing off the Bisquick, we've been experimenting with different "from scratch" recipes and we've finally settled on one. Do yourself a favor and make these waffles. Best part is you use the half-cup measure for everything (including pouring the batter). Minimal cleanup rocks.

Jenna's Waffles

First, mix these dry ingredients:
- 1 cup white flour
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 teaspoons brown sugar
- plenty of cinnamon (I never measure)

Then, add these and mix again:
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup plain yogurt
- 2 eggs
- 4 tablespoons cooking oil
- 1 banana, mashed with a fork

And for fun, add something like this:
- 1 small handful chocolate chips
- 1 small handful peanut butter chips

We don't use syrup (these waffles don't need it), just vanilla yogurt. Try it... your kids (or your taste buds) will thank you.

Important Lessons from Children's Books

2009-09-08T19:51:00.004-04:00

My daughter has a new favorite book: The Little Engine that Could. It's very sweet, and teaches an important lesson. Every time I read it, though, I can't help but think of the definitive poetic version by Shel Silverstein.

Shel was a weird dude (check the link for his first major employer) but the dude could write serious poetry. This is one of my favorites.

The Little Blue Engine, by Shel Silverstein

The little blue engine looked up at the hill.
His light was weak, his whistle was shrill.
He was tired and small, and the hill was tall,
And his face blushed red as he softly said,
“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”

So he started up with a chug and a strain,
And he puffed and pulled with might and main.
And slowly he climbed, a foot at a time,
And his engine coughed as he whispered soft,
“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”

With a squeak and a creak and a toot and a sigh,
With an extra hope and an extra try,
He would not stop — now he neared the top —
And strong and proud he cried out loud,
“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!”

He was almost there, when — CRASH! SMASH! BASH!
He slid down and mashed into engine hash
On the rocks below... which goes to show
If the track is tough and the hill is rough,
THINKING you can just ain’t enough!

Fundamental Assumptions Part 1: The God Who Salvages

2009-09-07T01:12:00.005-04:00

I wrote this as part of an ongoing writing project with my wife called The Theology of the Tweak. It's been sadly neglected due to our familial addition, but I'd like to get it going again.

---

The hard part about our Tweak Theology is that it has so many self-referencing assumptions that it's hard to articulate where the starting point is. It's basically turtles all the way down. But there are a few bedrock beliefs that I think can stand on their own before we get into the meat of it.

The very first is that our God is a God who salvages. Joe Boyd told me last year that Wall-E was the most spiritual movie made in 2008, and I couldn't agree more.

Look, we Christians have created all kinds of baggage around the word "saved." It's not really meaningful to us. Does the word mean remotely the same thing when saying "I got saved this weekend" and "I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance?" Obviously not. Forget the comparison of spiritual life and car insurance... aside from that, the word is still being used in totally different ways. Try this on for size, though:

Salvage: to rescue or save especially from wreckage or ruin

Catch that? Synonym for "save" is "salvage" when referring to "rescuing from wreckage or ruin." That's a pretty good explanation of what it means to enter a relationship with God... what if instead of saying "I'm saved" we instead said "I'm salvaged?" I don't know if our egos could handle it ("I don't need salvaging!") but it would be a lot more theologically accurate.

But WAIT! There's MORE!

I'm not going to spend a ton of time defending this (it's a blog post, and it's already too long) unless somebody objects, in which case I'll dive in and tackle it more thoroughly. But here it is:

God's goal is to save the world. I don't mean that just in the soteriological sense, but also in the practical. God's desire is BOTH to offer salvation (saving relationship, eternal life, etc) to every individual, AND to salvage our relationships, our culture, our work, our institutions, and our planet. These things are broken, usually as a result of our own brokenness. God is a fixer by nature, and each broken thing he desires to fix. I'm positing that half on Scripture and half by extrapolating from his character. If you have a great verse I should know please stick it in the comments.

But that's a quick writeup on one of my most basic understandings about life, God, and theology. It's not one that everyone shares (at the very least, it's fair to say that every 5-pointer has already written me off as a heretic) but this is the absolute bedrock of my understanding of God.

Fundamental Assumption #1: God is a Salvager by both nature and choice. It's a fundamental character trait to fix what is broken, which means that His goal is not only to redeem individuals from their brokenness but also to redeem the world: both nature's beauty and human society are fit recipients of his attention.

Or, more simply:

Our God is a God who salvages.

A Case for Intelligent Design: Part 1.5 of 3.

2009-09-01T16:42:00.001-04:00

I'll eventually finish, I promise. In the meantime, here's a thought on design while I'm unable to access my GMail.

For those just joining, this has nothing to do with "Intelligent Design" in terms of evolution. Rather, it's calling for intelligence in the way we design ministry systems. You can read Part 1 here.

Adam's Rib

2009-08-12T22:52:00.004-04:00

Ok, this is one of the weirder things I've read recently.

Normally I'd skip right by this, but this past weekend I was at a beautiful wedding where the pastor spent an inordinate amount of time talking about Adam's rib and its significance.

It was an interesting thought that I'd never heard before: God didn't take from the man's head, or from his feet, but from his side. I expect that gentleman wouldn't find this short article to be very convincing.

EDIT: New link. Old one broke.

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/28/gilbert_zevit.php

I read such weird stuff.

The Bible commands us...

2009-08-12T18:12:00.010-04:00

Disclaimer: here's a fundamental set of assumptions that I've been operating under for the past year just to try them out. I've thought about it enough that I'm comfortable sharing it in public, but not so much that I'd put it in a theology textbook quite yet. Here goes:

If you hang out in Christian circles for very long, you'll find that there's a never-ending discussion about which Biblical commands are "universal" and which ones are merely "cultural." This came up in a recent discussion I had, and I thought both readers of my blog might find my response interesting. That particular discussion had to do with a discussion over 1 Corinthians 14 and whether women could be in teaching ministry over men (I know, it's 2009) and honesty requires me to admit I was making my point perhaps a bit too forcefully. Still, the issue framed a major difference in the way we viewed Scripture, and I thought I'd write about it here. My friend Adam G. said:

I guess one thing that those on the opposite side from you . . . find a little scary is that if you dismiss the issue as purely a localized, historically-restricted, cultural issue being addressed, then that may become a slippery slope of saying that *everything* of theological significance with which you disagree is just Paul addressing a cultural issue.

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek here, but I think that Adam radically underestimates the degree of heresy that I'm willing to promote. We're working from completely different paradigms of how we're supposed to understand the Bible. I don't just believe that the stuff I DISAGREE WITH is localized, history-restricted, and cultural. I think EVERYTHING is localized, history-restricted, and cultural.

"Do not murder?" Localized, history-restricted, and cultural.
"Take a little wine for your stomach?" Localized, history-restricted, and cultural.
"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him?" Localized, history-restricted, and cultural.
"You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you?" Localized, history-restricted, and cultural.

The Bible isn't one big rulebook that we categorize in order to find commands. Each one of these statements is given at a specific time, by a specific person, to a specific person, for a specific situation. Each one of these commands is localized. Every one is given at a specific point in history. Every one of them is cultural.

ON THE OTHER HAND... (i.e., don't hang me yet)

I think EVERYTHING in the Bible is universal. I take Paul pretty seriously when he says ALL Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. So I think the dietary commands are universal. I think the Levitical purity commands are universal. I think the "eye for an eye" commands are universal. I think the "no tattooes" and "don't wear gold jewelry" and "don't wear cloth with two types of thread" and "don't have sex with farm animals" commands are all universal. I think the "women should be silent" stuff is universal. Every command God gives in the Bible applies to us today. Every description of God's preferences and personality is just as true today as it was the day it was written (since God does not change).

Here's the catch: it just doesn't necessarily apply to us in the way it applied to its original recipients (which, I need not remind remind you, we are not). As far as I can tell, I'm living in harmony with every one of the commands listed in this post, and I write this as I wear a gold ring, a comfortable poly-blend cloth shirt, and digest a carnitas burrito.

Look, if someone inspired by God went out of there way to say a certain behavior is wrong, and God saw fit to put that in the Bible, then why in the world would you say it doesn't pertain to you? That it doesn't, in some way, express God's heart?

The question that must always be asked about any command, though, is this: What's actually being revealed about God's heart, here? The dietary commands: does God really dislike pigs, or is he trying to get Israel to avoid (then-common, now-extinct) occult practices tied into the consumption of certain meats? Take the "eye for an eye" commands, for example. People get bent out of shape about how they enable vengeance, but pretty much all interpreters agree that they actually exist to prevent, not allow, the escalation of conflict. If everybody followed "an eye for an eye" we could never have a situation like this:

Neither woman is interested in getting even... each wants to get even, plus a little. Limiting their retribution means that the situation can't be escalated. God's heart is ultimately that we forgive (Jesus had a bit to say about this), but the short-term goal is to prevent escalation.

So in my opinion, the question "Are the instructions in this passage universal or cultural" is a false choice. Rather, when faced with any Scriptural command, we should immediately ask two questions:

1. In what ways is this command limited?
2. In what ways is is it universal?

And we should acknowledge that each command we find is both.

What's in a name?

2009-08-06T23:58:00.005-04:00

So the blog is titled "Forty Monkeys, Ten Minutes" because I misremembered the punchline to an old Dilbert comic.

But "Forty Monkeys" just sounds so much easier on my ego than "Three."

A Case for Intelligent Design: Part 1 of 3.

2009-08-05T21:38:00.008-04:00

I know an awful lot of Christians who care very much about the debate over creation and evolution, which is fine. I respect that. What boggles me, though, is how many people who detest biological evolution are willing to live with it in their ministry plans. They attend weekly worship services or a part of ministries that are the accumulation of years, decades, or centuries of accumulated evolution without undergoing real "Intelligent Design."

There's a pretty influential industrial designer named Dieter Rams. He designs stuff... physical possessions that cost far more than I'd be willing to spend. Regardless, in industrial design circles, he's kind of the man. He's famous for writing The Ten Commandments of Design, and for designing this radio. You can find these all over the net; here is the copy I'm working from.

So what if we assumed, just for the sake of discussion, that Good Design didn't just function for making stuff to fill your home, but also for making ministry decisions that really impact lives? What if design wasn't just an attribute of our objects, but also of our ministry? What would that look like?

So without further ado, I present the first three of Rams' Ten Commandments. Feel free to substitute his use of "product" with your ministry arena... "youth ministry,"
"Sunday morning worship," "small groups ministry," whatever. Take a look... what do you think?

1. Good design is innovative.

It does not copy existing product forms, nor does it produce any kind of novelty for the sake of it. The essence of innovation must be clearly seen in all functions of a product. The possibilities in this respect are by no means exhausted. Technological development keeps offering new chances for innovative solutions.

What if your youth ministry did not copy existing forms, but also refused to produce novelty for the sake of novelty? What would it take to make your class really innovative?

2. Good design makes the product useful.

A product is bought in order to be used. It must serve a defined purpose – in both primary and additional functions. The most important task of design is to optimise the utility of a product.

All of my theologian friends know that Paul declares all Scripture to be God-breathed... much ink has been spilled on that one. What's less clear to many, though, is how all Scripture can really be "useful," or that Paul would consider the utilitarian function of Scripture to be one of its highest attributes. The Bible isn't just a good book full of truth... it's also USEFUL! I am sick unto death of useless ministry. One of the things I love about my church is that we don't have much of it. But how do we ensure that the stuff we design is useful? What makes something useful?

3. Good design is aesthetic

The aesthetic quality of a product – and the fascination it inspires – is an integral part of its utility. Without doubt, it is uncomfortable and tiring to have to put up with products that are confusing, that get on your nerves, that you are unable to relate to. However, it has always been a hard task to argue about aesthetic quality, for two reasons.

Firstly, it is difficult to talk about anything visual, since words have a different meaning for different people.

Secondly, aesthetic quality deals with details, subtle shades, harmony and the equilibrium of a whole variety of visual elements. A good eye is required, schooled by years and years of experience, in order to be able to draw the right conclusion.

Ain't that the truth. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder... a worship set that one person loves feels overproduced to the next; a room setup that one finds inviting another finds pretentious. "Without doubt, it is uncomfortable and tiring to have to put up with products that are confusing, that get on your nerves, that you are unable to relate to." But how to gain the "years and years of experience" without going through them? How do you accelerate that process other than to make lots and lots of mistakes?

That's plenty long, for now. In parts 2 and 3 we'll tackle the rest of Deiter's 10 Commandments, but I can't be the only one thinking that he has far more to offer than how to build a better toaster. I'll end with a quote from my Reader:

If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, “What is your greatest failure?” I always have the same answer — We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!

Warning: Implied Political Commentary

2009-08-01T12:13:00.002-04:00

First off, allow me to say that this happens on both sides of the aisle... the Republicans did the same thing with the Patriot Act. So it's not an indictment of a specific party so much as an example of the degree to which our system is broken.

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee mocks the idea that members of Congress should read the bill before voting on it.

I love the implied corollary that even if they took the time to read it, members of Congress wouldn't be bright enough to understand it.

Can't say I disagree.

Look out! It's alive!

2009-07-29T18:17:00.002-04:00

An old quote, but a great quote. From C.S. Lewis:

Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God. I do not wonder. Here lies the deepest tap-root of Pantheism and of the objection to traditional imagery. It was hated not, at bottom, because it pictured Him as a man but because it pictured Him as king, or even as warrior. The Pantheist’s God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and earth should flee away at His glance. If He were the truth, then we could really say that all the Christian images-of kingship were a historical accident of which our religion ought to be cleansed.

It is with a shock that we discover them to be indispensable. You have had a shock like that before, in connection with smaller matters –when the line pulls at your hand, when something breathes beside you in the darkness. So here; the shock comes at the precise moment when the thrill of life is communicated to us along the clue we have been following. It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. “Look out! ” we cry, “it’s alive.” And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back–I would have done so myself if I could–and proceed no further with Christianity. An “impersonal God” -well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads –better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap –best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband-that is quite another matter.

There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (”Man’s search for God”!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?

My best steak ever

2009-07-12T23:21:00.002-04:00

Ok, that was amazing. Cheap cut of beef = boring steak? Not so, my friend. That was the finest meal I've had in months, and dead simple. Steak, Monterrey potatoes, and corn on the cob. Here's my playbook. Try it sometime.

Corn on the Cob

Can't go wrong with midwestern sweet corn.

1. Shuck corn.
2. Put in water
3. Boil
4. Serve with light butter. Don't add salt, good corn doesn't need it.

Monterrey Potatoes

This makes perfect FirstWatch-style potatoes. You can use other seasonings (I've had good luck with salt-free Mrs. Dash), but I'm trying to finish off the Monterrey seasoning. We inherited it from someone cleaning out a spice cabinet, and we don't use it for anything else.

1. Slice half an onion and put it in a cast-iron skillet
2. Dice potatoes until skillet is full
3. Add olive oil and Monterrey seasoning, toss. Add (stovetop) heat. Scrape and mix every time the potatoes start to stick.

Steak

This technique is called "salting" but it's not what you think. The salt doesn't cook in; quite the opposite. It's used to make the steak more tender. I used a relatively inexpensive cut of beef... $2.10 a pound. Here's how to make it awesome.

1. Put the raw steak on a plate and COVER it with a large-grained salt (Kosher or Sea Salt). Keep adding salt until it's all white... you shouldn't see any red. Then flip it over and do it again.
2a. Let it sit.
2b. Let it sit some more. I know you're thinking it's going to ruin the taste of the steak, but it's not. The salt breaks down the proteins on the outside of the steak, making them more tender. Also, this will help trap moisture inside.
2c. Let it sit. For a 1-inch steak, go 30 minutes.
3. Wash steak thoroughly under the sink. Get rid of all of the salt. Pat dry with a paper towel.
4. Rub with olive oil.
5. Grill. Grind black pepper over both sides.

Serve and eat the dinner of champions.

This is out of this world

2009-07-10T21:20:00.000-04:00

People amaze me.

You're not so smart, you just show up a lot

2009-07-01T11:48:00.004-04:00

I've really been enjoying a series of blog posts by Steve Blank. I have no idea who this guy is, but he's been rocking my world recently. The title of this post is taken from his most recent entries. You can find his blog here.

Steve is not, as far as I can tell, a Christian. He's a successful entrepreneur that is now retired from the biz and writing it up. I don't care at all about making stacks of money... my 2008 taxable income was HALF of what I made in 2004. Yay, ministry!

What's amazing, though, is the way that Steve's description of himself could just as well describe me, although he's far more successful. Steve is an entrepreneur. That's his identity. Maybe it's mine too.

He talks a lot about what it takes to make family work when you're an entrepreneur... I stand humbled. (See here and here). He talks about faith-based vision and fact-based execution, which is an interesting distinction for something I've pondered a long time. He talks about the curse of a new building... read that post and replace "office building" with "church building." Does anything change? Not a bit. It's hugely relevant.

Mostly, though, he talks about the mind of a "founder" and how it's different from the way other people think. This is hugely impacting my thinking right now, as it categorizes a lot of the stuff that's driven me crazy about myself over the years.

I don't do a good job at the slow, steady grind. I want to, and all of the people I respect are strong there. I've always seen it as a character flaw that I wanted to go start something new instead of building up the stuff that's already there. But that life is hard for me. It's hard for me to take the thing that's established and keep working at it... I want to get it most of the way there and then start the next thing.

Maybe this is a phase. Maybe I'll grow out of it. Maybe adding more discipline will eventually fix this in me.

But maybe I'm just wired different, and the stuff that excites me is different from the stuff that excites everyone else. I'm all in on the Kingdom, and I'm not interested in building anything else in the world. But I think I'm beginning to understand what my role is... and it's probably not the one I thought it was.

What it's like to see the future

2009-06-24T22:16:00.003-04:00

From Popehat.

Who names their kid Ivan Odor?

2009-06-22T01:00:00.004-04:00

My great-grandmother, that's who.

I'm totally wrung out. At the risk of using the blog as a boring tool for introspection and whining, allow me to say I'm closing out the hardest week I've had in a while. Earlier in the week we took what was supposed to be a vacation to Canada, but now I know why families with young kids often vacation at home. I did two weddings yesterday, which was awesome but exhausting (physically and emotionally).

But the weird thing that I still can't wrap my head around is that my grandfather died Friday at 9pm and Judi's grandfather died yesterday (Saturday) at 2pm. Two guys with nothing in common except great grandkids... 17 hours apart. What are the odds of that?

We'd planned for a quiet Father's Day at home to recupe from the week, but decided it made more sense to hang at mom and dad's, since the whole fam is coming to town for the funeral.

On my way from church to the house, I thought "Oh, this will be great. We'll be up at the house, so grandma and grandpa will be able to come over and see Jenna and Liam." And then I remembered that grandpa wouldn't be there.

I think sometimes grief looks like exhaustion. Good thing it's a nice, quiet week coming up at work. I don't have anything on my schedule except something called Summer of Service.

Dance Like You're Unstoppable

2009-06-09T17:11:00.001-04:00

This is the best thing I've seen all week. One insane (probably drunk) dude having a ball at an outdoor concert/music festival ends up getting over a hundred people to dance.

Imagine if the dude had stopped dancing 30 seconds earlier.
Imagine if the second guy hadn't come, or the third.
Imagine if any of them had the presence of mind to realize "Holy cow, I look like an idiot."

I identify with Mr. Random Anonymous Dancer, and not just because he stole some of my best moves. On my very best days, this is what ministry feels like. The crazy awkward lonely grind at first, but the huge party as time goes on.

The trick is to keep going when you're all by yourself.

Robert Putnam and Social Capital

2009-05-11T09:07:00.003-04:00

So one of the guys I find interesting, Robert Putnam, got a shout-out at VCC this past week. Putnam's not a Christian, but he's a big fan of churches... especially big evangelical megachurches. Here's a quote from a recent article about him:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jul/18/communities.guardiansocietysupplement

Across many of these issues, Putnam's old interest, social capital, features. As he demonstrated in Bowling Alone, social capital has a crucial impact on crime reduction, educational achievement, even life expectancy. His research had exposed steep declines in all forms of social capital across much of the developed world, which he detailed in Bowling Alone with its central image of the end of US bowling leagues, but Putnam maintains he is "optimistic about social capital".

What fascinates him is tracking where the new forms of social capital are developing and why they are successful. One of his key areas of interest is religion - religious affiliations account for half of all US social capital. He cites US megachurches which, typically, attract tens of thousands of members, as "the most interesting social invention of late 20th century."

He identifies the secret of their success: "They have very low barriers to entry - the doors are open, there are folding chairs out on the patio - they make it very easy to surf by. You can leave easily. But then they ramp people up to a huge commitment - at some megachurches, half of all members are tithing [giving a tenth of their income]. How do they get from the low to the high commitment? By a honeycomb structure of thousands of small groups: they have the mountain bikers for God group, the volleyball players for God, the breast cancer survivors for God, the spouses of the breast cancer survivors for God, and so on.

"The intense tie is not to the theology but in the emotional commitment to others in their small group. Most of these people are seeking meaning in their lives but they are also seeking friends. The small groups spend two hours a week together - doing the volleyball or the mountain biking and praying; they become your closest friends," he says.

"These churches form in places of high mobility - people live there for six weeks and the church provides the community connection. When you lose your job, they'll tide you over, when your wife gets ill, they'll bring the chicken soup."

Like I said, interesting. I'm pretty widely studied on small groups in America, and I don't think he's totally got a firm grasp on it in terms of group identification. I'm also somewhat skeptical that most other non-religious organizations will be able to fully utilize a small group structure. Still, a pretty interesting perspective from a very smart outsider.

He has a book coming out this year that I'm really looking forward to.

Shameless Broadcasting of Personal Info

2009-04-24T13:59:00.008-04:00

It took far longer than we expected, but once again I'm a daddy. Holy cow is it amazing. Liam Nathaniel was born Wednesday evening... a healthy 9 lbs, 3.4 oz. Judi's doing great. Those who know us may remember that Jenna's birth was pretty rough, but this one went fine.

They held Liam an extra day because he had a heart murmur and he failed his hearing check. Both cleared up by the following day, so they released us this morning.

God is so good. Thanks a ton to all of our friends who supported us (or just offered to). We were well-covered this time because my parents and Judi's parents were both in town to help with Jenna-care.

Jenna's first look at Liam.

The three most important people in my life.

I love you all (well, most of you) and look forward to introducing you to my son!

The blog post where I briefly rant

2009-04-22T00:00:00.004-04:00

Let's take it as a given that none of us will ever buy GM ever again. That's a given, right? We're all on a lifelong boycott? I mean, any company who flat-out admits that they're too incompetent to design a car that people will buy is one you don't want to buy from.

Add in the fact that the incompetent company decided NOT to spend all of its assets on trying to build better cars, and instead spent that money lobbying Congress and begging from taxpayers is a company I really don't want to have any part of. But to have the chutzpah to come back to the trough THREE TIMES? How poorly-run do you need to be to come back begging THREE TIMES?

I hate the fact that my tax money bought this commercial. And it's not even a good commercial. So seeing it 4 times in 30 minutes tends to make me snippy.

"You know what America needs?" Better car companies, apparently.

We're not gonna have that around here.

2009-04-10T16:39:00.001-04:00

Hilarious.

A very dangerous game

2009-04-10T08:40:00.001-04:00

Planarity.

http://www.planarity.net/game.php?size=small

The entire game is just untangling a knot. But it gets much harder as you go up in levels. Give the link a click, if you have an hour to kill.

Well, that gets rid of a ton of the stuff I've had sitting in my queue. I'll put some more out tomorrow.

Hitchens and Craig go head-to-head

2009-04-09T10:31:00.003-04:00

Haven't read it yet, won't get a chance to read it until this weekend. But a brief skim looks promising! Enjoy!

http://www.tothesource.org/4_8_2009/4_8_2009.htm

Primates on Facebook

2009-04-09T10:26:00.002-04:00

I logged into Facebook yesterday and said to Judi "Do I really have this many friends?" I don't pursue anybody on Facebook... it's been a long time since I've initiated a friend request. Do I really even know this many people?

So it was fun to read this recent article in the Economist, which argues that no matter how many FaceBookFriends we have, our actual capacity for human interaction has remained relatively stable.

What also struck Dr Marlow, however, was that the number of people on an individual’s friend list with whom he (or she) frequently interacts is remarkably small and stable. The more “active” or intimate the interaction, the smaller and more stable the group.

Thus an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13176775

Crazy... it's almost as if a core relational group does best with around 7 to 10 members. Now where have I heard that before...

I blame the young people!

2009-04-09T10:22:00.002-04:00

They are the cause of the downfall of America!

Or not.

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2009/04/the_wrong_booge_1.html

I tend to feel like Skye buys into too much hype, but in this case he does a great job of picking apart a stupid argument.

From reading Mohler's numerous posts about singleness and delayed marriage, he appears to be saying that if immature, selfish, and lazy young adults (and many of us are) would just get married and have kids they’d be forced to “grow up.” Unfortunately, my experience has proven the opposite. I’ve seen too many young families torn apart (both Christian and non) because a husband or wife proved to lack the maturity required for a stable marriage. Simply walking the aisle, saying the vows, and sharing a bed and bank account did not magically bring maturity. If marriage really is the prescribed avenue for maturity, as some have been promoting, then shouldn't the church be advocating more teen marriages?

Well worth reading. You'll thank me later.

"The methods change but the message stays the same"

2009-04-09T10:20:00.001-04:00

VERY interesting. I'd been pretty skeptical of the new book "Flickering Pixels" but this interview with the author is making me reconsider.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6QiyElRG3c

Clearing out my queue...

2009-04-09T10:18:00.001-04:00

I have a ton of stuff that I've meant to sit down and process rationally, but I haven't had time. And since our son is due any day, I'm not likely to have time in the future. Thus, today's onslaught of interesting things with little commentary.

Off we go!

In defense of work

2009-04-04T14:33:00.001-04:00

This was fun... especially fun to read after I spent the morning digging out stumps in my backyard.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/477

Want to see what I've been reading?

2009-03-23T22:13:00.002-04:00

I use Google Reader's "Share" feature to pass on the things that I find interesting. Want to see what I've been reading? Click the "Shared from Reader" tab up and to the right to see my Reader feed.

Also, note that it has RSS feed attached, so you can put it in your RSS reader of choice.

You ARE using RSS, aren't you?

I wish I could write

2009-03-23T21:59:00.002-04:00

I occasionally binge on fiction. It's like green vegetables, really: I'll go for weeks without remembering that I need them to function. Then I'll sit down for dinner, have a small bite of something green, and then proceed to eat every vegetable in the house. I know it would be healthier to just eat more veggies at every meal, but somehow my mind hasn't gotten the memo yet.

Fiction is worse (and better) than vegetables. I'll go for months without ingesting stories, have a small nibble of one, and then suddenly realize that I've been starving to death. And every time I read, I wish I could write. It's the same feeling you get watching Steve make tables... it's the hunger to create.

Here's a great example of a really short story. Seems like it would be easy to write something this short, but it's not. I've tried. If brevity is the soul of wit, then this thing has some serious soul.

Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the sub-ether bore through the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.

He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe—ninety-six billion planets—into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."

"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."

He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.

"Yes, now there is a God."

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.

A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/13-TheBalticWarCD/TheBalticWarCD/The%20World%20Turned%20Upside%20Down/0743498747__17.htm

This is pretty amazing

2009-03-12T23:12:00.004-04:00

The mashup is not a new art form. I've been a DJ Riko fan for a long time. But this is taking that to a whole new level. We're talking major composition, here, using Youtube as an instrument. Watch this right now:

In a completely unrelated note, are you familiar with the excellent service called ZamZar? It takes any media source on the internet--video or audio--and transcodes it to any format you want. I'm not saying I *HAVE* done this, since it's legally murky, but one could, if they were so inclined, take all of Katiman's "Thru-You" clips (since "Mother of all Funk Chords" is only the first of seven), run them through Zamzar, get them as MP3s, and drop them into your music player of choice.

I'm just sayin'.

A great thought from one of my favorite feeds

2009-03-09T11:53:00.002-04:00

If you don't have Andy Crouch's "Culture Making" blog in your RSS reader, you should add it right now. And if you don't have an RSS reader, stop what you're doing and read this link immediately. It's 2009, peeps. Newspaper is dead and TV is dying. It's time to make the transition to better ways of getting your news.

But as I said, here's a great quote from Andy's book review of Rob Walker's new book "Buying In." I've added my own emphases:

Here, then, is the real problem with the argument that this new generation sees right through traditional advertising and therefore is not fooled by its messages: Everybody sees right through traditional advertising. You’d have to be an idiot not to recognize that you’re being pitched to when watching a thirty-second commercial.

But recognition is not the same thing as immunity. And what’s striking about contemporary youth is not that they are somehow brandproof, but that they take for granted the idea that a brand is as good a piece of raw identity material as anything else. These are the consumers, in fact, who are most amenable to using brands to fashion meaning for themselves—to define themselves, to announce who they are and what they stand for.

Great thoughts. I've already added the book to my amazon wishlist, but maybe it needs to move to the top.

And we're off!

2009-03-02T10:32:00.002-05:00

To Louisville, KY. My very favorite sister has accepted a job in L-town, which moves her from Laguna Beach to 100 miles from my doorstep. CA's loss is our gain.

She doesn't actually move until April, but Judi and I are heading down to help her shop for apartments. Two days out of town should be good for us.

Judi and I have our best discussions while driving in the car. Forget candlelit dinners: when we need to reconnect emotionally, the best thing for us is a long drive. Before Jenna, we used to have date nights where we'd gas up the car and drive around town all night. Bad for our carbon footprint, sure, but great for our relationship.

I love the woman I married, and look forward to two days of driving around Louisville looking for a place for my sister. God is good.

The most amazing two minutes of basketball I've seen in years

2009-02-25T08:35:00.002-05:00

Look, I don't care if you watch basketball. I don't care if you think the college game is more "pure" than the pros. Watch this clip. LeBron James scores 16 points in 2 minutes. That's just nuts.

Best player on the planet.

What does a stimulus get ya?

2009-02-19T09:40:00.002-05:00

Here's a list of the stimulus projects here in Cincinnati.

http://www.stimuluswatch.org/project/by_city/Cincinnati/OH

Stimuluswatch.org is a scary site to play around on.

And thus ends my political commentary.

Wow.

2009-02-19T08:34:00.004-05:00

One of the most mind-blowing things I've read in a while.

"Is Food the New Sex?"

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/38245724.html

What happens when, for the first time in history, adult human beings are free to have all the sex and food they want?

...

Betty thinks food is a matter of taste, whereas sex is governed by universal moral law; and Jennifer thinks exactly the reverse.

Safe for work, I promise. But I'm going to be pondering that for weeks.

Ever have company show up in fancy clothes and the house is a mess?

2009-02-10T00:58:00.011-05:00

That's what it's like to get linked by Rachel when I've had no deep thoughts for weeks. Her readers are interested in weightier issues than curse generators. Whoops.

They're here because Rachel re-posted something I wrote back in November about visiting the creation museum. As I read it again, I realized I'd never followed through on my promise to give some of my creation/evolution backstory. It begins thusly:

===

When I was in third grade, my teacher tried to teach us the concept of rhetorical questions. "It's a question that has no answer," she said, "like 'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?'" I didn't get it. "The chicken came first," I said, "because God made the chicken, and the chicken made the egg." Simple deductions by a simple child who became a simple adult.

Well this threw the teacher into a rage the likes of which I've never seen from an elementary school teacher. She canceled the lesson plan for the rest of the week to teach about the importance of evolution. The problem was that she wasn't much of a scientist. The crowning statement, which I've always remembered, was her explanation of the evolution of lizards into birds: "Birds used to be lizards," she said, "and we know that because if you talk to someone who's eaten rattlesnake they'll tell you it tastes like chicken."

The obvious, unavoidable conclusion that I drew from this was that anyone who believed in evolution must be an idiot. Plus, she embarrassed me in front of the whole class, and I wasn't about to take that. So I started reading every book I could find on "Creationism." There's actually a lot of good literature out there that shows weaknesses in classic Darwinian theory. And I read it all. It's part of what shaped a love of science in me... every time we got to a new unit in science class I'd think "Ah, so this is what that chapter of [Creation Book X] was about."

So when I got to high school, my teachers had no chance. I didn't have a school board on my side, but I embarrassed the teachers if they taught evolution. There are just too many easy jabs that completely tie somebody up. One got so mad that he flipped out and brought in three feet of science books. "Micah," he said, "each one of these books is about evolution." And I asked "Do any of them explain blah blah blah? Because that seems like a dealbreaker." Class laughs, teacher livid, evolution unit canceled. Lesson learned: just because the books exist doesn't mean your teacher has read them.

I was out of college before I realized that the creation theory I'd held earlier in life had some significant logical flaws. But the sad thing was that in every debate I'd ever had on the subject, not one person had ever brought them up. Not one evolutionist had ever bothered to try understanding my side enough to see the weaknesses in my position. They just had silly straw-man arguments mixed with a lot of "Christians are stupid bible-thumpers that don't understand science."

What I realized was that most people don't understand evolution any more than they understand creation. They take the thing by faith. Their faith is in "science" (or, more accurately, scientists) instead of "the Bible" (or, more accurately, Bible commentators), but it's just as much a blind faith as the most rabid fundamentalist. They're just a different kind of fundamentalist.

===

My friend Tim chastised me last month for being cynical, since cynicism is a product of pride and disdain. He's right, of course. But corner-dwellers and fundamentalists of all stripes make me incredibly frustrated. It's not hard to find a position opposite your own; if you've only ever considered your own worldview it just means you're lazy. Faith doesn't mean running forward with your eyes closed, it means putting your trust in something or someone that you've found to be trustworthy.

Trust is an incredible commodity. A fundamentalist (no matter what their spiritual, religious, or political persuasion) can't truly trust, because they can't really imagine reality being different from their expectations. To attack the popular metaphor, sitting down in a chair (or turning on a light, or whatever) isn't really faith until you've had the chair break to pieces under you.

Faith is when you've had a chair collapse under you but you still sit down into it. Faith is when you have seen first-hand the ugliness of life but still believe that God can bring beauty out of it, because that is what God does. Again and again and again, that is what God does.

And so my faith does not dictate that the world is thousands of years old, or billions. I'm completely comfortable with either a young or old earth. But if it could be conclusively proven tomorrow that the universe was "young," that still wouldn't force people to put their trust in God. A relationship with the Creator cannot ever be fully explained or understood; it must be experienced.

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.

Curses

2009-02-09T15:16:00.002-05:00

So it's always a little odd to me to watch the way Christians use curse words. My theory is that there are at least two different parts to cussing: 1. the "uncontrolled tongue" part that has to shout an expletive, and 2. the taboo nature of the word.

That's really poor English. Let me try again.

I had a buddy in high school who, when he hit his thumb with a hammer, would yell "Cheese and Rice"instead of Jesu Christo. Ok, points for not "using the Lord's name in vain" although that's not what that verse is about.

It seems to me, though, that if you're so angry that you have to yell, "shoot" is about the same as "sh*t." "Darn" doesn't seem far different from "d@mn." I'm not advocating the latter, I'm questioning the use of the former.

Ahh, whatever. This soliloquy was really just filler so that I could introduce the coolest thing I've seen this week: The Biblical Curse Generator.

May you be mocked by eunuchs, O thou lazy Babylonian!

Hear this, O ye lying Girgashite, for you will be cast onto a steaming dung-heap!

Brilliant.

The Drive Home: A Story in Three Acts

2009-01-30T00:02:00.003-05:00

So we finished up a pretty amazing night at the Lift, I went out to IHOP (House of Pancakes, not House of Prayer) with some friends, and from there I went straight home. No problem, right?

And so our story begins.

ACT I - A Troubling Observation

I didn't notice this until I got to the highway, but my lights weren't really throwing much light out there. Actually, they weren't throwing hardly any at all. I turned them on and off a few times to be sure, but there was no change. Stop and check, and lo and behold I had so many layers of ice and snow over my lights that they couldn't shine. A few well-placed kicks and punches and the ice trembled before me. Good to go.

ACT II - Musical Interlude

As I drove home I was flipping through the radio. Yes, I know what I said tonight about the importance of being comfortable with silence, but I was in the mood for music. I skip ahead to the next station and hear a great guitar solo, and decided to listen to the rest of the song. It's Chris Rock's summer song (the Sweet Home Alabama knockoff), and I was shocked to realize that sometime since I heard it last (over the summer) they've started beeping out part of the song. There's no cursing, so I listened again just to hear what was cut. It was the word "smoking." Specifically, "smoking funny things," but they only cut the one word.

I was blown away. So, yeah, it's a drug reference. I get that. It implies that the dude was using weed. But he flat-out says he was drinking drinking whiskey every day (at 19) and sleeping with a 17-year-old (which means she was a minor while he was not). So I'm trying to comprehend the mind of the censor board. Underage alcoholism and statutory rape doesn't cause an eyeblink, but say "smoking" and we're gonna have to censor the song.

America is so weird.

ACT III - Parking the Car

Short version: the time between when I got within 20 feet of the house and the time when I got into the door was over an hour.

To understand this next bit you'll need to look at a map. You'll also need to understand that Lehman goes along the ridgeline of Price Hill and is thus relatively flat, while Claypole is moderately steep and Wing is quite steep. Hit Street View if you don't believe me.

View Larger Map

I drove almost all the way home via Lehman, dropped down Wing and went up Claypole (which is my street), but couldn't quite get there no matter how hard I gunned it. So I decided to park at the school (CCU) and walk. I backed all the way down the hill and tried to drive up Wing. No dice. So I backed down Wing, turned around at Claypole, and drove down Wing to Glenway. A block down Glenway was the main entrance to CCU, but halfway up I realized I probably wouldn't make it. There was a car ahead of me that was stuck, and a car got stuck behind me. So we all three turned around and drove back down to Glenway, over to Grand (I warned them about Wing), up to Lehman, and into CCU via the back entrance.

Then I got stuck trying to park. It took me 40 minutes of rocking back and forth, pushing, gunning it park and reverse, and finally borrowing a snowshovel and digging my car out before I was finally able to park the car.

I walked in my front door at 11:47. What a night.

A Random Something I Wrote

2009-01-27T23:58:00.005-05:00

So last summer I was asked to chip in an article for a CCU newsletter. This is what I wrote.

==============

Think back, if you can, to your first high-school breakup. Besides my own experience at getting dumped, I've probably been on the phone or across the table with a dozen different teenage and college guys who have just gotten "the talk." There's angst, usually. A little anger, a lot of confusion, and a loving spoonful of self-pity. The details usually vary. But in almost every one of those situations, there's one rock-solid certainty: no one understands. This breakup is totally unique, and unlike any other in history. Those who feel otherwise are just showing how little they understand.

Recently, I’ve felt eerie echoes of this sentiment while working with young adults here in Cincinnati. Not from the men and women of my ministry, necessarily, but from the thinkers and the writers of the Christian world. I keep reading that the Postmoderns (and after them, the Millennials) are a new people, a new generation. They think differently, work differently, and want different things from life and from Church. Walk into your local Christian bookseller or check on Amazon… there are a lot of people writing books about “bridging the generational divide,” and a lot of people buying them.

A few years ago, I read one of the classic (if an eight-year-old book can be called a “classic”) books on the subject: Postmodern Pilgrims, by Leonard Sweet. In the book, Sweet takes the position that a church trying to reach Postmoderns must be “EPIC:” Experiential, Participatory, Image-Rich, and Connected. These four letters, he contends, are the key to understanding today’s emerging culture and the people in it, and the church needs to adapt or face irrelevance.

The church needs to be “Experiential,” because the young adults of today don’t just want to understand truth, they want to experience it. The church must be “Participatory,” because postmoderns don’t want to simply sit and receive, they want to be engaged in what’s going on around them. The church must be “Image-Rich,” because the core concepts of this generation aren’t just words and phrases, but pictures. Finally, the church must allow its people to be “Connected,” because young adults long deeply for real community.

All of these things are true of almost every young adult I’ve spent time with over the past three years. There’s a problem here, though. These things are also true of my grandparents.

My grandparents attend a small church in a small town in central Michigan. They live in a house they’ve paid for, have a vegetable garden and a rose patch, and manage to get by while on a fixed income. I love them and respect them, but they’re not the cutting edge. When I hear people talk about the distinctives of the upcoming generation, I always ask myself “Fine, but is it also true of Ivan and Doris?” If so, it simply can’t be a distinctive of a particular age group.
My grandparents have probably forgotten more about community and connectedness than I’ll ever learn. They’ve modeled a participatory and experiential Christianity for three generations: they’ve never sat on the sidelines. They may not have icons in the church, but they have pictures of us plastered over their walls. “EPIC” doesn’t describe the youths of today, it describes the fundamental longings of the human heart.

That’s not to say that young adults don’t make up a different crowd in your church, or that you won’t need to reach them in different ways. But most of the differences have to do with “place in life” more than “generation.” Most of what’s left has to do with technological changes and the societal changes that go with them. So yes, your young adults think nothing of posting personal details on Facebook. They have short attention spans and little patience. They don’t have the perspective and maturity that forty (or sixty) years can give you. But in their hearts, they long for the same things we all long for: to know and be known, to be included in an adventure, and to understand the purpose of One who made them.

That doesn’t make them different from everyone else in your church. It makes them the same.