It's taken a collective apathy to create the problems of consumerism, globalization, exploitation, war and political turmoil we face today. The statistics are baffling. Canada and the US rank solidly among the top 10 richest countries in the world - and yet our desire for more remains constantly unsatisfied. And our willingness to help those with less than us is embarassing.

the rest here.

Dear Tech Support:

Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources.

In addition, Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization, where it monitors all other system activity.

Applications such as PokerNight 10.3, Drunken Boys Night 2.5 and Monday Night football 5.0 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected.

I cannot seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run some of my other favorite applications. I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but un-install does not work on this program.

Can you help me, please? Otherwise, I'm in a spot.
Thanks, Scott




Dear Scott:

This is a very common problem men complain about but is mostly due to a primary misconception. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 with the idea that Wife 1.0 is merely a "UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT" program.

Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and designed by its creator to run everything.

It is unlikely you would be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0. Hidden operating files within your system would cause Girlfriend 7.0 to emulate Wife 1.0 so nothing is gained.

It is impossible to un-install, delete, or purge the program files from the system once installed. You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is not designed to do this. Some have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but end up with more problems than the original system.

I recommend you keep Wife 1.0 and just deal with the situation. Having Wife 1.0 installed myself, I might also suggest you read the entire section regarding General Partnership Faults (GPFs). You must assume all responsibility for faults and problems that might occur, regardless of their cause. The best course of action will be to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE. The system will run smoothly as long as you take the blame for all the GPFs.

Wife 1.0 is a great program, but very high maintenance. Consider buying additional software to improve the performance of Wife 1.0. I recommend Flowers 2.1, Flowers 2.2, Big Flowers 2.3 and Chocolates 5.0.

Do not, under any circumstances, install Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3. This is not a supported application for Wife 1.0 and is likely to cause irreversible damage to the operating system.

Best of luck,
Tech Support

i can't believe someone could think that...

i spent an hour today with a good friend who just happens to be a church consultant. he is arguably a very sharp dude. whenever we get together the conversation is alive. we tweak off each other.

this afternoon we talked about church. both of us were once ministers of evangelical churches. both of us find ourselves in a different line of work right now. both agreed that we have learned so much about being a pastor by not being a pastor.

my friend has been looking for a church to attend but he finds it much more difficult than he imagined it might be. it seems his standards may be too high.

we talked about how self-serving so much of church seems to be. take 'worship' for example. it appears that so many of the people appear to worship for a feeling of closeness or euphoria. worship is a 'feeling' not a tribute. people judge the effectiveness of a worship service not on whether god appears to be happy but on whether or not they 'got into it'. it seems so superficial (this is of course a blanket statement and doesn't represent the entire worshipping church).

we asked ourselves what we look for in a church. we were looking for somewhere to learn something, some place that helps us change who we are, a chance to make a difference. we wondered if we know any churches that make a real difference. we doubted it, actually. the church seems to have little understanding of making tangible difference. they may have a signature move they employ and brag about, but largely society goes on hardly noticing the church. they don't feed as many people as the food bank, don't help developing nations as much as oxfam or cafe femenino. they don't canvas like politicians, don't seek social action like special interest groups. where are the churches encouraging sustainable economic change? why do we think a missions project makes any real difference? in fact we seem to do almost nothing as good as their secular counterparts anymore. am i wrong? i really hope i am.

something is broken and i'm not sure how to fix it. when did the church become a social club with token gestures and lousy community? where are the church groups that are serving the poor more than just on a special day. where are the churches that are at the forefront of social change anymore?

i'm not trying to condemn, i'm just asking the question.

my fav band, ok go, continues to redefine marketing and the internet. a band without a cd, the most downloaded video of all time, and defying the powers that be, continues to inculcate culture...

And I think it is time that I own up to the fact that I am an adulterer and have been for close on 9 years now (assuming I can’t take advantage of the loophole that I didn’t marry a divorced woman). Phew, what a relief to get that off my chest. We seem to have a lot of divorced people in churches these days. We seem to have a lot of divorced people in churches these days.

But according to the above, anyone who later marries one of these poor divorced people commits adultery. I have heard some talk about forgiveness and redemption for divorced people which enables them to be absolved of their sin. However, this seems to me to be inconsistent with the nature of that sin. Being divorced is a state of being. You can’t just take it back. It is, in the language of discussions about sexual sin, a “lifestyle choice”. Even more, being remarried is a specific decision (according to the above) to engage in adultery.

And yet, many contemporary churches have few problems having people who are divorced and remarried (deliberately remaining in a sinful lifestyle) in membership. I know this because our church is one of them. And I wouldn’t for a moment like to suggest that divorce should be handled differently. Likewise I am not for a moment suggesting that divorce is fine and no problems - I think it is definitely sinful.

However, isn’t this inconsistent with the way that some other sins are approached. First, what do you think of this - are we just wilfully ignoring a few fairly significant statements by Jesus and preferring to pretend he didn’t say them? Secondly, if you want to justify forgiveness of divorce and remarriage, what makes that different in nature from same sex or pre-marriage relationships (if you think that they are different).

the rest here. its' called "just curious"

Adam. The first guy. Had it all, animal friends, food, a cushy job, no mother-in-law.
Didn't need to bath really, who you gonna impress?
Didn't have to go to chickflicks to impress anyone, didn't have to sit through three hours of Titanic.
Didn't have to eat at McDonalds or watch Survivor because everyone else is.
Didn't have to pay .04$ for grocery bags.
Didn't have to pretend Crouching Tigar Hidden Dragon was really a good movie.
Didn't have to watch Friends. He had it all.


But it wasn't enough. Most of us know the story of Adam and Eve. The story is about how this guy Adam was sucked into eating the fruit by his wife Eve. For generations ministers and theologians have, at least passively, blamed the woman.
I mean, he was a guy.
She was naked.
Need i say more?

When i was in college I memorized a verse. Now if you know me you know that I am not the greatest person to ask where to find a verse. When people ask me where a verse is found I usually like to look all spiritual, act like I am pondering some deep theological truth, then distract them with some masterful ploy like, "hey look, a blue car!". I don't memorize as much as i should. But for some reason I memorized this verse in the Book of Timothy...
"for it was not the man who was deceived and became the sinner, it was the woman. But women shall be saved through child-bearing.

And when i'm at a party, and its kind of slow, I throw that verse out for fun. The babes love it. And they especially love it if I call them babes...

I mean, Adam was innocent right? It wasn't his fault right?

Adam's story is the story of victimization. Its the story of lost innocence, and of being a whoose. He passes the buck, shifts the blame and plays the victim. In alot of ways, Adam is the weak link, not Eve.

In the bible God says, "you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it, or you will die."

To which Adam and Eve respond, "where is it?"

So the serpent sucks in Eve who promptly gives some to Adam who eats it right away without so much as a "bye your leave". God comes to the garden and catches them. He asks Adam what the deal is, to which Adam, the heroic husband, the protector of his wife, the great lover and macho man says, "It wasn't me!"

Actually he really said, "It was the woman YOU PUT here with me. (wasn't my idea really). SHE gave me some fruit from the tree, held me down and shoved it down my throat and held my nose until i swallowed."

IT WASN'T ME.

Adam is just the victim right? Just the patsy who is forced to do something he didn't want to?
I don't think so. Alot of people play the victim like that. Nothing is there fault. Nothing they can do about it.They are never responsible.

One of my favourite movies is called “Rocketman”. No, not Rocketeer. Rocketman with Harlen Williams. One of the great scenes is when Harlen and another astonaut are forced to share a breathing tube while on Mars. Harlen then proceeds to fill the suits with an incredible series of farts. The other astronaut is distraught and begins to yell at Harlen, to which he replies, "wasn't me!"

It wasn't me! The devil made me do it! It was the woman! It was my parents! My job! My weak blood! It was the one-armed man!

So easy to live your life passing the blame to everyone else. Some people I know are masters at it. They are never responsible. They aren't wrong, it was something or someone that held them down and forced them to eat the fruit. Someone forced them into it, lead them astray, convinced them to fold, sold them out....

I'm sure alot of Germans felt that way in the Second World War. When I was at Dakau Concentration camp they said that the locals, after the war, claimed that they knew nothing of the camp and the genocide. The problem with this claim was that the ovens and the camp were only yards from the town. The ash from the burning corpses landed on their homes, the shots from the executions rang in their ears. The parade of prisoners arrived in their towns. The local nazis bragged about it in the taverns and played fox and the hound with prisoners in the town square for sport. The locals were commissioned to deliver food the the camp and dig the graves for those murdered. But they had no idea what was going on right?

I think all of us are tempted to cast blame. I know I am. If possible I want others to be blamed for any slight I may have been a part of. I wish that someone else would realize that the mistakes I make are in fact their fault. But as much as I want to spread the wealth, there is this incessent tugging that reminds me that I am responsible for my own life. At the end of the day no one else will stand with me at judgment and all the pathetic excuses I can imagine will bear little weight. I may be able to pass the buck in such a way that others may believe me, but one day, some day, all accounts will be settled. Someday all motivations will be laid plain. The fascinating thing is that so often this happens sooner not later.

Perhaps real courage is honesty. Honesty with ourselves - the capacity to look in the mirror and take the blame for our misery devoid of the petty excuses and attempts at looking good to others. Ah, but then again, I do have the flu...

this week i had a conversation with someone about ministry. they asked me, fairly overtly, how i felt not being ordained anymore. they wondered if i missed the title, and the subsequent status that accompanied that positioning.
yes i do. i miss being a big shot, even if i pretended i wasn't. in a world of equals i felt more equal. for some reason it made a difference. there was this need to be important; to have a title. somehow i associated effectiveness and status with credentials. annette reminds me that i miss it more than i would admit. so consider this my confession.

somewhere along the line many of us began to want status. i like what stanley says, " At some point, we pass a threshold invisible to most but clearly detected by God. We begin to minister, help, lead, organize, plan, bake, teach, preach, sing, visit, and give, primarily (though not exclusively) for the satisfaction of feeling spiritual and receiving accolades from others. Soon, the slightest trace of sincerity is enough to define our motives as pure."
i have worked with many guys and gals who have been wholely committed to the work of church, have spent countless hours in christian service, never asking for the status. people like mike and chad and lori and rose and tysey and andy and linda, nathan and ben, jean and betty and countless others who relentlessly sought to serve and never asked for the recognition. i always believed i would serve, no matter what, but somehow the status made it worthwhile. in many ways it diminishes my contribution. as the comedian says, "i'm paid to be good, you're good for nothing".
so here i sit. i still do "christian ministry" i guess, but without the title or the status. there is perhaps a level of respect because of the past, but little more. it feels good. i wonder if i would ever pursue ordination again. in many ways i hope i will not. for the first time in my adult life i feel like a real person, not the first among equals. i appreciate now, more than i ever did, those individuals who serve humanity, week after week, and no one notices.

spoke in surrey yesterday and used this story. have told it before but continues to hit home.
from tony campolo:

At the college where I teach I urge all of our sociology majors to go to the Dominican Republic or Haiti on study tours during the month of January.The first time I took a group of students there we stayed in a filthy, dirty home in a slum.

In the early morning the priest of the village invited us to walk with him. There was a flu epidemic. I had never seen anything like it. In the United States and Canada when people get the flu, they miss school. But when people are extremely malnourished and they get the flu, they die. As we wandered through the mud paths of the slum, mothers came out of their shacks that morning carrying the corpses of the children who had died during the night.

We went to the edge of the town, and we dug a ditch. And into the ditch we dropped these dead kids. We looked across the ditch as the priest prayed his prayer and the women screamed as only they can scream in the Dominican Republic.

I saw one of my students who was a basketball player. He was always macho. But he didn't look macho that day. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. His fists were clenched. His chin was trembling. And I knew, I knew that his heart had been broken by the things that broke the heart of Jesus.

Blessed are they that mourn.

Kester Brewin is right on here.

"You say I'm violent once more, and I swear I'll smack your head in"

The furore over the Pope's ill-chosen comments created an interesting debate on the radio this morning. It seems that his apology has not been enough for many Muslims, who have reacted to his perceived accusation of Islam being a violent religion with... acts of violence. A nun has been murdered, churches in the Middle East firebombed, and one Imam has called for a 'day of anger'.

I have been taken back by the irony of the response of many Muslims which was to respond in anger to the Pope. What also struck me was how the media reports I heard here would report this with a straight face and manage to blame the Pope for the violence.

via jordon

from internet monk:
the mid-life male is a mine field, if not a ticking time bomb, as far as adultery is concerned. As we grow older, we are socially trained to be sexually disciplined and docile, but we are psychologically and emotionally just as vulnerable to the power of our own sexuality as ever. In many men, the repression of their sexuality has made them particularly vulnerable. They have lived for years with their sexuality on a leash with constant feelings of shame. When an adulterous or potentially adulterous relationship unleashes that repressed aspect of the personality, the energy and consequences are large.

the entire essay here.

pope benedict illustrates for us this week the difference between being sorry and being sorry.

i have spent much of my life in the shadow of someone who did not understand how to apologize for anything. i'm sure you know someone like this, or are married to someone like this. they just cannot admit they are wrong, or take blame, or say they are sorry. somehow it is never really their fault - the situation was to blame or the planets lined up in such a way as to ally against them. they are almost a victim, not someone to blame.

they are sorry, to be sure - sorry you feel that way, sorry that things didn't work out, sorry for any number of things that do not address the hurt or cast blame their way. they are sorry, but not remorseful. they do not actually accept the blame, it only sounds like they do. there is no repentence. no real reconciliation. only hollow words. the pope isn't really sorry. he's only sorry he got caught. his guarded apology, cloaked in polical verbage, only illustrates the lack of remorse.

if that offends you... i'm sorry you feel that way.

You should look at it like the British empire or the French empire in the 19th century. Teens are like Africa. It's this range that they're gonna take over and their weaponry are films, music, books, CDs, Internet access, clothing, amusement parks, sports teams. That's all this weaponry they have to make money off of this market, to colonize this market. And that's exactly how they approach it. So they look at music as just one small part of it. They aren't music companies; they're money-making companies. And music is a weapon that generates money for them.

...What's happened in the media in the United States in the past 10 or 15 years--especially since about 1994 or 1995--has been an unprecedented concentration of ownership....Four of the five music companies that sell 90 percent of the music in the United States--they own almost all the TV stations in the largest markets. They're huge conglomerates, and this is really a new thing.

It used to be a largest media companies 20 or 40 years ago only produced newspapers, they only made movies, they only had a TV network. Now they're dominant players in each of these markets. They're highly non-competitive. They don't have to worry about a newcomer coming in. The barriers to entry, as economists talk about, are so high that basically it's a private club, a gentleman's club of like a half-dozen, seven-eight companies that really rule the thing. And they're closely linked. I mean they know each other. They have deals together, and what they're able to do with this tremendous power between them is hyper-commercialize their content without fear of competitive retribution.

Radio is a classic case in point of how that works and the company Viacom, which owns MTV, is a big player in this. In 1996, radio was deregulated by the federal government, and this is public property. So the government has a right to say how many stations you're allowed to own. Well, in the 1996 Telecom Act, without a shred of debate in Congress or any hearings discussing it, the ownership restrictions were lifted on radio from 28 stations for one single company to as many as they wanted to own. And you were allowed to own up to eight in the largest markets. Overnight over half these stations in America were sold from small companies to big companies and big to huge.

So you have a handful of companies like Viacom that now dominate American radio. Every market now has usually two or three companies that dominate it, own almost all the stations, sell relevant advertising. And what's happened to American radio is a classic case then of this hyper-commercialism, on one hand. The amount of advertising on American radio today is 18 minutes per hour. It's something like 50 percent more than the early 1990s, because these companies don't have to worry about competition. Two or three of them own all the stations. They don't have to worry about someone coming in doing eight minutes an hour and stealing away their listeners. So it gets hyper-commercialized.

read lori's take on "the merchants of cool"

frost writes:
with Jesus. I love him and am completely in his debt. But I’m not head over heals in romantic love with him. So it’s not singing that I don’t like. It’s the kind of singing that I’m expected to engage in. As much as this romanticising of worship bothers me, even more disturbing is the recent trend of singing worship songs in which I have to pledge my unfaltering devotion and service to him. You know, the ‘Jesus, I will never let you go...’ type song. In these songs I have to declare that I will follow him to the ends of the earth and that I will praise him all my days. In one sense, there’s nothing wrong with making such promises to God. The Psalmist does so on occasion. But frankly, I’m so much more comfortable with singing about the fact that Jesus has promised that he will never let me go. My promises seem hollow and unreliable.

the rest here.

got a call from a church planter today. they are doing the big show, somehow got my name, and called for some quick never-fail advice. they asked the usual questions - what hooks they can use, how to get video and new music, what kind of methodology. as usual they were intending on doing something quite outside the box and wanted, for some reason, my approval. and as usual i told them that they were doing what everyone else is doing and questioned why they would want to start yet another meeting place for christians who like acoustic guitars. i spent far too long questioning their passion then i should have. what they really wanted was to brag and maybe get some of my video.

i get quite a few of these a year.

it's interesting how the dynamic has changed. today's planters want to speak in lofty terms about how vanguard they intend to be, then proceed to describe how traditionally evangelical they are. they love acoustic music and U2, everyone apparently has celtic roots now, they are looking for a good deal on a video projector. they believe in prayer. they like me to know they swear and drink micro-brewery beer. they believe they are "edgy" and somehow it works its way into every conversation. they are often pissed off with being normal. they combine this need to be accepted as a radical with a string of values which often include intense prayer and "no compromise" spirituality and community. they are tired of the superficiality of their past churches.

i used to belong to a denomination that had yearly poser weekends for the pastors. we would have a deeply spiritual time then go out for micro brewery beer and impress each other with how much we could swear. you could tell who the coolest leaders were - they had churches with the weirdest single word name and swore the most. they talked incessently about themselves. they were dweebs in high school but have since discovered new glasses, gotees, and nixon watches. they used hair gel. they were "relevent" and had recently started a labrynth or a pub night or an art show or ______ (fill in the blank with the flavor of the month).

the pressure to non-conform was intense.

yup. posers. i was one of them. probably still am.

the resonate church planter's reading list is up. check out what the authorities, the posers and the battle-hardened are reading.

To the postmodern generations, “no alcohol, no tobacco” speaks only to a religion of rules meaning people who don’t really believe what they say enough to live it.

the rest here

I’m not asking you to forgive him because what he did was acceptable. It wasn’t; it was mean and selfish. I’m asking you to forgive because he doesn’t deserve the power to live in your head and turn you into a bitter, angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of your life physically...

the rest here

relationships are complex. in my former life, that which we refer to as "in the before time" i spent an inordinate amount of time counseling couples. i pretty much stink at counseling. my mind races, solutions bombard me incessantly. i am far too tempted to provide a prescription. after all, ask anyone who has done counseling - everyone basically struggles with the same stuff. there are 4 or 5 meta-themes. within a few minutes it is usually apparent what "appears" to be going on and i am impatient to fix it. but it rarely works. for several reasons.

first, and most frequent, is the fact that most people never do what you counsel them to do. it sounds great in theory but few individuals and couples make more than a token gesture. people love to bitch for years. it takes hard work to actually fix anything.

most character defects are terminal. chances are you will always be controlling, or passive-aggressive, a whiner, a baby, or a jerk. you can self-monitor, make positive strides in one direction, but more than likely you will be who you are. people who clamor, "i can change" usually will not. catastrophic personality alteration comes with drugs, not counseling. and let's be honest, you are ok the way you are. you were made on purpose. no one should ask you to fundamentally change who you are. they should never have married you, or dated you, or become your friend if they cannot stand you. few things hurt me more than when my friends feel they have to apologize for me or warn people before i speak or drop by. it used to happen to me when i spoke at out of town or yfc gigs all the time. if you don't like me, screw you. i like me.

i used to tell couples they needed to lower their expectations, not raise them. they needed to accept that the person they love is a moron. we all are. i certainly am. annette was crazy to marry me. i fart and swear (annette just told me to say i cuss, swearing is bad...) and say stupid things most days. i'm shallow and carnal and weak and usually obnoxious.

the good part is, so are you.

"Blog" itself is short for "weblog," which is short for "we blog because we weren't very popular in high school and we're trying to gain respect and admiration without actually having to be around people."

Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it. One popular technique for building readership is to send e-mail to more well-trafficked blogs offering to exchange links with them. One popular response from those blogs is to laugh derisively and hit the Delete button.

Another approach for advertising your blog is to mention it as much as possible in conversation; you'd be surprised how many people are fascinated to hear you have a blog and want to know more, especially if you were expecting the number to be greater than zero.

the rest here.

I'm part of the group of Canadians who collectively consume 40 million cups of coffee per day. After oil, coffee is the world's most valuable commodity. It's estimated that the average coffee drinking Canadian will likely consume $350 worth of the beverage per year. I was astounded to discover that the average coffee growing farmer may only make $350 total to support themselves and their families in an entire year. It seems incredulous in a multi billion dollar industry - that at the bottom of the ladder, people are still starving and struggling to make ends meet, while we leisurely sip lattes on cafe sidewalks.
more here.

The problem is that the mall-churches Warren and Hybels have built are not the future of evangelicalism. They are its last gasp. Super-sizing won’t help. The end isn’t near. It’s here. What’s going to happen to evangelicalism in the next 50 years will make the term “implosion” the most overused term in religious journalism.

Megachurches, their super programs, their consumer driven worship, their shallow, free-floating theology and their non-pastoral pastors are dinosaurs. A world-wide, global emerging church that’s too diverse to fit into anyone’s book is the rising tide.

Meanwhile, the praise band wars, the expenditures for audio/visual mega-screens and the snarky, cocky young salesmen masquerading as pastors will continue.

more here.

for ten years i've been saying that rock bands should not waste their money on expensive cd's, they should simply release everything for free on the net. for ten years i've been saying it and for some reason none of my musician friends have listened. is that because i'm usually wrong about just about everything? probably. but this time i was right.

take for example the phenom group "ok go". they released a series of backyard videos on youtube including this hit and this one. at virtually no cost whatsoever, the people loved them. i love them. lori, who turned me on to them, loves them. every single person i show the videos to loves them. they are amazing and cheesy at the same time.

so i was right. na ne na ne poo poo. at least about this. and that is really what matters here now. never mind about all that minor stuff i was totally off on. i was right about this.

A young megachurch pastor (who reminds me of a younger version of me) discovers that he can no longer keep up the pretenses of a deep faith and passionate church leadership, and he interrupts his sermon one day to tell this to his congregation. And then he walks out.
the rest here.

few things are harder to quantify than the death of our dreams.

growing up we dreamed of being rock stars and astronauts and models and richer than a small country. but it didn't happen. somewhere along the way we realized that we couldn't sing as good as thought, that people weren't lining up to sign our record contract. astronauts had to go to school forever. money didn't drop from the trees. slowly the dreams died. and we settled. we had too. it was a dream and like most dreams, it wasn't real.

it's hard when a dream dies. fortunately it happens so slowly that few of us notice. slowly our grasp on that hope loosens and one day we wake up to realize we are on a different trajectory, one we never imagined. that's life.

but sometimes it is hard to let go of a dream. just ask any of us who have been divorced. few of us imagined that one day we would see a paper with such a terrible word, "divorce". it is the death of a dream. and some of us pathetically hold out, year after year, believing in a dream, refusing to let it go - refusing to admit to ourselves that things didn't turn out. refusing to go on. i am one of those sad people. for years, even after my ex-wife remarried, i hoped against hope for fairy dust and hollywood endings. endings that would never come.

ask anyone who has watched a small business slowly creep into bankruptcy. or the person who has lost their dream home. or stood by a child's grave. or buried a spouse. or left a church they loved. some dreams won't stay buried.

i am finding i have to let some dreams die in order to dream again; but it's hard to do. it took years to bury my marriage, and i almost buried myself in the process. i still struggle to let go of my last church, even though i graze in green pastures once again. there are issues we all deal with - forgiveness of others and self, contentment with situations we have no control over, giving up control. lots of control issues. letting others go, giving ourselves permission to be free.

there are few fairy tale endings. life is not like we see on television. situations do not clean up in 22 minutes.

but that's ok. like many of you, i live in process. there are so many lessons i have yet to learn, places where i have to be humbled. people i need to forgive. footprints that need to fade. life to be lived. i have an opportunity to dream new dreams and grasp new adventures.

some dreams need to die in order to dream again.

here's to reality. what we have, not what we have not.
here's to the present, not the past. to a future bright.
may we have the courage to embrace life today, hang on, and not look back.

lori weighs in.

at first i thought this was a sick joke...

best rock video ever

via lori

i have been doing the full-time religious gig all of my adult life. well that is until last year. last year i turned in my ordination, quit my church and launched myself on an adventure into obscurity. i have written extensively about it (though now that i am obscure i don't have to worry too much about people reading it). i have enjoyed some success in the religious world - i've been involved with 7 church plants, been featured in some rags, done some consulting and speaking, even took a turn at being the denominational golden boy. but that's all over now, at least for the time being. now i help lead a little club church of 20 or 30 (i love it, especially the fact that it's only 20 or 30), i do some computer sales and service, i am starting a coffee wholesale business.

i love selling this coffee. it's the best evangelism gig i've had in years. this coffee has done more for the women and children in peru and mexico than any church project ever has. families went from abject poverty to financial health, social problems have been addressed and fixed, women have found hope and freedom. it's crazy. it's like i'm church planting again only this time the people really want what i'm offering.

the cafe femenino project is transformational. over 900 women have found an opportunity to escape the confines of bondage and been given the tools to succeed. it's not just fair trade (and if your coffee isn't fair trade you're basically promoting slavery), it's changing it's little world.

it's feels weird selling coffee. on one hand it feels like it's beneath me (holdover arrogance from my 2 decades of "serving the lord"). on another hand it feels like i'm making a difference in a whole different world.

and i don't have to convince anyone to join.
and there is no membership class.
and it's a product people like.

weird.

(and i'll be selling it online in a couple of weeks... shameless promo)

photo by cari

i listened to a religious broadcast today. i have a weakness in this area and would appreciate your prayers. it was an interview with several pastors. during the course of the interview it came to light the great heritage that each had enjoyed. most were from families of ministers, generations of clergy. there was, to be sure, a wonderful aura regarding growing up in a minister's family. those who enjoyed this heritage were all thankful.

i did not grow up in a minister's family. for much of my childhood my parents were only experimenting with their spiritual journey. i do not have generations of clergy to look back to for support. most of us don't. most of my relatives were a bunch of raving alcoholic gamblers. most were very uneducated. my father was an orphan, raised on the streets in some regard, forced to work at a young age. by all accounts he's an articulate and amazing guy, but nonetheless we did not enjoy the fruits of generations of education, middle class, or evangelicalism.

don't get me wrong. i'm not jealous. in fact as i listened today to that broadcast i was cognizant that these people had a great deal to be thankful for. i also wondered about how much of the real world they have ever known.

the mainline ministerial track scares the hell out of me. christian high school - bible college - seminary - suburbs - counselling marriage breakups, infidelity, heartbreak and financial ruin. i often wonder how we can believe that we are training ministers for anything even remotely mirroring real life. i have 8 years of post-secondary time in have yet to take more than a handful of classes that had even remote application in the real world. what i really needed, to supplement the hours spent doing synoptic gospel exegesis (which i now do not use) was a course in moving. and taxation, and administration, and trauma counselling, and decorating, and leadership, and running boring meetings, and conflict resolution. i needed classes on secondary income streams and sucking up to people. but mainly classes on moving.

it's labor day weekend and i'm just learning what that means. what it means to work for a living. what it means to dream of financial freedom. for the first time in my life i understand ecclesiastes. spending 21 years in full-time religious work did not prepare me for working for a living. it's not that i didn't work hard. i often did. it's just that religious service is not really a job. it doesn't force you to confront the meaninglessness of life, or of assembly line work. it doesn't allow you to actually relate to 99% of the people you talk to on a sunday.

ministers who have not worked full time for a number of years at an unfulfilling job should never preach on the value of labor. i wonder how many seminary-track pastors will stand up this weekend and honestly believe they have something of value to offer the average blue collar worker. they don't. no i won't qualify that. they simply do not. they have never lived in that world. it's apples and oranges. and no, that summer job between seminary years does not qualify you to speak to those who are on the 40 year labor track. neither does that one year you were "in the world". so be thankful but don't pretend you understand. i thought i was pretty relevent too. i believed i knew the score.

but i didn't. and probably still don't.