In the meantime

Hanging Out With My Dysfunctional Family

I've been in Indianapolis since this past Sunday night for the Southern Baptist Convention.  It's been a hectic week, so not much time for blogging... just the occasional tweet via Twitter.  I jokingly told some of my friends that I was going to Indy to hang out with some of my nutty relatives in the Family of God.  I was joking.  Really.  Well, for the most part.

Nutty relatives.  As as the saying goes, "Every family has one."  (Note to all my relatives: No this does not apply to you.  No, you are not the "one" I am talking about here.  Do not send me nasty emails!)

The other night on the Daily Show, they showed a video of this woman ranting and raving like a lunatic at the Democratic Rules committee meeting the other week.  The shot came back to host Jon Stewart who had this pained expression on his face and said, "OK, Grandma... see you at Passover... love you."  We all fell on the floor laughing.  That's what I'm talking about... nutty relatives.

You gotta love Baptists.  They get a bad rap for the most part nowadays (much of it deserved, sadly) but they are good people.  They love the Lord, they love people (they really do) and - from the looks of the "messengers" to the 151st Southern Baptist Convention, they love them some food, too.  Not too many folks around here look like they've missed too many meals. Sadly, I include myself in that assessment.  (I fit right in here in more ways than one.)

My colleagues and I all arrived here on Saturday by different flights and in one case by car (and through the flood waters.)  While we were on the way, we were playing - via Blackberry Messenger - a game we called "Spot the Baptists."  I'll bet we were right at least 80% of the time. You can just tell when someone is a Baptist... they look like Baptists.  You couldn't miss them. (Keep in mind, I'm allowed to say this.  I've been a Baptist since I was enrolled in Cradle Roll when I was a month old... If you don't know what "Cradle Roll" is, ask a Baptist.)

Three years ago this week, I left vocational ministry after more than two decades serving Southern Baptist churches.  When people ask me about my denominational affiliation, I jokingly tell them I am a Recovering Southern Baptist. The church we attend is technically a Baptist church, but as is the case with so many outreach oriented churches these days, they do not advertise the fact that they are Baptist.

Here's the thing.  Some of the nicest, kindest, godliest people on the planet are here i Indy this week. I lot of them are dear friends of mine. As I said earlier, they love people. They also hate sin.  Sometimes they get those two things mixed up, or at the very least they come across that way, and so they have a reputation for being mean spirited and even downright hateful. The vast majority of them don't come across that way, and the majority of those who do don't mean to come across that way. Many Baptists know they have an image problem and they want to correct it.  They want their unchurched friends and neighbors to know that they sincerely love them. 

I've enjoyed being with my Baptist brothers and sisters this week. Hanging out with them has reminded me of something this week.  I love them all.  Even the nutty ones.

My Kind of Pastor, Part 2

Ray Bentley is pastor of Maranatha Chapel in San Diego.  He's either not a morning person, or he is someone who has pity of those of us who are not.

When the time changes each Spring, Pastor Ray moves the church's morning worship services forward one hour that Sunday to offset the initial pain of the whole "Spring Forward" thing. 

Pastor Ray even has a name for this program at Maranatha Chapel: Raylight Savings Time.

I love it.

(Check out the previous winner of the In The Meantime My Kind of Pastor Award, Chris Elrod.)

Blest Be The Tie

I have a confession to make: I am a Baptist. 

I've spent most of my life around Baptists. Over the years I've discovered that in Baptist churches there are a lot of things that are common to almost all of them.  Just like you can walk into a McDonald's anywhere in the world and order a Big Mac and know it will taste the same, you can go to most Baptist churches and find a lot of the same things on the "menu," if you catch my drift. Some of these things that are the same are good.  Some of them are not so good.

Almost all Baptist churches have regular "business meetings."  If your church has a congregational form of government, I suspect they have something similar to the church business meeting.  These are regularly scheduled gatherings where the "business of the church" is discussed.  And discussed.  And discussed.  And then that business is voted on, usually in the form of a "motion." Baptist Churches use "Roberts Rules of Order" to guide them in how to conduct these meetings. (As a child I used to wonder who this Roberts guy was and why was he causing so much trouble in my church?)

Going to church business meetings was great entertainment for me when I was a kid.  You got to see adults behaving really, really badly.  Sometimes, if you were really lucky, you'd get to hear them yell at each other.  But most of the time the comments were just condescending or sarcastic and frequently sprinkled with the term "Brother" or "Sister."("Brother Moderator, it is obvious that Brother Smith, the chairman of our Grounds Committee, believes that money grows on trees since he wants to spend $50 of the Lord's money to spray the shrubbery for bugs!")

At the end of the business meeting, no matter how contentious it had been, no matter how close people came to jumping across the pews and strangling their fellow church members, the people would stand up and hold hands across the aisle and sing this little ditty:

Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above

I didn't have a clue in the world what those words meant when I was a little kid. But I did know what a tie was.  It was that awful contraption that you had to wear around your neck only when you went to church.  I would have to stand still long enough for my dad to tie it and when he was done he tightened it up and my face immediately started turning red and then blue from lack of oxygen.  I could certainly relate to "the tie that binds"!

When I was older I came to understand it was a song about how much we love each other, and how the love we have for each other here is a taste of what it's going to be like in heaven.

Say what??  We argue, fuss and fight for an hour or more and then declare that's what heaven is going to be like?  If that's true, I think I'll pass! (Thankfully it is not true - I rest in the assurance there will be no business meetings in heaven.)

But you know, now after many years of seeing the best and worst of people at church, I've sort of mellowed in my view of business meetings and the people who go to them.

Church business meetings are kind of like life.  We're not perfect, we sometimes say things we shouldn't, and sometimes we make complete idiots out of ourselves.  But through it all somehow God still loves us.  And through it all, we really do love each other.  You see, I've come to realize the singing of that song wasn't about how things were, it was a statement of how in our heart of hearts we really wanted them to be.  And how - praise the Lord - it will be in heaven.

So church - and I mean ALL of the church, not just the Baptists - let's stand up, hold hands across the aisle, and sing together:

"Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love..."

Your Life in Six Words

It started as a contest on the online writer's magazine SMITH.  Readers were challenged to write their own biography in six words.  They gave the classic example of the mini-masterpiece penned by Ernest Hemingway:  “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Readers were encouraged to send in their examples and the best of the best would be published.  15,000 people responded. That contest turned into a book and that book turned into an overnight sensation.  The book's title is one of the submissions: "Not Quite What I Was Planning."

My daughter heard a piece on the book on NPR last week.  She bought the book and we all gathered around it last night reading how people boiled down their lives into just six words.  Some were incredibly clever (“Eat mutate aura amateur auteur true”), some were stupid (“Born in California. Then nothing happened”).  Some were funny (“Birth, childhood, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence...”) and some were sad (“Everyone who loved me is dead”).  All were fascinating in their own way.

My personal favorite: "Sweet Wife. Great Kids. I'm rich!"  A Canadian minister even came up with two six word bios for Jesus that were clever and touching: “God called; Mother listened; I responded” and "I call you friends, not servants."

How would you sum up your life in just six words? I agree with the wife of a novelist who came up with this one: “It’s hard to summarize your life.”

I'm working on it.  As all of you who are regular readers of this blog know only too well, I can't say ANYTHING in just six words!

Hey, I think I just came up with mine - "Brevity is Not My Strong Suit!"

Baby It's Cold Outside

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - A few summers ago we were traveling out west by van, which, parenthetically, is my favorite way to get from point A to point B because you don't miss all of the great stuff along the way. We left El Paso, Texas that morning and headed toward California. As we passed through Arizona and New Mexico we noticed the temperature readout in the overhead display kept going higher and higher until it said 105°.  About that time we needed to stop for gas and, well, you know, the call of nature. 

When we left El Paso, it was probably in the 70s and for the entire morning the air conditioner in the van kept it a pleasant 72° inside. When we opened the car door, it was literally as if we had stepped into an oven.  I remember making a mental note that the next time someone from the west said, "But it's a DRY heat..." I was going to slap them upside the head.

Today I am experiencing the polar (and I mean that in both senses of the word!) opposite.  When I left Atlanta this morning it was in the 40s and pleasant.  Today the high in Minneapolis is expected to be 2°.  No, that is not a typing error... two degrees above zero!

I'm sure at sometime in my distant past I experienced temperatures in this range.  I did, after all, spend the first eight years of my life in New York.  But my body has long since forgotten what that feels like and certainly wouldn't register it as anything approaching "normal."

Prior to today, the coldest I ever remember being was a couple of years ago in Lower Manhattan.  It was about 12° that morning and We were walking in the Financial district.  The wind coming in off the Hudson River put the wind chill factor in a range that would make Nanook of the North seek shelter.

That doesn't even compare to the cold that welcomed me to the land of 10,000 lakes and Jesse Ventura this morning.  One lady stepped off the plane and into the jetway and immediately said, "Holy icicles, Batman!"  We all laughed.  And the condensation from our laughs immediately froze and crumbled to the ground.   OK, I'm exaggerating. But not much.

I couldn't help but wonder if folks up here make excuses to pretend that the cold isn't really cold like the folks out west do with the "it's a dry heat" fairy tale.  What would they say?  "It's a dry cold?" "It's a warm cold?" Or perhaps, "It's a wet cold?" (followed of course with the obligatory, "don'tcha know" which is the Minnesota equivalent of "y'all.")

My reply is it is a cold cold.  A cold, cold, cold cold!  The next time a Northerner says we Southerners are wimps, I promise I will heartily agree,  The folks who live up here are made of sterner stock than I.  My hat would be off to you, but then my head would freeze.

In case you were wondering, the low here tonight is supposed to go down to -13°.  I can assure you, I will not be outdoors after the sun goes down this evening!

My Unplanned Experiment in Internet Deprivation

On a normal day, I spend about 18 hours a day awake.  Of the 18 hours that I am awake, I am on the Internet around 15 of those hours.  It's not that I am an online version of the couch potato - it's just that's what I do for a living.  The company I work for is the largest provider of Internet media technology to the world's faith community.  I manage two Internet media properties and supervise the design and deployment of email campaigns that total 8 million sends a month (all opted-in, no spam involved, thank you very much.) Virtually everything we do is online.  Then add to that feeding my blogging habit and time spent on Ebay looking for stuff I don't need but somehow can't live without.

I am almost never without an Internet connection.  If I find myself somewhere that doesn't have a WiFi connection, or if my home Internet connection goes down, I have a broadband card that connects me to the Internet via Verizon. 

This past Friday I was working from home when I was suddenly and unexpectedly confronted with what we PC users euphemistically refer to as the "Blue Screen of Death."  In quasi-friendly text, the screen told me that Windows had shut down to prevent damage to my computer.  If I had never seen this screen before, the ominous white-on-blue text said, I should reboot my computer.  Since I had, in fact, never seen that particular screen before, I felt mildly perturbed but nevertheless hopeful as the computer restarted.  Just a few seconds later I was greeted by a sight far worse than the Blue Screen of Death: The Black Screen of Obituary.

The words now on my formerly colorful screen basically told me that the machine could not start because it could not locate system.cmd.  In other words, "Dude, where's my hard drive?"  At that moment I knew that barring a miracle I was now the proud owner of a ridiculously expensive paperweight.  I could hear Dr. McCoy saying to Captain Kirk, "It's dead, Jim."  Or John Cleese in my head declaring "THIS IS AN EX-PC...IT HAS CEASED TO BE! 

Being the eternal optimist, I spent the next six hours trying to prove that it had not ceased to be, but was just pining for the fjords.  (Apologies to those who haven't the foggiest idea what I am talking about. The Python-impaired can click here for an explanation, or here to see what I am talking about.) Alas, six hours later I was forced to admit that I was not going to have a laptop until sometime on Monday.

Granted, there were two other laptops and two desktop PCs in my house, and an aged Mac running OS 7.  But none of those machines had the programs I needed on them, so I had to face the fact that I was going to have a non-productive weekend ahead of me.

Now this post is not to preach about the wonders of a technology fast (see previous post on that subject) or to give you a lesson in getting offline and reconnecting with real life.  Truth be told it is really just a wordy explanation/excuse for why I haven't posted since the middle of last week! 

But, for what it is worth, my "unproductive" weekend included taking my wife to dinner and a movie, reading, and knocking out several long time residents of my honey-do list.  It was, actually, kinda nice.  OK, it was very nice.

After spending most of today working with our IT folks on the resurrection of my laptop (which involved a complete return to the dreaded "factory settings"), I am now about 75% back into the land of the connected.  I was never without email access courtesy of my "Crackberry," and thankfully I didn't lose any data in the debacle. It could have been a lot worse if numerous documents, including the scope docs for our new media property launch and revisions to existing properties, had been lost.

All in all, I find myself feeling like my Calvinist friends do after they fall down the stairs: "Boy, I'm glad that's over with..."

Note to my aforementioned Calvinist friends: It's a joke.  Really. I found it, um... Irresistible.

Note to those who didn't get the joke: Click here for an explanation, or at least a definition.

"Angels We Have Heard on High" On Broccoli... no kidding

I'm not sure if this comes from the "Now I've Seen Everything" Department, or from the "This Guy Has WAY Too Much Time On His Hands" Department... or both. 

This fellow fashioned an ocarina out of a large stalk of broccoli and then plays "Angels We Have Heard On High" on it.  With a harpsichord accompaniment.

Nothing says Christmas like carols played on... um, fresh produce.

Enjoy.

HT: Growth Starts

I'm an Uber Cool Nerd

I'm sure my mom will be so proud...

HT: Christian Thinker

How Large is the Wacko Fringe in America?

Today is Halloween, a day when little kids pretend to be ghosts and goblins, so I thought it would be interesting to see how many Americans actually believe in ghosts,  goblins, spells and superstitions.  The answer surprised me.

According to a poll conducted by the Associated Press and Ipsos, 34% of our fellow Americans believe in ghosts.  Ironically, this is the exact same percentage that say they believe in UFOs.  Hmmm.

According to the survey, 23% believe they have seen or been in the presence of a ghost.  Decidedly fewer of the UFO believers claim experiential evidence of their belief; Only 14% claim to have actually seen a UFO.

That 14% includes Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. I realize that for most of us, this news doesn't come as a surprise. I promise I am not making this up. Don't believe me?  Read all about it in the Ohio Congressman's hometown paper, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer here.

You know, we already knew Kucinich was "out there" but who could have imagined in their wildest imagination that he would not only claim that he saw a UFO (at SHIRLEY MACLAINE'S HOUSE, no less), but that he felt it was "observing him," he "felt a connection in his heart" with the craft and also "heard directions in his mind."  I presume the "directions" told him to run for President.

SFX Music - "Twilight Zone" Theme:  Do-do-do-do, Do-do-do-do...

Not surprisingly, when he was questioned about it in last night's debate, Kucinich tried to distance himself from the specifics of Shirley MacLaine's comments in her upcoming book about his close encounter of the weird kind.  He reasoned that "unidentified" only meant that he could not ascertain exactly what kind of flying machine it was, and reminded the audience that former President Jimmy Carter once reported a UFO sighting. Kucinich completely ignored the part of the story about him receiving directions from the spacecraft. 

Needless to say, he came across as a nutcase, and provided a great straight line and perfect set up for Barack Obama, who said he was more concerned with folks here on earth than out there somewhere. Watch it for yourself here. 

For the record, Jimmy Carter does not now believe his 1969 sighting was an extraterrestrial craft.  In fact, it has been proved to Carter's satisfaction that what he saw was actually the planet Venus.

It would be interesting to know how many of the 23% who think they have seen or been in the presence of a ghost are also in the 14% of those who think they have seen a UFO.  Then find out how many of those also believe the moon landing was faked and 911 was an inside job and BINGO... you have identified the wacko fringe in America!

How large is the wacko fringe?  I would estimate about 3%, which is the same percentage of Americans who believe they have been abducted by aliens.  And now they even have their own Presidential candidate.

How nice.

None of the Above '08

Surveying the Presidential candidates whose hats are currently in the ring on both sides of the aisle, I have to tell you I am resoundingly underwhelmed. Again.

I think the last time I was actually excited about a candidate was Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Since his second term ended in '88 we have had a steady sucession of lesser-of-two-evils, hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-one-of-them choices. 

In '88 we had George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis.  Bore and Boring-er.  The only excitement that year was Dukakis' silly tank driving stunt.  In 1992 we had Bush, Clinton and Perot, the three stooges. Four years later we had Clinton and Dole.  Bob Dole is a genuine war hero, a very decent human being and an extremely funny fellow, but he was already too old and even in his prime, he wasn't Presidential timber.  In 2000, we had the epic pairing of George W. Bush and Al Gore, which begat hanging chads and butterfly ballots.  In 2000, the Democrats decided to go an all new direction.  Instead of Ivy League educated elitist white guy Al Gore to pit against Ivy League educated elitist white guy George W. Bush, they went with John Kerry, (wait for it...) an Ivy League educated elitist white guy.

Now to this year's all new crop of POTUS wannabes.  First the Democrats--

Hillary Clinton: She gives me the creeps.  And from her off the charts negatives, I see I am most decidedly not alone in that feeling.  Don't know which is more scary, her total lack of sincerity, her laugh or her big government policies.

Barack Obama: The closest thing to a candidate that can generate real excitement. But he hasn't even completed one term in the Senate.  It is very possible he will be the first African American President. But not in 2008.

John Edwards: $400 haircuts. 'Nuff said.

The supporting cast: Joe Biden: Snore. Chris Dodd: Double Snore. Bill Richardson: I don't think so.  Kucinich and Gravel: The Wacko Factor.

And the Republicans--

Rudy Giuliani: He was magnificent as NYC mayor in the days after 911, but he has to bring more to the table than that.  Not exactly a great orator or a captivating personality.

Fred Thompson: His much-awaited entry into the race fizzled almost immediately. We're used to seeing him as the witty, erudite DA on Law and Order.  Let's face it, with no script, Fred is a dud.

Mike Huckabee: Comes across well most of the time, except for his dumb comments to the NRA. But as President?  Thanks for playing...next!

Sam Brownback: We're not in Kansas anymore...

John McCain: Too old, too grumpy, too many missteps. Plus he recently confessed to being a Baptist when everyone thought he was an Episcopalian.

Mitt Romney: I didn't think anyone could give me the creeps more than Hillary.  Enter Mitt Romney. Ewwwww.

The supporting cast: Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter: Again, The Wacko Factor.

After taking a good hard look at all of these candidates, I am throwing my support behind None of the Above.  Clearly the best choice at this time.

Although I have to tell you, I do see a candidate on the horizon that I could get really excited about: Stephen Colbert.  Why, I ask you, would you support an actor who plays a District Attorney on TV when you can support a comedian who plays a political commentator on TV?  Tell me which of the above candidates could match this logic:

I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’ nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.

There's a lot that can (and probably will) happen between now and November 2008 to change the dynamics or even the cast of characters.  Just ask Howard "YYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHH" Dean.  But as of now, I'm backing Colbert.  Or None of the Above.  Same difference.