From The Hills of Athens

Erin and I rented License to Wed from our local Redbox DVD rental mechanism last night, and I have to admit that i only rented it because they didn’t have Ocean’s 13 and I couldn’t convince myself to get Barbie and The Magical Marshmallow Land.

The movie turned out to be a pleasant surprise…we thouroughly enjoyed it.   You could see the ending coming a mile away(I called the sand part before it happened).  But there were plenty of funny parts, plus you get to see all of the characters from The Office throughout the movie.  I doubt I would buy it, but License To Wed is definitely worth the rental.

That’s a misleading title.  I don’t want to review a person; rather, I promised a few notes from my recent visit to Dallas to hear Rob speak.  I enjoyed the talk, and Rob held my interest, but I found the entire thing a bit like Bell’s book “Sex God” in that Rob seemed to suffer a little from the sophomore slump.  ”Velvet Elvis” was an amazing book that was fun and different and helped to reform my beliefs; Rob’s first speaking tour “Everything is Spiritual” was likewise fun and different and radically changed some long-held beliefs.  ”The God’s Aren’t Angry” certainly had plenty of facts and great stories and the message (God loves you and He’s not angry with you) was well-stated, but I can’t say I enjoyed it as much.

For another review, read this entry on the Out of Ur blog at Christianity Today. 

Paste magazine has posted their top 100 albums from 2007.  You can find the list here.

I’m somewhat amazed by how many of these artists and albums I have never heard of.  This is the first year I haven’t had a subscription to Rolling Stone or Spin in a long time, and it has definitely skewed my music knowledge.  However, I do have 5 of the top 50 including Ryan Adams, The Perishers, Arcade Fire, Band of Horses, and Derek Webb. 

Rick Warren made a great observation during his address to the BGCT convention in Amarillo.  (I’m trying to quote him verbatim, but i make no guarantees)

The Church is the only thing that will last.  In 500 years, there won’t be any Microsoft or United States of America…but there will still be the Church.

Wrap your head around that.  If you follow Jesus, then you are part of something that has endured and will continue to endure.  How do we leverage that?  How do we operate in that reality instead of trying to fight for what is ours? 

I have been lazy about blogging lately.  And I don’t really have anything much to write about, but I at least wanted to post a quick update.  I’m anticipating a good entry sometime Saturday or Sunday after I get back from Austin which makes for a quick segue…. 

Travels

+ Atlanta, GA for Catalyst Conference

+ Bullard, TX for the best football game I’ve seen in person

+ College Station, TX for the 2nd best football game

+ Going to Austin, TX for Emergence 2007

+ Going to Amarillo, TX next weekend for Big Baptist Fun!

+ Going to the House of Blues in 3 weeks for MuteMath

+ Going to Mexico in 1 month on a mission trip 

Reading

+ Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

+ The Likeability Factor by Tim Sanders

+ Peppermint Filled Pinatas by Eric ____ from Mosaic

Listening To

+ Band of Horses No One’s Gonna Love You from Cease to Begin

+ Jimmy Eat World’s new CD Chase This Light

+  Jonezetta Popularity

New Favorite Website

+ RetroJunk

Last Thing Purchased

+ Everything is Spiritual by Rob Bell

Last Great Sermon I Heard / Watched

+ Incarnational Ministry by Rick Warren from last year’s Q Conference

That’s it for now. A more thoughtful post is brewing. peace.

I am trying to engineer a convenient solution for our student ministry website. We own the domain AuthenticYouth.com and have published a website in various forms. At the moment I am trying to configure Apple’s new iWeb ‘08 program to build a site that will be easily updated and published. So far, there has been a bunch of work and reading and calling with few results.

I’m starting to come to the realization that there is probably not an easy solution to a complex problem like trying to have a good website. My options seem to be: A) Spend Money (too much in my opinion) or B) Build my own site. Which leads to my ultimate dilemma: I don’t know enough to build my own site with any technical program…but I almost do. That could be the title of a movie about my life: He Almost Knew Enough.

I’ve never been a good athlete, but I’m not bad. I’m average at almost any sport, and I was almost good enough to be really good at a number of sports. In school, I’ve always been pretty good, but I never could seem to turn the corner and be really exceptional at anything (that could’ve been from a lack of effort…hmmm..) . And with this website stuff, I’m right on the edge. I have a basic understanding of HTML, and a decent familiarity with computers. But if I got all giddy and ordered Dreamweaver, I’d be like a toddler lost in the deep end of the pool.

Anyone else feel like that sometimes? Competent at a bunch of stuff, but an expert at nothing? It’s frustrating some days, to say the least. I often think I’d rather be horrible at most things so long as I could be great at something.

Ever wish you could save that clip of the Dramatic Chipmunk to your computer so you could watch it over and over and over again?  Well, here’s how… 

 1. Find your favorite YouTube Video, and copy the URL from your address bar (i.e.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw) 

2. Go to KeepVid.com and paste the URL into the box on the screen.  Click Download.

3. Click on the “Download Link” text that appears.  Save the video to your computer with any title, but make sure the extension is .flv or it won’t work.

4. While the video is downloading, download the RIVA Free FLV encoder (PC Only, I haven’t found a good FLV encoder for Mac…iSquint is alright)

5. When you have installed RIVA, and the video has finished downloading, open up RIVA.

6.  Locate the .flv file as your input, and then change the file extension in the output section from .flv to .mpg so you can play it in quicktime and windows media player.

7. Click encode, and sit patiently. 

That’s all there is to it.

It really comes down to influence.  When I write something down on WordPress, there is a good chance that about 20 people may see it.  I have kept up with the stats of the blog and I average about 13 hits a day (I’m pretty sure that 9 of those may be my mom).  If you take 13 different hits over a few days and assume that some of those are the same people, probably no more than 20-35 people are actually looking at this blog.  Random drop-ins happen, but I have never had a comment nor been linked to by any of these drop-ins.And even if the readership went up, what is the point really?  Does anyone care about a trip to Chicago or what I think of the Dallas Cowboys?  Probably not.  This blog is just random ramblings about asinine topics.  There have been occasional posts about upcoming messages with the students or little thoughts about faith and following Jesus, but are those posts really “inspiring?”  I highly doubt it.And so, I am left wondering how I can spend more time where I have greater influence.  A Podcast?  Probably not.  The youth website?  Doubt it.  It gets about 1/3 of the hits that I get here.  I don’t know what is next, but I am pretty sure that I am done with blogging. 

Huge glass windows sit in front of me framing the lake at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. And the view is only a secondary cool-factor in this whirlwind trip. Highlights:
+ Chicago Institute of Art
+ Cheesecake Factory
+ A PillowTop Mattress and Down Comforter
+ A Hotel with a Television in the Bathroom
+ In a 2 hour stretch last night, I saw David Crowder play live, and see a sneak preview of Evan Almighty.
+ The Programming here at the conference is mind-boggling

I’m so in love with these over-the-top-cool conferences. It’s a reminder of what excellence looks like. Camp is right around the corner, and I have been trying to push through mediocrity and get to the excellence that is possible.

Home tomorrow, but only for a few days. Camp is next week, followed rapidly by a mission trip to the Houston area.

Slow down life…

Atlanta, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Graduation Sunday, Internsm Enchanted Rock, Comal River. That’s what the last 4 weeks have looked like. My Wednesdays and Thursdays have been my Mondays because I have just been flat gone from the office. And somehow over the past month, June has crept up and is waiting to catch me off-guard.
This is the second summer in a row that I do not have major plans of sitting by a pool for sustained amounts of time. The previous 6 summers, I spent the majority of my time lifeguarding, and the summers before that were arranged to include regular visits to the neighborhood pool. The first sunburn was always a momentous occasion. By mid-August I was completely tan, my hair had lightened, and my feet even had tan-lines where my flip flops typically sat. But each June as school was finishing up, I was embarrassingly pale.
I remember the trip to the pool on the first day it was actually hot. My brother and I would brave the cooler days simply because we wanted to swim, but there was always a day when slightly cool had morphed into sweltering heat. On this day, mom would always say something to the effect of “Don’t forget the sunscreen!” but who needed sunscreen. The memories of last year’s burning-and-peeling had faded just like my mid-August tan, and so I would swim for hours leaving my skin vulnerable to the death rays of the sun.
The result: cataclysmic sunburn. Red shoulders…sore back…tender stomach…burning eyes. Not long after, however, the redness would fade to a brown color, and the intense heat would die down. And thus, the first sunburn would pass.
I got my first sunburn of summer yesterday. The float down the Comal did me in. I know I need to wear sunscreen, but it usually just slips my mind. Some lessons just have to be repeated and repeated and repeated.