2007 May «

How did I miss this?

31 May 07 at 7:58 pm | In Music | No Comments

Usually, I am pretty up to date on music. Even if I don’t particularly like some form of music (country) or another (hip-hop), I still have at least heard of new releases through various websites and the ever-faithful iTunes store. Yet, with all this due diligence, I seemed to have missed this little gem.

Yes, musicphiles (is that a word?), Paul Anka has created the masterpiece for which we were all anxiously waiting - modern rock classics done in swing style. This amazing collection has been around for two years and I missed it! I only found out about it now because a colleague at work got it from someone who got it as one of those freebies they give out when you donate to public television. So far, it appears, most people ~~can endure it for one listening~~ can’t wait to share it with their friends so they pass along the ~~torture~~ sonic beauty as quickly as possible!

Yes! Smells Like Teen Spirit now smells like a lounge on the Vegas strip, baby! And, honey, if you thought Tears in Heaven was a sad song in the first place, put away any dangerous objects because this version is downright depressing! You haven’t heard anything until you’ve heard a big band shout “Jump” in unison.

You can hear a couple of songs here, but I warn you that ~~it may make your ears bleed~~ you may never want to stop listening.

UPDATE: So, I went away for awhile but this CD kept coming back to me like a ~~late-night burrito~~ pleasant childhood memory. And I started to think about what other modern/alternative songs of the past 20 years or so that Anka could ~~ruin~~ reinterpret for Rock Swings II. Here are my suggestions, just off the top of my head:

Alive by Pearl Jam
Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
Vertigo by U2
Been Caught Stealing by Jane’s Addiction

Please do add to the list …

Adieu, mon ami …

29 May 07 at 9:07 pm | In General, youth ministry | 2 Comments

The soda can has been recycled.

It had issues, to be honest. To repair the issues would have been expensive, especially given that the soda can had 109,600 miles on it. I drove nearly every one of them. It’s been to Ohio and back several times. And to Nashville. And to Ocean City. And Pittsburgh. Many times to Pittsburgh. And Baltimore. And D.C. And all sorts of small towns all through PA.

See the dent in the bumper? The result of another car backing into me at a youth event. Missing hubcap? Last seen speeding down a highway in Pittsburgh on the way home from a work trip with the students.

My little 2001 Toyota Echo was more than a car. Yeah, yeah … I know people say that all the time about their vehicles, but it’s true all the same. It was a dining room as I ate all sorts of burgers and fries while traveling to and from crazy and not so crazy places. It was the sanctuary in which I listened to and sang worship songs on the way to work and to keep myself awake on long drives. It was a bedroom once at Creation East when it was just too darn damp to sleep in a tent. It was a hideaway once when a couple of my students and I didn’t want to play a silly game. It was, unfortunately, a bathroom once when I had a raging migraine, complete with nausea on the way to work one day and suddenly breakfast was all over the steering wheel.

Most of all, it was my office. It was the place in which I rehearsed talks for our contemporary service. It was the place in which I previewed songs. It was the place in which I thought out papers and blog posts before sitting down to type. And, it was the place we talked. We being students who have passed through the youth group over the past six years. Can’t tell you what we talked about. It’s not that I don’t remember. It’s just that, unless it is a crisis situation, what is said in the soda can stayed in the soda can. I will, however, say that the theology that unraveled in that car ran deep and strong and parents should be proud of their kids.

So, farewell, my little (and I do mean little friend). If it would be possible for a car to serve God, you certainly did. Well done, good and faithful soda can!

BROKEN BY THE FALL …

28 May 07 at 10:24 pm | In Cycling, To Walk Humbly ... | 10 Comments

The Giro d’Italia is underway. Almost over, truth be told. All the same, I have had trouble feigning excitement about the new cycling season.

Truthfully, I can’t say I had much interest in cycling prior to 2003. I think the big difference, like it or not, was television. I don’t know if the Tour de France was covered daily on any cable stations prior to 2003, but, if it was, I didn’t get that channel on our system here in central PA. I’d watch the summary shows on the networks on the weekend, but couldn’t decide if they were trying to tell me about a bike race or about where to find the best escargots if you find yourself stranded in an Alpine village.

Then came OLN (now known as Vs.) And Lance 24/7. And Phil and Paul. And Bobke. And a whole cast of new characters in the two-wheeled drama that is the Tour. Suddenly, I learned new, exotic words like peleton and lanterne rouge. I learned about teamwork as practiced in cycling, pacing the team leader up a mountain, the agony of time-trials and the synchronous beauty of the team time trial.

To refresh our collective memory, 2003 was a dramatic year at the tour. Tyler Hamilton went on a solo ride for a stage win - with a broken collarbone. Lance was dehydrated at one point and lost a lot of time to Jan Ullrich. Joseba Beloki suffered a bone-crushing crash on the road into Gap. The time gap between first and somewhere around fifth was measured in seconds.

I was hooked.

Then came the doping accusations against British time trial specialist David Millar. He’s suspended.

Then came the doping accusations against Tyler Hamilton. He’s suspended.

Then came the Operation Puerto fiasco. Lots of riders booted the day before the tour.

Then came the incomprehensible news about Floyd Landis. Now, we wait for the ruling from days and days of testimony in an arbitration hearing.

Somewhere along the line when I had given up paying attention, Ivan Basso was again linked to doping practices. Jan Ullrich, too.

Then, last week, Bjarne Riis, the 1996 winner of the Tour de France and now the owner and manager of Team CSC, admits to doping in the year that he won the tour. Yep. Miguel Indurain’s streak of five straight tours was brought to an end by a cheater.

I just really can’t bring myself to care about professional cycling at all anymore.

Unfair? Maybe, but that’s the way we humans are wired.

Is it any wonder, then, that one Christian’s stumble can lead to a non-believer’s fall?

Sure, high-profile debacles involving famous Christians (btw - shouldn’t “famous Christians” be an oxymoron?) will become fodder for those actively antagonistic to the faith. That’s not who I am thinking about.

I’m thinking about the co-worker who knows you are active in church and just can’t figure out why you can’t say a pleasant word to or about him.

Or the friends who see you proclaim the importance of family, but notice that you let everything and anything else take precedence over your own family.

Or the driver who catches a glimpse of the fish symbol on the back of your car as you give him a “wave” while honking the horn as you pass him.

Anyone who has been a Christian for more than half a minute can think of times that they have failed. Unfortunately, just as the actions of a handful of cyclists casts a disturbing shadow across the whole of the sport, the failures of a Christian can be the one thing that shatters another’s image of the Christian faith as a whole.

So, what can we do? Walk with God. The closer we cling to Him, the more our character becomes shaped by Him. And, when we fail, humbly admit it. Seek forgiveness from God and from those we offended. In that way, perhaps, we can start to mend what has been broken by our fall …

What Matters Most …

17 May 07 at 7:32 pm | In Books, youth ministry | No Comments

In 2005, I heard one of the most important messages I think I ever heard in my life.

This week I read it.

I’m still trying to remember to do it.

When I heard Doug Fields encourage youth leaders to learn to say no at the National Youth Workers Convention in Pittsburgh, I knew instinctively that everything he was saying was spot on. I could identify with the warning signs - eyeing the grocery store lines to find the shortest ones, piles of papers to go through, etc. Identifying with what he said and actually learning to say no were two different and very distinct entities.

Which brings me to the book, What Matters Most: When Saying No is Better Than Saying Yes. Judging from my fading recollections of the talk at NYWC, the book seems to follow the same pattern - realizing you’re too busy, realizing you need to learn to say no to some things so that you can say yes to what matters most and actually figuring out how to do that. So, it was a great reminder and a short enough read that I can pick it up once in a while for a reminder because, Lord knows, us youth workers need reminders that we don’t have to be everything to everyone all the time!

Sometimes, it’s good to take a phrase or a short passage from a book to remember - paraphrase, not word for word - to help keep its message in mind. For me, it’s the story Doug tells of a pastor he knew who lived a very busy lifestyle with the motto: “I can never slow down because the Devil never slows down.”

Doug’s take? “The Devil never slows down? Oh, well. The Devil isn’t my role model.”

That’s something to say YES to …

Wednesday Worship Thoughts 2.4

16 May 07 at 10:25 pm | In To Act Justly, Wednesday Worship Thoughts | No Comments

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. - Hebrews 12:15-16

Wednesday Worship Thoughts tends to focus on the music. It’s the music that comes to mind first when someone says worship. It’s the song on your lips when you have that feeling welling up from somewhere deep inside you when your heart is just bursting with the urge to praise God.

But worship, of course, is more - much more - than just a song. In fact, there’s a song that says so - Matt Redman’s Heart of Worship. More importantly, the Bible says so, as the above verse from Hebrews illustrates. And there’s one of my all-time favorite verses Amos 5:23-24:

Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

God doesn’t want empty words and thoughtless songs. He wants a heart that breaks for what breaks His. He wants a spirit that seeks justice, loves mercy and acts for others not as some requirement, but as the natural response of a heart full of love for Him.

Last January, the college students at Passion 07 were challenged to worship God by doing something or, as the campaign was called, Do Something Now. There were several projects available and I chose to sponsor a verse through OneVerse, a program through which people give to the work of Bible translation by sponsoring a verse at a time (or maybe committing a group to sponsor blocks of verses).

Fast forward a couple of months and I get an e-mail update from OneVerse with a link to a photo page and … look … Matthew 22:5 … you can barely see the highlighter, but it’s there … that’s my verse for the Dela people of South Asia who have no Bible in their own language. According to the OneVerse web site, in 2002, a retired pastor introduced the Dela people to the Scripture in Kupang Malay, a creole language used widely in the region. Inspired, the people drafted the Gospel of Mark on their own.

So, how does this all relate to Wednesday Worship Thoughts? Simple. Thanks to lots of people putting together their little moments of worship in the form of offering a little money to help with translation, these people will finally have the chance to read the Bible in their own language.

In other words, they gave more than a song …

What can you give?

Aaaaaaaaand we’re back!

15 May 07 at 9:07 pm | In Adventures in Seminary | No Comments

Papers are finished. Books have been read. And soooooo much has been happening worth blogging about and not worth blogging about. Let’s see. Since last I wrote, the team from church helped to repair five homes in Pittsburgh, I attended a YS training thing in DC, wrote two papers (one 22-pager and one that turned out to be 30-something), went to work every day, started car shopping, read a couple of books for class, gave up on 24 for the season, gave up on gardening for the season, ordered books for next semester, endured two extra weeks on my disposable contacts because the delivery of the new batch was late, actually lost about three pounds during one intensive paper-writing weekend during which I ate just junk food now and again, haven’t set foot in a gym, haven’t set wheels to street on the bike, got the How Great Is Our God DVD in the mail and other stuff I don’t remember anymore. Certainly, some of these things will end up being posts later. Others won’t. All the same, I have learned a huge lesson this trimester … I have to learn to say no to things once in awhile. I have to get busy on the reading earlier. I have to be thinking about the paper from day one of the class and be on the lookout for resources throughout the trimester rather than working on it all at one time. And, I have to do all this without neglecting the important things … family, the youth kids and, most of all, God himself because (to paraphrase a passage from Scripture) what would it profit me if I can a Master of Arts in Church Development, but lose my soul?