Liveblog: Euro 2008 Final

I am attempting something I never have before and following after The Sports Guy… liveblogging while watching a sporting event. I have been pumped for the UEFA Euro 2008 Final between Germany and Spain all week and the day is here. Since Germany have plenty of Euro Championships under their belt, I am rooting for Spain. Plus, I have been to Germany and Spain is still on my list. Here it goes! Read more

Blogthruabook: The Challenge of Jesus

Today I am launching a new feature on Rethynk and I am calling it Blogthruabook (pronouced, “blog THROUGH a book”). Over the next few weeks I will be reading a book I have been meaning to for a long time and posting on each chapter my thoughts. The first installment of this feature is N.T. Wright’s, The Challenge of Jesus. This book comes highly recommended by friends and after a season of reading secular, social-justice books, I am looking forward to some soul food. I invite you to join with me in this read.

I picked up Challenge of Jesus (CoJ from now on) a few months back and knew right away I wasn’t ready for it. I was busy, as I always am, and felt I couldn’t give this book the time and thought it needed. But today, I am ready. After reading the preface and chapter one, I can already tell CoJ comes at a great time for me. Wright declares in the initial pages that he wants to refocus Christian thought on the “quest for the historical Jesus and that by asking the questions, “Who was Jesus?” and “What did He accomplish?” we are participating in basic Christian discipleship. I can get with that. Read more

The Presets: Apocalypso

I am sucker for good electronic music… (insert joke here).

No, really, I like electronic, electronic and techno. Its a genre that is diverse, requires talent, and never really dies. Anyways, one of my favorite bands is The Presets. They blew me away with their last album and I just downloaded their most recent one, Apocalypso. Read more

Jesus and the bleeder

Tomorrow, I am speaking to “my junior highers” about Mark 5:21-43 for the next installment of the Jesus series. In studying this incredible story, a few things bother me and few things amaze me.

For starters, I would have definately been one of the disciples who said, “Who touched you? We’re in a crowd here, Jesus, lots of people touched you.” Except I would have been a real smart alleck and said something like,

“Uh, are you serious?”

or

“Gee, thats a good question Jesus, let me stop the MASSIVE MOB around you and conduct an investigation real quick.”

or

“Hey Jesus, if this is some kind of cool illustration you are making, thats great, but unless it is going to heal Jarius’ daughter, why don’t you do it later so we can move on.”

Thats why I didn’t make the disciple cut I guess. Anyways, the whole “healing power transfer via cloth” thing is kind of sketchy too, but I’ll let it pass… Read more

The Game

Thats what I am calling it… “the game.’” It happened Monday night on the Yankee Stadium replica field and I was in it. My team, a talent-diverse group of guys somehow connected to my church took home the championship trophy, and what a game it was. You will want to read this, I guarantee you have never read a better amateur sports story.

First, the backstory. We played a team at the beginning of the season called the Churros. On this team is a pair of cocky, young, loudmouths who are trying to relive their high school glory days by playing slow-pitch softball as 19 year olds. With their mouths they let everyone know that they are too good to be playing in our league, they just haven’t been discovered yet. Right.

Anyways, in this first game we went into the bottom of the last inning as the home team and down by a run. With two outs, we had men on all bases. An out and we lose. Our guy hit a routine fly ball to left, game over, right? Wrong. Read more

Jesus 08

As we head full-steam into this election season, my soul and mind are bracing for a rollercoaster of emotions and thoughts. I am fully prepared to hear things that will anger me in the discourse that will accompany the next few months. I know that my heart will be saddened to see candidates, pundits, and average Joes all try to to win the official endorsement of Jesus for their own November aspirations. And I am ready for the blunt force impact of the American tradition that is the gross prostitution of the name of Christ for politcal gain. Read more

This will test you

Read this story, then come back here and post.

How do you feel?

As a father, I am scared at how easily my own young boys can become fatherless. As a husband, I saddened to think of his widow. As a follower of Christ, I am disturbed at the hatred inside me that I feel for these ignorant thugs. As a human, I am reminded that I am capable of the same brutality and am no less in need of a savior than these two.

My view…

…on a Sunday morning before I rock the mic wit da Word in my hand… ahem,ok, sorry for that.

Worth Watching

When you get a chance, watch the video to the right… a switch batter against a switch pitcher. Abbot and Costello would have had a blast with this one.

Youth ministry at its worst

I am so cynical. Why? What made me this way? Whose fault is it? Who is to blame?

Is it even a BAD thing?

What scares me is that most of my cynicism (or holy discontent), is directed at my fellow Christians. I am willing to give pre-believers a pass because “you can’t blame the world for being worldly.” But when Christians behave badly, I get agitated.

I’m not necessarily talking about sin.

For example… here I am at my local Starbucks on my typical Sunday morning, reading, studying, relaxing, and in the middle of the serenity that is cappuccino machines and Sergio Mendes and light conversation, bursts a whirling tornado of screams, laughter, dirty jokes, body odor, and “Man, I gotta take a dump”s. This tornado has another, much more obvious name: a youth group on a road trip to summer camp. Having been a professional youth pastor for over 8 years now, I recognized this trend immediately before the entire group made it in. The giveaway signs were the sporting of last years summer camp shirt (which I own and wear on yard work days), the cutdowns, and the immediate disregard for the Starbucks ‘partners’, property, and customers. And the youth pastor had NO control. I at least call the places we plan on stopping at before summer camp so we can give the manager a heads up that they will be invaded by 60 junior high students. But Starbucks?!

I am annoyed. Annoyace = blog.

But what really has me scared is that this morning as I was driving in, I asked God to teach me something about Him, myself, or both. Somewhere in this perfect storm in a 15-passenger van is a lesson for me, and I am not sure I can figure it out or if I want to.

Can you help me?

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