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I was having a conversation about some kids at church singing songs to God.  Most likely, the kids had very little idea what they were singing, but boy, were they having a ball!   “How cute!  Even though they don’t really get it, they still enjoy it.”  We were both very glad.

Now at church, we saw a lot of people singing.  While they understood what they were saying, there was the feeling that they did not really enjoy it.  Or, that if they did, it was for the wrong reasons.  Perhaps they just like to hear their own voice and so on.

Are we…

Over Labor Day Weekend our nerves were worn ragged by the constant conflict between our next door neighbor and her boyfriend. We hid out in our bedroom with the AC on high just to drown out the sounds, but eventually the screaming, cursing, and breaking glass had us calling 911. If they didn’t need relief, we sure did. Honestly, we’d had a couple of our own conflicts over the weekend, and although ours were much quieter and more civilized, the tension from next door just wasn’t helping.

This morning I got an email from an old friend and spiritual mentor describing how she and her…

John, who organizes church socials, sees people come and go while the depth of relationships stays shallow.  Judy can’t seem to find people to hang out with at all.  Mike can’t seem to get past the cultural differences that he’s facing with the people around him. 

Everyone I know is looking to belong and yet so few people have a solid community of friends.  You would think that with everyone wanting it, more of us would have it!  How have we as a generation lost all ability to form healthy relationships with the people around us?  Is it our amazing independence?  Do we all have these…

As I was thinking about dreaming great dreams, a friend of mine asked what the difference was between health and wealth and great dreams.  I thought that was truly a great question.  While I believe on an emotional level the difference is clear, on a logical level they are indeed similar.  They both ask God with expectation, and wait for God to deliver.  Indeed, there have been a number of people I have counselled, who could not tell the difference between great dreams and a warped gospel.  This led to them being ever disappointed by God not pulling through when they were…

In my time with God I’ve been praying through Good to Great by Chip Ingram.  This isn’t the classic by Jim Collins, but a sort of Christian version of the same thing.  On a chapter I read recently Chip Ingram talks about having God sized dreams, not little me sized dreams, but the big ones.  The ones I dare not admit because they sound audacious and arrogant.  Why wouldn’t God be able to do those?

Well, he can!  I imagine being able to grow a ministry that is consumed with the Glory of God!  Where every believer is unconcerned about their own…

Portable applications have been interesting me for a while.  Essentially, you can put them on your USB flash drive and carry them wherever you go, with all your settings, files, and preferences.  If they’re well written they also won’t leave any traces on the host computer, nor will they require admin privileges.

Along with these portable applications, there have been a few application managers that give you a windows like interface for interacting with the applications.  The two major commercial ones are PowerToGo (From Ceedo through Lexar) and U3, which come with certain USB drives.  There is also a free version, which…

Black Flight is changing the way our cities look!
This has serious implications for those of us with Here’s Life Inner City, or for that matter, any inner city organization. I would hope that we take notice, because not only will it affect who we do ministry with, but also where we do it. If we stay in the cities, then we will be working with a largely upper middle class white post-modern. If we wish to remain working with the poor, we might find ourselves in the suburbs.

Another interesting speculation is that with some western rural towns having an…

Lately, it seems as if I’m on information overload and my brain needs to work double time to keep up. I find myself contemplating parapsychology and wondering if kick starting a lucid dream is biblical. When I go to the library and browse amongst the titles, I find that my minute has turned to 10 and my 10 to 30. If only I could process faster… Instead, I lay awake before I go to bed with my mind racing, wondering when it will all end so that I can simply go to sleep.

Is it good to be so mentally vibrant?…

The basics of the argument are that income tax is one of the lesser sources of income for the government and would only reduce the governments ability to spend to about the year 2000’s levels. Then with who knows how much cash in the hands of people, untold jobs would be created and people’s earnings would skyrocket. What do you think? Workable or not so much?

Well, I haven’t been exactly faithful at this blog writing thing, but recently I came up with a noteworthy theory; and I thought my blog would be a good place to put it. My theory is that everything is cool somewhere. No, I’m not talking about the weather. Let me try to make sense of my thoughts…

After a recent trip to NC and a short dip into my home culture (with an unusual amount of reverse culture shock, I might add), I started thinking about how easy it is to think one’s own culture is the ONLY culture. Most…