Nov 20
The videos say it all.
Nov 15
Blah, blah, blah. Making some upgrades to this blog and this is a simple test.
Nov 09
I’m posting this on both my personal blog and ministry blog as I do write to two different audiences and thought that this information might be helpful. This weekend it was my mission to track down and close any credit account I had tagged to my name. I had a few that I knew of and I was sure there would be a few I didn’t know about.
I’ll be honest. I’m a sucker for a deal. Sara and I try to live in a pretty tight budget, so when I see that I can get 15% off a purchase at Amazon if I sign up for a credit card, I’m seriously going to think about doing it. Actually I’ve opened cards at Target, Amazon, some place at the mall and even a Planet Hollywood card because I wanted the free CD that they were giving away (Sara and I enjoyed that CD for many years). I came to realize that getting these cards (even if I planned to cut them up and never use them) reduced my credit score.
I knew I needed to clean up some of these accounts, so I went looking for one of those free credit report sites. Most of them are scams. Actually, they aren’t scams, they’re just giving you a free credit report if you sign up for a 10 day trial of credit monitoring (which will be billed to your credit card if you don’t cancel at the end of the trial). Then I found this site. No scam, just a site (I think it’s the only one sanctioned by the three credit bureaus) that lets you run a report from each of the three bureaus every year. I figured I’d run the report every 4 months, hitting a different bureau each time. This way I could see any suspicious activity more often than once a year.
So, I found two or three open accounts that needed closing. One I knew about, the other two I thought had been closed. The report provided the contact information of the companies I had accounts with, so closing them were easy. Again, I was able to do all of this for free. I used Equifax this time around and had no problems other than Equifax wanting to sell me credit monitoring or offering my “credit score” for a little money.
So, if you want to check out your credit report to clean up some of those account or just curious about what is on there, check out www.annualcreditreport.com.
Nov 04
At the last Presidental election I voted early through absentee since Sara and I were in the process of moving to Texas. Voting early was a great experinece. We should have figured out how we could vote early this time around. Unfornunately I’m in meetings tomorrow from 8:00 AM until 8:00 PM. So, I’m voting early, early in the morning. Sara and I plan to arrive at the polling place at 6:30 AM and hopefully be one of the first in line. I have a phone call at 8:00 and then my first meeting of the day at 9:00 AM. I guess a pretty hefty price was paid for me to be able to vote, so doing it a little earlier than I care to get up is the least I can do.
Happy voting everyone!
Oct 31
Today is my day off and I’m trying to complete my list of things to do today. One of them is to list a bunch of stuff on Craigs List and Ebay. Here is one of my items.
Taking bets now. Do you think it will sell? What are my odds?
Oct 27
I’m just not very good at it. I have three blogs right now. This blog, a personal family blog and a church blog that we use to communicate to parents. Probably in the next ferw weeks, I’ll be launching another blog for voluntters. It’s less about regular updates and more about a place where they can get lesson plans, documents and view training resources. Man do we need that soon.
But, I’ve found that I’m just no good at doing all of these… at the same time. I’ve not written a word in two weeks on this blog, but in the mean time I’ve been making many updates to my other blogs. Sorry to neglect, I’ve got some things to discuss this week, so I should be regular week again.
Oct 10
One of the blogs I subscribe to posted this recently. I literally laughed out loud!
Lark is a news site that pokes fun at the Christian sub-culture, but in a very funny way. It’s like "the Office" of news blogs. The material is fictional, but it doesn’t read that way. The first time I came across this site I did a double take, thinking the content was real.
What made me laugh so hard was because the the situation described in this fictional story wasn’t too far off from something that I knew happened in another church. How funny.
It brings up a really good point though. More than it has in a very long time, I feel the church is becoming more relevant to the world. That is good. However, I wonder if some churches are becoming "too relevant." Although this article talks about how the youth pastor was practicing how to drop a swear word into a sermon to get attention, I’ve had conversations with people about this very subject. I’ve met people who honestly believe that swearing may help them be more relatable to those they are trying to reach. I’m not so sure that’s a strategy worth taking.
The other thing I’ve noticed in the "authenticity" movement is a tendency to get complacent with some habits, actions or words we use. We say words or do things that are questionable and slap the "hey, I’m just being authentic" label on it and feel better about ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, I love where the church is going. I love it when churches create an authentic and grace-centered environment where people don’t feel condemned or judged just by walking in the doors, but I think we all need to be careful about how "authentic" we allow ourselves to become. Grace is there to help us up, but not to be used as a crutch.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to get preachy. I actually found the article very funny because it hit close to home and this very issue has been the subject of conversations I’ve had in recent months.
Oct 06
Well, I’m back! I arrived to Austin just before 10:00 PM. Now it’s Monday and it’s time to get back to work. Is it just me or is the first day back from vacation one of the least productive days ever? You know, your body is at work, but your brain is still in transit. Hopefully today won’t be like one of those days.
I’ve got a big week this week with a lot of things going on.
This week I plan to write a little about the revolution going on at Gateway. It’s something that has been in the works since before I arrived and officially kicked off this week. It’s big stuff!
Sep 17
Aug 22
About three years ago I got email on my phone. It was great. I could now communicate with people via email no matter where I was. Unfortunately, it was at that time when I started getting text messages from more and more people. This really annoyed me since I was paying $40 a month to get email and now people are sending me text messages. I even had some people with email enabled phones sending me text messages to my email enabled phone. Come on! That’s costing me $0.35 a message people!
I finally gave in. I no longer have email on my phone and I too text. It makes sense. If someone has a phone, they more than likely can get a text message. Chances are they don’t have email on that sucker.
Now I’ve come to the realization that teenagers really like to text. That is an understatement. When sending emails to all our volunteers, the 3 or 4 emails that bounce every month are the teenage email addresses. Why? They changed them? Why? They’ve had that email for two months and they’re so sick of being unicorns_with_tears_in_her_eyes@aol.com. Yes, you laugh because you’ve seen this. So what’s the best way to get a hold of a teenager? Text them!
Just last month I had two teenage girls from a previous church visit my family. They come from a big family. Right now there are 6 in the family on cell phones (Mom, Dad and four teenage daughters). Want to guess how many text messages were recorded on their bill (it was unlimited, so they weren’t charged individually)?
No really, guess!
35,000.
No, I didn’t put the comma in the wrong spot. I wrote it correctly. that is pretty close to 6,000 text messages for each phone. I’m sure the girls are texting more than their parents, so maybe they’re each closer to 7000 each. As unbelievable as this number is, I completely and totally believe it. While sitting in our living room talking one night, I watched their phones light up every minute with new incoming messages. While they were perfectly engaged in our conversation in our living room, they were also actively engaged in at least one other conversation over their phone. They don’t need to look at their phone. While at school, they can reach their hand in their bag and send a text without ever being noticed… they only need to pull the phone out to read incoming messages.
I often hear adults complain about how texting is ruining this generation. None of them know how to type with all their texting short hand. Honestly, didn’t they say similar things about Radio, TV and the internet? Our teenagers aren’t stupid, they can do both. Oh, and they’re more connected and networked than any of us.
