emergingmethodists.org

Tonight marks the end of a very long month for me. During this past month, I spent 4 full days in the office. Between Annual Conference, Mission Trip, and Summer camp, I was out of my normal rhythm for much of the past 30 days. This has obviously included my blogging rhythm as I only had 19 posts this month with several of them full of whining about the NBA finals. Although I have thoroughly enjoyed the past month (mission trip was great and I just wrapped up an amazing week at camp), I am really looking forward to returning to some sense of normalcy for the rest of the summer. I have several large projects remaining for the summer: a 30 day cleanse (yikes!), hiring a student ministries coordinator (several interviews upcoming), finalizing Josh’s position as worship leader, reading 7 more books to reach my goal of 15 this summer, and getting ready for a great fall. I can’t wait to get back to work.

In other news, for the time being, I am sticking with Typepad. Wordpress will have to wait…

Technorati Tags: Youth Ministry

I like how my title makes it seem like I have a life-altering decision to make. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty small decision, but important nonetheless. I have long considered the allure of wordpress as my blogging platform of choice. I have been a Typepad user for over a year and I really like their system, but I often feel very boxed in by their lack of extra features and flexibility…. For instance, Typepad has 12-15 “themes.” All of which are so bad I don’t use them. On the other hand, Wordpress has thousands of theme… many of which are pretty good… and there is something about the basic design and function of a Wordpress site that I like. So…. I have started experimenting with Wordpress. To see the “alternative” blog, click here.

I have a feeling right now that I am going to make the switch if for no other reason than to do something different. There is no doubt that I am addicted to change, and I do have a sense that I need a fresh start to re-energize myself. This may do the trick. In the meantime, I will be keeping both blogs running at the same time with the help of my friend ecto.

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When I was in Junior High, a star began to rise in the NBA. His name was Michael Jordan, and though all of my friends thought he was the most incredible player in the history of the game, I didn’t like him… I wasn’t stupid… I knew he could do amazing things with the basketball, but I already had a hero. His name was Magic Johnson. He was my hero not because he was the most prolific scorer in the game, but because he was the best passer in the game. Magic made everyone around him better, and the teams that he led played some of the most entertaining basketball we have ever seen. But Jordan was different. Jordan was spectacular… but Jordan was just Jordan to me. He didn’t need any help, and somehow at 12 I knew that wasn’t good for the game of basketball…

Fast forward 16 years in my life and many years removed from the end of Jordan’s reign and we just saw the NBA make one more attempt to “recreate” the greatness of Jordan through a guy named Dwyane Wade. And again, he is incredible. He does amazing things with the basketball… He can score at will… He seems unstoppable… but I still hate what the NBA has done to the game of basketball. I blogged about this last year during the final’s and again I am left feeling very unsatisfied because the NBA finals this year weren’t about crowning one team as world champions. It was about a vendetta between the commissioner and an owner, and it was about selling jerseys and tennis shoes. It was about recreating an era of basketball that I think derailed much of the greatness that the game had established during the 80’s. I’ve heard it said many times tonight, and maybe it is just sour grapes right now… but if this the product they expect us to swallow and call it basketball… give me march madness… give me the NFL… at this point, give me the MLB… Give me anything but a league that has sold out. That product sucks.

Technorati Tags: Dallas Mavericks, NBA

Bill Simmons had an interesting quote in his NBA Finals preview in which he was describing each team’s worst case scenario.

For Dallas, it’s foul trouble — they have the right guys to guard Shaq and Wade, but you can’t predict those games when all the calls start going Miami’s way. And that’s the thing that bothers me about this series: No team depends on the refs quite like the Heat. When the refs are calling all the bumps on Shaq and protecting Wade on every drive, they’re unstoppable. When they’re calling everything fairly, they’re eminently beatable. If they’re not getting any calls, they’re just about hopeless. I could see the refs swinging two games in Miami’s favor during this series, possibly three. In fact, I’m already depressed about it and the series hasn’t even started yet.

For the full article, click here.

For a followup article by Bill Simmons following game 5, click here.

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Do we feel better to claim that thus far the Maverick’s collapse has not been as bad as Phil Mickelson’s day at the U.S. open?…..

Nope, still pretty much sucks…

I’ll be honest. At this point, I’m not sure this series goes 7 games.

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I like to commend to any readers I may have any other bloggers who I find enjoyable. A recent addition to my blog reading is Jay Vorhees, a UMC Pastor in Tennessee. I enjoyed his post about the blessing and curse of Annual conference because what he shared reflected much of the underlying tension that I think we are currently experiencing in our Annual conference as well. He also mentioned a buzz word that I heard several times at our Annual conference gathering and might be a key word for the leaders of the church to grasp over the next 10 - 15 years. The word is transparency…

Here’s the post.

Technorati Tags: Annual Conference, United Methodism

I really like keeping up with Andrew Jones’ blog because he always shares some pretty interesting links. This one pointed me to a couple new services including Talkr which takes the RSS feed from your blog and converts your posts into an audio file. Pretty cool. If you want to hear my posts, click the Talkr button under the subscribe list

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Andrew Jones posted about his 50 books on his emerging church bookshelf.

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