Month: May 2007

8 Random Facts About Me

Will Phillips asked me to make 8 quirky comments about myself, so here goes:

  1. When I reheat foods, I like to set the microwave for a prime number of seconds (i.e., 17, 23, 37, etc).
  2. I tend to disdain “literary fiction” — I find that the typical science fiction or fantasy novel is just as insightful and vastly more entertaining.
  3. I write PHP programs to relax.
  4. I hardly ever watch TV anymore — I’m pretty much exclusively devoted to watching programs on Netflix. My wife and I are currently on a Veronica Mars kick.
  5. I used to hate talk radio, but now I love listening to Dennis Prager. I find him very stimulating.
  6. I don’t like the New York Times mostly because it doesn’t carry comics. Seriously. I want my Get Fuzzy and my Pearls Before Swine!
  7. I don’t eat the meal before I preach. Maybe it’s psychological, but I feel that the food in my belly makes me slow‐witted.
  8. The main reason I haven’t written a book is that I feel that there are too many books out there already — the great stuff is getting lost in the flood.

So there. 8 things about me you probably didn’t know.

Advice From A Design Expert

Last night at Chi Alpha we interviewed George Kembel, co‐founder and executive director of the Stanford d.school about his faith and how it integrates with his professional life.

It was lots of fun. During the interview he shared a helpful metaphor about his crisis of faith as a young adult. “It’s like my baby teeth. They had to go so my permanent teeth could come in. Something similar happened with my faith. I needed to move from a child’s faith to an adult faith, but what I got in the end was something better and more enduring.”

Anyway, afterwards we were able to talk briefly and I asked him about applying the principles of his professional life to ministry. How would a d.school person approach improving the experience of a regular or a guest at a ministry function?

We only talked briefly, but one tidbit he shared really struck me. “When we’re doing feedback we find it helpful to have people restrict themselves to three types of statements: ‘I like…’, ‘I wish…’, and ‘We should try…’. For example, ‘I liked it when you talked about x, I wish you had spent more time on that and less on this other point.’ It forces feedback to be more personal and also pushes it in a constructive direction.”

I think we’ll experiment with that and see how it works out for us. It sounds promising.

Anyway, I hope you find his comments as interesting and helpful as I did.