Month: October 2005

Guy Kawasaki

I just heard Guy Kawasaki speak at Straight Talk, a marketplace ministry hosted by Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. He uses humor well. For instance, he was offered a job in Atlanta but “couldn’t take a job where they call sushi bait.”

I really appreciated his intro:

When I was younger I used to go to a lot industry conferences, and I learned that most CEOs suck as speakers. And the only thing worse than listening to a speaker who sucks is not knowing how much longer they’re going to suck. So I’ve adopted a simple rule: all my presentations are in a top-ten format. That way, if you decide I suck you at least know how much longer I’m going to do it.

Unfortunately, I know a few preachers who could use his advice. 🙂

His talk was The Art of the Start, based on his book. It’s a talk he’s given in a lot of different venues. You can find the notes online. He did a pretty good job of customizing it for the context of the meeting (Christian business professionals and their guests).

In honor of his speaking advice, here are ten things I learned about Guy Kawasaki:

  1. He’s a Christian.
  2. He went to Stanford (where he majored in “the easiest major I could find–psychology.”).
  3. He secularized the term evangelism while at Apple. Good for him–the word could really use a facelift.
  4. He loves Apple and disdains Microsoft. “DOS was a moral wrong.”
  5. He finds evidence for the existence of a personal God in the continued survival of Apple. He further concludes that God really likes digital music and wants you to pay for it.
  6. He went to law school and dropped out after ten days, “thereby inheriting 2,000 years of pent-up Asian guilt.”
  7. He loves to play hockey–it sounds like an obsession.
  8. He is a CSI addict and is eagerly awaiting the day that they release CSI: Menlo Park.
  9. He loves first-class in Singapore Airlines. In fact, that’s his working model of heaven.
  10. He thinks iStockPhoto.com rocks–he went out of his way to plug it at the end of his presentation and claimed to do so without any financial incentive (“I’m not an investor or anything, I just love their product.”)

Pleasure As An Intrinsic Good

In my most recent sermon at Chi Alpha I made a statement in the Q & A time that “pleasure is an intrinsic good.”

At least one student has been thinking about what I said and sent me an email:

I was reading Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy and a comment reminded me of something you said last week at XA. You said something to the effect of pleasure in and of itself is intrinsically good. Now I totally understand what you were saying and what you weren’t saying. But I was wondering if you could shoot me some Bible verses to back it up.

So I wrote up a reponse which I thought might be of general interest:

First, the Bible never explicitly teaches that pleasure is an intrinsic good. The Bible doesn’t really deal in such philosophical categories. Rather, the notion of pleasure as an intrinsic good is a presupposition throughout.

Verses that occur to me in this context:

Deut 14:22–27, where celebration is pictured as worship (see also Nehemiah 8:10 where celebration is portrayed as more appropriate response to God than fasting)
Psalm 104:14–15, where God created some things in the world for the sole purpose of pleasure
The book of Ecclesiastes in general. Especially a few passages like Ecc 11:7–10 and Ecc 9:7–10, where the Teacher encourages us to enjoy life. As with everything in Ecclesiastes you’ll have to spend some time studying to make sure you feel that he’s endorsing pleasure in the context of the whole book (the Teacher is confusing, to put it mildly).

And I see strong hints that pleasure is an intrinsic good in that joy is a Biblical virtue (Gal 5:22, Neh 8:11), that many passages presuppose (or command) our delight in God (John 15:11, Psalm 1:2, Philippians 4:4), and that pleasure is a shorthand for the goodness God offers us (Psalm 16:11).

In fact, there is a whole host of passages that command or presuppose our joy: Deut. 28:47; 1 Chr. 16:31,33; Ps. 32:11; Ps. 33:1; Ps. 35:9; Ps. 40:8,16; Ps. 42:1–2; Ps. 63:1,11; Ps. 64:10; Ps. 95:1; Ps. 98:4; Ps. 97:1,12; Ps. 104:34; Ps. 105:3; Isa. 41:16; Joel 2:23; Zech. 2:10; Zech. 10:7; 2 Cor. 9:7; cf. Acts 20:35; Philippians 3:1. Heb. 10:34; Heb. 13:17; 1 Pet. 5:2.

That latter list, incidentally, was mostly lifted from some essays by a pastor and theologian named John Piper. He has written extensively on “Christian Hedonism” and these two brief essays are excellent introductions to the subject: We Want You To Be A Christian Hedonist, Brothers, Consider Christian Hedonism!

And to clarify, the fact that the pleasure of even a sinful action is intrinsicly good does not make the action itself good. Nor does it even make the fact that you derive pleasure from it good (consider, for instance, laughing at a perverse joke or the less common case of necrophilia). All that I assert is that pleasure is intrinsicly good and that we need to appreciate that fact. Some Christians treat pleasure as somehow bad for you and are instantly suspicious of anything fun or entertaining. That’s just bad theology. The fact that something produces pleasure should cause us to give it the benefit of the doubt rather than assume it guilty until proven innocent.

This has been a public service announcment.

Dana’s Biggest Words

Dana is 18 months old now, and her two biggest words are opposites and Rochester (a friend of hers is on vacation in said community).

It’s really funny to watch her say them. It takes all of her mental power to get all the syllables out in the right order and with the correct emphasis.

Kids are great.

On a related note, my pastor’s youngest son has starting saying suffering succotash, but is tragically prone to confusing his s’s with f’s. I leave the ensuing mispronunciation to your agile imagination.

Pastor, Is Your Church Too Small?

He even looks a little like a pastor...Adam Long recently emailed this to me and some other friends and with his permission I post it here for the world to enjoy.

A disclaimer: I don’t know anything about Nelson Searcy. He’s probably a great guy who has very helpful insights. The commentary below isn’t about him or his ministry–it’s about his marketing. In fact, it’s about the way most ministry training is marketed. And it’s pretty funny.

I have a long running problem with the conflation of capitalist marketing and church life. Yes, yes, I believe in redeeming the culture. No, no, I’m not a Marxist. But I think that we may be heading down a dangerous road. And we need to think things through before diving in.

So here’s my problem. I think there’s too much similarity between marketing for “church growth” services and male enhancement products.

Please don’t dismiss this. I’m not trying to be unnecessarily provocative. I don’t completely buy Freud, but so much church growth material seems to tap a certain form of envy that strikes many males.

Just take a look at the following quotes from the attached piece, “WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT A COACHING COMMUNITY WITH NELSON SEARCY.”

  • Assimilation has been huge!!!
  • I was slumping in my personal growth
  • This would have saved me several years of frustration
  • You don’t have to be alone, do it alone
  • Coaching Community gave me more confidence, competency
  • Do it! It is worth exponentially more than the fees!
  • Don’t miss this opportunity to grow yourself

I’ve heard people compare TBN to the Home Shopping Network. It’s so easy to make fun of others as long as their religious style differs from ours. But what happens when “our” groups sound like Enzyte comercials? Seriously? What do we do?

The uber-witty Anthony Scoma replied:

That is hilarious, but you missed the best line, My being challenged as a leader has raised “the bar” for leaders in our church.

Good News/Bad News

When I’m not out preaching, our family attends Pathway Church in Palo Alto. Pathway is an 8‑month old church plant. Good things are happening there–a Mormon lady converted last week, for instance.

But anyone who’s ever started a ministry from scratch knows that some days are just painful to be a part of. Things go wrong that you would never imagine could go wrong.

This was one such day.

  • Good News: guest shows up based entirely on our internet ads.
    Bad News: while chatting with the pastor before the service she is struck solidly in the neck by a frisbee and has to go home, take some medicine, and lie down.
  • Good News: I brought five students from Stanford to check out the church.
    Bad News: every single one of our regulars who wasn’t helping missed church today. Every. Single. One. During worship it was me and the students in the congregation.
  • Good News: the songs were really cool songs.
    Bad News: two of the microphones stopped working between the sound check and the start of service and somehow the keyboard became possessed by a demon. At least, that’s my best guess. It sure moaned as though possessed.
  • Good News: Scott’s sermon was thoughtful and well-presented.
    Bad News: the translation that was shown on the screen was different from the translation Scott was reading despite being purportedly the same (further investigation reveals there are two editions of the New Living Translation–our pew Bibles are the first and our computer Bible is the second–who knew?). The effect was disconcerting and distracted from an otherwise excellent message.

I’m not one to hyperspiritualize things, but I see a correlation between the success our church has been enjoying lately and all the “nobody’s fault” glitches that popped up today. The Bible teaches us that we have an enemy, and sometimes he leaves scat behind.

This is clearly going to be one of those services we spend a lot of time laughing about in a few years… especially the frisbee in the neck bit. How random is that?

Python Eats Alligator, Pops

This just in from National Geographic: pythons eat alligators and get really bad indigestion xxx movie . “Clashes between alligators and pythons have been on the rise in the Everglades for the past 20 years. Unwanted pet snakes dumped in the swamp have thrived, and the Asian reptile is now a major competitor in the alligator’s native ecosystem.”

Lay Leadership Summit

Every year our district sponsors an event called The Lay Leadership Summit. It’s a big conference designed to help church volunteers do their jobs better. There are about 50 learning tracks (each with four workshops) ranging from children’s ministry to using the internet effectively to using lighting and sound systems. We, of course, sponsor a college ministry track.

I mention all this by way of introduction to mention two people I interacted with this weekend: Dan Betzer and John Abela.

Dan Betzer is a legend in the Assemblies of God–he’s an incredible speaker, a missions fanatic, and an extremely successful pastor. He’s also a bit of a hero of mine (his wife, incidentally, blogs).

Anyway, I learned two things about him this weekend:
1) he once lost his ministerial credentials for seven years for flouting the hierarchy’s rules
2) he’s such an introvert that he keeps his office at 60 degrees so that people feel too chilly to hang around and chit-chat

For the record, he and I have never had a conversation. I gleaned one tidbit from his sermon and another from a friend of his.

The second person I met was John Abela. John is a former core member of the phpBB2 team and runs the most popular conglomeration of Assemblies of God websites in the world. I am told that his total bandwidth exceeds that of all the national Assembly of God websites in every nation combined.

That tickles me. Many of our leaders attempt to lead by limiting information and don’t seem to realize that’s no longer possible. John has effectively done an end run on a ton of stupid rules in the Assemblies of God and because he’s a layperson no one can stop him–he’s got no credentials for them to revoke. I love it.

He mentioned that he gets a phone call from some AG official or another about once a week asking him to stop doing what he’s doing. Even allowing for conversational hyperbole, that sounds about right. He’s making people nervous enough that we’ve even had resolutions at General Council prompted by one of his sites.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I think John’s a cool guy and that he’s making our movement better by using the web to help people. Kudos to him.