Weekend Annoyances

Mild­ly Annoy­ing: our neigh­bors hav­ing a loud, late par­ty
More Annoy­ing: it being a karoake par­ty
Pret­ty Darn Annoy­ing: hav­ing Blood­hound Gang’s Noth­ing But Mam­mals on the playlist
Extreme­ly Annoy­ing: lis­ten­ing to it sung off-key with gus­to

Beginning of Serenity Online

About two weeks ago I raved about the movie Seren­i­ty. It turns out that the first nine min­utes are avail­able online so you can judge for your­self.

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.”

Elite Admissions

Mal­com Glad­well has a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on “the social log­ic of Ivy League admis­sions.” I must say, I take umbrage at the “short with big ears” denial–us short­ies got­ta stick togeth­er.