Relevant Network Strikes Again

I’ve just received my third install­ment of resources from Rel­e­vant Net­work. I reviewed my first box, meant to review my sec­ond but got a lit­tle bit busy, and now want to tell you what came in my third (and also allude to the sec­ond when appro­pri­ate).

In both the sec­ond and third box­es I received 5 copies of the most recent issue of Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine. Nice for hand­outs to students–I gave away the last ones and I’ll give these away as well.

In both of the last two box­es I received the lit­tle mag­a­zinelet Rel­e­vant Leader, which seems to be devel­op­ing into some­thing a lit­tle more than the anno­tat­ed resource review it was in the first box.

As in the pre­vi­ous two box­es I received a good mix of books and CDs.

The CDs include:

The books are:

My crit­i­cism of the first box (that it con­tained almost no min­istry resources) has been tend­ed to, inci­den­tal­ly. The last box, for instance, con­tained a High­way Video DVD and a Blue­prints CD from Crave Resources. I was­n’t as impressed with the Blue­prints CD as I want­ed to be, by the way.

This box car­ries on the resource trend with a DVD called That’s My King from Ver­ti­cal Sky Pro­duc­tions. There is also a jour­naly kind of Bible-study thing to accom­pa­ny the Miles to Cross book.

All in all, I still think Rel­e­vant Net­work is the best bang for buck any min­istry to col­le­gians or twen­tysome­things is like­ly to run across.

College Folk and The Assemblies of God

This from the head of Chi Alpha: Accord­ing to the 2003 ACMR Report AG church­es report there are 245,912 adher­ents that are 18–24 years old that attend our church. This rep­re­sents 9% of all AG adher­ents.

By way of com­par­i­son, 18–24 year olds com­prise 14% of the Cal­i­for­nia state pop­u­la­tion (I was unable to quick­ly find the equiv­a­lent nation­al sta­tis­tic).

A Quick Trip East

I’ve been mean­ing to post this for a while, but I kept get­ting dis­tract­ed…

Hav­ing found my wed­ding ring I hopped a plane to Bal­ti­more to serve in Jer­ry’s wed­ding.

I met Jer­ry back in col­lege, when he had real­ly long hair. He’s gone on to get his Ph.D. in sta­tis­tics and now works for the Cen­sus Bureau. He now has much short­er hair.

Any­way, I flew in to Bal­ti­more (arriv­ing at some ungod­ly hour), tried to check into the wrong hotel, and final­ly got set­tled in some­time around 2 or 3 AM, if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly. It’s all a bit of a blur.

The next morn­ing I vis­it­ed the Edgar Allen Poe house, which was in the hood (this was some­what fit­ting, as Poe wrote dis­turb­ing fic­tion and I was great­ly dis­turbed after hav­ing had sev­er­al peo­ple ask me if I was sure I want­ed to be walk­ing down the street). Inter­est­ing­ly enough, even I had to duck to get up the stairs. Poe must have been one short (or lim­ber) dude.

After that I had the best crab cake I’ve ever had in my life at Fai­d­ley Seafood.

Then I head­ed down to DC. I looked at tons of his­tor­i­cal and inspi­ra­tional buildings/monuments/memorials. By far the coolest was the Library of Con­gress. No, real­ly. If you’ve nev­er gone on the guid­ed tour you have to go and check out the read­ing room. It’s astound­ing!

Added to my before-I-die list: do research in the Library of Con­gress (any­one can do it, you just need to make time in your sched­ule).

By for­tu­nate hap­pen­stance, Siew Ying (one of our Chi Alpha stu­dents) was in D.C. at the same time I was, so we got to hang out togeth­er for a bit.

I also had a chance to meet with Mark Bat­ter­son, pas­tor of Nation­al Com­mu­ni­ty Church. He’s one of the most inter­est­ing and well-read pas­tors I’ve ever met (which is say­ing some­thing). Props to Scott Aught­mon for hook­ing me up with the meet­ing!

Any­way, I head­ed down to Wal­dorf, MD to con­nect with Jer­ry and Elvi­ra (his bride-to-be). I helped Jer­ry, Elvi­ra, their familes, and Tina (the maid of hon­or) do some dec­o­rat­ing for the recep­tion. I also relearned how to tie a slip­knot, which was an unex­pect­ed bonus.

The high­light for me was meet­ing Jer­ry’s friends (espe­cial­ly my fel­low servers Daniel, Tina, and Bethany). Bethany put some pho­tos online, so if you’d like to see me in a tux this is your big chance!

Inci­den­tal­ly, I have to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty for this shot of Bethany plant­i­ng her face in the cake. Drunk peo­ple are so much fun to be around–they’ll do any­thing!

Side note: the recep­tion was pret­ty fun, but I was remind­ed of how sil­ly the Assem­blies of God can look to some peo­ple. Peo­ple were fine with me not drink­ing, but the whole not danc­ing thing was hard for them to wrap their brains around. For the record, I think our pol­i­cy is a bit quirky (and not in an endear­ing way).

On a relat­ed note, I enjoyed meet­ing the ECLA pas­tor who was con­duct­ing the cer­e­mo­ny. Nice guy. He and I are light-years apart the­o­log­i­cal­ly, but I real­ly enjoyed chat­ting with him.

Any­way, the wed­ding went off with­out a hitch (except the hitch that’s the point of the whole thing), and good times were had by all. I did make one faux pas, I did­n’t real­ize that Elvi­ra was­n’t chang­ing her last name to Maples and said some­thing like “How does it feel to be Mrs. Elvi­ra Maples?” Oh well, worse mis­takes have been made.

Before fly­ing out I got to swing by D.C. again, vis­it the Daedalus Books Ware­house, and eat some more crab cakes in Bal­ti­more.

Spe­cial thanks to Jer­ry for invit­ing me to share in his wed­ding, to Elvi­ra for mar­ry­ing Jer­ry, to Daniel for let­ting me stay with him, to Tina for doing such a great job with the dec­o­ra­tions, and to Bethany for being such an enter­tain­ing per­son (even more­so when she’s sober). And a big thanks to Paula for let­ting me galla­vant around the East coast like that.

Oh, while trav­el­ing I saw both Dodge­ball and Har­ry Pot­ter 3. They were both much bet­ter than I thought they would be.

You Know You’re From Louisiana

I got one of those for­wards from a friend (Brandt Noel) this morn­ing. He nev­er for­wards me stuff, so I decid­ed to take a look at it. I liked it!

In abridged ver­sion, here’s a Louisiana primer:

  1. There are 5,000 types of snakes, and 4,998 live in Louisiana.
  2. Squir­rels will eat any­thing. And folks in Louisiana will eat squir­rel.
  3. If it grows, it sticks; if it crawls, it bites.
  4. It is not a shop­ping cart, it is a bug­gy.
  5. “Fix­in­to” is one word.
  6. There ain’t no such thing as “lunch.” There’s “din­ner” and then
    there’s “sup­per.”!
  7. Sweet tea is appro­pri­ate for all meals, and you start drink­ing it when you’re two.
  8. “Jeet?” is actu­al­ly a phrase mean­ing “Did you eat?”

And you know you’re from LA (Louisiana, that is) if:

  1. You mea­sure dis­tance in min­utes.
  2. You use “fix” as a verb. Exam­ple: I am fix­ing to go to the store.
  3. You “axe” peo­ple ques­tions. Exam­ple: I got some­thin’ to axe you ’bout.
  4. You only own four spices: salt, Tony’s, Tabas­co and ketchup.
  5. The local papers cov­er nation­al and inter­na­tion­al news on one page
    and six pages for local gos­sip and sports.
  6. You think that the first day deer sea­son is a nation­al hol­i­day.
  7. You find 100 degrees Fahren­heit “a lit­tle warm.”
  8. You know all four sea­sons: almost sum­mer, sum­mer, still sum­mer,
    and Christ­mas.
  9. You describe the first cool snap (below 70 degrees) as good gum­bo weath­er.
  10. A car­bon­at­ed soft drink isn’t a soda, cola, or pop…it’s a Coke, regard­less of brand or fla­vor. Exam­ple: “What kin­na coke you want?”
  11. Fried Cat­fish is the oth­er white meat.
  12. You laugh out loud when you vis­it friends from oth­er states and they com­plain about the humid­i­ty.

Great Biblical Charts

Check out the great bib­li­cal charts at threetwoone.org (scroll down a bit until you see the “reli­gious” sec­tion).

Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the Old Tes­ta­ment overview.

One dis­claimer: the author seems to come from a mod­er­ate (rather than con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­er­al) per­spec­tive on Bib­li­cal schol­ar­ship. Adjust the charts accord­ing­ly based on your con­vic­tions.

Stanford Rocks At Sports (Again)

Scan­ning the news that backed up for me while I was away, I notice that Stan­ford was the best sports pro­gram in Amer­i­ca for the 10th year in a row.

Woohoo!

I hon­est­ly did­n’t think we’d get it this year. Shows what I know.

Along ath­let­ic lines, I found Supreme Court Jus­tic San­dra Day O’Con­nor’s com­ment at grad­u­a­tion pret­ty fun­ny:

“I am expect­ing to see any day at the Court a ne exeat peti­tion from Stan­ford for an order to pre­vent these depar­tures. As I count it, we have at least four Stan­ford votes on the Supreme Court at present.” (refer­ring to coach­ing changes–basketball coach Mike Mont­gomery and ten­nis coach Dick Gould are leav­ing)

I’m Back

I got back from Washington/Baltimore yes­ter­day, and Paula gets back in from Louisiana today. I’ll have to post an account of my trav­els later–they were fun!

Sor­ry about the bounc­ing emails–that should all be straight­ened out now.

Nothing Sketchy About That At All…

Aargh! In just a few hours I’m fly­ing out to Bal­ti­more for a week (I’ll be serv­ing in a friend’s wed­ding, con­nect­ing with some min­istry peers, and sight­see­ing).

Just one lit­tle prob­lem… I lost my wed­ding ring. I sat down to check my email this morn­ing and noticed that my hand felt odd. I glanced down and saw a ring of tan­less flesh where the glint of gold ought to be.

All I can imag­ine is that it came off in the show­er or some­thing.

What a time to mis­place my wed­ding ring. The phrase that keeps run­ning through my head is min­is­ter trav­els with­out wed­ding ring. Noth­ing sketchy about that at all…

Rest assured that a fran­tic search is about to ensue!

Update: found. I was in my bed–I must have been play­ing with it right before I fell asleep or some­thing. Whew!

Nate, Julia, and passages

One of the bit­ter­sweet things about col­lege min­istry is watch­ing the peo­ple in your min­istry grad­u­ate and move on.

That’s fresh on my mind because I bumped into two stu­dents who recent­ly walked the line.

This week­end Julia Heng (who just got her mas­ter’s degree in Man­age­ment, Sci­ence, and Engi­neer­ing) dropped by for a few min­utes to return some stuff she had bor­rowed from us. I had­n’t seen her since our grad­u­at­ing stu­dents celebration–she’d been galla­vant­i­ng around the coun­try with her par­ents (it was her mom’s first time in Amer­i­ca). Then she head­ed back to Sin­ga­pore.

And then this morn­ing I had break­fast with Nate Flake. Nate just grad­u­at­ed from Stan­ford with a degree in lin­guis­tics. He speaks more lan­guages than any­one else I know.

He was­n’t able to join us for the cel­e­bra­tion that we hold right before grad­u­a­tion, and he’s been on the road since receiv­ing his diplo­ma. This was the first time since then that we’ve been able to con­nect.

And tomor­row he flies to Chi­na for a year. He’s not sure what he’ll do there, he just knows that he does­n’t want to teach Eng­lish. He’s angling for a job as a trans­la­tor or some­thing.

Good luck and God­speed, Julia & Nate! We’ll miss you.

Groovin’

I down­loaded Groove Work­space today to see if it would be use­ful in our minstry train­ing pro­gram.

Will it ever!

I per­suad­ed Antho­ny to down­load it and give it a whirl. This soft­ware is absolute­ly amaz­ing. We were able to talk over the net quite effec­tive­ly and could col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly edit doc­u­ments and do all sorts of oth­er cool stuff. We could eas­i­ly work as a team on ser­mon prepa­ra­tion or con­duct web sem­i­nars or do just about any­thing involv­ing ideas.

Free for per­son­al use (with restric­tions) and afford­able for pro­fes­sion­al use. What a com­bo!

Now I just can’t wait until Groove 3.0 comes out…