Seth Godin had a post last week where he wonders aloud whether Jerry Garcia ever got jealous of bands that had regular radio airtime. The Grateful Dead had precisely one hit record over their thirty years as a band… yet they are known not only as one of the most influential bands of all time, but also as one of the most successful.  The loyal fan base that would follow them from concert to concert is [...]

Last week I touched on my man crush on Bob Lutz, the former Vice Chairman of General Motors. Since that post I have been reading Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business, and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Throughout the book Lutz looks at root issues behind GM’s bankruptcy, and explains how this once great company lost its’ way.  I am convinced that there is a great deal for church leaders to [...]

This week I have been thinking a good bit about how important different perspectives have been to the journey that God has brought me on.  Much of this has to do with a segment of On The Media that spoke about echo chambers, and how we tend to surround ourselves with voices and viewpoints that are similar to our own.  I often wonder how much harm we unintentionally do to ourselves by limiting the sphere [...]

I have a love hate relationship with Facebook.  I have shared about some of my concerns about the social media giant in the past, but I do believe that the ability to hear from differing perspectives on different subjects is of great value… if you can find them (more on that tomorrow).  Yesterday morning, before heading off to church, I was scanning through Facebook and saw someone post the question “why do you think people [...]

As we continue down the road with this missional conversation by examining our existing church structures we encounter along the was some things from the old world and wonder how they will work in the new world.   Recently a church planter friend asked me my thoughts on three things he has stumbled across.  He is working to innovate and discover new models of being the church that better empower people to live as missionaries. [...]

I like Bob Lutz. I have always enjoyed his candor, and his interview on Colbert a few years back solidified my man crush on him.  Earlier this month Kai Ryssdal interviewed Lutz on Marketplace, where Bob said this: But it is true that giving the customer the absolute finest automobile that General Motors could possibly produce has proven to be the correct approach to the automobile business because this finance-generated effort to skimp and see [...]

For the first five years of my life my family lived in an apartment complex in Parkville, a town just outside of Baltimore.  The complex was fairly spread out (for being that close to the city) and had a decent size patch of woods that I could spend my days adventuring in.  One of the big adventures that my friends and I took part in on a daily basis was digging a hole.  Now most [...]

I mentioned yesterday that the 2011 Southern Baptist Convention was held last week in Phoenix, Arizona.  Because of my recent affiliation with the SBC I have watched the convention online over the past several years.  Watching the convention, I get a sense of what is going on across the country, and the SBC is often a good indicator of what is going on in the evangelical Christian world.  The motions, while often comical, can also [...]

Last week Southern Baptists from all over the country descended upon Phoenix for the 2011 Southern Baptist Convention.  Having planted a Southern Baptist Church I found myself drawn to watching the convention online in order to stay in the loop on all things SBC.  In a report released just prior to the convention Ed Stetzer once again told a truth that scares many long time baptists: baptisms are down, membership is falling off, and we have moved [...]

I am not a golf person.  I figure that I have enough of a struggle with cursing in frustration that the last thing I ought to be doing is playing golf.  I also tend to have trouble with sports that require a degree of finesse, or touch.  I was a lineman on the high school football team, while at the Air Force Academy I played rugby and was the goon on our squadron’s team handball [...]