Tag: insights

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Really?

I’ve just been invited to the silliest facebook group ever.  I use the word silly because I’m trying to be nice.

The name of the group is “We Will Not Pay To Use Facebook. We Are Gone If This Happens.”  The capitalization is for emphasis, I think.  The group description goes on to explain that Mark Zuckerberg is going to sell facebook to someone who would then turn it into a pay site.  And this group is out to change all that.

Let’s stop and think for a moment, folks.  See those advertisements along the side of the page in facebook?  They are paying your way.  You are already paying to use facebook.  What Zuckerberg (and whoever buys it from him, someday) have on their hands is a money-making machine.  It’s an advertiser’s dream, really.  I frequently log in and see ads that are so targeted it’s laughable.  My favorite is the one that has a great picture of a fat guy that says “Are you 28 and overweight?” and then goes on to try and sell me something.  How did they know?  Today I saw one targeted specifically to worship leaders.  Again, an advertiser’s dream come true.

So trust me, nobody is going to do anything to make people less likely to log in to facebook.  Especially not charging us.  So all 800,000-plus people (please someone tell me they are mostly high-schoolers) in the group… please leave the group.  You are embarrassing yourself.

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The Satan Debate on Nightline.

I just got done watching the less-edited version of the Nightline debate entitled “Does Satan Exist” (that link appears to be one that will someday no longer point to the specific debate, but just to all of the debates.).  I wanted to give my reactions to a few points.

First off, it was very well-produced, and I thought that the editing didn’t favor one side over the other.  Perhaps that’s because I watched the nearly unedited version online.  Who knows what actually made it to the TV.

There was one point in the debate that really piqued my interest.  They allowed audience members to ask questions, and a girl asked Deepak Chopra what made his experience more valid or more true than the other panelists’ experience.  He immediately retorted that his experience wasn’t more true, but that he could only speak from his point of view.  Then he went on to make the point that her experience was not as in-line with “what we know about science and microbiology…” (not a direct quote, I didn’t go back and check the wording…).

Out of one side of his mouth he would say that her experience is perfectly valid, and then he would immediately turn around and basically call her primitive and uneducated.  Yet he doesn’t see the incongruence there. He spins very pretty word-webs and things that sound pithy and neat but have no real meaning.  “All belief is just a cover-up for insecurity.  Once you know something you no longer have to believe it.  You just experience it.”  …what?

Which brings me to my favorite interchange in the debate (which I really hope made it to the final cut that aired on ABC).  Also between an audience member and Chopra, it went something like this:

Man in Audience: Earlier you said that all belief is just a cover-up for insecurity.  Do you believe that?

Deepak Chopra: Yes.

Man in Audience:  Thanks. (turns to go sit down)

Brilliant.

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My Fickle, Self-Serving heart.

Two years ago, I thought there was far too much post-championship coverage of Florida’s win.  I don’t like Florida.

Last year, I thought there was just about the right amount of post-championship coverage of Kansas’ win.  I like Kansas.

This year, I didn’t think there was nearly enough post-championship coverage of the Heels.  I bleed Carolina Blue.

Maybe it wasn’t the coverage that changed…

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An addendum I wish were added to every support letter I send out.

A couple of days ago I posted a link to a letter we are sending out asking people for money for our upcoming trip across the country to minister in Santa Cruz, California.  One of my fears is that the process of raising support will be misunderstood to be solely a plea for money, or that we will be seen as insensitive.

I’m an American.  By virtue of that, I have deeply ingrained thought processes and assumptions about the nature of reality and humanity that, frankly, aren’t true.  One of the biggest of these assumptions is that independence is a virtue.  Of all of the movements in American pop culture over the past century, name one that has been a movement toward interdependence or selflessness.  Having trouble?  Perhaps only the civil rights movement and some of the hippie communes of the late 60s and early 70s were movements toward interdependence.  And even that dependence was self-serving.  Like Frank Sinatra famously sang, the key to being American is saying “I did it my way.”

So, take that assumption, and add it to the equation of raising financial support for a living.  I am, for all intents and purposes, a professional depender.  I depend on regular financial giving from people who share my passion for seeing the Christ-ian message of grace and forgiveness spread to the corners of the globe from the college campus.  Let me restate that.  I am the hands, feet, and tongue of Christ on the campus.  People that give the money are the heartbeat and life-blood of Christ on campus.  Without the heartbeat, I am shipwrecked, and without the hands and feet, my supporters are impotent.  We need each other.

I forget that fact far too often in my ministry on campus.  I try to disconnect the ministry going on from the people who are really making it happen.  What that looks like is sending out letters asking for support and then forgetting to let people in on what God is doing through them on campus.  Sometimes when I do personally engage supporters it is self-serving.  I often don’t have a mindset of service and worship as I raise support, but instead I frequently have one eye fixed on what’s in it for me.  I start to feel entitled to other people’s money.  That’s embarrassing to put into words, but it’s true.

So as I send out the letters sitting on the other side of laptop waiting to be stuffed into envelopes, I send them out with the recognition that God is doing something in me just as much as he is doing something through me.  Your financial gifts are precious to me, especally during these times of economic uncertainty.  Your giving reassures me that you place more trust in the God of the universe than the future of the American economy.  What a testimony and encouragement.  It is truly an honor to be Christ’s ambassador on campus.  God is using your gift not only to reach lost college students, but to reach me.  He is changing my mindset toward the whole process of raising support, and helping me to really begin to believe that it is developing partners far more than it is raising dollars.  My prayer is that God would use your giving to reach YOU as well.

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I wanna be a world-traveler.

With boots untied and a serious need to pee, I jogged past the visitor center, tripod tucked under my arm.  I glanced at the time: 5:16 AM.  I was hurrying to make it to Bright Angel Point, to watch the sun come up over the Grand Canyon.  It was set to rise at 5:22.  I got to a spot with a great view east and west, and set up the camera.

Then Marge showed up.

I shouldn’t know her name.  I shouldn’t know that she has traveled to Africa and Alaska and the Alps.  I also shouldn’t know that she has no desire to go to the Himalayas and that her favorite thing in the world is dessert in Italy.

I know all of that, from sitting about 30 feet from her watching the sun come up over the world’s most famous canyon.

That’s when it hit me.  I am Marge.  So caught up on myself and how cool I am that I can’t even enjoy what is going on in front of me.  See, Marge didn’t come to the Grand Canyon to see the Grand Canyon.  She came to the Grand Canyon to be able to later, sitting on a boat floating over the Great Barrier Reef, tell someone how beautiful the sun is when it comes up over the Grand Canyon.

And I do the same thing.  In the first paragraph of this post I wanted you the reader to see how well traveled I am.  I want to see the world, so that the world can see me. If I could figure out how to make it revolve around my shoulders, I would.

What a loss it would be to get to the end of my life, stand before Jesus, and tell him how many cities I have visitied, or how many pushups I can do, or how great my magnet collection is.

It’s my prayer that the gospel will continue to change me, and that someday I will actually be more about bringing God glory than about building my list of accomplishments.

But while we are on the subject of my accomplishments, and I can now claim to have peed into the Grand Canyon, just before sunrise.

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