Another one bites the dust!

When you don't listen to Mr. Trump, you get fired. It's just that simple.

When you want to win The Apprentice and the Donald says, "You don't want to bring in Mark," or "I just don't know why you would bring Markus in with you." Trump TOLD HIM HOW TO STAY ALIVE and he ignored it.

Last week, Kristi was smart enough to keep her yap shut when Carolyn gave her the hand. In the end, Melissa was fired for being difficult, rather than Kristi for coming up with a bad marketing campaign (XXX) and not hustling more to win (and for giving Trump the lame excuse, "we only lost by $19." He HATES that!). She let Melissa hang herself with her, "I don't work well with women - they are intimidated by my beauty and intelligence" comment.

Key lesson from the movie, "The Godfather": when you kill a guy, it's not personal, it's just business. Chris let his dislike for Markus get in the way of his better judgment. It was obvious Trump liked the guy and would not have fired him if Mark had been brought in.

Lesson from last week: Shut your cake hole.

Lesson from this week: Think with your head, not with your heart.

Another great quote...

Walt Disney’s widow was being interviewed after the completion of Disney World in Florida. The reporter remarked, "Isn’t it a shame that your husband never got to see this?" Mrs. Disney quickly corrected him. "He did see it. That is why it is here!"

(HT: The Leadership Blog)

Inspiration for your blog template...

I like the look of my blog. I like it, but I don't love it. However, if I change it, it's going to be a total redesign. Go big, or go home, I say.

Anyway, toward that end, I have been playing around and learning about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Want to see it put into use beautifully and get some inspiration for your site at the same time? Check out css Zen Garden. Wow! Lot's of beautiful designs - and they want you to use their ideas as inspirations for your own!

Check out the Garden HERE. BTW, my current personal favorite is 45 RPM. I don't know that I would use that design for my site, but I like the feel.

Photo by Bryan Mullennix. Getty Images (Collection: Photodisc Red, image #aa051376)

Quote of the day...

"When it's my work, I use my energy. When it's God's work, I use His energy."

Me

Take a break - make a movie!

Want to tap into your inner Cecil B. DeMille? Check out DFilm! Click on the D.Film MovieMaker logo on the DFilm home page and have at it! Remember, you don't have to stop at only one scene! Then send your finished movie to your friends. Or send it to yourself and post the link to your masterpiece in the comments so everyone can see it!

Check out mine HERE.

Sunday recap - 09.25.05

Here's the recap from the weekend at NewCov...

WORSHIP:

• Grace Like Rain
• Majestic
• Doxology
• Humble Thyslef in the Sight of the Lord (old school...)

DRAMA:

• "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall"

OTHER ELEMENTS:

• Communion
• The Wonderful Cross"
• Raise Up the Crown"

MESSAGE:
"Walk Humbly" (from our Senoir Pastor, Pastor Jän van Oosten)
To have humility without hypocrisy you need to...

• Let go of your ego
• Focus on what really matters

Humility enables us to...

• Do what is needed regardledss of recognition.
• To be grateful for what we have.
• To trust God.

Here's a great quote Jän used from St. Francis of Assisi: "All-getting separates us from one another. All-giving unites us with each other."

All in all this was a fantastic message - definately one of Jän's best.

Total attendance: 1396

Sunday night unwind... 09.25.05

For a while now I have enjoyed reading Just Charlie, by Georgia church planter, Charlie Pharis. Every Sunday night, he posts his Sunday night unwind. I thought it was a great idea to steal, er, borrow. Thanks for the great idea (and posts).

Tonight's unwind is all about mood music, "Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble" by RiverTribe. If you don't know this group from Australia, check them out. I will be relaxed and asleep in 10 minutes. It is just what the doctor ordered after a LONG day.

(HT: Just Charlie)

What mood are you in?

The other day, VT sent me a link to a fun tool to tell you what mood you are in. You are shown eight colors and you are supposed to clik on them in order of your preference. Try the Mood Analysis Test at www.colorgenics.com. Be warned, though... it doesn't work on Firefox (that is so lame!).

Here's what it says about me right now...

Utmost in your mind is success. You are constantly seeking stimulation and a life full of experience. You are trying to 'grow' and above all you need to develop freely and to shake off the shackles of self-doubt. You are an enthusiastic individual, full of life with the desire to live intensely. You like contact with others and are enthusiastic by nature. You are receptive to anything new, modern or intriguing. Your interests are many and you are likely to expand your fields of activities. You are optimistic about the future and you deserve every success because deep down you are a 'winner'.

You need an atmosphere of peace and quiet and you would like to share a bond of understanding with the 'right person' - you have the belief that with the right person, your stress and anxiety could be minimised.

Everyone has to compromise at times and circumstances are such that at this time you are feeling the need to do just that. Put all of your hopes on the back burner and let matters flow for a time - forgo some of the things you want. The good times are just around the corner.

As of late, you have been experiencing untold stress and this is a result of continuous frustration. You haven't been taking care of all your physical needs and it's beginning to show. It would seem that you have a need to find someone to whom you can really relate - someone perhaps whose standards are as high as your own. You want to be different - to be individualistic - to stand out from the common herd. Your inherent control of your sensual instincts is restricting your ability to give yourself to open up freely but this being on your own, being lonely, often makes you feel the need to give up some of your strict standards to surrender to the general flow - to be like everyone else; a part of the herd. Deep down you regard such instincts as weaknesses to be overcome. You would like to be loved or admired for yourself alone. You demand recognition and tender loving care.

The fear that you may not be able to fulfill or realize all of your ambitions makes you work and play hard. The thought of being prevented from achieving the things you want leads you to play your part with frantic fervor.

Have fun!

How sweet it is...

The Apprentice is back! Yeah, baby!

Last night's episode was a great season opener. This should be a fun season. Don't quite know yet who my money will be on, but I know who it won't be on (Markus).

Here's a little bit about the first casualty, Melissa:

Melissa, 30, was a star softball and soccer athlete for much of her youth. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Denver, with a dual B.S. degree in Accounting and International Finance, and two Master Degrees in Accounting and Computer Information Systems. Melissa's Fortune 500 professional foundation includes accounting and tax consulting at KPMG, followed by becoming Vice President of Investments at Wachovia Securities. She built a portfolio of investments valued more than $48 million in her first year as a stockbroker. True to her entrepreneurial spirit, Melissa founded Mosaic Co., offering title and inspection services, mortgage lending, and lease-option housing, after many years of buying, selling, and rehabbing properties. She recently acquired several apartment buildings in Fla. and is currently expanding into the hospitality and senior housing industries.

And did she mention to the producers she was Hispanic - or was that just to everyone else... all the time... ceaslessly.

Melissa graduated magna cum laude. Hmm.. is that a typo? Maybe it was magna too loud?

Melissa, you need to learn to keep your cake hole shut. Thanks for playin'. Buh-bye!

Post-hurricane compassion...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (and Rita?), we are left with more questions than answers. Our hearts are moved and go out to the victims of this natural disaster.

How can we rebuild? What lessons can we learn? What steps can we take? At TownHall.com, columnist Marvin Olasky offers these suggestions to political leaders who want to offer long-term, post-Katrina help in a compassionate conservative way:

1. Listen to and learn from the real poverty experts, those who have fought their way out of it.
2. Tweak tax rules to make it financially possible for that black single mom, as well as middle-class individuals, to help evacuees for a year or even more.
3. Do not discriminate in any way against groups that see the importance of offering spiritual as well as material help.
4. Provide student evacuees with vouchers so they can attend any schools in their new communities, whether governmental, private or church-based.
5. Create the "Gulf Opportunity Zone" (encompassing the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama disaster area) that President Bush has called for, and within it provide tax relief for small businesses as well as other spurs to entrepreneurship.
6. Honor compassionate "first responders" by telling the story of not only what went wrong, but what went right.
7. Thank God for His mercy. With everything that can go wrong in the world, with hurricanes each year filling most of the letters of the alphabet, it's worth noting that only a few become infamous. Why should we assume good weather and good health? Why not be thankful for days of clear skies or gentle rains?

Read the entire article HERE.

News of the bizarre...

Those that know me know that I love a weird news story. Like the one the other day about the life-sized sculpture of The King. Not the King of the Ages... the King of Rock-n-Roll: Elvis Presley.

It seems that the State Fair of Texas in Dallas will feature a life-size butter sculpture of the late, great Elvis Presley. According to the AP news story, the real Elvis was no stranger to the State Fair. The man known as the King of Rock and Roll performed at the Cotton Bowl in 1956.

The sculpting is being done by a New York artist -- Sharon BuMann (boo-man). The annual expo runs September 30th through October 23rd.

Stranger than that, however is the story from Sydney reported by Reuters: "Power Dressing Man Leaves Trail of Destruction."

It seems an Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.

Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woolen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together.

When he walked into a building in the country town of Warrnambool in the southern state of Victoria Thursday, the electrical charge ignited the carpet.

"There were several scorch marks in the carpet, and we could hear a cracking noise -- a bit like a whip -- both inside and outside the building," said fire official Henry Barton.

Firefighters cut electricity to the building thinking the burns might have been caused by a power surge.

Clewer, who after leaving the building discovered he had scorched a piece of plastic on the floor of his car, returned to seek help from the firefighters.

"We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited," Barton said.

"I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this," he said.

Firefighters took possession of Clewer's jacket and stored it in the courtyard of the fire station, where it continued to give off a strong electrical current.

Read the full story HERE.

Photo by John Drysdale from Getty Images (Hulton Archive, image #ji4343-001 or 51245660)

Check out this great artist...

I came across a great artist this morning while reading about The Grove Center for the Arts in soCal. His name is Wayne Forte. I have included a few more of his painting below. Take a minute to check out his work. It's good stuff.

Sunday recap...

We had a great Sunday at NewCov. Here are some of the stats.

• 1570 people in attendance
• 20 people deployed to Louisiana through the local Red Cross to help with Katrina relief (btw - these were all self-supported or supported by the church. We did not want the local Red Cross to have to deplete their reserves).
• Over $50,000 raised so far for Katrina aid.

Worship set:

• Alive Forever Amen (a great opener, although I think it may have been a bit to hot for first service to handle so early)
• Majestic (a great new song from Lincoln Brewster)
• Your Love, Oh Lord
• Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus
• Closer: God is Great

The message was on "mercy." The main text was from Mark 1:35-42. The key points were:

• Real mercy begins with meditation. It all begins with you and God.
• Real mercy makes proclamation a priority. What we do communicates what we really believe.
• Real mercy is having compassion.

All in all, a great Sunday.

(HT: Terry Storch)

Writers block? Try this...

The other day I found a great post on 43 Folders about "Prompts to Start You Writing." It's a fun article that highlights another great tool on the Creativity Portal.

The Creativity Portal has a great tool called the Imagination Prompt Generator. Click the button and get a question to start you thinking - and (hopefully) writing. Here's a random sample of some of the questions I came across.

1. One thing I want to accomplish TODAY is...
2. 10 things I'd like to learn
3. Name three things you are grateful for.
4. If I were going to be stranded on a desert island, what 10 items would I want in my pockets?
5. What do you sense you're supposed to do before your life is over?

In fact, the Creativity Portal has a whole host of writing prompts here and some good "how-to" links here. For those drawn to the truly bizarre, check out "Five terrible fake LiveJournal memes."

Also, if you are a songwriter, Mark Lee of Third Day has a great series of articles on his blog, This Guy Falls Down, about songwriting. The first is, "21 Songwriting Hacks Introduced." You can find the rest here: Hack 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

(HT: 43 Folders, This Guy Falls Down)

Photo by White Packert. From Getty Images (Iconica, image #a0063-000101a)

Why I blog...

Some of the people I don't know just don't "get" me. Let me be more specific (although, now that I think about it, it is true in a general sense, too). Some people don't "get" why I blog.

So why do I do it?

First, it's a good discipline. I try to write every day. Because of that, it forces me to think creatively, to find interesting things to read and write about, and to write well. In short, it makes me a better person.

Secondly, it is a great leadership tool (check out Randy Elrod's article on "Effectively and Strategically Leading Teams Through Blogging"). I can point me team to stuff I think they would enjoy, learn from, be inspired by, etc. Additionally, it gives them a window into my heart and soul by showing them what makes me ticks (and ticks me off).

So that's why I do it - it's good for me and it's good for my team. I truly believe that any ministry leader who is not utilizing a blog as a tool to enhance their leadership is missing out on a valuable opportunity.

Mark Batterson of evotional.com was recently interviewed by Eric Wilbanks in Ministries Today (September/October 2005) regarding why he is so passionate about the importance of blogging. Here's what he had to say:

The larger your church gets, the more important it is to blog. It allows the entire congregation to be part of my world, to feel like they really know their pastor. It allows the congregation to feel like you are touchable and approachable.

I concur with Mark's thoughts. If you are new to blogging, try this (assuming a ministry model):

1. On Friday, write a short article on what's coming up on Sunday.
2. On Sunday afternoon or Monday morning, write about what God did on Sunday. Remember to praise your staff and volunteers.
3. During the middle of the week, write an article that will give your team a "tool" they can use in their ministry.

That's it - great stuff in only three days a week!

Here are a few tips I found on evotional.com (see the full article here):

1. Blog for yourself. It's a good discipline to be journaling, meditating and capturing thoughts.
2. Never put anything on your blog that you fear will come back to haunt you.
3. Never talk about other people. This is about you.
4. Be careful to protect your family. Use good judgment concerning disclosure and transparency.
5. Blog for others. It helps them feel like they know you.
6. Have an abundance mentality. When you discover a great thing, let your readers know about it.
7. Find your voice. Make your blog a reflection of who you are as a leader.
   

Go ahead... try it... start a blog. Take advantage of a great tool that will enhance your leadership and help you grow as a leader.

Photograph by Sakis Papadopoulos. From Getty Images (Photographer's Choice, image #200214820-001)

Creativity...

I found a great site called the Creativity Portal. Creativity Portal is an imagination inducing sanctuary for artists, writers, crafters, and creativity enthusiasts. It's been featured in Imagine magazine, Writer's Digest, Blogger's Buzz, and thousands of other places Web-wide. It features free coaching articles, creative projects and printables, and quality hand-selected 'how to' Web resources designed to inspire your creativity.

One of the articles that caught my attention was "11 Tips to Surviving a Day Job with Your Creativity Intact." I've summarized it below. For the full article, go here.

1. Name your vision. Your vision functions much like the keel on a sailboat, cutting invisibly through the sea to keep the boat upright. If you’re working a day job and feel the urge to make art but have no larger vision, you probably find yourself scraping through the day with annoyance gnawing holes in your belly, saddled with a general sense of dissatisfaction and malaise... Visions are buoyant bubbles that lift the heart and make it sing.
2. Set a creative goal that will keep you moving. Once you know what your vision is, you can bring it to life by setting a goal and working towards it... Many artists feel uncomfortable with speaking about their art in terms of goals, preferring to “make art for art’s sake.” But goals can be applied creatively to even the most process-oriented method... A goal that serves your vision will give your everyday activities meaning and clarity.
3. Begin the night before. Before you go to bed, think about the three most important things to do the next day to bring you closer to your goal and write them down... By writing down your goals the night before, you’re already ahead of the game when you wake up in the morning. Choose your goals realistically, keeping in mind the time and energy required for your job. Don’t be too hard on yourself; you’re learning to balance.
4. Get up early. Don’t laugh — those extra moments or hours can be the most productive of your day... The stillness of the early hours is a fine time to concentrate. If you use the time wisely, you’ll be miles ahead of the rest of your time zone. Not everyone functions well in the morning and you may resist this idea. But please don’t discount it until you give it a fair try. The body can adjust to almost anything, and it takes a good three weeks to assume a new habit. Give yourself a month of early rising before you go back to burning the midnight oil.
5. Design a morning ritual and do it every day. Ritual is like the steady tick-tock of the minute hand through our lives. It keeps us on track and moving forward... A fifteen-minute ritual in the morning is all it takes to start your day with a creative act that will reverberate through all your subsequent movements and activities.
6. Learn to do the Lifeboat Exercise. Stopping whatever you’re doing to create for ten minutes is an invaluable survival skill, and practicing drills at home can save your life out in the world.
7. Set a theme for the day. The point is to see the day (and the day job) as a work of art rather than a series of drudgeries keeping you from your true vocation... Practice holding this truth in your awareness and you will never be bored.
8. Practice relevance. This is the practical extension of setting a theme for the day. It’s easy to see our day jobs as intrusions on our valuable time and basically irrelevant to the important things in our lives. Practicing relevance can enhance the productivity of those hours by influencing both the day job tasks and our own art... Staying awake to what the work we’re being paid for has to offer our own creative work makes the moment richer, the time go faster, and both kinds of work qualitatively better.
9. Put on the headphones and crank up the volume. As artists our media may appear to be stone or words or movement or music, but as creative souls our medium is energy. You cannot use energy creatively if you stop it from flowing; you won’t have any material to work with. Be its friend, invite it in, learn to dance.
10. Surround yourself with who you are. Everyone in every job has at least two inches of workspace they can call their own. You may have a desk or a locker or an entire office to yourself. Bring your inspiration to work and don’t be shy... See working with the limitations of your workspace as an artistic challenge. Learn to see yourself and your vision for yourself reflected in your environment, wherever you are.
11. Be grateful. Gratitude is a prosperous and productive state of mind, and absolutely essential to true creativity. Remembering to be grateful for the fact that we’re earning money at all and putting food on the table keeps us open to the positive things that come our way throughout the day... If you’re having trouble giving thanks because you can’t see past your lack of money or time or the necessities of life, try starting with air, sunshine (or rainfall), blades of grass, leaves on trees, roofs over heads. Abundance is everywhere. Once you start naming the blessings that surround you, you may not be able to stop.

Article by Jori Lynn Keyser. Jori Lynn Keyser is a prosperity coach for artists and craftspeople, with a site that offers creativity coaching for artists and budding artists of all kinds. Art in Abundance is about being more creative, generating prosperity through our art, and living a more satisfying and productive life.

Photo by Joel Sartore from Getty Images (National Geographic Collection, image #ngs35_0135).

Conservatives and movies and James Woods...

I love the movies. I love a well-made film with an engaging story. Who doesn't?

I also love learning about movies and, more specifically, acting, from watching the show, Inside the Actor's Studio. James Lipton does a great job of allowing us to take a glimpse into what makes a particular actor tick. Getting to hear people like Clint Eastwood talk about their career and their approach to movies is fascinating.

James Woods has been a guest on the show and was recently interviewed by Zap2It. In his interview he has some very interesting views/opinions about the Hollywood institution:

"I'd really decided I don't want to act anymore," Woods says. "People say 'Why?' and I go, 'Have you been to the movies lately?' They're just horrible, as everybody knows now. They've gotten so bad..."

He continues, without pause, "If you ran any other business this way, you'd be out of business in 10 minutes. It's like, 'How about I make 100 cars and 98 of them stink and crash and blow up on the highway and two are like OK and they give us enough revenue.' Do you know how hard it is to get five nominees for the Oscars? They go, 'Are you kidding with that movie?' Well there's no other movies. The other 595 stink..."

"I've been on movies where the money that's spent is so profligate that it's mindboggling," he says. "I'm not a big liberal, but I have to say, the first thing you think of is 'You could feed a nation with the money you're wasting on this movie, with people's vanity...'"

"In this politically correct era, the middle-aged heterosexual white guy gets to play one part, he gets to play the asshole in the suit," Woods grouses. "That's the only part they make anymore. That's the only part there is for a white heterosexual guy. Sorry, but it's the truth. Even when he's the hero now: Like Tom Cruise in 'War of the Worlds,' he's the hero, right? Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, H.G. Wells, how do you top that? They do a remarkable job of how the make the movie and so on, but he has to be a father who's a lousy parent, a terrible ex-husband, blah blah blah."

After the desire for oxygen temporarily kicks in: "You can't be a heterosexual white guy and be a hero anymore. You've gotta be really flawed and really bad and a piece of crap. Otherwise, the marketing department says, 'You can't have white guys be decent people. They're the enemy. They only put a man on the Moon and wrote 'Hamlet.' Why should we let them have any cred?'"

You can read the entire Zap2It article here.

Perspective...

Jonathan Schwartz, President and COO of Sun Microsystems said, "You get a different perspective on the world when you go out and participate in it."

In the church we have been called to action... to do... to help... to be fishers of men. Too often I find that instead of doing something, we call a meeting to talk about how we might do something; instead of helping, we sit around and talk about all the different ways we might be able to help; instead of being fishers of men, we become ichthyologists - studying the fish, becoming experts even, but without actually catching any fish.

We need to be out there in the trenches. When we go, we might actually be able to change things: to do some good... to lead some people to Jesus. Additionally, our perspective of "the lost" might change, too. Not our perspective as to their "lostness," but our perspective regarding WHO they are (as opposed to WHAT they are).

When that happens, we might actually begin to make an impact.

We need to participate in the world if we are going to ever change it. So let's get to it.

What's your MP3 player say about you?

The New York Times had an interesting article about MP3 players and their owners today. In a telephone poll of American digital music player owners, 50% of them store fewer than 100 songs on their players. The average device, the survey found, was loaded with 375 songs.

"It's not just music players," said Kaan Yigit, the president of Solutions Research. "The storage capacity of most digital devices today far exceeds what we know people do with them."

Partly because of the higher storage capacity of most iPods, Mr. Yigit said, owners of those devices carry an average of 504 songs. iPod owners surveyed, he added, tend to have substantially higher household incomes, buy more music both online and on CD's and tend to be older than people who use other brands of players.

The telephone survey of 1,062 adults was conducted in May and June. The growing number of lower-price, and lower-capacity, iPod shuffles shipped since then may have somewhat altered the market, Mr. Yigit acknowledged. Also, the survey does not account for other things that may be stored in the devices, such as digital photo files.

Among the 1,062 people surveyed, it appears that iPod owners have more varied musical tastes. Mr. Yigit said that they were four times as likely as non-iPod users to listen to various kinds of music. There is, however, one glaring exception.

"Very few of them identified country as their favorite music," said Mr. Yigit.

Read the entire article here.

Word verification....

With apologies to those who regularly post comments here, but I am getting an increasing amount of spam comments and so I have turned on word verification for comments. It means you'll have one extra step to leave a comment.

Thanks for continuing to read AND comment!

Question of the day...

OK gang... here's the question of the day. I'm interested to hear your responses:

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"

Let's hear it...

Photograph by Burke/Triolo Productions. From Getty Images (Collection: Brand X Pictures). Image #brxbxp139548

Reaching the unchurched (Part 1)

Rick Warren from Saddleback Church in California published great article (actually what will be a series of articles) on how to reach the unchurched at Pastors.com. The author of the article, Thom Rainer (who was recently nominated to be the president of Lifeway Christian Resources) actually went and TALKED to unchurhed people to find out how they could be reached (what a novel idea!).

In part one of this three-part series, here is what Rainer reveals:

1. Major on majors. Churches that reach the unchurched tend to major on majors: worshipping the living God and reaching people who face a Christ-less eternity.
   
2. Be biblical, conservative, and convictional. A church can attempt many good contextual efforts to reach the unchurched, but if it does not have the foundations of a high view of Scripture, the efforts are either futile or transient. I have yet to discover a church that consistently reaches the unchurched over a several-year period that is not conservative in its theology.
   
3. Give evangelism priority and passion. Too many church leaders seek to copy the methodologies of growing churches without emulating their hearts. Never expect to be a church for the unchurched unless you have a passion for evangelism.
   

The full text of this article can be found here.

Photograph taken by Robert Harding. Photo of Mosaic of Christ, Santa Sofia, Istanbul Turkey. From Getty Images, image #dv1915670.