Reese's is the King

Okay, they sounded kinda crazy to me when I heard about them, but I'm always up for something new so I thought I would give them a try (especially when they're on sale - 2 for $1 at SuperAmerica right now). Elvis Peanut Butter & Banana Creme Reese's cups are terrific! The banana is subtle enough that it doesn't overpower the PB or chocolate (which was my first concern) but instead compliments it to create a wonderful taste.

If you like banana and peanut butter at all you have to give this a try! Too bad they're limited edition.

A Fair Time Was Had By All

My last official Frontline event yesterday was our ministry appreciation trip to the Minnesota State Fair. Our group had a great time together but were exhausted by early afternoon with all of the walking! Lots of great food (fried cheese curds, chocolate chip cookies, strawberries and cream, corn dogs, fried Milky Way bar on a stick, all you can drink milk for $1, etc.!) as well as great fellowship together. Plus we got to see former senator and possible future president Fred Thompson ("I'm With Fred!") and see Princess Kay of the Milky Way being carved in butter! How cool is that!

I was also on the WCCO channel 4 noon newscast in the background of the crowd. (Okay, we had to freeze frame and advance at 1/15 speed to see me, but still...) We didn't end up riding any rides (they're expensive and I'm cheap!) but had a blast just hanging out together, eating, and seeing the fair.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Whew. I've been busy this past week since my last blog entry. A quick rundown:

Friday - Leadership Summit day 2. Excellent, again! John Ortberg's talk, "A Leader's Greatest Fear", was especially compelling.

Saturday - Picked up our boys (Jordan and Jonah) from their first-ever week away at Wood Lake Bible Camp near Grantsburg, Wisconsin. They had an excellent time but were a little homesick by the end of the week. I think we missed them more than they missed us, though! Great week, great camp. Highly recommended. (Had to miss the final two sessions of the Summit, but wasn't about to miss seeing the boys after more than a week away!)

Sunday - Finished the Dave Ramsey "No Matter What" series on finances for high school and college students. This final session which was about giving and stewardship was his best in the series.

Monday - Movie Nite with our youth group. Watched National Treasure. Great, fun, clean movie. A good time was had by all.

Tuesday - Spent much of the day at Cabin Coffee with various meetings. The Journey North elders meeting was that night elsewhere (too bad CC closes at 5 p.m.!) Anticipation keeps building for the new church! Lots of things happening and we are looking forward to sharing much at the first pre-launch meeting Sunday.

Wednesday - A great, but exhausting day at Wild Mountain with the youth group! Lots of fun had by all. Lots of soreness had by the leaders. Thanks to Doug Schultz for going as a sponsor.

Leadership Summit doesn't disappoint

The first day of Willow Creek's Leadership Summit was awesome! Not that I'm surprised. I've been to four or five previous Summits and all have been outstanding. I make it a practice to bring students who currently serve in youth group or have leadership potential as it is an awesome way to introduce them to leadership principles and help them begin to think in terms of leadership as it applies to the entire church. I'd also highly encourage any church staff to leverage this event for growth and discussion. It has become a "can't miss" event for me that is a permanent fixture on my calendar.

Bill Hybels started off Thursday with a great message about vision ownership. Carly Fiorina followed up strong in a wonderful interview with Bill and shared about her leadership principles via her time as CEO of HP. I hadn't heard of her before, but now will definitely get her book, Tough Choices, which sadly (for me, not for her) sold out at the resource tables at Eagle Brook Church (our satellite site).

Rev. Floyd Flake spoke in the difficult 'after lunch' session and did a solid job. Marcus Buckingham hit it out of the park with the last talk of the day on putting your strengths to work. I've read his first two books, First, Break All the Rules, and Now, Discover Your Strengths and look forward to his two most recent book. His talk was lively, packed with content, and hysterical at points. All four students I brought were sitting forward in their seats in rapt attention. I could listen to him all day! Great speaker.

I ran across a blog that has some great summaries of the summit at: Live Intentionally. Now I can supplement my own notes from the conference! (Thanks to Mark Bjorlo at the wonderfully named but unrelated The Journey North Community Church of Brainerd for the link.) Not a substitute for being there, but the blog may give you a bit of the flavor of the conference.

The Goat Has Left the Building

For those in ministry who get to teach or preach, you will sympathize with the desire to emulate a great teacher or awesome message. Those of us in youth ministry are always looking for creative ways to communicate, as well. This Christianity Today/Preaching Today article shows some the the challenges you may face. It's hysterical - mostly because I could see myself trying something like it... but not anymore. Here's a clip from John Beukema's The Day I Tried to Preach Like Rob Bell:

It all began at the Willow Creek Conference on Preaching. Rob Bell gave a soul-stirring message on Leviticus 16. The talk described the Day of Atonement, the scapegoat, and the work of the high priest. Rob brought out a priest and goat, and both were live. He dramatized Jesus' ministry as the ultimate scapegoat and as our great High Priest who sat down when the work was done. The big idea was, "The goat has left the building." The sermon ended with the priest slowly walking to a chair and sitting, after which the audience erupted into cheers, high fives, applause, and a little celebratory dancing. Never before had I desired to borrow from another speaker, but on that day I thought, I want to preach that sermon.

In January, I decided it would make a great Easter message. I mentioned it to the staff and they seemed supportive. Then I asked a group of our leaders if I could spend money on a goat. They feigned nonchalance and told me to get whatever I wanted.

In February, I figured I should get to work. Amazingly, there were several places in the Chicago area advertising animal rentals. I started composing an e-mail. In the subject line I wrote, "Pastor seeking goat." That sounded like a bad personals ad. Next I tried "Goat wanted," but that seemed open to improper interpretation. In the end I went with "Animal rental inquiry," and sent the detailed request out to three places...

Click Here for the rest of the article.

Boxes o' Books

I've been busy this week starting to pack up my office at PCEFC. I'm one of those that takes a while because I sort through everything I have. Part of what I've been doing is deciding which books I need access to regularly, which can go into storage until I have a new office somewhere, and which I can let go of.

I have whittled down my library a bit already (from 6 bookcases to 5 and a half) and keep trying to make the tough call on which I can let go of. I finally threw out many of my seminary class notes that have been gathering dust for ages. Books that I haven't opened in the last 15 years since I graduated from seminary I can be fairly assured that I won't open again in the near future. Many are books I purchased for my sem classes with the prices still on them! Wow are some expensive. I wish I had sold them back to the sem after I graduated, but I thought, 'Hey, I'll use them again.'

Not so much.

Many were good, some were less than helpful, and some I'll keep for reference or because I may yet find a use for them. I found out that the Bethel Seminary (my alma mater) library will take my ministry books for me, use what they may need, and donate the rest on to seminaries and Bible schools in other countries that might not be able to afford to purchase reference materials. How cool is that!

The only thing that's slowing me down now is lack of boxes. When we lived in Northfield I would make a daily morning trek over to the local Cub Foods for produce boxes which were perfect, but it's a bit further here to the local Cub and neither Wal-Mart nor Nelson's Grocery seem to have many boxes when I stop by. So if you live near me and have some boxes or sources for boxes please let me know! Thanks.

Big Harry Deal

I was very skeptical of the whole Harry Potter phenomenon for many years. A couple of years ago when my boys were about 9 and 10 they asked to see the movies. After discussions about the difference between fantasy and reality, and the fact that magic was pretend and the occult in real life was very bad, I agreed to let them watch the first movie after they had read the book. I watched with them, to be sure it was okay, and found it to be far better than I had anticipated. We quickly moved on to the second and third movies. By the fourth movie I was hooked. I went back and read the entire book series myself, becoming an avid fan in the process.

I recently finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (a couple of days after my boys who read it on our trip back from Florida). I thought it was great - the best in the series. Just today I ran across two posts that I thought were excellent in dealing with the (older?) controversy surrounding the series. One is at Christianity Today: Harry Potter 7 is Matthew 6. The second (full of spoilers, but terrific) is Harry Potter and the Firebreathing Fundamentalists. Previously I had come across the excellent (spoiler free) posting, An Early Look at Halloween, which is one of that after I read it I wished I had written it myself! I'd recommend all of them as they each have a slightly different take on the series. All are very well done. Enjoy.

Blogging about blogging

Found a cool new (to me) program that is changing the way I surf the web - a little bit, anyway. Let me explain.

For years now I've used Firefox as my web browser of choice. On my bookmarks toolbar folder at the top of the page I have embedded another folder that I titled "AM". It's simply all of the pages I visit in the morning to catch up on news and other things I'm interested in. Firefox has a cool feature that lets me 'open all in tabs' so I click on that in the morning and open a dozen sites at once. I click through them as I am drinking my morning coffee and get all caught up on my favorite sites for the day. Many are only updated once a day, so that has worked well.

I also have several blogs that have been included on that list - my favorite of which has been Josh Griffin's Don't Believe Everything You Read on the Internet - he's a youth pastor and Star Wars fan so you can see the draw for me! Plus he's a great blogger - interesting, brief (unlike mine!), and very frequent updates! But I digress...

I have also been adding some additional bloggers to my frequently read list (see my Blog Friends for some examples) including my sister, brother-in-law, and now our senior pastor. I discovered that checking once a day is really not enough to stay current.

That's when I began searching for tools that would help me with that. I know there's others out there, but the one I stumbled across that seems very helpful for me is the free Google Reader. It collects RSS feeds from the blogs I read and puts them all together on one page. Plus it has a cool tool for the link bar labeled "next >" that takes me to the next unread blog entry! It's awesome. I am somewhat chagrined that I didn't discover this before! And here I consider myself a techie geek.

Nevertheless, I'd recommend this tool to you if you aren't using a newsreader or aggregator (is that a word?) Check it out! If you know of some that work better, let me know.