| Liminal Space - 4/30/2009 |
Liminal space is where I find myself right now in several different contexts. Liminal means threshold, in between, transition. So, liminal space is the place between two phases or seasons of life. That's where I am and it's not so bad. Here are some on my "liminal spaces":
My daughter, the youngest of our three children, will graduate in June from high school and then it's off to UCONN on a full athletic scholarship!
My middle son will be married in December and will be lea
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| April 30, 2009 | Comments |
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| Caps Win! - 4/29/2009 |
Caps win! I love a great come back story. The Washington Capitols were down 3 games to 1 to the New York Rangers and looked to be down and out. But with a valiant effort they tied the series up at 3 games apiece and then took game 7 last night to move on in the playoffs. The crazy thing is I'm not really a hockey fan, but good friend of mine is always going on and on about the Caps so I decided to follow them in the playoffs. Hockey isn't so bad!
I'm sure we've all had times in lif
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| April 29, 2009 | Comments |
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| Visionategy - 4/28/2009 |
Visionategy- the combining of vision with strategy (me definition)! My leadership team will tell you I'm somewhat of an expert at making up words. Now, understand, I don't make them up because I accidentally mispronouciated a word. No, I purposefully try to invent new words.
My latest new word is "visionategy!" Like I said earlier, it's vision with a strategy, and strategy with a vision. I personally love my "new word" because it's how I want to live my life, how I want to lead a t
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| April 28, 2009 | Comments |
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| Modern Thessalonians - 4/27/2009 |
I've been reading through Paul's letters lately, the "Epistles" if you will, and 1 Thessalonians really stood out for me.
First, Thessalonica was a city of about 200,000 and very multicultural- made up of Greeks, Romans, and Jews. It was also a major business hub, directly on the "Egyptian Way"- a major Roman road.
Second, it was a city of people who were willing to try anything; immorality abounded.
But thirdly, it had the highest rate of people attracted to Judaism.
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| April 27, 2009 | Comments |
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| Gonna Fly Now - 4/24/2009 |
"Gonna Fly Now"- almost everyone remembers the Rocky theme song. I happened to be in Philly yesterday where the Rocky story is set. My daughter was high jumping at the Penn Relays. I couldn't help thinking about the song when Cayla was preparing to jump. You see, back home in her region she's the top high, long, and triple jumper. But at the Penn Relays she was up against some of the top high school girl's high jumpers on the East Coast. On every jump I kept saying, "Gonna fly now, Cayla!"
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| April 24, 2009 | Comments |
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Space, the Final Frontier - 4/22/2009 |
I heard Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic Church, speak today at the Exponential Conference in Orlando, Florida on "Spaces." Using Acts 17 as his text he described three "spaces" that are "people places" that we need to seriously consider if we're going to be true Jesus followers.
The first "space" is the community we create that we invite people into. It's the "church space" and it better be a place where the "whosoevers" are welcome! Regrettably most churches tend to creat a space th
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| April 22, 2009 | Comments |
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| Waiting - 4/20/2009 |
..................You're waiting for me to write something, say something... Waiting, I don't know of anyone who likes to wait. Yet when you think about it, there's a lot of waiting in our lives. As a matter of fact, right now I'm waiting in line at the Avis rental car booth at the Orlando airport. What's with all the waiting?
We have to wait because everything in life has to do with timing. This morning I experienced one of those unusual moments when connecting flights there was no
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| April 20, 2009 | Comments |
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| There's "RWR" and "RWD" - 4/19/2009 |
I don't like to run! Way back in the day when I played some football, the coaches would make us run a mile before or after practice- I hated it! Through the years, I've put on the running shoes and I've hit the pavement or the treadmill; not because I like it, but because I need to do it to stay in shape. I have to confess that the "goal-setter" guy in me would really like to do a 5k or 10k one of these days before I'm too far over the hill and perhaps that's what motivates me to run even tho
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| April 19, 2009 | Comments |
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| Remembering Nick - 4/16/2009 |
Tomorrow Nick Adenhart, 22 years young, will be remembered at his funeral service. A private family service will take place before a larger memorial service later tomorrow evening at Williamsport High School. The family has requested that the media be respectful of Nick by not necessarily covering the event. I imagine there will be a huge crowd at Nick's memorial; certainly his family, friends, some coaches and teammates, and many others who simply want to pay their respects will be in attend
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| April 16, 2009 | Comments |
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| Jesus Didn't Cheat! - 4/15/2009 |
Jesus didn't cheat! I love that! The statement came from one of the guys that we've got in the queue to plant a church. In our LHCN Planter's roundtable today we were talking about personal goals and what ultimately motivates you to accomplish them. We were discussing this in terms of how one of the qualities of a great leader is they can first of all motivate themselves.
The "we've been at this a while" guys were throwing all kinds of deep philosophical ideologies around about bein
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| April 15, 2009 | Comments |
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| Stink Bugs - 4/14/2009 |
What's with stink bugs? These things found a way into my house and want to stink up the place! When there's three or four of them in a little cluster, you can really smell the stink they put off. And when you pick one up with your fingers, yep, the stink rubs off on you!
So here's the question... what's finding a way into your life that's really stinking up your mind or heart? Who are you "clustering" with that really leaves a stink in the air? And lastly, how much stink are you pu
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| April 14, 2009 | Comments |
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| The Day Between Death and Life - 4/12/2009 |
We celebrate Easter today; the reality of Jesus conquering death, hell, and the grave! But more importantly we need Easter to be real in our lives every day. Primarily because we live in what I call the "day between" dimension.
We know Jesus' death happened during the Passover week, perhaps on a Friday. With that timeframe, He rose from the dead on Sunday, th "third" day. But the day in between often gets overlooked, and yet it's probably the day that we all experience most of the t
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| April 12, 2009 | Comments |
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| The Dramatization of Easter - 4/10/2009 |
After you've seen the movie, "The Passion of the Christ", every other attempt at an Easter dramatization just doesn't compare. I mean, dressing up church people in 30 A.D. garb and having them parade around a platform, singing and dancing, with hokie sound and lighting effects, just seems to me to be a little overindulgent, and in that "rut" category of "doing it because we've always done it." Think about how much time, energy, money, effort, etc. is put into some of these church Easter deals.
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| April 10, 2009 | Comments |
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| Great Coaching - 4/9/2009 |
Great Coaching! In my opinion, you can't have great teams o great players without great coaching. As you may know, if you read this blog, I've had an athletic theme of late and for some good reasons. First, I just plain love sports. Second, my daughter is a petty good athlete based on the fact she's earned a D1 full athletic scholarship. And third, there's a lot of great analogies between sports and life situations.
My old ball coach for high school football, Coach Harmen, taught m
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| April 9, 2009 | Comments |
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| UCONN Women's Basketball - 4/8/2009 |
As some of your may know the UCONN Women's Basketball team won the National Championship last night for the 6th time since doing it for the first time in 1995. Also, they did by going undefeated- a perfect 39-0! As a matter of fact, they beat every team they played by at least 10 points. Obviously they're a team with great coaching, great players, and a great work ethic. You don't achieve that level of success without understanding what it takes to get there and to sustain it.
As ma
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| April 8, 2009 | Comments |
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| Running with the Big Dogs! - 4/7/2009 |
Who are you running with? In terms of of fulfilling your life mission, who are the people that you've chosen to associate yourself with? How intentional are you about it? Here's my point: Without question there are a few people in our lives that we didn't get to choose- parents, siblings, etc.; but there are others that we definitely have a choice when it comes to spending our time/life with!
I don't know about you, but I want to spend my life running the Big Dogs; with the people wh
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| April 7, 2009 | Comments |
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| When the Good News Gets Uncomfortable - 4/6/2009 |
Yesterday was an interesting gathering at LHCB. We emphasized Kingdom Expansion and showed some video clips from a recent pastor's conference I led in India. The gathering itself was a lot different than usual as I tried to bring our church family into the Indian experience. I go the impression that everyone enjoyed it, but at the same time, it was definitely uncomfortable as people tried to adjust to listening to the message as it's being shared in English and through an interpretor. We als
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| April 6, 2009 | Comments |
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| Easter: Invite, Invite, Invite! - 4/5/2009 |
Next Sunday is Easter and it's a great opportunity to invite people to church services, who may not otherwise attend on a regular basis. I really believe God expects us to take advantage of these moments, since most people you ask to attend an Easter Service with you are really just waiting for you to ask them! As a matter of fact, survey polls, etc. bear this out. I know that sounds like a lame excuse, but frankly, if it's just a matter of someone waiting to be invited then why not just invi
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| April 5, 2009 | Comments |
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| Track Meets - 4/4/2009 |
I love sports but I was never a real track and field fan until my daughter got involved in her high school program. The school is one of the best in the state when it comes to girl's track and Cayla has done exceptionally well, winning state championships either individually or as a team every year of her high school career. And it looks like there will be some more in store for her as a senior.
But man, I got to tell you that track meets take forever! And, as is my luck, Cayla's fin
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| April 4, 2009 | Comments |
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| Death and Taxes - 4/3/2009 |
Death and Taxes- something someone famous said are two of the things we all have to deal with! Well, I guess most of us anyway- on the "taxes" side, quite a few of President Obama's team picks seemed to have forgotten about us "all having to pay them!" So, sure, we can definitely avoid the "tax" thing if we so choose, but we certainly can't put off the "death" deal!
I confess that just about every year I wait untill the last possible moment to do my taxes. Not that I'm a procrastinat
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| April 3, 2009 | Comments |
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| Fighting for What's Yours! - 4/2/2009 |
I love that story in the Bible about the Jewish soldiers who defends his "pea patch" against an entire garrison of Philistines! When it was all said and done he'd not only fought for his pea patch, but he killed everyone of the dudes who came at him- AND they had to pry his hand from the hilt of his sword because it had been clenched tightly the entire time he'd been fighting!
What's your "pea patch?" What do you consider so valuable that it's not even an option to let it go; and no m
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| April 2, 2009 | Comments |
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| What do you do when it's clear you are going to be replaced? - 4/1/2009 |
What do you do, what's your response, when it's pretty clear that your services may no longer be needed? You know, thee proverbial "handwriting is on the wall" kind of stuff. Whether it's a job situation, on the court, in a leadership context- all kinds of scenerios. What do you do?
In the Bible there's a great example of this in regards to Saul and David. Basically, in Saul's case, he was the King and David was one of his main generals if you will. The story goes that while Saul w
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| April 1, 2009 | Comments |
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