Weekend With Friends

This past weekend was very special because we had a lot of friends come and visit us throughout the weekend.   Here’s a list…

Meri’s brother Matthew came in on Thursday, headed to Texas Friday and returned Sunday.  This was all part of his 2007 Grad School Audition world tour.

Josh Longbrake, a good friend of mine from Fort Wayne came in on Friday and headed back on Sunday.  We got lots of great time for conversations about working for churches, grad school, the Isn’t She Beautiful conference, and the internets.

Matt and Steph Jones came in Saturday and left Sunday.  It was really great to see Matt and Steph because Steph’s about 7 months pregnant and with the pregnancy Matt’s growing a HUGE beard (the 2 are most likely unrelated.

Finally… on Sunday night Nick and Andrea Rosendaul, two of my old high school friends came up from Columbus for the latest installment of Take Back the Church at 707.  We were able to go out for dinner and then Nick bent a skillet into a tube with his bare hands.

All in all it was special…  If you’re my friend and you don’t live in Cleveland you’re always welcome and then maybe I’d write about you on this here Blog…

Here’s some pics from all the happenings.

Sosa’s Back

So the Texas Rangers RE-signed sure to be Hall of Fame slugger Sammy Sosa.  I know there has been a lot of speculation about Sosa being a HUGE cheater with allegations flying about him taking steroids, using corked bats and being a bad team mate.  I just want to say that people who spread these kinds of rumors are nothing but haters.   I for one am glad that Sosa’s back and I’m guessing he’ll hit around 50 homers and get 135 RBI’s.

Man the 2003 baseball season is going to be so great!

What’s that?  It’s 2007?  What?

Oh man.  This is going to be a rough year for the Rangers.

Take Back The Church Video

This week we used a video taken from Josh Longbrake’s “i am the church” photo project. You should watch it. It’s inspiring.

Update…

I don’t feel very compelled to update my blog today, but I thought I would give a breif update on life and all that’s going on (or not going on).

Last night at 707 we started a new seires called “Take Back The Church” that I think will be a defining one for us as a ministry. This has been something burnning in my heart for a couple of years now and I’m excited to see how the whole thing develops and how it shapes sevenoseven in the coming months.

In related news I started Take Back The Church.com this weekend. It’s got a ways to go (like 100% of it) but I am hoping to enlist some friends and developing it into something that can call people to the revolution. Stay tuned…

Cat Power…

is so good.  Especially this album.

It’s got some nice old school R&B feel.

You can hear some of it on her myspace page or you can join emusic (best value in music) or get it off itunes.

do it.

Purpose Driven Hulkamania

Last week I told you about a guys blog I’ve been reading lately named Kevin Cawley.  Today I was checking in to see if he had updated and I came across this picture…

Now in case you don’t know who’s in this picture… that’s Hulk Hogan.  Oh… you know who he is… it’s the other guy you’ve never seen before?  That’s Ed Young Jr. pastor of Fellowship Church in Dallas (and other places).  You’ve got to go to this page and watch the preview for the series… 

Out of control.

The best part about the whole thing is that the first sermon in the series is about fasting!  Can you believe that he’d get Hulk Hogan to advertise for a series that kicks off by talking about fasting?  AMAZING!

In other news, the whole crew here at 707 is currently trying to Macho Man Randy Savage to come and push our next series.

Update::  In horrible news Fellowship Church has removed the video!  WHY?

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Celebrity Run In

Last night Meri and I went up to Crocker Park for a little dinner at Champps.  After suffering through one of the most obnoxious servers we’ve ever had (you know the kind that keeps talking about how great they are…) we headed down to Barnes & Noble to kill some time before our movie started.

It was raining pretty hard, but as we were walking to the theater I cam eup very quickly on a large man wearing a white/black/grey camo shirt.  I was able to avoid him, but as I shuffled around him I got a quick look at his face and realized that it was none other than Kellen Winslow Jr.  I had our new camera with us but since it was raining so much I didn’t want to stop and take a picture.  So here’s another picture I found online…

At any rate, that’s my first Cleveland Celebrity run in and really only my second ever (sometime I’ll tell you about my run in with Kurt Warner at a urinal).  Real exciting right?  (yeah… not really)

Remember Winter?

I don’t.

Too bad I bought a bunch of sweaters in December.

I blame Al Gore. It seems like whenever I hear people talking about “global warming” and environmental issues they always throw his name in the mix. I mostly just tune out because global warming is nothing but a myth that the liberals are trying to push on us so that we’ll stop driving our SUV’s, but I do think that the evidence points to the fact that Mr. Gore is directly responsible for global warming if it does exist.

The only question is how did he cause this great January weather? I think it’s fairly evident that the problem stems from Mr. Gore’s inability to factor in proper emissions when he invented the internet. Where’s all the computer exaust going while you’re updating your top 8 on myspace?

Thanks for nothing Mr. Gore now I’ve got keep my eyes peeled for glaciers.

man.

Saban a Snake?

I’m having a really hard time with all that’s being said about Nick Saban leaving the Dolphins to go back to the College game at Alabama. Here’s an overview of what’s happened. For the last couple weeks of the NFL season Saban was asked if he would be leaving to go coach Alabama and he always denied that he’d be leaving. At one point (about 2 weeks ago) he said that there was absolutely NO WAY he’d be leaving and he had a hard time understanding why he had to answer the question so many times.

Then on Wednesday he took the job.

So here’s the truth. Saban (essentially) lied when he said that he was not leaving the Dolphins and left anyway. I understand that, but let’s talk about another situation that took place in the very same league last week.

On the last Saturday of the season Adam Schefter reported that the Raiders would be firing their coach Art Shell to which the Raiders responded by calling Schefter a liar and questioning his place as a reporter for the NFL Network.

Then they fired him today.

All you have to do is listen to Sports radio for about a week to know that a coach or players job is only secure as long as they’re winning. As soon as the teach gets cold there’s a really good chance that the coach/player would loose their job. The team doesn’t care about the commitment they made to the coach/player, the team doesn’t even care if it told the truth last week. At the drop of a hat the coach could be without a job.

So why is it wrong for Saban to leave for another job when he could (if the season doesn’t go well next year) be fired in week 6? I do agree that there are better ways to answer the questions in the middle of the season, but I still think that this is the culture of sports.

So why’s everyone so mad? I think the answer is fairly obvious. The owners are angry because the power is slowly slipping through their hands and the media’s angry because they don’t like to be lied to. In the end I think it’s all about control.

Oh… and are you really suprised that Don Shula’s angry about the situation? I mean Alabama FIRED his son and then hired Saban. Is it really about honor Don?

So let’s be nice to Saban. After all who wouldn’t leave a job they hated for a job they really wanted (especially when they’d get paid a TON more).

American Pride

So tonight we had our LifeGroup at the Kitchen’s house in Cuyahoga Falls, which is about 20 minutes away from the church. For most of my drive I was behind a light blue GMC Jimmy that had a sticker on the back that brought up all sorts of thoughts and questions. It was a sticker of Calvin (you know of Calvin and Hobbes fame) peeing on the word IRAQ.

Here are some of the thoughts that came on my 2o minute ride…
*Do people really think that IRAQ is the enemy? I thought we went into IRAQ to save IRAQ from the terorists (or Saddam or the insurgents or whoever)?

*Does our country really need another country to be the enemy?

*Even if we do have to have an enemy isn’t there a better country for this little cartoon man to be urinating on? I can think of a few countries who might be disapointed to know that their countries name isn’t the target.

*Could this sticker be one of the reasons that certain people groups hate us?

*Who creates these stickers? I would love to have a conversation with them to try and understand what in the world they’re thinking. And besides I just saw a pickup truck where this very same kid was kneeling down and praying in front of a cross. I was sure there was genuine life change and now he’s back to peeing on things he doesn’t like. Next thing you know he’ll fall back into total dillusion where he’s peeing on both Ford and Chevy and if things get really bad he may target Imports as well. Then again maybe he just wishes we walked more.