Filed under: Sports
We are embarking on some of the best few weeks of the year (right behind the baseball playoffs in October and before the bowl games at the begin the year). March Madness is sweeping the country and people everywhere have become college basketball experts.
I want to fill you in on 2 great things directly related to the madness you may be feeling right now.
1. I’m sure you’ve already filled out your official bracket, but I’d like to invite you to join us in the First Ever Midwest Mindset Bracket Throwdown. There are lots of people joining in and you know that you’re dying to be a part of it. So… go on over to MidwestMindset.com for all the details.
2. My brother decided that picking the tournament just by guessing who he thought would win was a little boring, so he thought he’d go a little different route. From his blog…Jake’s blogging each round of the mascot death match tournament under this criteria and you really ought to go read it, you’ll really enjoy it.
So I decided to pick each game on the following principle: if the two mascots from these schools were to have a showdown to the death, who would win? I decided to suplement with a few other sub-rules:
-If the school has a foam bodied mascot then that will be the representative.
-Whatever the mascot normally carries can be used in the fight.
-Bird mascots will almost always lose to Feline or Bear mascots.
Oh the madness!
My friend John Alan Turner is reading The Shaping of Things To Come and has been discussing it over at Faith 2.0. His initial posts have created quite the buzz with the current focus being on churches who use an attractional model.
It’s truly great conversation, head on over and jump in (or just read a long).
Big news today… I officially have broken the 400 friends mark on my myspace page. That’s officially 367 more friends than I have in the real world (and you thought I wasn’t counting).
In other news. My friend Josh (of thelongbrake.com fame) has “tagged” me and in order to maintain my status in his real world “top 8″ I’ve decided to play along. Here’s the details…
1. scan through your itunes or cd library. refamiliarize yourself with the nooks and crannies of your musical options.
2. identify five categories — genres, if you will — of music. these should be as obscure and finely-articulated as you’d like. feel free to use modifiers liberally.
3. nominate — select, really — a “perfect song” for each category. include a link for each song to something (the amazon page for the CD, or the artist’s website, or whatever).
4. ideally, some of the songs will be nominally obscure, or, at least, not completely mainstream and overplayed. no need to tell us all about songs we all know!
So here’s my all time desert island top 5…
(note:: I became painfully aware at how poorly labeled my music is by genre… I also had a hard time giving just 5… but here you go… oh yeah… if you click on most of the songs you can listen to the whole thing)
1. Taken “alternative & punk” is the 12 minute epic Make Like Paper by Red House Painters off of Songs for a Blue Guitar. I got this record while I lived by myself at a camp up in Michigan and I remember listening to it throughout the fall and winter CONSTANTLY. It was hard to pick 1 song off the record, so I picked the longest because it will give you the most satisfaction.
2. Take from “Christmas” Come Thou Fount by Sufjan Stevens which was on Songs for Christmas Volume 2. This is one of my favorite hymns because of it’s frank honesty and Sufjan’s arrangement strips it of anything that isn’t honest. I could listen to this every day of the year. Maybe I should.
3. Taken from the “Country” genre, which I have a lot more of than I realized (don’t worry, none of that new country… yeah, I’m talking about you Kenny Chesney)… at any rate it’s God’s Gonna Cut you Down by Johnny Cash. This song is raw and rough. I like the rhythm and the blunt honesty. It makes me smile.
4. Taken from the “Indie” genre is Tree House (here’s a link for a video, you should watch it) by I’m from Barcelona. My brother played this band for me at Christmas and told me that it reminded him of “contemporary praise and worship” from the late 90’s early 2000’s. It’s amazing how right he was… and the best part is that it’s all the great things about that kind of praise and worship and mixes it with a healthy dose of the Polyphonic Spree. I love it, you should to… you probably won’t.
5. Taken from the “Pop” genre is my favorite song off of Ryan Wilkins new record Beautiful Disrepair called “Lay Down My Arms” (you’ll have to listen to this one at his myspace page. I love the way he uses walk downs throughout the song and his falsetto is ridiculous. Best line… “and I need the strength of ten thousand men or more, or just yours…” You should buy this cd from … it’s great!
I will now tag Johnny Rice, Dusty & Brian. You better play along. It’s important.
Since the Office was a rerun again last night we watched Stranger than Fiction.
This morning I found myself thinking about the movie a great deal. I would suggest that you see it because it’s special, and I think that you might enjoy it.
As a film it’s great to watch. Lots of great colors and style. They used amazing visuals in new ways that drive home the story… you’ll have to see it to understand what I mean. The actors are so good too!
At any rate the story is what I kept thinking about today. I think there’s a story of purpose, a story of life, and a story of redemption…
I don’t want to ruin the ending for you… so I won’t, but there’s this amazing quote from one of the main characters that reminded me of Jesus…
It’s a book about a man who doesn’t know he’s about to die, and then dies. But if the man does know he’s going to die and dies anyway, dies willingly, knowing he could stop it, then… I mean isn’t that the type of man you want to keep alive.
This quote is followed up with a “moral of the story” type quote that ends the film. I watched it again this afternoon and if you hear the quote with Jesus in mind I think you get a glimpse of what abundant life might look like.
I don’t know… maybe you’ll agree when you see the film, or maybe you’ll think I’m crazy.
At any rate go rent Stranger Than Fiction.
Every now and then I wonder who is actually reading this little blog (if anyone). So I thought I’d take a second and ask you a little bit about yourself.
So, if you’re reading this, why not leave a little comment that tells me (and everyone else) who you are, where you’re from, and how you found yourself at one of the most popular websites on this here… oh… what’s that… I was just informed that it is actually just one of the websites on the internet… not most popular.
My bad.
Filed under: Music
Every week I look forward to Tuesday’s because that’s the day that new music is released. I actually check in at Metacritic.com to see what’s coming up so that I’m ready and waiting.
Today Arcade Fire and Lovedrug both released their sophomore efforts and I must say I am pleased by what I’ve heard of both so far (each got a single listen today between meetings). If you’re looking for a good sample may I recommend a single track from each album (click on each song to listen to it).
My favorite from Arcade Fire is Intervention.
The track to go for from Lovedrug is Happy Apple Poison
Take a listen. I double dog dare you.
Now… you may ask, “andy, how do you afford all this great music?” Well, let me tell you. I have been a subscriber to the emusic.com service for about a year now. The way it works is you pay a monthly price and you get to download a certain number of songs per month. I pay 19.99 a month and I get to download 90 songs a month. Soooo… for the cost of 2 cd’s I get roughly 9 cds. Don’t go getting too excited though. We’re not talking about the “BIG” artists, you’ll still have to pay full price for your the Pussy Cat Dolls, but all the best indie music is available at emusic.
The leadership team at CVC is in the process of reading a new book by Thom Ranier called Simple Church. The basic premise of the book is that churches need to simplify their approach to ministry in order to be more effective. There’s a lot more to it, but of course you’ll have to read the book or wait until I get all the way through it (I’m less than 4 chapters in right now) and lay out my review.
I was invited to this weeks team meeting to talk “Strategery” as we decide how we can implement some of the key concepts. The focus of the conversation was what a “passionate follower of Jesus Christ” looks like and how people become a passionate follower. Spinning off of some of the ideas in chapter 2 the leadership team is thinking of moving towards this statement to answer both questions…
“Love God, Love Others, Love the World”
As they say in the book this idea is both a “goal and a process”. A passionate follower of Jesus is someone who Loves God, Loves Others and Loves the World, and the way you become a passionate follower of Jesus is by actively Loving God, Loving Others.
This may seem incredibly simple, but the simplicity of these statements is the launching pad. If we’re talking about what’s happening within the walls of the church we can point them to the “program” that works at developing that in a person. If we’re talking about the person outside the walls of the church it gives us a chance to ask the question “what’s it look like for YOU to Love GOD in your daily life?” It’s something that can translate easily to how a REAL person lives their REAL life.
The best part of this book is that it pushes churches to make things simpler which can only make it easier for people to follow Jesus. I’m all for this! Anything that we can do to get out of the way of people understanding and living out the Gospel is a good move in my opinion.
Filed under: Politics
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find it very odd that a presidential candidate would declare his run on a late night comedy show. I know that Lettermann probably has some street cred compared to Jimmy Kimmel or Jon Stewart, but this is the same show that features the weekly segment called “Will it Float?”.
At any rate it John McCain is in for 2008 and like all good Republicans he’s for the war (although against Rumsfield) and against abortion. Sounds good John, but where do you stand on the Paula Abdul issue?
I DEMAND AN ANSWER!
