Posts from — September 2008

I spend a ton of time traveling, both in the air and driving (when can I please start sailing again?!) and most of the time I have my iPod on.  Only rarely am I listening to music, although I have a nice collection ranging from Eva Cassidy to the Rolling Stones, from James Taylor to J.S. Bach.  No, I’m catching up on Podcasts, mainly sermon series from Rob Bell, Mark Batterson, Andy Stanley… and about ten others.  I do this in blasts, waiting for a pastor to finish a series and then I listen to the whole thing in one shot.

I did that today, listening to Kent Dobson filling in for Rob Bell, then jumping over to Andy Stanley on the will of God.  If you have anything to do with podcasts here’s some advice I’ll pass on from today’s listening:

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Cindy McCain and my wife, Kat, have something in common (besides both being beautiful, capable women)… they have both been active volunteers with the Norfolk, Virginia based charity Operation Smile.

I was watching Mrs. McCain’s speech Thursday night at the Republican National Convention, during which she mentioned Operation Smile. This fine group of plastic surgeons, ENTs, dentists (and many other medical specialists) did the work on Bridget McCain‘s cleft lip and palette, John and Cindy’s daughter whom they were entrusted with by Mother Theresa.

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Not long ago I blogged about Twitter [click here to read it] and wasn’t really all that complementary.  But what a power peer pressure is!  Some of my best friends are active twitters, or is it tweeters… check out what Michael “Holy Cow” Buckingham and Mark “Hardly Normal” Horvath are up to [ @holycowcreative and @hardlynormal ].

So scroll down the page a bit and glance over to your right and you’ll see a new feature… a Twitter box where you can read my latest Twitter post, which I think is really called a Tweet.  In fact, click at the bottom of the box and you can follow me and see what strikes me as interesting throughout the day.

My Twitter highlight so far is having Guy Kawasaki, one of my marketing / evangelism heros, reply to my comment about the high frequency of his excellent tweets. (I’m just learning this stuff, I didn’t know the tweet would go to him just because I listed his contact name in my message! Sorry Guy!)  Who knows, maybe next he’ll comment on one of my blog posts!

I have produced thousands of hours of live and live-to-tape television, and the majority of all problems have come from IFB (interruptible foldback- that ear piece allowing a mix-minus feed of audio) or the prompter (the screens that allow the speaker to read the script whilst looking out at the cameras).

Last night at the Republican National Convention, the prompter demon reared its ugly head during the magnificent speech by Gov. Sarah Palin. [Read more →]

“We’re not trying to grow a church here.” That’s not exactly what you expect to hear right before the pastor says that we must expand to three services because of our rapid growth. It’s not normal, but that’s what Rod Van Solkema told us this Sunday at Crossroads Bible Church outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

So it begs the question: if Crossroads isn’t focused on growth, why is it growing? (Especially when so many churches are extremely focused on growth, but are actually shrinking.) [Read more →]