Diffusion of Regeneration

Excitedly but Reluctantly Moving

Mikey — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:57:13 +0000

As many of you already know I am moving soon to Sedalia, MO to be the teaching pastor at the First United Methodist Church there. As such, I am going to be focused on my transition for the next couple of months. This blog is going to have to move to a new location, since this domain is owned by the Wesley Foundation. I will have a new blog in the future. I may have two separate blogs, one integrated w/ the new church family I am going to be a part of for things like what I’ve been doing here, and another just to keep all my peeps posted on whats happnin in my new life. Stay tuned for where thats going to be . . . . .

Easter Message

Mikey — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:59:32 +0000

To whom it may concern, the message from Easter is now available online [here]. CD’s of the Easter message will be available this week at the church office and in Sunday’s service. A mp3 cd of all of the messages will be available when the series is completed.

Promised Erwin McManus Article

Mikey — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:42:03 +0000

Here is the Erwin McManus article I had promised in my previous post. I would have provided a link, but this is an old article that I had saved and I couldn’t find it posted anywhere on the internet.

Article:

Alexander Hamilton was 19 years old when George Washington appointed him as an aid. Impressive enough, except when compared to the fact that at 14, Hamilton set the rules for the sea‑faring captains who traded with his employers on St. Croix Island.

In 1381, Richard 11 walked onto a field and faced off against Wat Tyler and his mob. Later that same day, after fourteen year old Richard II had Wat Tyler beheaded, the young king addressed the mob of peasants with enough sensibility to calm the crowd and end Wat Tyler’s Peasant Rebellion.

Few of us are aware of the way history and culture - not to mention our personal age - influence our feelings about youthfulness and leadership. In order to create an ethos conducive to including emerging leaders, we’ll need to ask ourselves the question. “At what age does someone have capacity to lead?”

Recently I spoke on a University campus and was startled at the youthfulness of the student body. This happens to me every year. In truth, the students are the same age undergraduates have always been, I’m just one year older. Every year, as our church leaders age, the young look younger. The corresponding danger is that we may overlook many of our ablest leaders.

History is sprinkled with tales of the exploits, achievements and leadership of young adults, even teenagers. Columbus and all the explorers of the new world relied on hard working teens to man their crews. Think about this: middle school age children setting off on adventures that many adults would lack the courage to undertake. In times past, teenagers could lead armies in battle and young pages could be made knights as early as age 12.

Contrast this to the head deacon who said of his new “young” pastor, “We’re letting him stretch his wings a little”. Emerging leaders will not stretch their wings within a cage of past accomplishments and existing institutions. Emerging leadership will go where it can fly. One question we must ask ourselves is, do we really want young leaders? Or are we only looking for someone to serve in and manage a program we’ve created.

End Article

Yikes! This was written by a Southern Baptist, how many quality leaders has the United Methodist church lost for this very reason? I can think of several, some who are leaders of the most innovative and fastest growing churches in America. I am sure you can as well. Has anyone out there ever read “Good to Great?“. I think this book has some very important things to say about having the right people on the bus as being the top priority of any organization.

I’ll end this line of thought with a quote ascribed to Thomas Jefferson:

“Every generation needs a new revolution”

Revolutionary

Mikey — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:58:16 +0000

Here is an interesting article on the information revolution and the struggle our legal and economic system is having with a radical new framework [ The Revolution Will Be Televised . . On YouTube ]. I have read several interesting articles recently that I hadn’t bookmarked, but was able to track down. One about a Microsoft executive admitting that software piracy was good for their business.

People who work in the industry are well aware of this principle. I remember when I was working in the technology field as a salesperson and consultant we learned that the main target of anti-piracy propaganda was not the individual home user, but businesses and institutions. Individual home users who pirate software often times become paying customers. The software companies aren’t losing any money on these illegal downloads because most of these users would never purchase the software in the first place. The reason they “pirate” the software is to learn how to use the technology and to figure out whether or not it is going to be actually useful in proportion to the price. The learning curve on most software that is priced at a point that encourages “stealing” is vastly greater than the free one or two month trial period offered by most software companies.

Here is another article arguing that the damage to music sales cause by illegally downloading mp3’s was blown way out of proportion by the music industry (in fact an in dept study makes the case it hasn’t changed sales in that industry at all).

I point this article on the information revolution out in particular because the author, adjunct faculty at UC Berkley, draws interesting comparisons between this revolution and past revolutions. The point being that radical changes in legal and economic systems have regularly been the impetus behind and result of revolutions.

Lots of food for thought in that article. It has much cross functional application in other arenas outside of technology. It leaves me pondering the point that there is a fine line between what is perceived, by some, as a revolutionary and a criminal. I am in particular connecting this line of thought with an article I have saved by Erwin McManus on leadership. I can’t currently find it on the internet, but I have in in paper form and will post it soon.

More on Talpiot Tomb

Mikey — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 05:37:57 +0000

I only perused the Discovery channel show. It was two hours, and even though I had it on DVR that was way too much time for me to devote to this subject, since so much of the film was just fluff. It was interesting to note that the expert witnesses were primarily verifying the information that everyone agrees upon. Apparently, however, the statistics expert is cooling off on some of his conclusions.

I was really disappointed that I missed the expert analysis at the end! I caught the last 10 minutes or so, and fortunately they all seemed really intelligent, articulate, and persuasive (a rarity for Christian representatives the media usually chooses). Below are some additional links to blogs commenting on this issue, plus revisit updated entries on blogs cited in previous Talpiot Tomb post:

Darrel Brock (One of the experts critiquing the Discovery Channel film)
Dr. Jim West (An breakdown and analysis of each segment of the film)

Talpiot Tomb

Mikey — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:53:51 +0000

Here is an interesting new controversy. I assume someone is trying to capitalize on the Da Vinci Code effect, which is the brainwashing of the uninformed about new takes on history. The claim is that the ossuaries (burial box of the bones of a deceased person) of Jesus and his family were found together in Israel. Actually these boxes were found back in 1980. It was determined by the Israeli archaeologist who actually discovered the ossuary that the possibility it belonged to Jesus of Nazareth of the New Testament was “nonsense” and “impossible”. In fact this is the second ossuary that has been found with the inscription “Jesus bar Joseph”, the first was discovered in 1926.

Not a single scholar has endorsed this new proposal that the box belonged to Jesus of the New Testament, but still someone has decided now is the time to take another stab at making this point. Yet I can’t help but think it is an attempt to capitalize on the Da Vinci Code fervor, since one of the underlying claims is that Jesus is found buried with Mary Magdeline and a possible son of theirs’ Jude. The Discovery Channel will be airing a program about the claims this Sunday at 9pm.

Anyway, here are some links for more in depth analysis:

Ben Witherington’s Blog
Tyler Williams’ Blog
The Jerusalem Post
The Discovery Channel
James Tabor’s Blog

The Looming Tower

Mikey — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:28:57 +0000

Here is an very well written introductory history of not just al-qaeda, but radical Islamic fundamentalism in general. Very useful in understanding the mindset and motives of this stream of terrorism. After this read, my sense is that terrorism and radical Islam is not primarily about religion. It is primarily motivated by a grasping for power and relevance. While religion is the primary justification for acts of violence, it does not seem clear to me that it is the primary motivation. We all know that religion of any flavor can be used as a tool in the hands of power hungry humans. That is not to say that religion per se is dangerous, other tools would be recruited and used if religion were to be abolished. Western culture has arrived at a place of relatively unrivaled power in the world, and there are people of other cultures and nationalities that want a piece of that wealth, power, and influence.

Two good movies which paint a picture of life on both sides of this conflict are Osama and Syriana. Osama shows the oppressiveness and injustice of life under radical Islam, a point also reflected in the book reviewed here. Syriana shows the oppressiveness and injustice of life under the immense power and wealth of American culture, in particular for those in the center of competition over the world’s oil supply, the middle east.

My Favorite Word : Free

Mikey — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:49:45 +0000

I am very fortunate in that I actually know what my favorite word is . . . . Free. How many people can say that? The problem is, most of the things in life that are free tend to reflect in value what you have (or haven’t) paid for them. But somehow, Google seems to have found a business model making truckloads of money by offering free products and services to people, and they are exceptional tools.

Recently I have been exploring the calendar application Google created. I am so impressed with how useful and feature rich this program is. I am currently using it in combination with Google desktop, another free application that allows me to run a plethora of tools called gadgets (there is a gadget for pretty much anything you could think of) on my desktop. I have Google desktop running on both my home computer and office computer, this allows me to access my calendar from both places (or you can access is from any computer with an internet connection online) without any importing or synchronizing. I can add or view daily events right from my desktop without opening a browser and navigating to a site. I can even set reminders to appear on my desktop to remind me of events when they come up.

I have found this to be an extremely useful ministry tool. I have created a calendar for the Wesley at WTAMU and integrated it with the home page on our website. Once I have entered all of the events for the Wesley, I can add the Wesley’s calendar to my personal calendar, and all of those events show up without any extra work. Not only can students click an event on the calendar to find out the details on what is happening, they can also add that event to their own calendar (if they have a Google account) as well as click on a map to the event site that Google automatically creates for you when you enter the address and zip code of the event.

As if that wasn’t enough, don’t have a computer or internet connection handy? Desperately need to access your calendar or add an event? No sweat. Just grab your cell phone and sent a text message to ‘gvent’ and you can either add an event or view the events you have entered. To add an event, for instance, I sent a text message to ‘gvent’ saying, “lunch with Amy on Friday at 12:00pm”. Google calendar automatically created an event for me on that time on that day with that information. I have my calendar set up to automatically remind me of an event 45 minutes before it occurs, so I will receive a text message sent to my phone for every event I have entered unless I have specified otherwise. In order to receive by text message all events on my calendar for the current day or following day, I simply text the word ‘next’ or ‘day’ or ‘nday’ to ‘gvent’ and it will text back to me whatever information I have specified I want to receive.

How cool is that?

Google is the number one company in the US to work for. No wonder they are coming up with such cool products. Happy energized people do the best and most creative work.

Good Idea for a Book

Mikey — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:09:13 +0000

Anyone in particular you can think of to whom you would like to send this cartoon? Now, now . . . let’s be nice Christians.

Fiesta Bowl Heartbreaker

Mikey — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:05:09 +0000

Here are some interesting stats from the OU Boise State game. These statistics are from ESPN’s website and at the time I took this survey, 62,107 people had chimed in (my responses are in bold). I have to say, I am just now in a place where I can comment about this game, I have been emotionally spent. Especially after the Cowboy’s fiasco. In spite of my heartbreak over the loss, what Boise State did, it was beautiful football.

On another note, I have been pondering the question, why do I care so much about OU football? I went to school there for 1 1/2 years and I didn’t even like it there. Oh, well, here are the stats:

1) Did you stay up to see the end of the game?
79.9%	Yes
20.1%	No
2) Which was the best play of the game?
54.7%	‘’Hook-and-Ladder'’ to tie it
45.3%	‘’Statue of Liberty'’ to win it
3) Which play call down the stretch took the most guts?
64.3%	Going for two instead of kicking the extra point and forcing a second overtime
35.7%	Vinny Perretta’s overtime option pass for a touchdown on 4th and 2
4) If Boise State had kicked the extra point to send it to a second overtime, which team would have won the game?
66.4%	Oklahoma
33.6%	Boise State
5) If you hadn’t seen it for yourself, which of the following moments would you have considered least believable to occur in an actual game?
50.4%	‘’Hook and Ladder'’ play working to perfection on 4th-and-18 to tie the game with seconds left
29.0%	Using a ‘’Statue of Liberty'’ play on a two-point conversion to win the game
20.6%	A player proposing to his girlfriend shortly after scoring the game-winning two-point conversion
6) Does Boise State deserve a shot at Ohio State for the national championship?
80.9%	Yes, they are the only other unbeaten and showed they belong in that game
19.1%	No, the BCS system worked fine and Florida is more deserving than Boise State
7) Was the Fiesta Bowl the final game of Oklahoma running back Adrian Peterson’s college career?
84.6%	Yes
15.4%	No
8) Which ‘’Cinderella'’ team over the past year is the better story?
60.1%	Boise State football
39.9%	George Mason basketball
9) Where does this game stand, in terms of the greatest college football games of all-time?
54.2%	Top 5
23.1%	Top 10
15.1%	It’s the best
7.5%	It’s not in the Top 10
Total Votes: 62,107