I’m all over this video of some small group conversations at the 2nd day mission track at General Assembly 2011. Talking about DC! Plus, Spencer Burke (of the Ooze) is a fun guy.

Going to enjoy some reading through the rest of summer:

Many Colors (Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church) by Soong-Chan Rah

Missional Worship by Cathy Townley

& … a new bible, but specifically the Common English Bible, which is my new favorite translation (at the moment)

Yes.

Doing an Advent tune in the midst of Lent.

But it works.

Aaron Niequist’s “End of the Story”

we say – hate doesn’t win

we’ve seen – Redemption in skin

we say – let the celebration begin!

we’ve seen the end of the story and Heaven wins

Sometimes, you can leave for a weekend and take a single bag with you for all you need… and yet come back loaded down with burdens, thoughts, questions, and hopes.

That was my weekend in a nutshell.

Great… but heavy.

Ever felt like that happened to you?

I’m late to the game, but I finally decided that I’m giving up something for Lent.

In the past, I’ve given up mostly negative things and have written about it. By negative, I mean - self criticism, cynicism, etc.. I’d suggest that too if you felt like giving up chocolate or cheese or whatever seemed a little pointless. Consider Lent an opportunity to improve your life rather than an opportunity to abstain from something you like.

But this year, I decided to give up a beverage I desperately love.

If all goes well, I am going to extend this Lent project indefinitely, beyond the initial 40 days. Just quit cold turkey.

I’ll leave it up to you to guess what beverage I am giving up.

Journey on through the desert, my friends.

In my sermon today about love, I used a bunch of quotes from Mother Teresa, that I in turn, got from this great sermon out of the Gathering in Cincinnati. Cool stuff.

Too little, too late?

Hey AT&T, how about cutting text message costs and data costs and improving service? Now that’s a thank you.

I did a little bit of everything this week - maybe a little too much.

Post-week report would be…

Sunday - Met with youth group parents, talked about parenting, brainstormed some discussion/study ideas.

Monday - Dallas Children’s Aquarium at Fair Park. Decent experience.

Tuesday - New pub ministry launched. Simply awesome - plus great pizza.

Wednesday - Great meeting with my Table leadership crew.

Thursday - Mother-in-law returned to Korea. McDonalds dinner with the kiddos (minus the wife) that was equal part fun and chaotic.

Friday - Game Night at EDCC which was a blast. Almost got to play Settlers of Catan IRL but did play Apples to Apples and Bananagram.

Saturday - Co-led two workshops at NTA Leadership Event about young adults, hope someone got something out of it.

Next week should not be that… packed.

Android phones are the cheaper alternative to iPhones, but this article is every reason why you might want to avoid them. They seem like solid phones, but this is way too complicated. How the heck do you determine “build quality” anyway? How is someone’s mom supposed to figure out the software version?

Another alternative: just buy an iPhone. Or even a Blackberry.