In just a few months, Mountain View Community Church will be taking up residence in our new church building. After 13 years of meeting in a high school, we are very excited to have our own place to call home. I can remember most of the lengthy process it took to get there -- buying land, hiring an architect, forming committees, evaluating and envisioning our space needs, sitting in congregational meetings, raising funds. It hasn't been easy, but God has been good to us and our people have been generous. Our dreams are becoming realities, including my dream of a youth center to house our awesome student ministries. Soon Mountain View will have 30,000 square feet of space in which we can do whatever we want, whenever we want.
Well, almost. We can't have a cross. At least on the outside.
Throughout the lengthy process of creating this building, one theme that came up more than once was, "We want it to look like a church." That can mean a lot of different things. Certainly, no one was thinking medieval cathedral, but we wanted something to set it apart from a school, library or auto body shop.
As the design took shape, it became clear that cost restrictions and design preferences would preclude such classic touches as a bell tower or steeple. So someone proposed a simple idea that seemed to accomplish our goal. What if we put a cross on the side of the building, tastefully and artfully done, back-lit for a pleasant affect at night? This would be a nice, inexpensive touch, and ensure that everyone passing by would know this is a church.
Not so fast. When the design for this feature was submitted to the county for approval--along with other important details like the number of loops in the lobby carpet, the shade of leaves on the exterior shrubbery, and the capacity for individual sheets of toilet paper to be flushed in any given 48-hour period--the wise and magnanimous Frederick County Permit Office informed us that this was unacceptable. In fact, it was a violation of code 481037-f7-b5, which explicitly states that the amount of signage permissible for a building our size is 60 square feet.
That's right--a cross is considered a sign, no different, I guess, than a golden arch. Erecting a cross AND a sign with our church name on it would be a gross violation of our signage limits, akin to allowing us to float a giant inflatable Jesus over Rt. 270. When pressed, the FCPO's polite response was "What we say, goes."
The common sense oozing from this official declaration got me thinking. The cross, a symbol of faith and an important element of architecture for hundreds of years, is now considered nothing more than a sign in violation of code. What other historic feats of architecture would never have seen the light of day had they been built in Frederick County in 2010? Imagine the conversations.
"I'm sorry, Pharoah, but your pyramid is required to have 8,394 other sources of egress..."
"Citizens of Pisa, your tower must be knocked down and replaced with a one-story structure..."
"Michelangelo, we have tested the paint you are using on this chapel ceiling. The lead content presents presents a hazard for young children who may climb up here and eat it..."
"All skyscrapers with iconic towers are required to have ape-proof fencing around the exterior..."
"You are allowed a maximum of seven letters. You will have to go with H-O-L-L-Y-W-O..."
So, chalk up another victory for bureaucratic common sense. We can all rest easy knowing we have a county government to protect our safety, manage our growth, and preserve our freedom. We will be spared from unsightly crosses, giant apes, and other heinous violations of architectural decorum.
I wonder what they'll say when we hang that cross from the ceiling?
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
God's Day Timer
Every Tuesday morning, I sit down with my Planner Pad and plot out the course of my week. I group things into categories (prayer, teaching, leadership, encouragement, administration) and try to figure out how to manage my time to accomplish everything I'm supposed to accomplish, talk with everyone I'm supposed to talk with, and be everywhere I'm supposed to be.
This morning, my list started with "drink coffee," because I was really sleepy. First things first. Prayer was next.
Anyway, I just finished filling in the rest of the blanks with important tasks -- plan Sunday's parent meeting, SOS movie night, and next week's staff meeting. Write the weekly email. Get back to her. Arrange to meet with him. Call so-and-so about this'n that. It really helps me to see my week in front of me, and it blesses me to be able to X-out the tasks when they've been done. I feel like I've accomplished something at the end of the week. I guess I have.
I'm glad God doesn't work like that, though. For God, there is no such thing as a Day Timer. He doesn't need to keep track of anything, and he never checks off something as finished. There's a big difference between being a steward of responsibilities and being God. God is just...there. Doing. Working. Amidst. Among. Outside. Inside. Holding Up. Sustaining. That's who he is. No administrative assistant, no reminder emails. He's God. Always completely involved and never forgetting the smallest detail, from setting up a king to caring for a sparrow.
Consider God's relationship to time. He sees the beginning, the middle and the end of all our human activities and days, and has forever. Time is irrelevant to him and he can even bend it if he wishes. Because he's outside of the whole scene, He doesn't need to make himself notes, "Scare the heck out of Zechariah in the Temple. Remind Gabriel to visit Mary. Prepare stable. Stick star in sky." God is beyond the sequence and intimately involved in it. All things are at work because of God. He holds all things together.
Consider God's relationship to our will. That's a mystery too big for anyone to understand, but somehow God allows our choices to affect our circumstances and the circumstances of others. Our prayers can even change the course of events on the earth. Yet nothing happens that surprises him and nothing happens without his foreknowledge. We can sin, we can fail, but we can't thwart the plans of God, who sees the whole amazing tapestry of every person in the world, and knits it all together in his perfect plan.
Consider God's relationship to you and me. We plan, we schedule, we discipline ourselves to complete our tasks. We think some things are more spiritual than others, and some of us make great efforts to improve spiritually, physically, intellectually, or whatever. But God works through every detail of our lives, even the ones we are unaware of, to make us aware of him and more like him. Every moment (if you can use that term in relationship to God) he is thinking completely of every one of us, pouring out his love and his mercy.
Romans 11:34 says, "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" The answer is, of course, no one but God himself.
And he can keep track of it all without writing it down on his Planner Pad or programming it into his Blackberry.
So today, as I set my agenda for the week, I'm glad that I have a purpose and a mission, and I will work hard to complete it. But I will also pause and remember that God directs my days. He is at work. Always has been. Always will be. His agenda is the only one that really matters. Remembering he's at work makes my work a lot less overwhelming.
This morning, my list started with "drink coffee," because I was really sleepy. First things first. Prayer was next.
Anyway, I just finished filling in the rest of the blanks with important tasks -- plan Sunday's parent meeting, SOS movie night, and next week's staff meeting. Write the weekly email. Get back to her. Arrange to meet with him. Call so-and-so about this'n that. It really helps me to see my week in front of me, and it blesses me to be able to X-out the tasks when they've been done. I feel like I've accomplished something at the end of the week. I guess I have.
I'm glad God doesn't work like that, though. For God, there is no such thing as a Day Timer. He doesn't need to keep track of anything, and he never checks off something as finished. There's a big difference between being a steward of responsibilities and being God. God is just...there. Doing. Working. Amidst. Among. Outside. Inside. Holding Up. Sustaining. That's who he is. No administrative assistant, no reminder emails. He's God. Always completely involved and never forgetting the smallest detail, from setting up a king to caring for a sparrow.
Consider God's relationship to time. He sees the beginning, the middle and the end of all our human activities and days, and has forever. Time is irrelevant to him and he can even bend it if he wishes. Because he's outside of the whole scene, He doesn't need to make himself notes, "Scare the heck out of Zechariah in the Temple. Remind Gabriel to visit Mary. Prepare stable. Stick star in sky." God is beyond the sequence and intimately involved in it. All things are at work because of God. He holds all things together.
Consider God's relationship to our will. That's a mystery too big for anyone to understand, but somehow God allows our choices to affect our circumstances and the circumstances of others. Our prayers can even change the course of events on the earth. Yet nothing happens that surprises him and nothing happens without his foreknowledge. We can sin, we can fail, but we can't thwart the plans of God, who sees the whole amazing tapestry of every person in the world, and knits it all together in his perfect plan.
Consider God's relationship to you and me. We plan, we schedule, we discipline ourselves to complete our tasks. We think some things are more spiritual than others, and some of us make great efforts to improve spiritually, physically, intellectually, or whatever. But God works through every detail of our lives, even the ones we are unaware of, to make us aware of him and more like him. Every moment (if you can use that term in relationship to God) he is thinking completely of every one of us, pouring out his love and his mercy.
Romans 11:34 says, "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" The answer is, of course, no one but God himself.
And he can keep track of it all without writing it down on his Planner Pad or programming it into his Blackberry.
So today, as I set my agenda for the week, I'm glad that I have a purpose and a mission, and I will work hard to complete it. But I will also pause and remember that God directs my days. He is at work. Always has been. Always will be. His agenda is the only one that really matters. Remembering he's at work makes my work a lot less overwhelming.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Reflecting on a Decade of Youth Ministry and Pondering the Next One
(This is an article I wrote for our student ministry newsletter. It's a bit long for a blog, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.)
I cannot believe it’s already 2010. Where did this decade go--these 3,652 days, 87,648 hours, 5,258,880 minutes? Think for a moment about the things we now take for granted that did not exist, or at least weren’t as commonplace, just ten years ago, things that most of us need to survive:
Cell phones Facebook Panera Bread
Texting Flat screen TVs YouTube
Ipods Terrorist Alert Colors
Miley Cyrus (I don’t need her to survive, but some of you do!)
Anyway, for most of the people reading this, the now-ending decade equals the majority of your life. For me, it’s like somebody hit the FF button on my remote and skipped a whole scene.
It seems like yesterday we were preparing for the turn of the century, known at the time as Y2K. There was a lot of hype that night. People were worried the world was going to end, all computers were going to crash, the electric grid was going to explode, and the moon was going to fall out of the sky. They stocked cases of water and giant cans of beans in their pantry. I celebrated by parking cars at a country club in Colorado to earn some cash. It was our last year of seminary. We were poor and happy. Karen was at home with three little boys. Thomas was only 1 ½. The world didn’t end. In fact, for us it seemed to be just beginning.
A few months later, I walked across the stage to accept my diploma. I was as proud as David after slaying Goliath. I only had two B’s my entire seminary career (both in Greek). I got an award as the best preacher in my class. I had already visited, interviewed, and been hired as the first-ever youth pastor at Mountain View Community Church. I even had a fancy title: Associate Pastor of Student Ministries. It was the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. We celebrated with a family vacation to Yellowstone, where we camped under a sky as big as the dreams we shared.
We arrived in Maryland in June and moved into a home the church had arranged for us to rent in Adamstown. It was a cool old house, but one of the first days there, Karen saw a spider big enough to be Maryland’s third largest city. A couple of days later, we were looking at a little brick ranch house in Walkersville. It was about the 10th house we’d looked at that day. It was small, but the backyard was huge, the neighbors were nice, and while we were there a little steam engine rambled down a railroad track behind the fence. We knew. The boys have grown up in that house.
Of course, while our boys grew up, so did the youth ministry at Mountain View. Our first event was XXXL Beach Day – a one-day marathon to Rehoboth Beach. Joel Stafford “helped” out—he pulled up beside me at a stoplight and opened fire with a Super Soaker. Some things never change. A 7th-grader named Ben Roembke ignored my plea to put on sunscreen. On the way home, the fair-skinned, freckled Ben was in agony, shivering and moaning in the back seat of my car while I debated about what I was going to say to his parents. Either, “I’m so sorry; I should have put the sunscreen on him myself,” or “Your son is dumb.”
That fall, we started SOS. I thought the name was cool, an import from Colorado. It stood for Stoked on Sundays—you know, “stoked,” as in, “Woah, Dude, there’s a foot of powder today! I’m stoked! Let’s grab some big air.” The kids thought I was a dork and made fun of me. I cajoled Scott and Erika Rape to join me as my first staff recruits. We were the whole senior high youth staff.
We met at DeGrazia’s house in Holly Hills. Their basement was perfect. Mrs. DeGrazia stocked the fridge with sodas and made us pizza. That was probably the reason anybody came. Somehow I convinced 13 kids to go on a retreat despite having no real answer for their nagging question, “What’re we gonna do there?” Melissa Hite (who has since moved to Florida) called to offer to teach Sunday School. I told her she had to come on the retreat. Scott and Erika came, too, with their new baby, Cale. There were 18 of us that weekend at a little camp called Refreshing Mountain. I brought an Al Gore mask; he was running for president. He’s in the picture.
Meanwhile, our middle school group met at Urbana Elementary for something called Manic Mondays. Now that was a name that made sense! Trying to teach a lesson to kids sitting on the floor in the corner of the gym was like trying to get the attention of a cattle herd by waving a feather. On more than one occasion I thought it might be worth the jail time to strangle Christopher Reynolds and Nathaniel Jones, two incorrigible middle school boys. I needed more than Joel’s Super Soaker.
In the summer of 2001, we took our first mission trip to Matamoros, Mexico. The heat, the rotten-egg- smelling showers, and the dirty-toilet-paper-in-the-garbage-instead-of-the-toilet changed us all, but not as much as the incredible bond we felt with the people we could barely understand.
In the fall of 2001, we officially became The View. An old acquaintance of mine was working as a graphic designer near Harrisburg. I asked him to make us a logo that looked kind of like “Mountain Dew, only with a cross.” He did a good job.
In the summer of 2002, 29 people had nothing better to do, so they signed up to to go to Atlanta for something called “Nationals.” I told them it was going to be awesome. They didn’t believe me, but they went anyway. It was 95 degrees with 100% humidity when we arrived.
That evening, we walked into Georgia Tech’s basketball arena. The place was packed with 6,000 students. Lasers lit up the room, speakers blared. Our students looked like a bunch of Amish kids who’d been air-dropped into Disney World. Soon a little guy nobody had ever heard of named Chris Tomlin started to play. By the end of the week, our lives were changed. Mary Sarah Kneebone was changed the most – she no longer hated me. And more importantly, she loved God.
I could go on for a long time. There are so many memories from the past ten years. There was the first-ever video-making contest in 2002, producing the classic, “Monday Night Football.” There was the trip to Nationals in Salt Lake City in 2004, when we took advantage of our time in the west to climb rocks at Zion National Park, ride horses through the dust of Bryce Canyon, and eat burgers fresh off the buffalo at the ranch. There were more mission trips to Mexico, Peru, Pittsburgh and New Orleans—and more fall retreats at Refreshing Mountain. There were long drives through the snow to Camp Orchard Hill, and short drives to deliver blankets to the homeless in DC. We changed Manic Mondays to Mini Mondays and then, for obvious reasons, to Wise On Wednesdays. We moved SOS from DeGrazia’s to Katsotis’s to the Landon House to Jones’s and eventually to Leggit’s. We celebrated Christmas with the microwaveable egg timer reappearing year after year as the prized gift, and started a sweet banquet to honor our seniors.
We laughed a lot. We learned a lot (I hope). And we cried a lot, too, especially when Louisa died, a moment most of you won’t remember, and which I will never forget. It was December 5, 2005--the halfway point of the decade, and the seminal moment of Mountain View’s youth ministry. I’ve never looked at this ministry the same way again. It’s really, really important to realize the battle we face as we fight for the souls of young men and women.
And through all of this, God was good. He was faithful. He was teaching us. He was growing us. He was leading us. He was living in us. As he has always done, and will always do. Everything changes, except Him.
Who knows how the world will be different ten years from now. I heard that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are merging into a new network called YouTwitFace.
But this new decade belongs to you—the current generation of the View. You may be 12, 13, maybe 17, and your time at the View is now! Take advantage of it. SOS and WOW will provide friendship and community. Morning View (soon to be “DTour”) will provide discipleship. Backoftheline will provide practice. Mission trips will provide new eyes. Challenge will provide passion. The youth staff will provide guidance and love. Our new youth center will provide space (Woohoo!). The Holy Spirit will provide a new heart. And YOU will provide the enthusiasm and energy necessary to make our memories complete and our decade all it’s meant to be.
How fast will these next 3,652 days go? If they go by as quickly as the past ones did, I’m going to need oxygen to catch my breath. But I’m ready. And whether you know it or not, so are you!
Happy New Decade!
I cannot believe it’s already 2010. Where did this decade go--these 3,652 days, 87,648 hours, 5,258,880 minutes? Think for a moment about the things we now take for granted that did not exist, or at least weren’t as commonplace, just ten years ago, things that most of us need to survive:
Cell phones Facebook Panera Bread
Texting Flat screen TVs YouTube
Ipods Terrorist Alert Colors
Miley Cyrus (I don’t need her to survive, but some of you do!)
Anyway, for most of the people reading this, the now-ending decade equals the majority of your life. For me, it’s like somebody hit the FF button on my remote and skipped a whole scene.
It seems like yesterday we were preparing for the turn of the century, known at the time as Y2K. There was a lot of hype that night. People were worried the world was going to end, all computers were going to crash, the electric grid was going to explode, and the moon was going to fall out of the sky. They stocked cases of water and giant cans of beans in their pantry. I celebrated by parking cars at a country club in Colorado to earn some cash. It was our last year of seminary. We were poor and happy. Karen was at home with three little boys. Thomas was only 1 ½. The world didn’t end. In fact, for us it seemed to be just beginning.
A few months later, I walked across the stage to accept my diploma. I was as proud as David after slaying Goliath. I only had two B’s my entire seminary career (both in Greek). I got an award as the best preacher in my class. I had already visited, interviewed, and been hired as the first-ever youth pastor at Mountain View Community Church. I even had a fancy title: Associate Pastor of Student Ministries. It was the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. We celebrated with a family vacation to Yellowstone, where we camped under a sky as big as the dreams we shared.
We arrived in Maryland in June and moved into a home the church had arranged for us to rent in Adamstown. It was a cool old house, but one of the first days there, Karen saw a spider big enough to be Maryland’s third largest city. A couple of days later, we were looking at a little brick ranch house in Walkersville. It was about the 10th house we’d looked at that day. It was small, but the backyard was huge, the neighbors were nice, and while we were there a little steam engine rambled down a railroad track behind the fence. We knew. The boys have grown up in that house.
Of course, while our boys grew up, so did the youth ministry at Mountain View. Our first event was XXXL Beach Day – a one-day marathon to Rehoboth Beach. Joel Stafford “helped” out—he pulled up beside me at a stoplight and opened fire with a Super Soaker. Some things never change. A 7th-grader named Ben Roembke ignored my plea to put on sunscreen. On the way home, the fair-skinned, freckled Ben was in agony, shivering and moaning in the back seat of my car while I debated about what I was going to say to his parents. Either, “I’m so sorry; I should have put the sunscreen on him myself,” or “Your son is dumb.”
That fall, we started SOS. I thought the name was cool, an import from Colorado. It stood for Stoked on Sundays—you know, “stoked,” as in, “Woah, Dude, there’s a foot of powder today! I’m stoked! Let’s grab some big air.” The kids thought I was a dork and made fun of me. I cajoled Scott and Erika Rape to join me as my first staff recruits. We were the whole senior high youth staff.
We met at DeGrazia’s house in Holly Hills. Their basement was perfect. Mrs. DeGrazia stocked the fridge with sodas and made us pizza. That was probably the reason anybody came. Somehow I convinced 13 kids to go on a retreat despite having no real answer for their nagging question, “What’re we gonna do there?” Melissa Hite (who has since moved to Florida) called to offer to teach Sunday School. I told her she had to come on the retreat. Scott and Erika came, too, with their new baby, Cale. There were 18 of us that weekend at a little camp called Refreshing Mountain. I brought an Al Gore mask; he was running for president. He’s in the picture.
Meanwhile, our middle school group met at Urbana Elementary for something called Manic Mondays. Now that was a name that made sense! Trying to teach a lesson to kids sitting on the floor in the corner of the gym was like trying to get the attention of a cattle herd by waving a feather. On more than one occasion I thought it might be worth the jail time to strangle Christopher Reynolds and Nathaniel Jones, two incorrigible middle school boys. I needed more than Joel’s Super Soaker.
In the summer of 2001, we took our first mission trip to Matamoros, Mexico. The heat, the rotten-egg- smelling showers, and the dirty-toilet-paper-in-the-garbage-instead-of-the-toilet changed us all, but not as much as the incredible bond we felt with the people we could barely understand.
In the fall of 2001, we officially became The View. An old acquaintance of mine was working as a graphic designer near Harrisburg. I asked him to make us a logo that looked kind of like “Mountain Dew, only with a cross.” He did a good job.
In the summer of 2002, 29 people had nothing better to do, so they signed up to to go to Atlanta for something called “Nationals.” I told them it was going to be awesome. They didn’t believe me, but they went anyway. It was 95 degrees with 100% humidity when we arrived.
That evening, we walked into Georgia Tech’s basketball arena. The place was packed with 6,000 students. Lasers lit up the room, speakers blared. Our students looked like a bunch of Amish kids who’d been air-dropped into Disney World. Soon a little guy nobody had ever heard of named Chris Tomlin started to play. By the end of the week, our lives were changed. Mary Sarah Kneebone was changed the most – she no longer hated me. And more importantly, she loved God.
I could go on for a long time. There are so many memories from the past ten years. There was the first-ever video-making contest in 2002, producing the classic, “Monday Night Football.” There was the trip to Nationals in Salt Lake City in 2004, when we took advantage of our time in the west to climb rocks at Zion National Park, ride horses through the dust of Bryce Canyon, and eat burgers fresh off the buffalo at the ranch. There were more mission trips to Mexico, Peru, Pittsburgh and New Orleans—and more fall retreats at Refreshing Mountain. There were long drives through the snow to Camp Orchard Hill, and short drives to deliver blankets to the homeless in DC. We changed Manic Mondays to Mini Mondays and then, for obvious reasons, to Wise On Wednesdays. We moved SOS from DeGrazia’s to Katsotis’s to the Landon House to Jones’s and eventually to Leggit’s. We celebrated Christmas with the microwaveable egg timer reappearing year after year as the prized gift, and started a sweet banquet to honor our seniors.
We laughed a lot. We learned a lot (I hope). And we cried a lot, too, especially when Louisa died, a moment most of you won’t remember, and which I will never forget. It was December 5, 2005--the halfway point of the decade, and the seminal moment of Mountain View’s youth ministry. I’ve never looked at this ministry the same way again. It’s really, really important to realize the battle we face as we fight for the souls of young men and women.
And through all of this, God was good. He was faithful. He was teaching us. He was growing us. He was leading us. He was living in us. As he has always done, and will always do. Everything changes, except Him.
Who knows how the world will be different ten years from now. I heard that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are merging into a new network called YouTwitFace.
But this new decade belongs to you—the current generation of the View. You may be 12, 13, maybe 17, and your time at the View is now! Take advantage of it. SOS and WOW will provide friendship and community. Morning View (soon to be “DTour”) will provide discipleship. Backoftheline will provide practice. Mission trips will provide new eyes. Challenge will provide passion. The youth staff will provide guidance and love. Our new youth center will provide space (Woohoo!). The Holy Spirit will provide a new heart. And YOU will provide the enthusiasm and energy necessary to make our memories complete and our decade all it’s meant to be.
How fast will these next 3,652 days go? If they go by as quickly as the past ones did, I’m going to need oxygen to catch my breath. But I’m ready. And whether you know it or not, so are you!
Happy New Decade!
Friday, December 11, 2009
How to End Poorly
Yesterday, a man named Brian Kelly accepted the head coaching position at Notre Dame. I had never heard of Brian Kelly before a few weeks ago, when I watched his former team, the Cincinnati Bearcats, beat Pitt in a miracle comeback, 45-44, to finish their regular season undefeated and win the Big East championship.
Brian Kelly seems to be a very good coach. He took Cincinnati's football program and built it into a national power in just three years. This year they are ranked third in the nation and will be playing in the Sugar Bowl in front of millions of viewers.
In that game, however, they will not be coached by Brian Kelly. He's already left for South Bend. He grabbed the money and the prestige and headed for the promised land faster than any of his players can run the 40.
This displays a lack of character that I find disheartening and shameful.
It's not his leaving that I find offensive. He's Irish and he's Catholic. Being the head coach at Notre Dame is to Irish Catholics what being being the quarterback of the Steelers is to boys from Pittsburgh. It's how he did it that I cannot fathom.
He accepted the job and agreed to leave his post while his team prepares to play their biggest game ever. He left his assistant coaches and more importantly, a group of young men he invested in and supposedly cared about, right before their greatest challenge. He's like a ship captain abandoning his vessel right before the battle. His actions demonstrated incredible lack of tact, shameless cowardice, and a frightful sense of narcissism.
This is how he did it. He met with his players after their football banquet (what should have been a happy time) and told them he was grateful that they made this possible for him. Then he told them he would not be coaching them in the Sugar Bowl and then snuck out the back door, with a police escort, leaving them to answer questions for the media. On the way out, he had time to change his Twitter and webpage, replacing Bearcats with Fighting Irishmen, red and black for green and gold.
Some of his players cried. Others were angry. All of them had to ask themselves a very legitimate question: Couldn't he have stayed for the Sugar Bowl, and headed off to his new job with a sense of completion? Couldn't he have taken some time to say goodbye to everyone he purported to care so much about? If he had done so, he could have left with honor and good will. He could have left with unburned bridges and relationships intact. He could have taught his team a lesson about commitment. He could have ended well. Instead, he made it all about him, left under the cover of darkness as a coward, and alienated everyone he purported to care about so deeply these past few years. In doing so, he revealed his true character as a selfish glory chaser and not a leader of young men.
Good luck, Notre Dame. I have a feeling you will regret this decision. You hired a good coach, and a lousy person.
Brian Kelly seems to be a very good coach. He took Cincinnati's football program and built it into a national power in just three years. This year they are ranked third in the nation and will be playing in the Sugar Bowl in front of millions of viewers.
In that game, however, they will not be coached by Brian Kelly. He's already left for South Bend. He grabbed the money and the prestige and headed for the promised land faster than any of his players can run the 40.
This displays a lack of character that I find disheartening and shameful.
It's not his leaving that I find offensive. He's Irish and he's Catholic. Being the head coach at Notre Dame is to Irish Catholics what being being the quarterback of the Steelers is to boys from Pittsburgh. It's how he did it that I cannot fathom.
He accepted the job and agreed to leave his post while his team prepares to play their biggest game ever. He left his assistant coaches and more importantly, a group of young men he invested in and supposedly cared about, right before their greatest challenge. He's like a ship captain abandoning his vessel right before the battle. His actions demonstrated incredible lack of tact, shameless cowardice, and a frightful sense of narcissism.
This is how he did it. He met with his players after their football banquet (what should have been a happy time) and told them he was grateful that they made this possible for him. Then he told them he would not be coaching them in the Sugar Bowl and then snuck out the back door, with a police escort, leaving them to answer questions for the media. On the way out, he had time to change his Twitter and webpage, replacing Bearcats with Fighting Irishmen, red and black for green and gold.
Some of his players cried. Others were angry. All of them had to ask themselves a very legitimate question: Couldn't he have stayed for the Sugar Bowl, and headed off to his new job with a sense of completion? Couldn't he have taken some time to say goodbye to everyone he purported to care so much about? If he had done so, he could have left with honor and good will. He could have left with unburned bridges and relationships intact. He could have taught his team a lesson about commitment. He could have ended well. Instead, he made it all about him, left under the cover of darkness as a coward, and alienated everyone he purported to care about so deeply these past few years. In doing so, he revealed his true character as a selfish glory chaser and not a leader of young men.
Good luck, Notre Dame. I have a feeling you will regret this decision. You hired a good coach, and a lousy person.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
I am a V
Our latest diversion/indulgence/obsession at the Andersons is the new TV show, "V." "V" stands for "Visitors." It's a cheesy, poorly-written, hole-filled, inadequately-acted new series about the appearance of an alien race above the skies of earth, who set about to win the loyalty of humanity with promises of healing, goodness and peace while secretly planning to eat us or something (ultimate purpose yet to be explained). I have to admit, it's so bad that I find myself enjoying it immensely.
I don't suppose the show will last all that long, but for now, it's looking promising for some escapist entertainment on Tuesday nights. Since I'm letting my mind wander into a catatonic state for an hour each week, I figured I should offer a penance and perform some intellectual exercises on Wednesday morning. So here it is.
I am a "V." Here's how:
I am an alien. The earth is not my home.
I am exceptionally attractive on the outside, but pretty ugly on the inside.
I cannot allow anyone to see the inside or they would be horrified.
I speak good things while secretly plotting evil things.
I sometimes use people for my own purposes.
I have secret plans to rule the world (see Blog title).
I am only here for a season, or maybe a few.
There you have it -- my true identity. I am a "V," living among other "Vs," some of whom are aware of their true identity and some who are not. If you want to join me, put on the uniform and meet me at the New York spaceship. We can rule the world together.
I don't suppose the show will last all that long, but for now, it's looking promising for some escapist entertainment on Tuesday nights. Since I'm letting my mind wander into a catatonic state for an hour each week, I figured I should offer a penance and perform some intellectual exercises on Wednesday morning. So here it is.
I am a "V." Here's how:
I am an alien. The earth is not my home.
I am exceptionally attractive on the outside, but pretty ugly on the inside.
I cannot allow anyone to see the inside or they would be horrified.
I do everything I can to fit in and appear normal.
I speak good things while secretly plotting evil things.
I sometimes use people for my own purposes.
I have secret plans to rule the world (see Blog title).
I am only here for a season, or maybe a few.
There you have it -- my true identity. I am a "V," living among other "Vs," some of whom are aware of their true identity and some who are not. If you want to join me, put on the uniform and meet me at the New York spaceship. We can rule the world together.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thomas and his Father
I live in a household dominated by teeangers.
Jonathan and Timothy are the driving forces in our home. They are busy with friends, sports, church activities, and now girls, work, and requests for the car. Weekends come, and my plans to hang out with Karen, watch a movie, or go out to dinner, are usually squashed by the Paris Hilton-esque social calendars of my teenage sons. They seem to go to any lengths to avoid being home or seen with me outside of church.
It makes me thankful for Thomas.
He's still 11. He's not a teenager yet, hasn't discovered girls, doesn't have to go "out" to have fun, and isn't a social networker like his brothers. He's been the easiest of our three kids to raise. He is easy to please, talented, funny, affectionate. He loves the things I love (baseball, Steelers, music). And every day he teaches me a simple lesson about God.
It is this: Every time he leaves for school, and every time he goes to bed, he asks for me.
"Tell Dad I said 'goodbye,' he says as he leaves for school if I'm not up yet. "Tell Dad 'goodnight' and I love him,' he relays through Karen to me if he is going to bed while I'm still downstairs watching TV. He can't leave the house or go to bed without communicating a quick message to his father. It's as if his life is not complete without an acknowledgement to me -- a word of love, a hug, a goodbye -- before moving on to even the most mundane of things like sleep or school.
I love my son. And I love what he teaches me. May I do the same with my Heavenly Father, every moment acknowledging him, telling him I love him, when I rise, when I sleep, when I am on the road or safe at home, so that no moment is lived separated from him.
Deuteronomy 5:4-9
Jonathan and Timothy are the driving forces in our home. They are busy with friends, sports, church activities, and now girls, work, and requests for the car. Weekends come, and my plans to hang out with Karen, watch a movie, or go out to dinner, are usually squashed by the Paris Hilton-esque social calendars of my teenage sons. They seem to go to any lengths to avoid being home or seen with me outside of church.
It makes me thankful for Thomas.
He's still 11. He's not a teenager yet, hasn't discovered girls, doesn't have to go "out" to have fun, and isn't a social networker like his brothers. He's been the easiest of our three kids to raise. He is easy to please, talented, funny, affectionate. He loves the things I love (baseball, Steelers, music). And every day he teaches me a simple lesson about God.
It is this: Every time he leaves for school, and every time he goes to bed, he asks for me.
"Tell Dad I said 'goodbye,' he says as he leaves for school if I'm not up yet. "Tell Dad 'goodnight' and I love him,' he relays through Karen to me if he is going to bed while I'm still downstairs watching TV. He can't leave the house or go to bed without communicating a quick message to his father. It's as if his life is not complete without an acknowledgement to me -- a word of love, a hug, a goodbye -- before moving on to even the most mundane of things like sleep or school.
I love my son. And I love what he teaches me. May I do the same with my Heavenly Father, every moment acknowledging him, telling him I love him, when I rise, when I sleep, when I am on the road or safe at home, so that no moment is lived separated from him.
Deuteronomy 5:4-9
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Redskins to try novel approach to QB position
-Landover, MD
Having already benched Jim Zorn as play-caller and replaced him with newly-hired consultant Sherman Lewis, the Washington Redskins are now set to try something totally unprecedented in the NFL -- a passing-only QB.
Head Coach Jim Zorn, reading a memo from Executive Vice President of Football Operations, Vinny Cerrato, which was then translated by Offensive Consultant Sherman Lewis, hand-copied by Offensive Coordinator Sherman Smith, and sent to Zorn via a carrier pigeon, announced this morning that starting quarterback Jason Campbell will no longer throw any passes. Instead, backup Todd Collins will enter the game whenever the Redskins plan to pass. Campbell will remain in the game for all running plays.
"We love Jason Campbell. We think he gives us the best chance to win the game as the starting quarterback and has a great future in this league," Zorn said. "He hands off as well as anyone. But the passing game just isn't there, and we think it's time for a change, so we are bringing in another arm to try and spruce up the passing game."
"It may seem unusual," Cerrato's memo said. "But I just found out the other day that some teams have what they consider 'third-down' backs whose primary responsibility is to catch passes out of the backfield. So I thought to myself, Why not have a third-down quarterback? I've talked to Mr. Snyder and he likes the idea. We ran it by Sherman and Sherman and Jim, and we all agree this is the thing to get our offense going."
Campbell wasn't thrilled with the idea of sitting out the pass plays, but seemed resigned to the need for a change. "Let's face it," he said. "Getting those plays called from the booth to the sideline to the other sideline to the front office and then to me -- it has made things awfully complicated. If this simplifies things and helps us win, then I guess we can try it.
"At least I won't get sacked."
Collins, on the other hand, seemed happy to get his chance. "It will be nice to come into the game and run for my life and throw the ball," he said. "I just hope somebody catches it."
Asked about the likelihood of opposing teams looking exclusively for the pass when Collins enters the game, Zorn said, "We thought of that. But we've already been pretty predictable, so this is just the next step in that process."
Defensive Coordinator Greg Blache had no comment.
Running back Clinton Portis had this to say. "The way this season is going, it's definitely time for a Todd Collins."
Having already benched Jim Zorn as play-caller and replaced him with newly-hired consultant Sherman Lewis, the Washington Redskins are now set to try something totally unprecedented in the NFL -- a passing-only QB.
Head Coach Jim Zorn, reading a memo from Executive Vice President of Football Operations, Vinny Cerrato, which was then translated by Offensive Consultant Sherman Lewis, hand-copied by Offensive Coordinator Sherman Smith, and sent to Zorn via a carrier pigeon, announced this morning that starting quarterback Jason Campbell will no longer throw any passes. Instead, backup Todd Collins will enter the game whenever the Redskins plan to pass. Campbell will remain in the game for all running plays.
"We love Jason Campbell. We think he gives us the best chance to win the game as the starting quarterback and has a great future in this league," Zorn said. "He hands off as well as anyone. But the passing game just isn't there, and we think it's time for a change, so we are bringing in another arm to try and spruce up the passing game."
"It may seem unusual," Cerrato's memo said. "But I just found out the other day that some teams have what they consider 'third-down' backs whose primary responsibility is to catch passes out of the backfield. So I thought to myself, Why not have a third-down quarterback? I've talked to Mr. Snyder and he likes the idea. We ran it by Sherman and Sherman and Jim, and we all agree this is the thing to get our offense going."
Campbell wasn't thrilled with the idea of sitting out the pass plays, but seemed resigned to the need for a change. "Let's face it," he said. "Getting those plays called from the booth to the sideline to the other sideline to the front office and then to me -- it has made things awfully complicated. If this simplifies things and helps us win, then I guess we can try it.
"At least I won't get sacked."
Collins, on the other hand, seemed happy to get his chance. "It will be nice to come into the game and run for my life and throw the ball," he said. "I just hope somebody catches it."
Asked about the likelihood of opposing teams looking exclusively for the pass when Collins enters the game, Zorn said, "We thought of that. But we've already been pretty predictable, so this is just the next step in that process."
Defensive Coordinator Greg Blache had no comment.
Running back Clinton Portis had this to say. "The way this season is going, it's definitely time for a Todd Collins."
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