I've decided to give up two personal conveniences for the good of others and the betterment of myself. Both of these conveniences have to do with my public work during Sunday gatherings at church.

I'm giving up capo'd chord charts.

When I lead music from the guitar, I often use a capo. It allows a guitar player to use the most appropriate and best sounding voicings (or chord shapes) in the best keys for congregational singing. There are several problems with this though. First, no one else in the band plays with a capo. My chord sheets says "G" but everyone else's says "B." That makes it more challenging for me to communicate. I have to transpose as I speak to my team, which, for some reason, doesn't always work right. Secondly, I have on more than one occasion placed my capo on the wrong fret of my guitar. I then played all the right chord shapes in the wrong key. Again, the rest of the band doesn't have this and consequently has no idea where I am and cannot play with me. As a solution, I have decided to just memorize the shapes in each capo'd position and play with charts that are labeled for the absolute key.

What this allows me to do is both communicate with the band easily (because we are reading the same chart) and increase my ability to play the correct chords wherever I am capo'd without having to rely on the transposed chart. They can understand me, I become a better player.

I'm giving up sermon notes. 

I am taking a preaching class this semester and in one of the textbooks the author strongly encourages his readers to get rid of sermon notes. He does not advocate memorizing the sermon, but simply memorizing the outline. I usually preach with an outline about a page and a half long. I was given the opportunity to open up Kroc Church's study of the book of Galatians and got to preach for the last two weeks through chapter 1. I did not use notes either time. It was a lot of fun.

This practice has done two things for we so far. First, it allows me to keep better eye contact with the congregation while I am preaching. I have noticed an immediate difference in my ability to read the congregation. Secondly, it forces me to write a simple outline. If I'm going to memorize it, it can't be 8 points with 3 subpoints each. It has to be simple. Hopefully a simple outline is easier to communicate to the congregation.

So there you have it. Two ways I'm trying to become better at what I do. Hopefully these steps won't come back to bite me one day in a horrible wrong key/forgotten outline mishap. Perish the thought.

The Oatmeal recently published a comic called "How To Suck At Your Religion." (warning, offensive language) There are a lot of things that I would take issue with in it and several points that he makes that I would agree with. There are a lot of caricatures of religious ideas, particularly Christian ones, that are unfair critiques. I have one big issue with his conclusion though, and it's an issue that I find increasingly common. He says,

Does your religion inspire you to help people? Does it make you happier? Does it help you cope with the fact that you are a bag of meat sitting on a rock in outer space and that some day you will die and you are completely powerless, helpless and insignificant in the wake of this beautiful cosmic ****storm we call existence? Does it help with that? Yes? Excellent! Carry on with your religion!*

*Just keep it too your ******** self.

I think that's totally lame. What I take from that paragraph is that religious/faith based/metaphysical/philosophical aspects of my worldview are only as good as they make me feel and help me to cope. If they do that, then they are great (but not worth sharing). If they don't, then they aren't. On top of that, they are completely subjective (see his comparison to a child's favorite color).

Now, I understand that he holds that view. From following his work, I would guess he's at least somewhat of a secularist/naturalist/materialist. My problem is that the view that my religious beliefs are just subjective preference, like my favorite ice cream, is incredibly hard for me to find valuable.

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is who the Bible says that he is. I believe He is the Son of God and that after being brutally murdered in the early 1st century AD he physically rose from the dead 3 days later. There is good, historical, forensic science based evidence for this. I also believe that I have encountered Him, alive, not physically, but spiritually. He has changed my life. If I didn't believe in this objective reality, I wouldn't be a Christian. I would stop being a Christian. I'm a Christian because I know with reasonable certainty what happened in the past and I know what I have experienced.

No one else has to believe that, but it seems that the Oatmeal's position is just a polite way of saying "you go ahead and be crazy, just don't bother me with it." If not arrogant, that's just poorly thought out as far as an argument goes. Anyone that boils faith claims down to subjective self-help maxims isn't taking faith seriously. Either you don't think your worldview is faith based (it is) or you don't care enough about reality outside of your daily rhythms and routines to formulate a coherent philosophy of life (you should).

Religious claims are a big deal. They are a big deal for the Christian, the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Atheist/Agnostic and every other adherent of every other belief system in the world. Refute them, argue for the superiority of yours, demonstrate how your worldview best represents reality, but don't dismiss them. That's not reasonable.

Now I know the Oatmeal is a cartoonist, and his medium is limited. If I had to guess I would guess that I would thoroughly enjoy a cup of coffee with him. But this cartoon represents an idea that is pervasive among the non-religious and the mildly-religious: what you believe doesn't really matter as long as it makes you happy and you don't "bother" anyone else with it.

What you believe about the world really does matter. What matters most about it is whether or not its true. Believe what you believe because its true, not because it makes you happy. Take the time and do the work to figure out what's true. Just don't kill people. He got that part right.

Today my daughter bought her first kindle books. She got a kindle for her birthday and she has been reading a few things that were on Jo's kindle and could be transferred. Today though, she bought books. 3 books. What books? Let me tell you.

1. The Gingerbread House (Volume 1) by Carin Gerhardsen. "In a short space of time, several bestial murders occur in central Stockholm. When criminal investigator Conny Sjöberg and the Hammarby police begin to suspect that there’s a link between the murders, Sjöberg goes completely cold. There is a killer out there whose motives are very personal, and who will not be deterred. The Gingerbread House by Carin Gerhardsen is the first in the Hammarby series, thrillers with taut, suspenseful plots and unexpected twists and turns. This haunting novel explores schoolyard bullying among young children and the effect it has on them when people look the other way. Many of the scenes in this book are self-experienced and based on Gerhardsen’s own childhood. Urban settings and strong portraits of authentic characters are crafted in depth and detail, insuring the books will linger in the reader’s mind long after the finish. The Gingerbread House is written in the same tradition as the Sjöwall / Wahlöö crime novels, and has been described as a book version of the tv series The Wire. It is not only published by the same publisher as Stieg Larsson’s The Millennium Trilogy, but by the same editorial team."
2. A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. "WHERE DID THE UNIVERSE COME FROM? WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE IT? WHAT WILL THE FUTURE BRING? AND FINALLY, WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?” Lawrence Krauss’s provocative answers to these and other timeless questions in a wildly popular lecture now on YouTube have attracted almost a million viewers. The last of these questions in particular has been at the center of religious and philosophical debates about the existence of God, and it’s the supposed counterargument to anyone who questions the need for God. As Krauss argues, scientists have, however, historically focused on other, more pressing issues—such as figuring out how the universe actually functions, which can ultimately help us to improve the quality of our lives.
3. Magic Tree House #1: Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne "Jack and Annie's very first fantasy adventure in the bestselling middle-grade series—the Magic Tree House!Where did the tree house come from?

   Before Jack and Annie can find out, the mysterious tree house whisks them to the prehistoric past. Now they have to figure out how to get home. Can they do it before dark . . . or will they become a dinosaur's dinner?"

Unfortunately we can't undo the purchase of the first two books, but we did remove them from her kindle and will make sure to keep track of her a little better while she reads.

I grew up in a non-denominational hippie church. Actually, it was a church plant that came out of a hippie non-denomination. What is a non-denomination? That's for another post. Anyway, my pastor's mantra was "teach the Bible." He was good at it too. He still is. I learned a ton and my faith was really formed through the years I spent there. Because of its ties to the hippie non-denomination though, record keeping, and specifically statistics were never really a big deal. In fact, I walked away with the perspective (whether it was taught or not) that focusing on "nickels and noses" was a bad practice to be in. I've come to realize that it definitely can be, but how many people you have and what they do with their money can also be a valuable metric for evaluating the health of a church. Then we have The Salvation Army. 124 countries (last time I checked), 4 US territories, 10 western divisions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Statistics are important. Why? Because if you work at territorial headquarters in Long Beach, California and I work at the Kroc Center in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, there is no reliable way for you to judge how well I am stewarding the Army's resources in my local context without some kind of standardized measurement system that we both understand and agree on. Sure, the leaders at the territorial and divisional levels come check on us from time to time, but it's hard to get a good picture of what's going on from a visit.

So statistics. I find statistics challenging in two ways. Funny thing is, one way is due to my humility and the other way is due to my pride. First off, I find it hard to quantify the work we do. Not because we don't do quantifiable work, but because we do it all the time. For instance, one of the general categories of statistic that the territory wants is "people assisted." Well, we do that all day long, every day. The couple hundred of us that work at the Kroc Center are all about assisting people. It's who we are and it's the culture we have created. That makes it hard to quantify.

Lest I come across too holy and benign though, the second reason I have trouble with stats is that I want to look good. I am always tempted to find ways to make numbers appear greater than they are. Mr. Jones says he really liked the sermon on Sunday? What he probably meant was that he repented from his sins and decided to follow Jesus. A new salvation! That's a stat.

In all honesty though, I've never done that. But I've thought about it. The sick, twisted, Jesus-is-killing-day-by-day part of me that is my flesh has thought about manipulating stories of the saving work of Christ for personal and organizational pride. I would be surprised if I couldn't find others like me.

So when it is time to report stats, I try and ask myself two things:

1. What are all the things we did? Who are all the people we served?
2. Did we really do all those things? Did we really serve all those people?

Hopefully, by asking myself those questions, the statistics I keep are an accurate representation of the ministry that goes on at our corps and in our Kroc Center. I think we lean more towards the "I forget all the things that we do and our stats are a poor reflection of our ministry because we leave stuff out" rather than the "I inflate the ministry we do in order to look good," but this year I want to redouble my effort to collect accurate stats. Not so we can feel good about ourselves, but so that brothers and sisters around the country can rejoice with us in the work that God is doing in Coeur d'Alene.

The Kroc Center is hiring a new business director. Our current business director is moving on to become an officer in The Salvation Army. (Congrats Elaine!) The whole process is very formal and business-like, but I have been told that there are several candidates (all current employees in other positions) and that interviews with a crack team of interviewing professionals and directors will be held next week. That's great. The office is all abuzz with who the candidates are and other miscellaneous gossip.

It got me thinking though, what if upper level positions at work were elected instead of appointed? What if the candidates for business director had to campaign, and the rest of the staff got to vote? A friend mentioned that this idea should be a blog post, so, the following list contains several possible circumstances that would occur:

1. There are more employees in the Aquatics department than any other. They are a powerful voting block, yet most high level candidates are likely completely out of touch with the average lifeguard and their needs. I assume this is a perfect storm for pandering and hollow promises designed to get the votes of lifeguards.
2. The marketing department is one of the smallest in the building, but the one who wins the favor of the marketing department automatically gets great signage. The marketing director also has veto power on anything that gets hung up throughout the building. I'm not sure she has power in the break room, but she could definitely prevent candidates that she didn't support from having signage throughout the rest of the building.
3. Our audio/video team, much like the marketing department controls much in the way of media. A candidate backed by both constituencies puts forward a powerful campaign.
4. Politicians are all about kissing babies. That makes the Child Watch Department a good asset and worth pleasing.
5. I work for the ministry department. We are about 20 strong, but we have easy access to 80 volunteers. For this reason, ministry is a heavy hitter. We are also arguably the most fun department. For an exercise that's likely to degenerate into a High School popularity contest, fun is a huge benefit for your campaign.
6. One positive effect of this would be the necessity to let the lower echelons into some of the more important policy decisions in our somewhat large organization. While it's not reasonable to have everyone making important decisions, it would be necessary for candidates to explain business processes and policy decisions to their constituencies if they wanted to continue in their offices over time. I think this would be a good thing.

So, there it is. Likely outcomes from switching to a democratic hiring system. I'm guessing it's too ahead of its time to be taken seriously. Oh well.

Charis' Birthday Cake

Six years ago, around this time (actually it was quite a bit earlier in the morning) I was waking up after sleeping on a barely sleepable hospital window seat, with a daughter. She was laying in something not unlike half an aquarium, with a blanket on the bottom, next to the real bed that my wife was sleeping in. After some business with the hospital, we got to take her home.

Charis turned 6 yesterday. We had a fun little party. There was amazing cake. It both looked and tasted amazing thanks to my wife's friend Jeanna, who bakes cakes for a living. It was bluish outer space colored, with an edible space shuttle and variously sized cake pops representing the planets on sticks on the top. The cake pops were so realistic that when Charis corrected me for saying that she had eaten Earth when she had really eaten Neptune, I had to concede. Earth had green continents on it, while Neptune was just blue and cloudy.

Charis' grandparents and great-grandmother came over for dinner. I BBQ'd shish kabobs. They were nice. Then there were presents. She got a kindle, a sweet new doll, and a set of 7 harmonicas in a carrying case. Jo and I bought her the harmonicas because she has one in the key of C, but when I am playing the piano or guitar in a different key, it sounds awful. Her playing is actually pretty good, but if the song isn't in C, it doesn't work. Now she has a harmonica for every common key. That's the kind of thing that makes us good parents.

Joanna spent the night before Charis' birthday at the hospital. Her sister was in labor. As it turns out, Charis' "best" present is that now her new cousin Evie will share a birthday with her. I'm giving that two years before she decides it was a lame gift. Of course, it will take Evie a couple extra years to realize that sharing a birthday with her close cousin is also almost as bad as being born on Christmas, but she will figure it out eventually. Fortunately, all us parents will be able to save money on cake.

I was a 1990's CCM fan. It was really all I knew. It was also what my peeps were into. I largely left the CCM genre in the 00's, but the 90's were it. I oversee our in-house radio station at work. While the song selection is chosen by recommendation by the staff, I end up getting to craft most of the vibe of the station. Consequently, there is a good selection of songs from that list of albums that get into the rotation on Kroc Radio. Why, because of my personal nostalgia.

I started a new session of the Kroc Church Membership class on Sunday. I typically set up the class to run for 6 weeks in 2-hour segments. Since it's summer and no one wants to have 6 of their summer afternoons (or whatever passes for summer afternoons in North Idaho) taken up by doctrine and philosophy (except me of course) I am abbreviating the class to 3 weeks of 3-hour sessions. Sunday's class went rather well, if I do say so myself. We got through the Our People documentary and the first 4 doctrines. I had to go quickly through some of the finer points, and gave a bit of scripture to take as homework instead of looking it up and discussing it in class, but I think it went pretty smoothly.

It's a small class this time, only 8, but I think it will be a good one. Lots of interest in what we are doing and a desire to be involved. Truthfully, I'm not interested in making members and soldiers that simply want to get a certificate or say that they are connected to our church. I want people who are excited about the mission of God and want to get their hands dirty with the work of the ministry. I don't think this class will disappoint. There are several staff represented, a couple from my Community Group, and a few others that have been in the process of checking us out for awhile. It's a good group.

It's interesting, but I think there is something to be said for having membership classes more often during the year. The last class I taught was in the late winter, February/March. Since it's July, any momentum and excitement for membership that we could have generated from the Spring enrollment is gone. We will enroll new members and soldiers from this class some time in August, and then the next class will be in September. I am planning on doing 2 classes this fall, almost back to back, to further capitalize on our congregation seeing the new recruits and the enrollment prompting others to sign up. It's quite a bit of work teaching two sessions in a semester (back to the six week per session format as well) but I think there will be considerable fruit from it. Whether people become Salvationists or not, the knowledge of who we are and what we believe in invaluable if someone wants to be connected to our ministry. All I have to do now is raise up someone else to teach the classes so that I don't have too all the time!

My wife and I got into a fight yesterday. For some reason, the family was gathered around watching The Muppet Babies, and Jo said that she remembered them being better when she was little. She also remarked that maybe an episode of My Little Pony or Chip N' Dale would be better. She nearly had to sleep on the couch. Honestly though, this is a great cartoon. It's full of pop culture references, goofy humor, and Gonzo. Lots of Gonzo.

Isn't it true that you are nothing but a low-down, two-faced, dirty, sneaky weirdo?

This is classic TV people. Classic.

I am conflicted by my blog's spam filter. You see, when I get a comment on a blog post, the spam filter automatically decides whether or not it is spam and puts it in a special "delete me" folder. It doesn't even bother me with it (typically I get an email asking me to approve comments). My inner turmoil comes from the fact that I 1) don't want spam comments and 2) want more comments. Comments are an indication that people are reading your blog. Now, not everyone who reads a blog comments (I rarely comment on the blogs I read) but, statistically, I would assume that the more people that comment, the more readers you have. So, I want comments for my own self-worth's sake.*

However, I don't want spam. Spam comments are not real readers. They are just robots that scour the web for places to unload their ridiculous advertising information. Here are a few of my recent favorites:

You know it and I know it… Facebook is off the charts. Well, I found a way to harness all that power. It’s a 3 in 1 software package that leverages the power of Facebook and integrates with Amazon, Ebay & Clickbank. Amazingly, it works even if you don’t have a product to sell or even a website. This is something that you just have to see to believe. Take a look…[link removed]

He's right, I know it. Totally off the charts. I use Facebook's power to heat my house.

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You are the first to claim this. Thank you. Also, "anyway" is one word.

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Location: Genuinely Informative. And hey kids, watch out for those brussels, they'll bite off your legs. All the best to you too!

I realize a good amount of people today have had various things to say about this publish, and a few of them are doing a good point, but I do recognize the way you watch it. Very good sharing.

Isn't "I do recognize the way you watch it" a lyric from a Beyoncé song? Maybe not.

See, I don't really want comments like this on my blog, but it still makes me a little sad that when I check my spam filter, I don't find that it has made any mistakes. Just once I'd like to be able to rescue a genuine comment from an interwebs passerby that mistakenly got caught. Not today folks. Not today.

*Only sort of not true.

I really don't like the concept of "Christian" things. I'm not the first person to notice this, but the word Christian is a noun. It's a noun, that over the centuries, has meant "one who follows Christ" more or less. It's a word for people. People who have given their allegiance to Jesus, the Christ, or savior, of the world. There are a couple things that drive me crazy about the label "Christian," whether it's music, movies, art, literature, or, as of today, home electronics. One reason is that the word has become a marketing term. If we put "Christian" in front of it, there is a whole demographic that will just rush out to buy it. Is it good? Can it compete in the marketplace of ideas? It doesn't matter, it's a Christian thing.

Another reason I really dislike the adjective is that it gives a wrong impression of the definition of the word. To the outside world, Christian should mean:

a person or group of people, set apart for Jesus Christ, dedicated to serving Him through loving others and sharing His message of freedom from sin and death and restoration as subjects of His wonderful kingdom by grace through repentance and faith.

Instead, because of the adjectival usage of the word, it comes across as:

Nice, wholesome and bland versions of real culture, dumbed down for those people that don't want to interact with the world at large.

Is that harsh? Yeah. Are there examples where "Christian" things are not any of those things? Probably. But by and large, the average person sees an article about the "Edifi" and sees a second-rate Kindle Fire with limited functions and applications for people that are what, too afraid to buy a real Kindle Fire? It's either that, or Christian Family stores, the makers of Edifi, are just trying to capitalize on a captive audience. I'm not sure which is worse.

I don't wear Christian clothes. I'm not sitting on a Christian couch. I didn't have Christian coffee for breakfast.

I am a Christian. I love and follow Jesus Christ. I want others to be Christians. Christians are people. Christian is a people word. Christians need to use it as a people word.

Update! Gizmodo has an article on the Edifi.  Notice how the default assumption is mockery. Best comments?:

 Does the Tablet come with the 10 commandments etched on the back?

It comes with five of them. The other five are on another tablet.

A couple days ago my friend and co-worker April offered to bake me cookies in exchange for fixing up her grandfather's new computer. What was wrong with it? It was brand new and chock full of terrible OEM HP software. REE-DIK-YOO-LUSS. To help explain the crazy here, I have decided to list what the strategy of HP OEM software would look like at a car dealership.

1. Every car comes free with all the options that any particular person ever may or may not want, except they are all cheap, poorly designed rip-offs of the real thing designed, built and installed by the dealer. Would you like a GPS? How about Dave Smith In-Car Navigation? DVD player? Sure, straight from Knudtsen Electronics and Hi-Fi. There are even really advanced options like the Robideaux Fryer Grease to Diesel Fuel Conversion Kit, just in case you're into that.
2. In case you didn't know that your car comes with all these features, they all automatically activate their singular function whenever you turn on the ignition, and you have to reach under the frame, next to the oil pan, to turn them off, individually.
3. They are all ridiculously branded and designed to match the dealership's awful website color scheme so that you know they were made by the dealer and that while they aren't the real thing, the dealer really cares about your convenience.
4. There is just a little something funny about each one, like the guy that designed the custom child safety seat that came with the car has never actually seen a baby. It's close, but it's still something you'd never use.
5. As soon as you drive out of the dealer's parking lot, all the warning lights on your instrument panel light up saying that all these features are due for scheduled maintenance.
6. If you don't like all these extra features, the easiest way to remove them is to simply gut the car to its frame and start over with the features that you want.

I think the person I feel the worst for is the poor software designer in charge of all these sad little programs that I and every other reasonable computer user are deleting. He must hate his job. Oh well, at least I get cookies.

I don't like loose leaf spinach. I really don't like it at all. I don't think there is ever a time when, if given the choice, I would eat loose leaf spinach. Unfortunately, that's what my wife buys. She loves loose leaf spinach. Don't get me wrong, I eat it, but I would much rather eat iceberg lettuce, or romaine, but loose leaf spinach is the salad green of choice at my house. A long time ago, I didn't like the way it tasted. It's got a bitterness to it that is missing from my other favorite salad greens. I got over that. I sort of like how it tastes now.

Then I thought it was the texture. I still don't like the texture. It's too thin. A good lettuce is ripply, like a potato chip, and crunches. It is also packed full of water in its inner structures. I like this about lettuce. It's refreshing. Not so with loose leaf spinach. It's like eating paper, and not in a good way.

A couple days ago I think I had an epiphany. I think I now know why I really don't like loose leaf spinach. It's too big. The leaves, at least in the containers we get from Costco, are around two to three inches long and the stems extend from them at least another inch. That's too big for the salad bowl, too big for my fork and too big for my mouth. If I had a nice head of romaine or iceberg, I could cut it into reasonable, bite-sized pieces. Not so with loose leaf spinach. It comes pre-configured in its loose leaf shapes. Shapes that are too big.

The size problem is further compounded in a salad. I can manage to get one piece of loose leaf spinach into my mouth just fine, but a half dozen on a fork, covered with salad dressing and possibly accompanied by a tomato, mushroom, or piece of grilled chicken, is too overwhelmingly large to make it through my lips without getting ranch on my face. I don't like getting ranch on my face.

For the foreseeable future we will likely stock our fridge with loose leaf spinach. Can I chop it before we make a salad? Is that allowed? I think I will attempt it next time. There's probably a rule against that. I am not afraid.

When I was in Bible College, I was taught the OIA method of Bible Study: Observation, Interpretation, Application. First you look at the text. What does it say? You can answer a lot of questions about a passage just by reading it carefully and making notes about the concepts that the author is communicating. Secondly, What does it mean? The interpretation of a passage is singular. The author had a specific thing in mind when he wrote the sentences and, based on what you observe from the text, you need to make a judgment about the interpretation. Since there is only one, it's helpful at this point to see what other, much smarter people have said about the passage in the past. My guess is that you and I are not discovering an interpretation that 2000 years of the church missed. Third, What does it mean to me? Interpretation is one, but application is many. There are often several different ways to apply the one meaning of a text to yourself, your family, your church, our culture, etc. All that introduction to say, I think we confuse interpretation and application sometimes. On the one hand, we make many interpretations. This happens especially in a small group setting when you read something and one person says that the passage means one thing and another person says that the passage means a complete opposite thing and everyone nods in agreement. Two completely opposite interpretations cannot both be true.

The other error, the one that I find myself looking at more often lately, is that we are firm on the one interpretation, but we are also firm on the one application. We do not allow a text to have more than one application* because we like a single application the best. Here's a for instance in Galatians 1:8:

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.

We are beginning a study in the book of Galatians next week at Kroc Church, and I get to teach on that verse. So, what immediately comes to mind when I read that verse? Mormons. We live just north of major Mormon country here in North Idaho, and the Latter-Day Saints have a large presence here. My pastor growing up was somewhat of an expert on the cults, and whenever the Mormons came up, we heard this verse. You see, according to the Mormon faith, Joseph Smith was visited by an angel named Moroni and shown the location of some golden plates that he needed to translate into the Book of Mormon. So, an angel from heaven preached a different gospel to him.

Don't get me wrong, that's a great application. Mormonism is a false gospel no matter how it came into existence, but if a so-called "angel" delivered it to Joseph Smith, that's a superb application of this verse. However, Galatians 1:8 was in the Bible 1800 years before Joseph Smith, so how was it applied then? If I connect the application of this verse so tightly to Mormonism that I don't allow for other applications, I will miss a lot, specifically because I'm not Mormon!

Throughout the book of Galatians, Paul isn't teaching against Mormonism, he's teaching against legalism and license. He goes back and forth showing that a failure to trust God results in either an assumption that the cross of Christ isn't enough (leading me to add works-based righteousness to the gospel) or that God doesn't have my best interests at heart (leading me to disregard the commands of God because I think they are burdensome). The false gospel that is being preached to the Galatians is that they need to be circumcised in order to be Christians.

When I read Galatians 1:8 and only see a proof-text against Mormonism, the verse becomes meaningless to me. But, if I hold to the interpretation (that there is only one gospel and we need to reject all false ones) and can freely apply it to my context (where I hear many false gospels through people, media and culture all the time), then all of a sudden Galatians 1:8 is relevant to me and the situations that I find myself in.

So, interpretation, one. Application, many. Observe, Interpret, Apply. Learn it, live it, love it. And if an angel shows up on your bed tonight, just make sure you ask some probing questions.

*That's not to say that every application is valid. Applications need to be firmly grounded in the observations and interpretation of the text. 

You know what's a terrible idea? TVs in showers. If there is a spiritual discipline that I am most attracted to, it's silence and solitude. Unfortunately, it's hard to get. I try to make time, at least once a year, to go out in the woods or something for at least half a day and spend time listening to God in the quiet. The closest thing I get to silence and solitude on a regular basis is the shower.

There is very little to do in the shower. Some soap, a little body wash, maybe shampoo, but little else. Wash, wash, wash. A nice relaxing shower is really only at most 25% getting stuff done. The other 75% is just hot water and thinking. I do some of my best thinking in the shower. There is no internet, no other people, no books, no music, no paperwork, nothing but me and my cleaning solutions. I have yet to really be distracted by the list of chemicals in my shampoo.

What could possibly ruin all that? Putting in a TV. That is a huge waste of silence and solitude. TV is the absolute non-thinking, non-listening-to-God device. It's not bad per say, but it's definitely something that takes over your mind while it's on.

So, value silence and solitude, spend some time alone, and don't ruin the experience with a TV in your shower.

There are things that I like to do: Play music, dabble in video, etc. There are other things that I don't care about at all: bow hunting, Chinese calligraphy, etc. It's very interesting to me that when I am doing what I love, I am incredibly picky about it; when I'm not, I'm not. I will spend literally 24hrs of computer resources because a video I am working on really could stand to be just a little bit brighter. It won't be perfect, but it will be darn close. When I built the fence in my backyard though, there were many things that were just good enough and I don't even care that I didn't go the extra mile (my father-in-law the carpenter could point out all the little things I didn't bother with from at least 30 feet away though). I notice this behavior in others too. Today the marketing team at work (who sit on the other side of the cubicle from me) were talking about choosing fonts. Immediately (as font discussions inevitably do) they started talking about the horrors of Comic Sans. The use of this font, ever, according to them, is tantamount to design suicide.

This phenomenon is interesting. The more knowledgable that we get in a certain field, the more detail oriented and flat out picky we get.  The blessing of learning a craft is that you get better at it: I'm a better musician that I was years ago, our marketing team are presumably better designers than when they started. The curse is that you see imperfections in the work of others and have less tolerance for them in your own work.

I think the worst part is the resistance that comes from those that don't know any better. I think people are trying to help when they tell you that "it looks great" "no one can tell" "that's not even that important." However, it's the little things, the things that no one but those that do the craft notice, that separate ok work from excellent work. I can't tell you exactly why top end Italian furniture is better than Ikea, but I can tell that it is. My non-musician friends can't tell me why a mid-level local musician working hard at his craft sounds better than a lazy beginner that can't bother to practice, but they can tell me that he does.

I've learned to hate Comic Sans because of the little bit I know about design. In areas that I don't know, I have learned to trust the opinions of those that do. Whether I can see the minor details or not, I know that paying attention to them will end in a better product. Besides, the computer isn't doing anything else all night long. It might as well be working for me.

I was reminded both by Territorial Commander Commissioner Jim Knaggs and by Major Ben Markham (at service yesterday) that yesterday was the day, that all around the territory (maybe the world?) Salvation Army officers preached at their new appointments. The Salvation Army is fairly unique in that its head pastors, "officers," are itinerant. They move from church to church, appointment to appointment, throughout their careers, typically every 3-5 years. In what I consider great news, Major Ben, who with his wife Joann have been our associate officers at Kroc Church for the last three years, announced that yesterday they officially began their new appointment as our Corps officers and executive directors at the Kroc Center. Ben told me that they even got an official letter that said they were supposed to depart their old appointment last week as associate corps officers in Coeur d'Alene and they had 4 days to report in at their new appointment as corps officers in Coeur d'Alene. It's a long trip.

There is a lot that can be said about the pros and cons of moving pastors around. That's for another post though. Today I am grateful that my senior leaders are a couple that have been with us since the beginning, understand our culture, the unique role that we play in this massive organization and are prepared to fight for the gospel, the people under their care and the city that they are called to ministry in for many more years to come.

There are a lot of things I love about being part of The Salvation Army. There are also things that totally drive me crazy. That being said, I want to approach an issue with as much grace and an attempt at understanding a different opinion as possible. The New Frontier magazine (available at a Kroc Center receptionist's desk near you), Volume 30, Number 09, featured a front page story by Karen Gleason and Amy Jorgens entitled "Soldier Numbers Rise In The West." It seems that soldiers (Salvation Army church members) are on the rise in the Western Territory of the United States.

First off, that's great. I'm a soldier. I teach soldiership classes. The commitment to being a soldier is one of the things, in my opinion, that is great about The Salvation Army. What bothers me about this article is a quote by Reno, Nevada Corps officer Major Janene Zielinski. The article says:

Offering adherency as a viable and attainable church membership option is also helping to grow the corps. "People (young families) are responding by the boatload," she said. "They are thrilled to be accepted, valued and not judged for where they are in their spiritual walk at the moment."

To be fair, I don't know Major Zielinski, and have no idea what the context of this quote was outside of where I read it in the article. However, all I have to go on is this quote and there are several things that rub me the wrong way.

It was an adherent member of our church that pointed this article out to me. Jeff is a member of our music team (he leads about 25% of the time these days), he's a member of our Corps Council (sort of a TSA deacon's board), he serves on the Social Services committee, his wife (also an adherent) is an employee of the Corps and oversees our children's ministry and their whole family are models of faithful service to Jesus. Jeff was totally appalled by the above quote. The way he took it (and the way I read it) is that those that choose to become soldiers are somewhere ahead in their spiritual walk of those that choose to become adherents. It seems like Major Zielinski is trying to communicate that adherents are accepted while at the same time labeling them as spiritually inferior. It's totally possible that I am taking the statement "not judged for where they are in their spiritual walk at the moment" the wrong way. I would like to know how I should take it if so.

I think there are two extremes when it comes to this issue. One is that soldiers are clearly superior and adherents (which I have on good authority is a word we shouldn't be using anymore - they are members) are just dodging their responsibility as Salvationists. Soldiers do commit to a pretty strict way of living life. The Soldier's Covenant (aka, The Articles of War) contains lines like:

I will be responsive to the Holy Spirit's work and obedient to His leading in my life...

I will uphold Christian integrity in every area of my life, allowing nothing in thought, word or deed that is unworthy, unclean, untrue, profane, dishonest or immoral...

I will abstain from alcoholic drink...

...giving as large a proportion of my income as possible to support its ministries and the worldwide work of the Army...

Those are just a few of the commitments that soldiers make. The entire member's covenant says that they:

Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and seek to follow Him

Participate through worship, fellowship and service at a local Salvation Army corps

Identify with the mission of The Salvation Army

So, if a soldier is the real deal and the member is being "valued and not judged for where they are in their spiritual walk at the moment," why do we even have members in the first place? If the call to join our army is soldiership, why would we lower the bar just to get more people on our rolls? If soldiership is where it's at, it totally seems to me that members are cop-outs and the army that created that "adherent member" was just trying to pad its statistics by making it easier to get signatures. Again, that's a harsh accusation, and I am fully prepared to be corrected, but that's just what it seems like to me.

The other extreme is that soldiers and members are the same. I think this is both true and false. The big question is,are we disciples of Jesus? That's the club that the Bible forms: the church. Members, adherents, soldiers, officers, those are all things that we have made up since. I don't have a problem with that, but we can't forget the categories that God's Word puts us in in favor of categories that we make up for ourselves. So it one sense, the sense that my good friend and TSA member Jeff is operating from, soldiers and members are the same: disciples of Jesus Christ who seek to live out the mission of His church with The Salvation Army.

However, soldiers are also different, and I hope that's what Major Zielinski was getting at. Soldiers are called not only to identify with Jesus and His mission in specific ways, we are called to identify with The Salvation Army in specific ways. If I am taking my soldier's covenant seriously, I am limiting my personal freedoms, sacrificially giving of my resources, and seeing myself as an ambassador of Christ through The Salvation Army. Can members do all those things? Yes they can, but they don't have to commit to doing them, and they aren't committing to do them while taking into account the values and needs of The Salvation Army.

In our church, there are certain things that only members can do, like lead a Community Group. Why? Because I want to know that they have taken a class (where they learn all about our church), that they really are Christians (as much as we can tell), and that they can represent both the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Kroc Church whenever they are asked. The members of our church love Jesus, are generous givers, volunteer their time in service and believe in what we are doing.

Soldiers are a little different. We always have fewer soldiers to enroll than members, but if you become a soldier, you are telling me that you aren't just committed to the Gospel, but you are committed to the leadership of our church and our philosophy of ministry. You are a soldier in the army and you are willing to do what it takes to get the job done. If you are soldier, it might take me a while, but I'm gonna find you a job to do, and in a perfect world, I'm not going to have to make a lot of accommodation for you to do it.

So, where does that leave me and the quote from the New Frontier? Frustrated. Frustrated that we sometimes see officers as more committed to Jesus than soldiers. Frustrated that we see soldiers as more committed to Jesus than members. If you are part of Kroc Church, do I want you to become a soldier? Yes. If you prayerfully consider it and decide to become a member instead, do I look at you as less than me? No. The Salvation Army soldier is not given a higher calling than any other Christian, just a different one. And depending on your views on alcohol, it's not even a radically different one.

Do you ever give genders and personalities to inanimate objects or concepts? Throughout history, ships and cars have been designated as "ladies." There are probably many other examples of common things that we think of as being male or female and give human characteristics to. Here is an example. I don't know why, but for as long as I can remember, I have assigned gender and personality to notes in the musical scale. I have never really identified a correlation between my anthropomorphisms and the way the notes sound, but there might be a link.

C Major is male. He is unassuming, but confident. He can be passionate and lively, in the right situation, but he can also function equally well as the wallflower at the party. He has a couple good friends, F and G.

D, who is a close friend with G but can't stand F and doesn't get along with C, is also male. He is sweet, charming, a little boyish and silly. He catches the eyes of the ladies more so than C, but he's not as nuanced and interesting once you get to know him. G is a close friend, as well as A.

E is somewhat of a pompous jerk. If he drove a car, it would be a fast one. If he had a house, it would be a big one. He makes up for lack of depth and character with the sheer awesomeness of his presence. He runs around with a lady on each arm: A and B.

F is classy. She is a full figured woman, with all the right kinds of tastes. She appreciates the calm confidence of C. She has a temper, but it is shaped by wisdom and poise. She can't stand B though, and does everything in her power to wreck her day.

G is warm and gentle. He is equally at home at a party or in a reading room. C and D are his two best friends.

A is a lot like G, but she would never admit it. She loves the reckless confidence of E and the crazy antics of D. She is light and airy and is always brightening rooms and turning heads.

B is brazen, unforgiving and conceited. She is condescending and outright mean at times. There is nothing that can stand in the way of her getting whatever she wants, and she has the means to live her life as she pleases. She keeps E around for laughs, but she doesn't really care about anyone but herself.

There you go. I promise, since I was a little boy, I have thought of the notes on the piano is just those terms. If you know anything about music, it's apparent that the notes hang out with one another based on their relationships as tonic, dominant and sub-dominant chords in the scale. The notes don't get along when one key sharps or flats another. For example, B is so self-centered because in her key, all the notes but E are sharped. I don't know why my mind interprets that as relational strife, but it does. I'm sure this has to do with learning to play in the key of B on the piano. It's one of the hardest ones for a young student to master. This kind of thinking is so ingrained in my mind that I always have a brief second thought whenever I play a song in B. I don't like B. She's a jerk.

So, is it just me? Am I alone in my crazy anthropomorphisms? I think not.

Sunday afternoon the family and I were driving home from a great 4 days in Seattle visiting family and hanging out. It was lunch time and we were in Ellensburg, Washington so we stopped at Arby's for some sandwiches. I've always felt like Arby's was just a little higher on the fast food chain than some of the burger options. I'm sure at some point I felt like eating there would be a healthier option than Burger King. I don't think that anymore, but I am still attracted to Arby's when I want something just a little fancier than a cheap burger or taco. Irrational reasoning or not, we drove up to Arby's and went inside. There was quite a line. Lots of Arby's folk in the back making food, and one lone girl at the register. She was trying to make the best of it, but, at that moment on that day, her world sucked. You see, Arby's had run out of roast beef. At least, they had run out of prepared roast beef. As I neared the front of the line, someone was frantically pulling chunks of hot meat out from some hot meat maker in the back and throwing them on an automatic meat slicer where another someone was just as frantically pulling them off piece by piece, weighing them and make sandwiches as fast as the slicer would let him.

The hard thing for April (that was the girl at the register) is that she was being told, pretty regularly, that she needed to let all the customers know that any beef product would be a ten minute wait. I think this was supposed to disuade the customers from ordering beef products. It wasn't working. Why wasn't it working? Because all of these shenanigans were taking place at Arby's. The roast beef sandwich place. April was making the best of it though. She asked the customer in front of me what name to put on the order. "Connie." "That's the name of my car," she said. "What?"  "Yeah, I have a Lincoln Continental. I call her Connie."

I ordered my roast beef sandwiches, much to April's chagrin, and went to the side to stand and watch. Each customer heard the same warning that the customer before them did: "Any beef sandwiches will be a 10 minute wait." No one changed their resolve for beef. At one point, the manager, or at least the girl in charge of the shift, after continuing to see beef sandwich orders appear on the monitors around the kitchen, came up, again, to make sure that April was telling her patrons that there would be a long wait for beef. April assured her that she was informing each one of the perils.

As I put in my 10 minutes, it was fascinating how frustrated the staff was about the beef. Now, I'm sure they were frustrated about there not being beef: whose fault was it that there was no beef right at lunch, is there anyway to bypass some steps in order to get beef faster, etc., but the way that their frustrations kept coming out was: why do you people keep ordering beef?

It's funny how we misdirect legitimate frustrations toward those totally not responsible for our problems. The way we see a solution, but it doesn't involve hard work, an apology and possibly personal loss, but instead a scapegoat that we can blame. The right thing to do would have been to suck it up, apologize profusely and give everyone free sodas (that's not even a statistically significant personal loss but it would have gone a long way) but instead the staff decided to blame all those pesky customers for their problems. If only we had gone to Taco Bell on Sunday, Arby's would have never run out of beef.

I only stayed long enough to get my 'Shroom and Swiss Roast Beef, Regular Roast Beef, Jr. Roast Beef and Large curly fry, but as I was walking out the door it became clear that the staff of the Ellensburg Arby's was going to get their wish: the shift leader announced that instead of just being behind on beef slicing, the restaurant had actually run out of beef. I'm sure the line subsided shortly thereafter.