Merry Christmas...

Here is a snapshot from our latest Christmas adventures!

Another LA excursion...

I had two life moments on my last trip to LA. The first was the privilege of lying on the greatest mattress in the world. We were in Culver City which tends to be pretty uppity and we saw this store called Hastens. It was an unexplainable experience until we heard the price...$62,000. Well I will sleep just fine on my Sealy thank you very much.

The next was a trip with my Sis and Bro in law to a Ron Paul tea party reenactment at the Santa Monica Pier on Saturday. It was awesome to see so many people excited about the constitution and abolishing the IRS. There are some photos on my flickr but there is plenty more stuff on youtube. VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

I made the front page of Digg.com

A user generated news site that welcome chronic addiction. I submitted the article last night and this morning I saw it on the front page. Watch out internet stardom here I come. Here is the story I dugg.

Like Sonny and Cher...

I enlisted the talents of my wife for a Christmas video we were shooting. I think she did a great job and this might be her big break, who knows? Here is her stunning debut!

Attack of the Sequel...

Well we had moderate success with the first mock news cast we produced so we did what any self respecting hollywood producer would do...we made the sequel! Hopefully it will fare at least as well as its older brother and help pay for my impending vacation. Feel free to check it out here.

Nasville again...

I was in Nashville this last week taking care of some business before the holiday season commences and all industry comes to a stand still. Well one of the companies that we had a meeting with offered to let us take a private tour of RCA's Studio B. This is a very big deal! Everyone has recorded in there and it was probably a number one record when they did. There were over 1,000 number hits recorded there. They told us all these stories about the recording technologies that were developed and furniture that Elvis damaged when he was angry at Chet Atkins. It was a great time and I was really blown away by the experience. To know more about Studio B check it out here

small screen debut...

I recently made a video with a super talented friend of mine for distribution on Sermonspice. My goal was to sell more units than last years previous best seller turkey blues. Well I didn't even come close but if you would like you can check out the video here.

You know that person...

The person that can pretty much ask you to do anything and you can't refuse them. Well Pastor Doug Holck is that guy for me. He is the Music and Exec pastor for Peoples Church and has kinda been our family's Pastor since I was really young and has married all of the Temple kids and so on. One of the things that I really like about him are his theologically profound one liners. The little sentences and quips that shake your theological foundation and make you evaluate everything. One of my favorites of his is this: Relationship precedes Truth.

That background is to say that he spoke recently in our church's third service and it is always a treat to hear the creative and passionate methods he uses to express God's word. His delivery in tender, understated, and devastating. I invite you to listen to his message and hope that you enjoy him as much as I do.

check it out here

This is something that my sis put together, now you can be trendy, subversive, and patriotic all at the same time.

The Chance for a Renaissance...

I have recently become a huge fan of dark-horse republican candidate Ron Paul. His is a simple straightforward message that revolves completely around the constitution. It is refreshing to hear and I hope he goes all the way. Any way here is the vid:

Where are all the good men dead...?

The list of people that I would like to meet is quite a eclectic grouping of people. The "Iceman" Chuck Liddell is at the very top, He was the undisputed light heavyweight champ of the UFC and there is not one of his fights that I missed. Well no one can be on top forever and that fact was sadly proven as Chuck dropped his second fight in a row last Saturday night.

It was tough to see and we were all left very quietly. Chuck is still my guy though and I think that he might have another push left in him. I still believe in you Iceman.

Nashville...

I had never been to Nashville or Tennessee for that matter. I was excited to go and even more excited that my family was able to come along. Sure I got a lot of business taken care of and got to meet with some pretty important people. Heck I was even allowed to sit in on a recording session at a Warner Bros. studio. But really the most exciting had to be the Bass Pro Shop.

For all of us Californians let me just give some background: Imagine a Costco building gutted out and filled with fishing poles, guns of all kinds, and camouflage. It was awesome. In fact we went back about four times throughout the week and bought all of our souvenirs from there as well.

It was a blast and I was really impressed by Nashville overall. What a great city that had a great blend of charm, beauty, great freeways (even though everyone drove crazy slow), and ridiculously low housing prices. I would definitely recommend it to anyone. That and they have great gun laws.

No. 132 cont'd...

So I got to meet Mel Gibson's producer. We met at his beach front office in Santa Monica to talk about promoting some of his faith based products that they are working on. I was very excited to say the least. I think that my excitement peaked when I noticed a gleaming piece of thin metal in the corner of the conference room. It was the sword. I will leave you with that.

LA trip no. 132

As you may have surmised from the title I travel to LA quite a bit for fun but also a lot of business. I love it there, my wife love's it there and my son knows that it is the home of Disneyland. Well I was not yet prepared for the experience that awaited us on this particular excursion. First of all, my sis and her hubby live there and have given is a slew of new restaurants to eat at. The star of this profile is a mind blowing trip to the heart of the most amazing greek food I have ever eaten. Papa Cristos is the name of the place and I was not prepared for what was about to unfold.

I was blessed enough to experience what had to be the most succulent gyro, pillow soft pita, and creamy delectable tzatziki sauce that the western mind could comprehend. It was after the my plate was clean that I saw the autographed poster from My big fat Greek wedding that thanked them for all the catering. Everything is making sense until they brought out the baklava. This is just any baklava this is the kind of delicacy that causes you to consider a change in nationality. When was the last time you were excited about baklava? Well I would be willing the wager that this small slice of honey dripping heaven could incite passion on the most stoic of souls (in case you were wondering I do think I will be 400 lbs. by the time I am 60). I have had a lot of amazing food experiences and this has to be top 5 easy.

About the time we were all feeling as though we had become examples of gluttony my son started flirting with the waitress and scored us another baklava this time it was filled with custard! The mind cannot comprehend and I cannot possibly go on any longer else I will get it my car and make the drive right now.

Reforming the reformation

This blog originally started out as a sounding board for all of the deep, plaguing, introspective and theological issues that I had to let the world know about. Turns out there weren't that many and I am happy to report that I am relatively an untortured (is that a word?)person. So from now on I will post the happenings of my frenetic and crazy family. It should be fun and I have some great pictures and stories that have happened. Here is to some good reading!

Soapbox #2: Fear of Intimacy and a Relentlessly Personal God

I can't figure out how to start this post. I guess it comes from the fact that it resides in deep inside and I don't want it to smell like a fart when it does come out. Let's just get to it.

Here is the conflict as I see it: The capital "C" Church has done a great job separating ourselves from the world as it pertains to the consumption of alcohol, smoking of any tobacco product, and dressing conservatively. I read an article recently promoting a book discussing how a truly Christian family MUST home school their children in order to avoid the evils of being swallowed by worldliness. These are just a couple of great ways that we have physically separated ourselves from an unregenerate world.

Where it starts to get tricky is the areas where we slowly have let the more corrosive elements in over the last two generations or so. In my opinion it is the massive breakdown of truly close and intimate relationships that have stagnated the growth of our Church. These last two generations of the population have dealt with a glut of divorces, dysfunction, and day care (no alliteration intended). Which has caused a base level mistrust and immediate defense to those around us. We have carried all these walls and defense mechanisms our whole life and forgotten to drop them off at the door step of the church once we got saved. Partly because we didn't know that we had them as they have been ingrained nearly from birth.

So now we have the biggest, coolest, most relevant churches replete with tattoos and coffee bars that have the loneliest people an incredibly affluent society has ever known. For so long the family structure has been intact and the churches response (which I believe was excellent) was to offer programs to already fully functioning families. They acted as a catalyst to give strong families even more tools and continue to make them stronger. It was a wonderful system that served this country very well for a number of decades. However a completely intact family structure can no longer be the assumption as all the statistics and overcrowded rehab programs can attest.

We, then, are faced with a breakdown at a base level that aside from the Bible I do not believe there is a manual for. It is an intimacy that was meant to be nurtured from birth by sacrificing parents, an involved community, and a growing relationship with God himself. Instead we were met with divorce, substance abuse, sitcoms, and a new term called "latchkey kid". It was these failings that caused us not to trust out of survival so that we would no longer get hurt. The problem was that we still needed intimacy but didn't know it and surely would not risk again for it.

Now we have a serious percentage of the population that cannot be intimate because they were never taught, the best solutions so far are casual sex and myspace. And we have a church that is used to offering programs as solutions. I have a feeling it is like the oil industry looking at electric cars, it is possible and will be necessary in the future but lets not deal with it now. My assertion for the subject avoidance is this: Intimacy is not something that is programmable, it doesn't fit it a pie graph or a vision statement, and most of all it is not something that is mass marketable. Once you hold intimacy with God and others as paramount then it is no longer about massive crowds and big results. It is about pouring yourself out before God and digging in with others. This is simply something that one person cannot do with 100, 50, 20, or even 10 other people. Jesus had twelve, he hung out with three, and one he called beloved.

It is time to reprogram our methods into heartbeats and to forsake our strategies for the sake of the people. Let us endeavor to know God personally and maybe for the first time allow Him to know us, even the nasty bits.

So I guess that all I am really saying is that man is sinful and in need of God for restoration, pretty original huh? Hey let's think up a three point action plan to help combat the lack of intimacy in the American church, and when that becomes successful we can write a book and start a small group study guide.

soapbox #1

Well I have realized my first soapbox; it came to me as I was sitting in one of my many meetings that I sit through in a given week and it hits me. As I work in the full time ministry we encounter a lot of people that would like us to partner with them in doing whatever it is that they do. And it never fails during the pitch that this person is making I hear the dreaded phrase: "We need to be doing this" or "This needs to happen!"

Now to be fair these are generally good hearted people that are very passionate about what it is that God has called them to do and I don't fault them for that. The problem for me is what I will call the "Need" mentality with God. It is that thing people in church do when they unknowingly want to guilt people into showing up to something by telling them that they need to do it. Suddenly everything becomes top priority and everything needs to get done. Regardless of what your calling, passion, or talents are you really need to be doing this thing over here. I remember one such meeting a few months ago there were no less than five different people that were presenting their ministry and wouldn't you know it, I needed to be involved in every single one.

The main thing that bothers me about this mentality is it's underlying logical inconsistency. If everyone needed to do this one thing then who would do all the other things that need to get done. The second thing that I find troubling is the emphasis that it puts on performance rather than enjoyment. I believe that we are the best examples of Christ's love when we are carried by it and strengthened by His power rather than our own. When we as believers can exist out of the freedom and love that Christ bestows we can then be an unstoppable force. How much better does that sound than dutifully showing up to a banquet or function because we feel like it would make us bad Christians. Now I do not intend to invoke the theology of Freedom in Christ to alleviate us from any and all hard work or responsibility. In fact I believe that it would be just the opposite. When you are passionate about something then there is no stopping you or I from achieving an objective. It is out of freedom that you will pour out countless hours and resources in order the make happen what needs to get done. It is only when we are obligated under the pretense of need that we will only ever do enough just to get by. It is like being at a wedding where no one agrees that the couple should be getting married. It is quick routine and polite and sadly nothing more.

This is not my ideal for ministry or Christian life. So in order to validate my point even further I did a search on biblegateway.com for the word need in the same context as has been used here and this is the result that came up: Exodus 14:14 :The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still."

Ouch

The First...

I am beginning this blog as I sit here with my son as he watches Disney's Treasure Planet and I have the day off because of Martin Luther King. It will be an interesting process as I learn what will work best in this, my little corner, of cyber space. My desire is to communicate the larger life themes that have more opportunity to change lives and find out how many agree or disagree with me. I will always welcome and truly thrive off of healthy debate as long as it remains logical and above the belt. I truly hope this is going to be awesome!