Ok, so I am in the middle of watching the 60th Emmy Awards and watched Josh Grobin (sp?) sing. I have to say that was the worst waste of time I have ever sat through. It ranks right up there with watching A.I. That was actually quite painful and I hope I never have to watch something like that again. I have heard Josh Grobin perform before, and to tell the truth I have never been really that impressed, but this absolutely takes the cake. I don't know if it was done because the producers of the Emmy awards asked him to perform this, or if it was his idea, but either way it was BAD. If you didn't get the chance to take part in this painful experience, I encourage you to go to youtube and endure through the worst 5 minutes of your life. You will be stronger for it because you persevered.
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Sunday, September 21, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
When will the bleeding end?
I typically write in my blog about ministry related items, with the occasional non-ministry item here and there. This is one of those non-ministry related items, although I think it has some ministry implications.
If you have been paying attention at all to just about ANY media lately I am sure you are reading about the economic downturn that we are in. Just less than a year ago it seemed like our economy was BOOMING. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was over 14,000 and it seemed like everyone had a house and a job. But this last year has been disastrous. The Dow is down under 11,000 - it lost 504.48 points on Monday, had a little gain on Tuesday, but is down another 363.46 as of this writing (Wednesday). We have seen the failure of many banks, we have seen the Federal Government bail out Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and now AIG, while leaving others to simply fail. We are seeing people losing their homes at a record pace, and the unemployment going up at a steady rate.
So when will the bleeding end??? It is like when you cut yourself and the wound bleeds and bleeds and bleeds and it seems like it is never going to end. The economy is going through that right now, and all we can do is hold on.
It seems like there are certain political figures that want to blame this on the current Government administration. They seem to want to pin this on the government and say that it is their fault that we are going through all this. They then have a list of all the things the government should have done to prevent it. When it comes down to it, the government is not responsible for this downturn - the Greedy American Public IS!!!
For too long we have said, I want more, more, more. We have turned to credit to try to satisfy our desires. We want a bigger house, so we go and get a loan for that bigger house. We want a better, nicer car, so we go and get a loan for that. We then find out that our funds run out before the end of the month, well we have credit cards to take care of that, and eventually we can't even pay our bills. Now I know that some people out there were the victims of predatory lending, and I really feel bad for them, and I feel bad for the people who have been laid off of work and lost their house or car. But, for the vast majority of people they simply got greedy, and now are paying the consequences for that greed.
The greed goes beyond just the common person and into the corporate world, where corporate greed has caused many of these banks to fail. For goodness sake, there are CEOs out there making hundreds of millions of dollars while the company they are in charge of is filing bankruptcy. There has to be something wrong with that.
In all, like I said it all goes back to the fact that Americans have become VERY greedy.
I love reading the book of Ecclesiastes - the writer of Ecclesiastes, probably King Solomon said this, "Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless."
Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:10 and said, "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
It isn't our money that has caused the problem for the U.S. economy. It is our greed for MORE. Once again scripture proves itself right - when you get greedy (love of money) you open yourself up to all kinds of trouble.
So America, we go through another great economic downturn - will we ever learn to be content because Greed destroys.
If you have been paying attention at all to just about ANY media lately I am sure you are reading about the economic downturn that we are in. Just less than a year ago it seemed like our economy was BOOMING. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was over 14,000 and it seemed like everyone had a house and a job. But this last year has been disastrous. The Dow is down under 11,000 - it lost 504.48 points on Monday, had a little gain on Tuesday, but is down another 363.46 as of this writing (Wednesday). We have seen the failure of many banks, we have seen the Federal Government bail out Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and now AIG, while leaving others to simply fail. We are seeing people losing their homes at a record pace, and the unemployment going up at a steady rate.
So when will the bleeding end??? It is like when you cut yourself and the wound bleeds and bleeds and bleeds and it seems like it is never going to end. The economy is going through that right now, and all we can do is hold on.
It seems like there are certain political figures that want to blame this on the current Government administration. They seem to want to pin this on the government and say that it is their fault that we are going through all this. They then have a list of all the things the government should have done to prevent it. When it comes down to it, the government is not responsible for this downturn - the Greedy American Public IS!!!
For too long we have said, I want more, more, more. We have turned to credit to try to satisfy our desires. We want a bigger house, so we go and get a loan for that bigger house. We want a better, nicer car, so we go and get a loan for that. We then find out that our funds run out before the end of the month, well we have credit cards to take care of that, and eventually we can't even pay our bills. Now I know that some people out there were the victims of predatory lending, and I really feel bad for them, and I feel bad for the people who have been laid off of work and lost their house or car. But, for the vast majority of people they simply got greedy, and now are paying the consequences for that greed.
The greed goes beyond just the common person and into the corporate world, where corporate greed has caused many of these banks to fail. For goodness sake, there are CEOs out there making hundreds of millions of dollars while the company they are in charge of is filing bankruptcy. There has to be something wrong with that.
In all, like I said it all goes back to the fact that Americans have become VERY greedy.
I love reading the book of Ecclesiastes - the writer of Ecclesiastes, probably King Solomon said this, "Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless."
Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:10 and said, "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
It isn't our money that has caused the problem for the U.S. economy. It is our greed for MORE. Once again scripture proves itself right - when you get greedy (love of money) you open yourself up to all kinds of trouble.
So America, we go through another great economic downturn - will we ever learn to be content because Greed destroys.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
A couple EYE opening reads
I just finished reading "They Like Jesus but not the Church" by Dan Kimball. I actually have just a short bit of reading to do in the book, which is an appendix where Dan answers some questions that critics of the book may have. This book, along with "UnChristian" by Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons really confirmed many of the thoughts that I have had over time. The primary one being that the most effective form of evangelism is through relationships.
I think it was John Maxwell that once said, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." I think this really sums up a good portion of what these books are about, or at the very least the portion of these books that spoke to me the most.
Both of these books cover similar material, but they come at it from a very different way. UnChristian comes to their conclusions based on a great amount of polling research done by the Barna Group, while They Like Jesus comes to these conclusions based on conversations with non-Christian people. Regardless of how they came to their conclusions, they came to basically the same conclusions. Through their research they found that by and large people have a negative opinion of Christians. These opinions can only REALLY be changed through relationships.
It is through these relationships that as Christians we begin to build trust with those that have a negative opinion of us. It is through that trust that we then have the opportunity to introduce them to Jesus Christ.
So anyway, if you don't have anything else to read, I would encourage reading both these books. As I said, they come from a completely different angle, and so both of them kind of work together to give the whole picture.
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