charlieDEAN’S Blog

So I was reading 1 Corinthians 10 this morning and a question jumped into my head as I read this passage. And I wondered this: based upon what Paul says here, if you happen to be a Christian who believes that drinking alcohol is wrong, then what do you do if a neighbor offers you a beer?

My thinking is that the apostle Paul would say, “you drink it.”

What say ye?

Every year it happens…

The weather starts warming up, the sun roof gets opened,  and from somewhere deep inside of me this latent longing for hard rock emerges.  So here’s where the fun is…

At the risk of great personal embarrassment and loss of respect for the small degree of “coolness” that I may posses in ever-decreasing measure, I’ll open the floor to two kinds of comments:

1.  I will reveal my favorite guitar/rock song of all time after letting you guess for a while (I will provide clues in the comments as we move forward.)  At this juncture I will say that this song may not be my favorite song per se, but if I could  just turn off the vocals and listen to the band I would be a happy guy!

2.  Your favorite spring-time-windows-down rock song?

You will never fully understand this until you have children of your own, but I love this picture so much, so I thought I’d share:

By the way…this came from the Gateway Building on Sunday morning…

by the way…you can run from Wal-Mart, but you can never hide!!

Several months ago I read Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, which is about fundamentalist Mormonism.  As part of the book he gave a history of Joseph Smith & the Mormons, which included a stint in Nauvoo, Illinois.  My friend Ryan regularly has business in Nauvoo, so I asked if I could ride along the next time he was headed that way.  Today was that day.  So this is me in front of the Temple in Nuavoo.  (In a day of small cameras, I used the iSight on my MacBook Pro to take this shot, so it’s a little awkward.)

Okay, this picture is less than revealing (except for the marks on my forehead which are from wearing my glasses up).

Here’s the wiki on the temple if you’re interested! 

Major League Baseball opened its season this morning at 6:05am (ET). While most teams don’t have their first games until Monday, the Red Sox & A’s are playing three games in Tokyo.

I love opening day because it says “SPRING IS HERE!” So this morning, I ate my breakfast and watched the 8th inning.

Also, for the first time I’m playing fantasy baseball. We had our draft last night. Here’s my first 10 picks (of 22) in draft order:

1. Matt Holliday (COL)
2. Jimmy Rollins (PHI)
3. Ryan Braun (MIL)
4. Brandon Phillips (CIN)
5. Jered Weaver (ANA)
6. Brad Penny (LA)
7. John Maine (NYM)
8. Jeff Francis (COL)
9. J.J. Putz (SEA)
10. Adrian Gonzalaz (SD)

Yes, Luebcke, I drafted a Rockie 1st! I knew you’d be proud!

Okay, I just got called out by Summer for not posting this sooner. I’ll make my excuse…I’ve wanted to write this all day, but have had a hard time putting words to everything that I was thinking/feeling. So this is my best effort.

After that, I’ll let the people that were there comment, to give you a feel for what it was like…

First, The Gateway Building is awesome! I think every church I’ve attended in my lifetime either has had no windows or dark stained glass. I love feeling connected to the world outside — and I love that the city is always in view!

I really am quite speechless about everything! It’s hard to describe what a cool feeling of excitement & anticipation there was. It was fun to have friends, family and even quite a contingent of Northwoods folks there to wish us well.

For the first week, I thought things went about as smoothly as could be hoped for.

Without getting cheesy, I can’t really talk about it without just getting to a place where I feel overwhelmed by God’s goodness to us!

Two pictures…the one is from the balcony overlooking the scenic Illinois River, the other is of people arriving and getting coffee (before we ran out of the 5 gallons we purchased!)

summary: if you’re under 35 and don’t live in the fundamentalist camp, don’t waste your money on this book.  you already know and agree with pretty much everything they say, it won’t really reveal anything knew to you.  if you’re over 35…you must put this book on the top of your list, and don’t even think about doing “gen-x” ministry (or whatever y’all are calling it these days), before reading this.

okay, more thoughts: i’ll admit that there hasn’t been one Barna book that I’ve liked, because i generally don’t go for books from pollsters…in general.  in my opinion they’re just boring and descriptive rather than prescriptive.  this one, called unChristian is not from Barna himself (the high and exalted one), but from David Kinnamen who works at Barna’s company and at the request of Gabe Lyons decided to do some fairly extensive polling of young adults.  the result is something that if you work with young adults at all, or if you are one, you already know — either intuitively or anecdotally, you still know.  but if you’re the type that needs the polling data to affirm what you already know of our culture, then read away.

the other thought i had reading this book was, “i hope some boomers read this book.  it might make them think/lead differently, and they might believe it coming with the Barna seal of approval.”

if you’re curious as to what the polling data reveals, at the beginning of each chapter they have a quotation from someone polled, the perception and then what they believe the new perception should be — basically the whole chapter summarized in one page.   (i may have only read this part for the last chapter or two.

i guess, for me personally, this felt like a book that would have been adequate as a 10-12 page report with indexes of specific polling results.

I liked this movie so much that even though I saw it in the theater only a couple months ago, I put in in my Blockbuster Que, and watched it again last weekend!

Here are three things that captured my attention (and two of the three relate to how we do church, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions):

• i love this style of movie-making where things appear more normal. cars are old and rusty. actors are blemish-free. it rains a lot. basically, it’s just more real. sometimes i do watch movies to “willingly suspend disbelief,” but most of the time, i enjoy seeing the beauty in everyday stuff.
• i was watching an interview with the director and he was talking about the camaraderie among the cast and crew and all the things they did to really build a sense of “family” on the set and he said something to this effect, “we wanted to be as proud of how we made the movie as we were of the movie itself.”
• again, the director was talking about the type of humor employed in the movie and suggested that stupid humor (see almost everything done by Will Ferrell) is easy and cheap. but great humor comes in the midst of sadness. i think this is true. (and he didn’t diss Will Ferrell…that was me. and i’m not saying that i don’t enjoy some cheap humor once in a while either…”we’re the knights who say NEE!”)

I was at the library not too long ago, and spontaneously picked up Michael Moore’s documentary SiCKO.  Here’s my quick review:

Unfortunately, Michael Moore has a way of taking a serious issue that really needs serious discussion, debate and insight and handles it with such a sneer and with side-jabs that are completely ad-hominem,  to the degree that his style completely overshadows his substance.  Furthemore, his solution to the problem is so extreme as to make it completely irrelevant to the conversation.  Too bad.

[ps.  the extreme right does the same thing, and it's too bad]

last weekend i finally got to watch the movie Into the Wild. i’m a fan of Jon Krakauer, and so i was eagerly anticipating this movie-version, but was unable to get to the theater and see it when it came out in November. Here are a couple movie thoughts, and then some personal reflections:

• i’ve already said that the soundtrack is amazing. in the context of the movie it’s even more so.
• beautifully shot film. i wish i could have seen it on the big screen.
• as is the norm, the movie-makers added some content, which is too bad, considering this is all about a real person and real events. the thing is, i didn’t see that the added parts were necessary.

here’s the thing. this was a great film. but my guess is that there will be some people who absolutely love it and others who hate it — and it probably has more to do with their own personality than the actual film.

some people look at the story of Chris McCandless and say, “he was crazy” and they just don’t get why he did what he did. others, including Krakauer in the book, look at McCandless and say, “i get it. i have the same wanderlust, the same craving for adventure.”

i was telling this to Jennifer — that were i not bound by various responsibilities — i could see myself strapping on a backpack and heading into the wild for some time — and she told me how when she was in the bookstore recently she saw a promotional display that said ADVENTURE and she was looking at the books realizing that i either owned or had read many of the books.