Marc’s Musings

Very cool Blue Man Group videa from Keely Stevenson on her blog From Tribeca to Tanzania.

As the folks at the Vineyard Church of Boise say, let’s tend the garden!

To see the “Let’s Tend the Garden” TV ads, go to their media page.

[Update: I'm having challenges with the embedded video. A link to the clip on YouTube is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8yYEik5E88]

It’s SLUSHY here in Maine.

Literally. Slush is falling from the sky.

I found myself wondering if there were any flavored syrup around…you know a riff on that old “lemons/lemonade” thing.

If life gives you slush…make

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Most of Us Have Been Misinterpreting Life
04/17/2007
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Most of us have been misinterpreting life and what God is doing for a long time. “I think I’m just trying to get God to make my life work easier,” a client of mine confessed, but he could have been speaking for most of us. We’re asking the wrong questions. Most of us are asking, “God, why did you let this happen to me?” Or, “God, why won’t you just ________” (fill in the blank—help me succeed, get my kids to straighten out, fix my marriage—you know what you’ve been whining about). But to enter into a journey of initiation with God requires a new set of questions:

• What are you trying to teach me here?
• What issues in my heart are you trying to raise through this?
• What is it you want me to see?
• What are you asking me to let go of?

In truth, God has been trying to initiate you for a long time. What is in the way is how you’ve mishandled your wound and the life you’ve constructed as a result.

“Men are taught over and over when they are boys that a wound that hurts is shameful,” notes Robert Bly in Iron John. Like a man who’s broken his leg in a marathon, he finishes the race even if he has to crawl and he doesn’t say a word about it. A man’s not supposed to get hurt; he’s certainly not supposed to let it really matter. We’ve seen too many movies where the good guy takes an arrow, just breaks it off, and keeps on fighting; or maybe he gets shot but is still able to leap across a canyon and get the bad guys. And so most men minimize their wound. King David (a guy who’s hardly a pushover) didn’t act like that at all. “I am poor and needy,” he confessed openly, “and my heart is wounded within me” (Ps. 109:22).

Or perhaps they’ll admit it happened, but deny it was a wound because they deserved it. Suck it up, as the saying goes. The only thing more tragic than the tragedy that happens to us is the way we handle it.

(Wild at Heart , 104–6)

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From The Ransomed Heart, by John Eldredge, reading 107
Ransomed Heart Ministries www.ransomedheart.com

Spoke with the local Dunkin’ Donuts today about an outreach idea.

Then I mentioned the card I’d put money on in February. The manager was SO glad to talk to me. He loved the idea. “Can I have more of those cards with the church info on it? I’m giving lots of those out.”

You sure can!!

Cale just came home after a weekend with Aunt Lisa and Uncle Paul.

I picked him up yesterday and got an earful about how much fun he had. Eventually, he quieted down and we rode in silence for a bit. Then he said:

Cale: Dad, Paul asked me a really tough question.

Me (wondering where this was going to go): Really, what was it?

Cale: He asked me which was better, Star Wars or Harry Potter.

Me (slightly relieved and quite amused): So, what did you tell him?

Cale: I told him it was certainly a difficult question…both stories are awesome.

Here’s the breakfast the girls made this morning!

There should be a slide show above this line. If not, try refreshing the screen. Or simply go to the album here:

Green Eggs & Ham

I just love stuff like this.

(It may be better to listen to him rather than watch. His lips start moving out of sync with this words. Kinda distracting.)

I you’d like to put into practice the goal setting, check out my free MagnetGoals Workbook at: http://fundraisingcoach.com/magnetgoals.htm

This is one of my favorites:

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than gift, or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.
–Charles Swindoll

One of the folks over at ChurchMarketingSucks.com just posted on a blunder he made in writing a press release to a new book.

In comparing it to the T.D. Jakes book “Woman, Thou Art Loose” !

I wonder if Bishop Jakes might get a whole new audience for his book now…

The original ChurchMarketingSucks.com post is here.

I just came across a post on attractional approaches to church vs. incarnational ones.

Check out the post here.