• Last weekend Rick did a great job speaking on one of our essential values: Synergy.
  • I’m looking forward to speaking on Love this weekend.  Love is one of those topics that I really enjoy talking about. Love is so central to who we are and to life, that it connects with us on a deep, unexplainable level.
  • Softball Championships are tonight. Win or loose, our team has had a great season. Come out to support them tonight at the Princess Anne Athletic Complex at 6:30pm tonight (Friday, July 16).
  • Our staff is finally moving in to our office space one by one. I’m actually writing this post from my office. When you’re a church planter, your house becomes the default storage facility for everything.  Most of all I am looking forward to finally moving stuff out of my house to the office. This past winter when we got the new facility I was able to get my garage back and now I am looking forward to getting our spare room back.
  • With Rick and I splitting the teaching load this summer, I’ve been able to work on my summer reading list which is: The Tipping Point, Freakonomics, The 360 Degree Leader, Too Busy Not to Pray, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, Good to Great, Tribes, Practical Atheist, The Monkey and the Fish, and Wide Awake.
  • One thing I have found to be true is something that Matt Damon said in the movie Goodwill Hunting, “…you dropped 150 grand on an education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!” Having made it through the bulk of my doctorate degree I’ve found this to be true. Most of what you learn in school is from books which you could get at the library or on Amazon.com for less than $10. Half of my reading list is available at the public library…in audio format which is my favorite way to read a book.
  • Great quote from Freakonomics: “Emotion is the enemy of rational argument.” This is why you can present the best rational argument to someone about God, Jesus, the empty tomb, moral absolutes, creation vs. evolution, the reliability of the Bible, and the like and still have someone reject the rational conclusion. If you don’t engage someone emotionally, you can’t convince them rationally.  This truth is said in other familiar ways, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” or  as we’ll see this Sunday, “love is the context for mission”.