Let wonder replace worry

Girl with Down syndrome voted Homecoming Queen

A suburban Chicago high school crowns a 17 year-old girl with Down syndrome their 2008 Homecoming Queen.

This story has made me smile all day.

Church Shootings

Shooting suspect hated liberals - USATODAY.com

Sunday morning, a guy walked into a unitarian church with a shotgun in Knoxville and killed a couple of people.

His reason? He believes they are too liberal.

Absolutely crazy.

While I'm not unitatian, this is something I feel like I am reading about way too often- in all kinds of chruches.(Remember YWAM?)

Makes me wonder how many of our churches have a plan, or have even talked about what they would do in a situation like this.

I don't guess it is really something you can plan for, but I think it may be smart for every church to at least have a conversation about what would happen if they were ever faced with a crazed gunman interrupting worship.

Have gas prices went up a little or something?

We live right in the middle of town. Everything is within walking distance- even the church is about a quarter of a mile away.

So we don't have to drive anywhere- although we normally do.

I put 4 gallons in Nicole's car tonight at $4.16.

It has gone up steadily everyday for over a week.

So my prediction- $5.00 a gallon by July 4.

At this rate it will soon be cheaper for people to stay home than to go to work. Hopefully something will give soon.

Touching Them All

Link: ESPN.com

Here is a touching story from here in Washington State. Someone at church was telling me about this game last week and I am glad to see that ESPN picked up on it.

This could really be used in a variety of ways in youth ministry. I can think of 3 different discussion topics right now off the top of me head. I may be showing it soon.

This is 5 minutes that you will not regret. Trust me.

Is Global Warming Real?

Interesting article on Global Warming.

Global Warming scares me. It is surprising how many regulations and taxes are being proposed for something no one fully understands.

I wish everyone would read the great Michael Crichton novel "State of Fear".

Youth Ministry and Music

A couple days ago we learned that taking CD you own and saving it to a computer you own is illegal reproduction. Sure, that is crazy but we are working with a generation of kids who honestly believe they should not have to pay for music. If you like a band- then borrow and friend's CD and load it onto your iPod. Or, log on to any P2P site and download whatever you want.

In terms of youth ministry, this has got me thinking about services like Interlinc. They provide (for a price) CD's for the purpose of creating a library to loan music to students. A few months back, I remember reading an article from them explaining why they had no intention of moving to all digital because then it would be much harder to let students borrow the music.

I am going to speak in very general terms here.

If a student borrows a CD on Sunday morning and returns it to you on Monday afternoon, is there really any question as to if they "stole" (using the RIAA's language) the music? Even if we ask them not to, how do we ensure this? Especially when students today will pay little to nothing for music. Sure, they will pay .99 cents for a song, but none of them would buy a whole CD with songs they did not care about.

I normally would not think this is a big deal, but things are getting nasty in the music industry.

Where does this leave us youth pastors? Is loaning music to students wrong? Should we be concerned about what happens to that music when it is out of our hands?

I don't know there is an answer, but this is fantastic: CD Liner Notes of the Distant Present.

Computer glitch stops New Year's Eve fireworks at Space Needle

In the land of Microsoft, high tech savvy, and 2.0 dot com start-ups, the fireworks show had to be rebooted last night. Just after the start of the show, the computer froze and had to be rebooted- twice.

All the talk today is on what operating system was being used. General agreement is that it was Vista.

Buy Nothing Day

Nicole and I (unknowingly) participated this year.

It was much more fun staying home, watching the guys down home in Arkansas beat the top team in the nation.

Tomorrow is Washington and Washington State battle for the Apple Cup. Neither team has had a great year, but they seem to match up pretty well. Should be a good game. I'm just going to pull for whoever gets behind first.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hilarious...

This is absolutely the funniest thing I have ever heard on talk radio in my life. 

Definitely worth your time.

Listen here.

You will thank me.