I've died and gone to heaven

Sour, crisp, green and delicious. No sandwich should consider itself complete without one, or two or ten. A pickle bar? Genius!

I want my three wishes!

It's quite possible my favorite part of Nashville didn't even happen in Nashville; it happened while flying over it. As we were getting on the plane to go back to San Diego, I was thrown back into elementary school, visions of driving for hours in mini vans singing at the top of our lungs:

"Every heartbeat bears your name
Loud and clear they stake my claim
My red blood runs true blue
And every heartbeat belongs to you."

Are you kidding me? Amy Grant on our plane?! Giddy with anticipation, I hoped she would at least stand up and bless the plane, give us a little rendition of Silent Night, SOMETHING! I mean, this is almost as big as saying hi to Coolio at LAX. Okay, so there were no words exchanged between us, but we did look at each other. I'm not quite sure if it tops Jen seeing A.C. Slater (aka Mario Lopez) in the airport, but think if all these three people could have some sort of musical get together, it would be beautiful.

Wish #1: whirled peas
Wish #2: an Amy Grant/Coolio/Mario Lopez world tour
Wish #3: never-ending wishes

Quite possibly on the brink of BSH #11:

Standing in a sea of Big Southern Hair

So this past week we were at the National Youth Workers Convention for Youth Specialties and there is much to post on, but first . . .

Church Marketing Sucks, one of my favorite blogs, had a mostly unmanned booth right around the corner from us. They posted a blog asking for those attending the conference to take their picture in front of the booth and blog about it. Good marketing for CMS, but we decided to take that one step further. It's all about the partnerships people:









I love the minimalist approach taken at their booth, and it seemed to work, because in the midst of my picture taking, there was a constant influx of people taking cards off the CMS table. Who knows whether this had to do with the popularity of the blog or the fact they used the word sucks, etc.

As a ministry, we're trying to figure how to combat the "noise" of the exhibit hall by possibly stripping down what we're showing to a next to nothing picture. In a place that held close to 500 other booths vying for the attention of the 7,500 youth workers, it made for a sensory overload.

This includes everyone from media groups with so much marketing money to blow they're painting their employees green and giving out iMac computers, to the mom and pop booths with their one table, most likely getting swallowed by the bells and whistles surrounding.

Next year: how do we create buzz without the iMac, the green guys, the 27 plasma screen T.V.s? Maybe it's time to step outside the convention hall and make some noise of our own.

P.S. Running tally: Erin - 12 Big Southern Hair sightings, Katie - 10 BSH sightings

Tamara's Tract - note: this is a joke

This is Tamara's attempt to reinact a scene from "Tracts for Your Friends and Mine: A Life Lived in the Fire."

Would you rather have a) fingers made of sausage; b) grass for hair; c) a need to yell "I love pumpernickle and I don't care who knows it!" every time a door shut; d) the ability to share the love of God to all your friends through red-hot drawing skills and interpretive dance or e) ears that sprouted an enormous amount of moss every time you got embarrassed?

Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it; right is right even if no one is doing it.

Augustine

They will know us by our scary cartoons

This is probably the most repulsive piece of "Christian" propaganda I have ever seen. The last convention I attended for work had an exhibit hall which held numerous "ministries". I quote that purely for the sake of the few like this one who I'm surprised were even let in the door. (Who am I kidding, at $1,000 per booth space, I'm not surprised they were willing to take anyone with an open wallet.)

At first I thought, hey, ten free tracks, we'll take them and send them to unsuspecting friends as jokes (I know, us Christians really do need to get a life). But now that I'm reading through them, it's no wonder the world is afraid of those who proclaim to follow Christ. If I was given an ultimatum with "the wrong choice" or the choice of the non-Christian being "a horrible future including World War 3, dying in my sins, facing God and spending eternity in the Lake of Fire", or "the right choice" being to "reign and rule with Christ at His return and enjoy heaven forever" ... well, you can see the obvious decision. Of course the whole "let's scare people into heaven" tactic is the obvious form of proselytizing employed by Jesus himself. [sarcasm] Maybe I never caught that in reading my non-King James Bibles(because according to Chick Publications it's the only version to truly encounter God) but sometimes I wonder what kinds of faces God really is making at these "HI THERE!" publications . . .

Even more scary, and something to talk about amongst yourselves: what kind of cringing faces might God be making at the publications I help produce to promote Amor; OR the ways each of us employ our own "tactics" to show the love of Christ in the world??

Fear is not my friend

Imagine the impact in our world if we all infused our passion and purpose with the proof and power of loving one another and telling the truth - and then, one by one, moved it out of our offices and factories and boardrooms and filled our homes, classrooms, hospitals, churches, and governments with it. It would be - quite simply - inspiring, and therefore revolutionary.

from Worthwhile Magazine September/October 2005, a magazine who's mission is: "to put purpose and passion on the same plane as profit. WORTHWHILE offers a roadmap for business success that is more personally fulfilling and socially responsible. We live by the motto that it is impossible to have a meaningful life without meaningful work."