Some of you are probably wondering how I got on CBS Sunday Morning. The answer is…I haven’t the foggiest. To me, it all seems like a rather random intersection of events. But after putting some thought into it, I realize one of the main reasons that I got noticed by CBS is the stupid decisions I have made throughout my life. To be fair, they really weren’t stupid decisions, but questionable ones that were based more on conviction than actual common sense, which appears the same as stupidity to the casual observer. And these decisions are at least part of the reason that CBS and other outlets noticed me at all.
Archives For Musings
I am very pleased to announce a few things: first, I have a new public Facebook page! Please visit and Like, and that will let me interact with all of you much more freely and actively. My second announcement is much more impressive, and that is CBS Sunday Morning will be airing a feature on me and Peace Fellowship church this Sunday, sometime between 9:30 and 10 am EST. Ironically, I won’t be able to watch it live because I’ll be at church, as will many of my church-going friends! But I think this is actually a good thing because hopefully people who don’t usually attend church will see church in a new light, as a place where reconciliation and community thrive. That’s my hope and prayer…
But even before the show airs, I already know that there will be one person who will not be given nearly enough credit for her role, and that is my wife. She never gets enough credit for anything, mainly because she’s so quiet and thoughtful, and I’m so loud and thoughtless. But at every point in our story where it seems like I was doing something courageous, she was doing far more. Continue Reading…
“You are my greatest adventure, and I almost missed it.” – Mr. Incredible, from The Incredibles
I just read an article about Jerry Seinfeld in the New York Times, and the incredible amount of time and craftsmanship that he applies towards comedy. At one point, he explains why he never uses crude language in his shows, which was something that I had always wondered about. I just assumed that it was a religious or moral choice that he had made, that he wanted to set a good example for children or something to that effect. But instead, his explanation is not one based on morality but excellence, that Seinfeld thinks that the use of curse words in comedy is a crutch of sorts, a lazy way to elicit easy and cheap laughs, a crutch he refuses to use because it would compromise his comedy. In some way, Jerry Seinfeld is a comedian-samurai of sorts, a man dedicated to the quest of perfecting his craft not for any other end than to perfect that craft.
So many of you have probably noticed that I have been posting less frequently than usual. Part of the explanation for this is that I am pretty busy with helping the church and raising four little kids, as you all know. But as you also all know, whenever someone says they are “pretty busy”, this is usually not the entire truth. There’s always more going on there. So allow me a moment to give you the fuller story of why I find it hard to blog right now: Continue Reading…
If you didn’t see it yet, the Washington Post ran a feature on me and the church where I serve as interim pastor:
I am very honored that the Post ran this piece, not to mention a little confused as to why they chose to run one on me, given that I am almost a complete nobody. But in the end, I just appreciate that I wasn’t portrayed as a giant jerk of some kind. That’s really all I’ve wanted in life, not to be portrayed as a jerk.
This article did bring a few thoughts to mind: Continue Reading…
Finally, a more lighthearted post…about cancer!! I wrote this for a magazine, but it got REEEE-jected. So it goes up here, where all my rejected but favorite pieces go:
As many of you know, a few years ago, I planted a church in Washington D.C. For our opening service, I had it all planned out: we would launch on Easter Sunday, a perfectly symbolic day for a new work of God. We would serve lamb for lunch, again, very appropriate given the day. A sister from our church would share her powerful personal testimony of how she had lost her father to violent crime, and how God restored a sense of peace and forgiveness to her. And I planned on wearing my good tan suit, which I bought specifically for that day.
It was going to be awesome – more than that: perfect. I was especially excited about the suit, as all my other suits were stereotypically black or dark blue. Continue Reading…
I may not have very much to say right NOW, but fortunately, I wrote a few pieces in the past that are just getting published. Here is an article I wrote for the Covenant Companion (which is actually my first print piece, yay), describing my first experience with the Evangelical Covenant Church at its Midwinter conference. And yes…that is the same headshot that I use everywhere:
I’ve had three dreams for my professional life since I graduated college: first, I wanted to be a professional musician. Second, I wanted to plant a church that would preach the gospel faithfully. Third, and most recently, I wanted to be a successful writer and share my family’s testimony. These have been my life dreams for the past decade and a half.
And to be honest, I haven’t been doing especially well in any of them. Continue Reading…
(This post is following up on this previous one – not intentionally, but more because it’s been on my mind a lot recently):
So I’ve been reading a book – shocking, isn’t it? It’s this one, Michael Hyatt’s Platform – Getting Noticed In A Noisy World.
Mr. Hyatt is undoubtedly the man when it comes to creating a platform. When I say “platform”, I mean the influence and popularity needed to get your idea or product off the ground. And when I say “the man”, that’s putting it pretty mildly. Homeboy has one of the 800 most popular blogs in the world (which, if you think about the sheer number of blogs out there, is kind of ridiculous), and 100K Twitter followers – not bad for a guy who’s main claim to fame was that he was once the president of a Christian book publisher. He obviously knows what he’s doing in this field, and it’s a book chock full of good insights. I’m trying to implement 90% of what he recommends.
But here are the ideas that I simply can’t put into practice, no matter how important he says they are:
My sincerest apologies that my blogging productivity has dropped off as of late. One big reason for this is that my family is preparing for the birth of our fourth child, and as you can imagine, that has consumed much of my time and energy. Hopefully when we adjust to being a family of SIX (did I really just write that?), I’ll be able to blog more regularly again.
But there is another reason that I haven’t been able to blog much, and that is that I have lost some of my motivation. I used to blog solely for my own enjoyment and the encouragement of others, but now I’m supposed to use my website to build a following that will convince publishers that I am a worthy investment as a writer. This requires a lot of networking and a good deal of self promotion, which has been terribly uncomfortable for me, as I am by nature not very prone to putting myself out there. Continue Reading…
