Yours Truly on the Cutting Edge of Cultural Change

You may remember that I railed against our culture's over-use of the phrase "the perfect storm." Well today is sweet vindication. The good people at Lake Superior State University included "perfect storm" in the list of 19 clichés they have targeted as affronts to the English language.

Nerdy wordsmiths everywhere rejoice.

Boycotting the Rose Bowl Game

I decided not to watch the Grand-Daddy today.

Missed an opportunity to see the beautiful Song Girls today

For firsts, the outcome was never in doubt. USC blows out every out of conference opponent they face every year, especially in bowl games. Why would the fighting Zookers be any different? The Men of Troy are bred to win big games; Pete Carroll has built a group of players with a championship pedigree. When the other team is a bundle of nerves, USC is cold as ice, and they dispatch their competition with an executioner's efficiency.

Also, while I love me some USC Song Girls, the Men of Troy are one of the more annoying teams to watch blow out another team because of the way they insist on playing their "Fight On" theme song after every first down & touchdown. The list of teams that are horrible to watch in blowouts are as follows...

(Just imagine hearing these theme songs more than 30 times in a 3-hour stretch)

3.) Southern California -- "Fight On"
2.) Oklahoma -- "Boomer Sooner"
1.) Tennessee -- "Rocky Top". Hands DOWN the worst!

And, the three best chants in college football:

3.) Alabama -- "The Rammer Jammer" (and another good version)
2.) Kansas -- "Rock Chalk Jayhawk" (FF to the 1:00 mark)
1.) Florida State -- "War Chant". Nothing more intimidating.

I feel like you need to know these things.

The second reason I wasn't real big on watching the Rose Bowl today is their stance on a College Football playoff. With the system we already have in place, we could have a "Plus One" Championship Game with the top 4 teams playing off for the championship. The ONLY thing holding this back is the Rose Bowl & the commissioners of the Pac-10 and Big Ten. Here's an excerpt from an article by Austin Murphy on CNN/SI:

Baseball players, basketball players and golfers all miss substantially more classes. "Football players miss four or five Friday afternoons a year -- on a day most of 'em don't even have classes," says DeLoss Dodds, the athletic director at Texas, who believes the buzz created by a playoff would equal if not surpass the excitement of the Final Four in basketball. "If we had an eight-team playoff," says Dodds, "it would capture America."

In the next sentence he explains why it can't happen. "The plus-one won't work," he says, wearily, "because to do it, you've got to seed the [top] four teams. And if you do that, the Rose Bowl won't accept it."

Confirming that is Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen, who replies, "Uh, no," when asked if his conference is open to the possibility of a plus-one.

"If you seed the teams, and that's the only fair way to do it," he says, "then you're going to seed the conference champions out of their traditional bowl games. And that would be very injurious to all those games."

Have I mentioned that I like the USC Song Girls?

So "injurious" and abhorrent do Hansen and his ilk find such crime-against-nature bowl matchups that they are only too pleased to block the path to a playoff. And so tied to tradition is the Rose Bowl that, having lost Ohio State to the title game, it invited 13th-ranked Illinois, the only three-loss team to get a BCS bid, to face USC. The sport is being held hostage, as one frustrated AD puts it, "by the Rose Bowl parade."

Springing to the defense of his Pac-10 counterpart is Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who together with Hansen forms a kind of Axis of Obstruction. Pointing out that their conferences already compromised once, back in 1998, when they joined the Bowl Alliance -- later christened the BCS -- Delany says, "We gave up a lot. I don't feel like we're takers. I feel like we're givers."

It is the rest of college football's problem that they are no longer in a giving mood. That nine-year-old decision to play ball with the Bowl Alliance "was not a first step toward a playoff," Delany emphasized last Friday, "but a last step." The Big Ten, Pac-10 and Rose Bowl recently signed an eight-year deal with ABC. (Fox has the rights to the four other BCS bowls in a contract that runs through 2014.) Says Delany, "We intend to honor that commitment."

PM Worship Service

I submit for your approval a sermon I preached yesterday for New Year's. I wouldn't necessarily call it a homerun, but I feel safe saying that I thought it was an extra-base hit. Its not too late to challenge your church for the New Year. If there's anything in there that helps, or even if you just want to preach from that script, have at it.

I want to ask this question: where did PM worship service come from? Who was the first guy to say, "One worship service on Sunday isn't enough. We need two."

I love Mike Cope's joke about PM worship service. He calls the AM service the "Varsity" service, and PM the "JV" edition. Varsity comes out in the morning; they have the nicer uniforms & the bigger audience. JV comes out at night. To most folks, they care about the Varsity team, but they could care less about JV. I even recognize that most of my better sermons are the ones I preach Sunday AM.

I fail to understand why someone once felt the need & decided for the church to come together, worship, leave, then come together again, and rehearse from the same script what we did on Sunday morning. If its the Lord's Supper people need an extra chance to take, we could have a dedicated Lord's Supper Service. However, I've just gotta say that the church's antiquated system of PM worship service is redundant (and so not attractive), inconvenient, and (frankly) ineffective on many levels.

I love the idea of coming together on Sunday for a 3-4 hour block of time... having bible study, having worship, sharing a meal, and then going home. Or having worship Sunday AM & having cell groups in homes at night. Those ideas make sense. Can we say the same about the idea of PM worship service?

My New Drug

I've been meeting weekly with a group of local friends in ministry for encouragement & accountability for over a year now at Starbucks. I'm not a coffee drinker, though. I tried a couple frappuccino's, and they were ok but didn't really blow me away. For over a year, I've been lobbying the guys to pick another place to meet because I just don't really care for the Starbucks experience.

The charming Starbucks logo with the enchanting Siren of Greek Myth

While I don't care for coffee, I am a sweet tea connoisseur. As we all do, I keep mental notes of the pluses & minuses of local restaurants, and one of the more important factors that I keep track of is "the Sweet Tea test." Is good? Is it bad? Is it too sweet? Is it not sweet enough? Is it not fresh? Is it watered down? If I'm with a group who is deciding between two different restaurants, I'll often vote for the one that doesn't have bad sweet tea.

So while at one of our ministry gatherings at Starbucks a little over a month ago, I was thirsty, and I thought I'd search the menu one more time. Specifically, I hoped I could get a sweet tea. To my delight, I noticed that they had shaken iced teas. But there was only green tea, red tea, orange tea, and black tea. The sweet tea that I normally drink is golden brown-colored, so I asked the guy behind the counter, "Do you guys have regular sweet tea?" He told me that that was black tea, and I nearly jumped for joy. "I want one," I declared. "Large!" Amused, he replied, "That would be 'Venti.'" It was $2.24, and I handed the man a twenty-dollar bill. "$17.76 is your change, sir." Ridiculously expensive, but with that total, at least I feel strangely patriotic. And then, it was so good that while we were there for a couple hours, I indulged with two refills.

I love me some Tea

So, since that day, my new drug is the Starbucks Venti Tazo® Black Shaken Iced Tea Sweetened. It is SO good! It may be the best sweet tea ever. Whenever an errand takes me to that part of town, I drop by & order TWO! I do that because I usually suck down the first one because I enjoy it so much. And the second tea is the one that I savor. And then I spend the next few hours going to the bathroom, but its WORTH IT! I think that there are three key elements that make this tea great. First, it is fresh tea. I can make fresh tea at home, and its almost as good, but it takes half an hour. Second, the sweetener. I don't know what it is... I don't want to know what it is... it is euphoric... its probably a narcotic. Third, the most elemental ingredient, water. The water is soft, not hard, and it hits the pallet just right.

O Starbucks, just like the logo on the side of your cups, you are a seductress.

The Links

The Essentials
If you read nothing else, click on these links

I don't say this lightly: if you minister to people, you need to read this entire article. Matt Dabbs, given his considerable psychological experience, is exempt. ;) The Zoloft Dispensation: Pastoring in the Meds Age.

Not sure if this news event registers on many of your radar screens, but former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation. If a major presidential candidate who was running against an incumbent was assassinated in U.S. 11 days before elections, I can't begin to imagine the damage that would do to our republic, much less their fragile one! As per the play-book, the 2008 Presidential Candidates picked up the political football & ran with it.

The Frivolous
Some guy in Indiana paid for a new pickup truck with loose change. Me, I'm one of those annoying "Use your change as you go" guys who is digging in his pocket for another nickel & dime to pay the cashier in exact change while you stand behind me just waiting to make your order at Starbucks.

From the "What in the WORLD?!?" Department, Man nails Santa to a cross in protest.

Have you found Jesus yet? All you need is coordinates...

A bunch of priests brawl in Bethlehem. Even though we are not Greek Orthodox or Armenian, the un-churched links us with them. I hate news like this, because events like this don't help the effort for evangelism.

Interesting article from CNN/SI about how some guy got to go one-on-one with Obama. He appears to be a very balanced person.

Lots of talk by college football analysts & commentators about how revolutionary the new spread offenses are with mobile quarterbacks. Well, the next generation football offense is already here, and its laboratory is Alabama High School Football. It's called the A-11 offense, for "All 11" players being eligible to touch the ball. What a mess to try to defend. Here's a video of the offense in action.

College Football Players rack up during bowl season. Sound systems, Nintendo Wii's -- these guys get taken care of.

You thought you had a crappy Christmas...

Some kids develop late, and others figure it out early. This little girl early has a head start on the world...

With apologies to ESPN's Bill Simmons (a.k.a. The Sports Guy) & his links column, this is the Best Wedding First Dance Ever...

Perfect Storm = Bad Form

A side note before I allow you to take a dip into my cynicism...

Anyone who is dissatisfied with the lack of "spirituality" in this blog lately may want to sample some of the sermons that I've begun posting on-line at SermonCentral.com. The link is a button (looks like this --><--) on the side panel that is listed under "Elsewhere," which is a collection of links to my other virtual presences on this tangled world wide web that we weave.

Since I have the weekly opportunity to share Christian messages from Scripture every Sunday, I typically exhaust most of my theological reflections at that time. Given that fact, I'm simply not as motivated to opine spiritual opinions in this forum for all 2 of my readers. That does not necessarily mean that this blog will be completely void of Christianity. Simply, I'm serving notice for each of you in case you're wondering why a preacher's blog isn't more preachery.

So, if getting a glimpse of what I share on Sunday's is your cup of tea, feel free to help yourself in that regard by checking out what I post there at SermonCentral.com.

As evidenced by a previous blog entry, I tend to be particular, and sometimes ornery, about how we use the English language. Has anyone else seen the new IBM commercial where a group of co-workers go to some business conference & during one of the sessions end up playing business buzzword bingo? Its hilarious. It's a play on how there are certain buzzwords & phrases that are over-used. They are words that are often peppered into a speech, and the speaker intends for the buzzword to have gravity & carry deep meaning. However, a word's effect is lessened each time it is used, thus "buzzwords" end up becoming annoying utterances that effectively make the speaker appear shallow.

I'm sure that some of my regular Sunday listeners could come up with a good list of words to play buzzword bingo with. When it comes to contemporary churches, it seems that you aren't a hip church unless you have one of the following words in your title: Fellowship, Grace, or Community. And if your church is named "Grace Community Fellowship," then you're probably at the hippest church in town.

Well, the well-worn phrase that has drawn my ire lately is "perfect storm." It is everywhere. Whenever folks intend to describe a confluence of events that returns a negative result, they say, "Its a perfect storm." From the situation in Iraq to the current political climate to the crisis in sports concerning a lack of loyalty between coaches and institutions /organizations, it seems that I hear or read it more than I go to the bathroom. We're really wearing it out, America. I urge readers everywhere to limit how often you use this phrase.

Anyone else wish to share any buzzwords or phrases that grate against their language sensibilities?

The 12 Pains of Christmas

Well, it's nearly over, but I thought I'd share my favorite Christmas parody of all-time. I believe it was originally recorded by Bob Rivers. Anyway, enjoy!