Never Give Up

Personal News
My family had a great time in Topeka, and now find ourselves at my parents' home in beautiful Pella, IA. If my extended family can just get over a stomach bug and not share it with my family, we should have a great time!

Personal Thoughts
My brother and I just watched the end of the Insight Bowl with Texas Tech and Minnesota. When we first popped the game on, the score was 38-10, Minnesota on top.

Much to our amazement and delight, we watched Texas Tech battle back from 31 points down to tie the game on a career-high 52 yard field goal, and then win the game in overtime, 44-41. Absolutely amazing.

I told my brother that had we started watching the game from the beginning, I would have turned it off. I wasn't interested in a blow-out. Yet in the on-field, post-game interview, the Texas Tech coach said that he believed even at halftime down by 28 that his team could win. To him it wasn't a blow out. To him it was an opportunity for his team to shine.

What a great reminder. If you believe in what you are doing, never give up. No matter what anyone else says (even those who tune you out), keep doing what you are called to do.

Santa from an Engineer's Perspective

Personal News
We arrived in Topeka today. Even though we got off an hour later than we had hoped (T seemed to be on his own schedule) we made excellent time because T ate like a champ and we could hop back in the car after only a 30 minutes stop and take off again. And all combined - he probably only cried 10 minutes total in the 6 and a half hours we were actually inside the van. Not bad considering how much he hates his car seat!

Personal Thoughts
I've seen this before, but thought I'd share it with all of you in case one or two of you haven't seen this humorous bit of info. I just re-read it at Mark Batterson's blog and thought it would bring a laugh or two over at my blog, so here you go!

There are approximately 378 million Christian children in the world according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh; hop out; jump down the chimney; fill the stockings; distribute the remaining presents under the tree; eat whatever snacks have been left for him; get back up the chimney; jump into the sleigh; and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations, we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household--a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run at best 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set weighing two pounds, the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the flying reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with nine of them--Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth, the ship not the monarch.

Six hundred thousand tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance--this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of acceleration from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in one-thousandth of a second, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa which seems ludicrously slim would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4.3 millions pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Merry Christmas from the Birdnest

Here is our 2006 Christmas Letter for you to enjoy.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I Hate Church Lists

Why is it that some Christians and organizations feel the need to rate churches and pastors on various lists. There's the 50 Most Influential Churches list, the 100 Fastest Growing Churches list, and now we get the 25 Most Innovative Churches.

Lists like these only serve to draw comparisons, to raise pastors to Christian-Culture icon status (even if they don't want it), and to create copycat churches. I'm all for learning from other churches, founding out how different local churches are affecting their communities, how various church bodies are reaching people with the good news about Christ, and being inspired by other church families that are doing great things for the Kingdom. But I don't need the comparing, the rating, the worldly approach to gathering this helpful information.

I just struggle so much to imagine Jesus putting together a list like this. Even in the Book of Revelation when Christ talks directly to 7 different churches, he doesn't compare them to one another, he addresses them individually on their own merits and confronts them straight up.

I encourage you as a young adult to not engage in church comparisons (or pastor comparisons for that matter). It's hard, but it's not fair. Each local church (and pastor) is accountable to God, and each is reaching different people in different ways and expressing worship of God differently. Let the world have their lists to argue about, and let's live differently as Christ-followers.

History of World Religions in 90 seconds

I'm not exactly sure how accurate this is, but the little bit I know of the spread of world religions corresponds with this 90 second Flash movie from Maps of War. I found it a bit fascinating and thought a few of you might also.

Thanks to Church Relevance for the link.

I guess everybody really is doing it...

I saw this news article from ABC News saying that 9 out of 10 people have sex before marriage. The thinktank that conducted the surveys concluded that abstinence education is a waste of money since everyone seems to be giving their bodies before giving a ring, even those from more "chaste" generations.

First, I think it should be openly noted that the group that conducted the research went into the survey with a bias. While they would not say this, they pretty much view people as animals who can't help themselves in the sexual arena, and so we must educate these animals in how to have "safe sex" that won't spread AIDS and other STDs since they have such high sexual appetites (er, excuse me... "needs"...). They would identify me as a "religious moralizer" who they perceive as making matters worse by telling people to wait until marriage for sexual activity and then to remain faithful to your spouse.

In their defense, they do seem to have the statistics to back up their claims. On one page on their site, they refer to other studies showing that 80% of HIV-infected women in south India were monogamous and 25% of HIV-infected women in Rwanda have only had one sex partner their whole life - their husband.

But their conclusion is that "Promoting abstinence or faithfulness as the only ways to prevent HIV transmission will leave millions of people without the ability to protect themselves from infection."

How can someone get HIV if they are abstaining from sex? How can a married couple get AIDS if both stay faithful? But it is assumed that everyone is going to have sex anyway (such we are just animals), so we need condoms in and out of marriage and medicine for those infected who will keep being sexually active.

This makes me so sad. This is living life at the minimum. We are missing out by taking these short cuts to intimacy. God has a MUCH better plan for our lives.

Sex is beautiful. It was created by God, not only for reproduction, but for enjoyment, bonding, emotional health, and so much more. The Scriptures are FULL of this message. But when we give our bodies to someone that we haven't committed to by exchanging vows before God and witnesses, we aren't able to FULLY enjoy, to FULLY bond, to FULLY be healthy. Which leaves us below the maximum and truly missing out on God's blessing.

I have seen this play out over and over and over with countless numbers of young adults. And not just with young adults who grew up in church hearing this message. I've seen the pain that premarital sex has had on the hearts of even non-Christians who have bought into the cultural mantra of "sex is okay between consenting adults". They engaged in premarital sex because the temptation was so strong, they longed to feel loved, and hey - everybody's doing it anyway...

As seen in the article, some may discount the 95% statistic in the survey referenced above because of the bias of the survey's conductors, but I'll give Guttmacher their statistic because it is irrelevant to me. Even if 100% of all teens and adults had sex before marriage doesn't mean that 100% are enjoying the best for their lives. It could be possible that those people are living at the minimum and not enjoying the maximum that God calls them to and wants to give them.

Yes, the draw to sex is extremely powerful for most people. But I WANT to want sex with my wife. I want to want her and I want her to want me. So thank God for the sexual desire in mankind! It is a beautiful thing. It's just too beautiful to give to someone who isn't your spouse. As someone who belongs in the 5% who never engaged in sex before marriage, I don't regret one minute of my decision to wait. It was hard - but it was worth it.

P.S. If you have already engaged in premarital sex and realize that you aren't living life at God's wonderful maximum, take heart. The cross of Christ can renew you and let you enjoy the blessing of His maximum!

Schwartzkopf on Leadership

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. (Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf)

Thanks to Chroma for the quote.

Merry Riskmas

Here's a great (and humorous) short article from Phil Callaway about his risk-taking son.

I wonder what risks God will ask us to take in 2007...

Judging a brother or sister...

I just got done about an hour ago with a conversation with a great gal from my church who has been feeling like others are excluding her - juding her as not being good enough to be in their inclusive group. She realizes that most of it is probably just her perception, but she still feels it nonetheless. We talked and prayed about it together and I think she left with hope.

Then just moments ago I somehow find this excellent blog about judging others, especially those within the Church that view ministry differently or dress differently or behave differently than us. I thought this was a fantastic post, and even though it is almost a month old, I thought it beared repeating.

(And for those who didn't't know (like me), Ned Flanders is the Christian character on the Simpsons).

Thanks to Gary Lamb for pointing this post out to me.

Congratulations (and Thank You's)

Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. For this award, I would first like to thank God for giving mankind brains to come up with the technologies that allow us to shape culture through the use of the Internet. I would also like to thank Apple for making my PowerBook so I could connect to the Internet and type my thoughts. like to thank Blogger for providing me with the platform to publish my thoughts to the Internet public, to YouTube for the videos that let me catch news items that I might have missed (or videos that give me a laugh!), to Kim Pagel for encouraging me to blog so I could share in this award with him and all of you, and to all the little people who didn't act little, but acted big and made the biggest impact in 2006 (according to Time).

And that brings me to the other half of this post. Congratulations to you as well as being a recipient of this year's Person of the Year award. I hear that if you pick up a copy of this week's Time Magazine that you even will see your picture on the cover. I would enjoy seeing that, however I'll be too busy looking at myself on the cover. After all, it's not often I win such a prestigious award as this.

Worldview Lessons

I got the following article in my weekly Relevant Leader email. I thought it had good lessons that we as young adults could learn, so I'm posting it here.

(By the way, not only did I learn some of these same principles during my time in Venezuela, but I also learned them elsewhere in life as well. So you don't have to go overseas in order to learn the three lessons below!)

Many Christians in America tend to trip up on the issue of worldview. Many have little awareness of what worldview is, how it works, what the major worldviews are or how the biblical worldview differs from other alternatives. In most cases this is true whether the Christians in question consider themselves to be radical, liberal, revisionist, moderate, conservative or fundamentalist! It seems that the only people who do have a good grasp of worldview issues are missionaries or others involved in cross-cultural business or church planting. Which brings me to my passage to India. I've been in India twice, each time for about three months. While there I learned some important worldview lessons. Worldview Lesson #1 I had just landed in Bombay (now Mumbai) and was out and about seeing the sights. On my second day I went to a mosque on a tiny island that sits in the middle of the bay. While I was on the island, a fellow there befriended me and offered to show me around. I took him up on his offer. He showed me around all right, and when I was distracted, he stole my camera and case. Obviously, this really bummed me out. How could I have been so stupid? Then I started talking to some people and discovered I wasn't the first one. Others' stories of how they had been conned or had stuff stolen became a fascinating window into a whole new way of thinking. Having grown up in suburbia, I was not streetwise, especially to foreign big cities. It was my time to get educated. Lesson learned: The Indian Christians comforted me through this and taught me that you can be both guarded and open at the same time. This real-world, school-of-hard-knocks experience taught me something about discernment into human nature, about the difference between perception and reality and about learning from others' experiences. Worldview Lesson #2 The Christians I met in India showed me how Christians can relate to a vastly complex and pluralistic culture. In India, underneath the "formal" non-biblical religions lurks animism—the belief in many gods and spirits who must be appeased or pleased to make life livable. On top of that you've got Hinduism (actually a complex of religions), Islam (which itself has radically different expressions), Buddhism, Jainism and Sikkhism, Zoroastrianism (the Parsees) and Maoist secularism. My Indian Christian friends taught me that no matter what denomination or branch of Christian faith a person might come from—they are "Christians," period. They aren't to be thought of as pagans, unbelievers, infidels, aliens, enemies or traitors. Lesson learned: In India, Christians of whatever stripe have more in common with each other than with the other religions being practiced all around them. Indian Christians see things this way partly as a result of being a small and persecuted religious minority in a nation that is dominated by a not-always-tolerant majority religion. But their unique setting and experience enables Indian Christians to understand an essential New Testament principle that is harder for Christians in the West to grasp: spiritual unity in Christ (see John 17:20-21). Worldview Lesson #3 My Indian Christian friends taught me that theologies need to be corrected by cross-cultural insights, otherwise they become culturally blinded and insulated. God intended Christian faith, to the ends of the earth, to be incredibly diverse, reaching into every culture, transforming it to the glory of God and preserving the best of each culture. Christians have much to learn from other cultures. God is the creator of the vast diversity—and wants the best for all cultures. Christian theology in the West needs to be corrected by Eastern Christian theology, and vice versa. Christian theology dominated by countries in the Northern Hemisphere need to hear from Christians in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa. No Christian group has the absolute final word about what Christian faith is—only God does. But we can rejoice in the white-hot core of Christian faith that all Christians have affirmed through the ages.

Bayard Taylor is the author of Blah, Blah, Blah: Making Sense of the World's Spiritual Chatter (Bethany House).

Christmas Music

With Christmas music all over the airwaves, in stores, and pumping out of MP3 players worldwide, I thought I'd share my favorite Christmas CD. It is very unlike any other Christmas CD I've ever heard.

Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb of God was introduced to me last year before he came to Cedar Rapids in concert. LeAnn and I worked at the Compassion Table, and so got to go to the conference for free. The CD tells the Christmas story through song, but instead of starting with the angel appearing to Mary, it actually starts with the Passover. It has some deeply beautiful and moving songs on it. It has a fun song on it (check out Matthew's Begats). It has a couple of instrumental Christmas numbers (with hammer dulcimer!). It has guest singers (so it isn't about Andrew, but rather about the One who was born). The CD isn't just Christmas music - it is an experience.

Right now, you can listen to the whole album online on Andrew's site. Just click "Open Player" and enjoy!

Devotion 2

In light of my recent post on Devotion, I have one question. How can you NOT be devoted to kids like these?


Man, I love my family!

P.S. This picture was taken Sunday afternoon. It was Tsion's first time in the Exersaucer, and the whole family celebrated!

Reminder of the Day

Don't ignore email for 5 days.

Online file conversion

As a wanna-be graphic artist/web designer, I loved finding this site:

Zamzar - free online file conversion

Haven't used it yet, but look forward to the day I need it!

Exmas and Crissmas

For the past two Sundays, Eric Thompson has led the 12:30@Eleven community (meets at 11:00 am in Room 137 at New Covenant) in a lively discussion about Christmas. I've kept quiet (because I've noticed when pastors speak up, some people take their word as final, and thus discussion ends. So to encourage others to talk, I don't. :o), but have enjoyed batting the conversation around in my own head.

The first week we read an article by a Christian who thinks Christmas should be eliminated as a nationally recognized holiday. I felt the article was poorly written and thought out. Even if the government didn't make Christmas a recognized holiday, offices stayed open, and the post office delivered mail, I still think there would be a lot of the stress of the season she thinks would disappear. The celebrations of this time of year are just too entrenched right now in our culture.

But it doesn't matter to me if the government calls off Christmas or not. I would still celebrate that Jesus came to earth. I would still ponder the mystery of God becoming human. I would still give gifts to my kids (they each get three gifts from me and LeAnn - a "gold" gift that is "expensive" (on our budget that isn't that much!), a "frankincense" gift designed to help them spiritually this next year, and a "myrrh" gift that is practical for life). We would still decorate a tree because it is so much fun to do together as a family. And we would probably still host our annual Christmas Open House. That was the author's overall point, though. Would Christians still celebrate if the federal government didn't give us the day off?

Then this past week Eric read us a C.S. Lewis essay/parable about Exmas and Crissmas. I thoroughly enjoyed the piece and encourage you to read it. I found it amazing that Lewis probably wrote this around 50 years ago about Christmas in England, and yet it is still so true, at least here in America. Having kids has helped us remember to keep in perspective what Christmas is really all about. We had a good little discussion last night during our weekly family night after watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" since Charlie Brown yells "Can anybody tell me what Christmas is really all about?!"

And in case you've forgotten yourself, here is what Linus answers Charlie Brown's question with:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." (Luke 2:1-20)

Devotion

While preparing for a Bible study last week (Route66 at New Covenant at 6:30 pm for those who are looking for a college/young adult group to get involved with) I ran across the following story:

"If somebody offered you $2 million, could you give up sports for two years?" This was the question a sports radio station recently asked its listeners. No games on TV, radio, or in person. No sports page. no ESPN highlight films. No Tuesday morning arguing about Monday Night Football. One fan phoned in and said no, he would definitely not give up sports, not even for $25 million. "It's where I turn when I pick up the paper in the morning," he said. "It's where I go when I'm on the Internet. It's what I watch on television. It's what I listen to on the radio in the car. Everywhere I go, it surrounds everything I do."

When I first read that, I didn't like it. How could someone be so addicted to sports? I mean, I enjoy watching a football game on TV, going to the Kernels stadium, wishing someone would give me tickets to an Iowa wrestling meet, playing tennis, or dreaming what life would be like if I actually had ESPN at home. But not give it up for two years for $2 million? I think I would be able to give up just about anything for $2 mil.

But then it hit me - what couldn't I give up for the highest sums of money? Immediately I thought "My family and my God." There is no WAY I could give them up for even two weeks, let alone two years

How about you? What are you devoted to? Are you living right now in such a way that no amount of money could make you give up your faith or your important relationships? What is it that you can say "everywhere I go, it surrounds everything I do"?

Not again...

When LeAnn and I lived in Colorado, I served as the worship director for a new church plant called Pinecrest Community Church. The mother of our volunteer youth leader/bass player was one of the secretaries at Grace Chapel. Through this, we developed good relationship with Grace Chapel. They donated some items to help us one time. One of their associate pastors guest spoke at our church one Sunday while our senior pastor was out of town. I had a lot of respect for Grace during our 3 years in the Denver area.

Just moment ago, I learned that Paul Barnes, their senior pastor (who was also the founding pastor), has resigned because he has admitted to a struggle with homosexuality his entire life. And this comes just a month after he spoke about integrity in the wake of the Ted Haggard scandal. Apparently someone called the church because they overheard a conversation of someone who was going to "out" Paul. So rather than Paul seeking help on his own, an anonymous phone call brought the truth to light.

If you are struggling with an habitual sin, I urge you to please find someone to confess your sin to. Get help. Don't let your sin find you out - you overtake the sin by confessing it to God and to another human who will love you and pray for you and support you through your healing.

And I also encourage you to live your life in such a way that others will be comfortable opening up to you. If you wear a mask yourself or slander others behind their back, no one is going to want to confess to you. It broke my heart to read the words of one of the elders of Grace Chapel - "Where did I fall short in making myself so unapproachable that he couldn't come to me?" So even if you aren't living with a secret sin, still seek to be a person of godly character.

"But godliness with contentment is great gain." 1 Timothy 6:6

Happy 60th, Dad!

Today my dad turns 60 years old. We surprised him with a celebration the day after Thanksgiving (LeAnn and I gave him a NET Bible - First Edition for personal study as he prepares for the Sunday School class he teaches at his church - I highly recommend it!) and he is spending his birthday in a MUCH warmer climate (hope you are enjoying Arizona, Mom and Dad!).

I am very proud to be the son of Larry Bird. I like to brag that while my dad is a foot shorter, 10 years older (almost to the day!)and not near as rich as the basketball star, my dad is WAY nicer (Disclaimer: I've never met the basketball Larry, but even if I did, I'd still think my dad is tops!). I love being a father to my 4 kids, and I think it is because my father was such a great dad to me (and I think my brother would say the same thing). I am so thankful for the legacy he started for our family, and I am proud to continue that on for my kids.

Happy 60th Birthday, Dad! I love you!

Extravagance

I was reading in my MacAddict magazine this morning while eating my scrambled eggs and came across their "drool worthy" page (and I quote: "sexy stuff we can't wait to get our hands on"). Usually they have things like huge TVs, or fancy iPod accessories, or other cool, interesting, rarely seen gadgets. Well this time I saw this digital camera.

My first thought when I saw it: "What a lavish waste! Cameras get used and scratched and dinged - how extravagant to give a camera a gold case with diamond studs around the lens!"

But then the thought hit me - why do I not have the same reaction about gold jewelry as I do about this gold camera? Isn't jewelry just as "extravagant"? (I looked up extravagance in my Mac's built in Oxford Dictionary and it said that extravagance is "excessive elaborateness of style".)

I fear that sometimes people will spend more money for items like this gold camera or a gold necklace to try and increase their personal "worth". Minox has the same camera in a typical digital camera case that is quite a bit cheaper, but many people will buy the Carat camera simply to gain the attention of others, which they think will make them "better".

But this camera's beauty will fade. It won't bring the same sense of satisfaction in a few years. New and better cameras will hit the market. And eventually people will see the real you hiding behind your "extravagant" toys and possessions. And when that happens, will they like what they see? Or for that matter, will you like what you see?

With that said, there is another thing bothering me about this camera. Having just posted about young adults in debt, seeing things like this camera angers me a bit because I know there will be some young adult somewhere who will buy into the myth that he or she will be happy with a camera (or any product) like this, and it will only steep them deeper in debt, keeping them enslaved even longer. I'm a typical male in the fact that I love gadgets, especially ones with a high cool factor, but not at the cost of my financial freedom.

So many books, so little time...

About a year ago, a couple of area pastors came to talk with me about college ministry in Cedar Rapids. Upon entering my office, one of them commented that I needed more bookshelves. He was right - I have books piling up, many of which I know I will never get to. And it's gotten worse since he visited!

I just read a great article over at Church Relevance that said that a new book is published every 30 seconds. I LOVE books, but no matter how hard I try, at that rate I will never be able to read all of the ones I want.

The Church Relevance article gives some great advice on picking what to read as part of your "continuing education". It challenged me to consider more carefully what books I choose to give my time to.

And I encourage you to not be like 58% of the population that never read another book after high school graduation!