No Slutty Halloweens

This is a picture of Baylee's Halloween costume: Hello Kitty. 

My adorable little girl.

My funny, caring, outgoing, social, loving, observant, full of life, beautiful little girl. 

As her daddy I take it as a deep personal responsibility to shower her with love, affirmation, empowerment, wisdom, and build up her self-respect so that when she is older she doesn't feel it necessary to dress up like a slut in order to have fun on Halloween.

Her decisions will be her own.

But it's my role to give her a foundation to make those decisions, and impart to her through our relationship the self-respect, confidence, and know how to be able to make the best ones. 

Dear Lord - please help me! 

 What matters is not your outer appearance—the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes—but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. 1 Peter 3:3-4

The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord. Psalm 45:11

Very thankful and proud of our worship team!

The worship team at New Life Lincoln Park is AMAZING!!! They are an incredibly talented group of people who all love Jesus immensely, and they had both these things in full display last night when they put on ROCKTOBER! It was an all-out rock-out fund-raising Halloween party! 

Because of traveling for work I wasn't able to get there till late, but I could hear the music as I approached the building.  A huge song list was available for people to choose from, and songs were priced out at $3, $5, and $10 (I think that was the price range). The bands then took turns performing the purchased songs, with all proceeds going to New Life Centers, our church's non-profit organization. At the end of the night $400 was raised!!! 

Here's a few pics from the night:

This Saturday is ROCKTOBER!!!

The amazing worship team at New Life Lincoln Park is throwing one awesome party this Saturday night to help raise money for New Life Centers. You WANT to be there!!!!

Here's all the info (click the image to enlarge it):

Some thoughts about the fact the world is ending today

Harold Camping

Today the rapture might happen, the world as we know spinning into chaos. I type this while sitting in a Starbucks in downtown Orlando. Guess if I can't be in Chicago then the land of Mickey is as good a place as ever. It's unfortunate though because Baylee and Jaxon were anticipating the Magic Kingdom on Sunday. [insert churchee crack about the real Kingdom here].

Harold Camping predicted that this would all happen on May 21, 2011.  It didn't.

Mr. Camping explained his error and then rescheduled things. For today. Oct 21, 2011.

I'm going to bet my kids will be able to take a picture with Mickey this Sunday afternoon.  

A few thoughts on Mr Camping and end of the world predictions:

Me & Baylee at 39,000 feet

A blog post while in midflight (thank you Southwest). 

Baylee and I are entertaining ourselves on the plane with Photobooth:

What Siri says - funniest help I've had in awhile

Last Friday I upgraded my iPhone 3GS to the 4S. Going from what I had to the new version is a pretty substantial change, and I must say I love this new phone! The camera is phenomenal, the speed is substantially better than the 3GS, and I'm starting to really get into the new iCloud as well.

But one of the coolest additions is the virtual Assistant feature, called Siri. She will help with pretty much anything. The way Siri works is that you hold down the iPhone's home button and then say whatever you need help with. "Call my wife," "Type up an email to Matt, "Find restaurants near me," "Send a text to Kevin," "Remind me to send a fax when I get to the office," and a ton of other things I'm still learning about. Basically, most things you'd want to do with the smart phone Siri will assist to make it happen.

Siri is also pretty funny. Somethings what you ask her is answered with rather humorous responses. Below are some of my exchanges. A few I did just messing around, others I've been told about and had to see for myself. They bring a good chuckle:

The Bears lose, but the buddies win

Sunday night the Bears destroyed the Minnesota Vikings by a score of 39-10. My sister was at the game, so yes, I was incredibly jealous. Break the 10th commandment and ask for repentance jealous. Why? Because the week before, on Monday night, the Bears were destroyed by the Detroit Lions with a final score of 13-24. And that was the game I was at.

Week In Review #15

I was doing really good with consistent blogging for a couple months. Then this week happened. I've been sick and wiped out since Tuesday. It's been really up and down through that: Tues felt horrible, somewhat better Wed, Thurs back to bad, Fri pretty good, and today horrible again. Any spare minute was spent horizontal, trying to get extra rest. Hence, not a lot of blogging this week. But, this was the week apart from being sick:

Me & Mark Driscoll

Yesterday I was part of the Love Life conference with Mark Driscoll down in Athens, GA. Regardless of the whether you are a Driscoll fan boy or the exact opposite, his messages on love, dating, and marriage were phenomenal. The content is based on a book he has coming out in January, and subsequent speaking tour that Logos is sponsoring. Really powerful stuff, highly recommend checking it out. Based on the current schedule he'll be in Rockford next September. So you have some time to plan ahead. =)

Week in review #14

This was one of those weeks filled with everything. Some excitement, some low, some fun, some dull. It was all over the map:

Everyone Mad Libs

The only people who don't like Mad Libs are the people who don't know what they are. And Nazi's. 

So for all of the unfortunately misinformed, and for all of the short evil dictators with little mustaches out there, this is the idea behind Mad Libs:

Thank you Steve Jobs for being brilliant

I've been a pretty sold out Apple fan boy for about a year and a half now. But this hasn't always been the case. For the longest time I was anti-Mac, to the extent of poking fun at Apple people. At the time there was good reason. To the question, "Why do you like that thing?" most people would say one of two basic answers: "It's just so easy" or "It's just so simple." For me a PC was easy and simple to use, so these arguments for a Mac told me more about the person than really anything about the computers themselves. 

But there did come a time when I needed to buy a new machine. While doing research on the type of computer I'd want for my Swiss Army Knife of needs/tasks, the results always came back the same: MacBook Pro.

Ugh...really?

Wrong worship in the church

This video is rather funny, and also rather potent with truth and reality:

May we never minimize worship to simply singing songs on Sunday.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2 

My thoughts on Apple's iPhone 4S announcement today

Ehh.

How to daily keep up on 125+ different blogs

Last week I shared a large list of many of the blogs that I follow on a regular basis. The type of blogs I peruse are normally in the topic range of ministry, tech, culture, leadership, art/creativity, theology/Bible, and then various people who inspire and challenge me. If you still haven't checked out Seth Godin's blog, you are missing out! He's had some real killer posts lately.

All in all, I follow over 125 different blogs, for the most part on a daily basis. It's not impossible, it's actually pretty easy. Here's how you do it:

When was the last time you went to church?

Just because the last message was incredibly boring doesn't mean today's will be.

Just because no one said HI before doesn't mean no one will smile and say welcome today.

Just because fakes were at the last place doesn't mean they aren't genuine at the new place.

Just because you were hurt at the last church doesn't mean you can't find healing at the next one.

Just because the last pastor was a prideful jerk doesn't mean the next can't be a humble servant.

Don't condemn all Christians as guilty because a few act like complete idiots.

Don't attempt to hold Jesus hostage because of how His children behave sometimes.

Don't allow a few worse case scenarios to blind you to all of the best ones.

When was the last time you went to church?

Don't miss an opportunity today.

Week in review #13

Lucky number 13. Here is: