Monthly Archives: March 2008

Tactics Vs. Goals

From Seth Godin’s blog: “Persistence isn’t using the same tactics over and over. That’s just annoying. Persistence is having the same goal over and over.”

We hear people, and churches, say, “We already tried that before, and it didn’t work.” Are they referring to the goal, or the tactics for accomplishing that goal? If the goal remains worthy, just try different tactics to accomplish it. But don’t say, “We tried to accomplish that goal, and it didn’t work.”

That kid who beat me in the table tennis tournament on Saturday–if I played him again, I would definitely need different tactics.

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Light Vs. Dark Office Space

Do you prefer working in light, or dark? A company called Rackspace has two sections to its corporate office: a lights-on section, and an all-dark section. People have different preferences, and in progressive high-tech startup companies, they can actually cater to it.

I like working in the dark. Just me and the computer screen. You don’t see anything else. You can really focus, without distractions (or glare). I’ve occasionally worked in darkness, though it’s been a while. It somehow just doesn’t seem right. But now, Rackspace has legitimized the concept.

I wonder how my coworkers would feel if, tomorrow, I didn’t turn my lights on. Just worked in the dark. I’m designing a website. That would really help me focus totally on my work. I’m afraid my coworkers might consider it a bit weird, even creepy. But…should I care?

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Old Guys Can Still Have Glory Days

stevetrophy_200.jpgAge 51, and still winning athletic trophies. Yay me.

Played in a table tennis tournament in Indianapolis today. I have a rating of 1081 with the US Table Tennis Association. I entered the Under 1250 and under 1450 categories, and ended up winning 7 of 8 matches. Altogether, a good day for me. I actually won the Under 1250 category, and brought home a nice trophy. Had to beat up on one youngster while his parents watched.

Last summer, in cleaning out the basement, I threw away all my old tennis trophies. Didn’t see the point in keeping them. What am I going to do with this table tennis trophy? Should I set it on my keyboard tomorrow at church?

My only loss came in the Under 1450, to an Asian middle-schooler who skunked me, 3-0. This kid was small– probably still needed to use a car seat. I’m a better player and higher rated, but he snuck up on me. As it was, I ended up in a three-way tie in our initial four-person round-robin, beating the other two guys handily. But one of them beat the Asian kid 3-0, and that broke the tie. That guy moved on instead of me. Bummer.

But hey–I still took home a trophy. Mom said she was proud of me.

Four players from our Fort Wayne club participated. Sean Fitzgerald won the Under 1850 group without losing a game. So our club did pretty well.

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Unwelcome, Late-Night Visitors at Church

Sunday night, some mischief-makers broke into the church. We couldn’t find anything that was stolen, though I understand some things were, indeed, taken. They also:

  • Jammed the photocopier.
  • Jammed the paper shredder.
  • Turned on the computer in the sound booth and accessed porn sites.
  • Broke off all the nobs on the lightbox.
  • Changed all the settings on the soundboard.
  • Moved all the nobs on my keyboard.
  • Did other stuff.

Someone was also in the church Saturday night. Pat, the administrative assistant, noticed that stuff in her office had been disturbed. The worship team, always the first to arrive, noticed a downstairs door open.

Last night at music practice, I couldn’t figure out why my usual piano setting sounded so sharp and loud. Then I noticed that all of the sound adjustment nobs were maxed out.

Pam couldn’t get the monitor working, which means the worship team won’t have the benefit of lyrics this Sunday.

I just learned that the culprits, two boys, were caught and will be doing community service. Such is life at Anchor.

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Dream-Killing Debts

One more note from Mark Cuban’s post about destiny, which I referred to Monday. He wrote:

The greatest obstacle to destiny is debt, both personal and financial. The more people you are obligated to, the harder it is to focus on yourself and figure things out….Financial debt is the ultimate dream killer. Your first house, car, whatever stuff you might want to buy are going to be the primary reasons you stop looking for what makes you the happiest.

A lotta truth there. I hear a lot about bright young people who feel called to missionary service, but college debts keep them tied to the States until they can pay down those debts. Meanwhile, their commitment to missions dissipates. Sad, sad.

Churches run into dream-killing debt issues with overly-ambitious building programs. The demands of debt create a constant distraction from the church’s mission. Way too much time at board meetings focuses on money issues.

But Cuban also mentions “personal” debts to “people you are obligated to.” Sometimes missionaries return from the field to care for an ailing parent; I can’t fault that. In a book I wrote about our missionary work in Honduras, I learned about an incredible missionary named Betty Brown who did just that.

But sometimes, the reason is that a parent isn’t on board with your missionary call, or can’t stand being separated, or whatever. They put up a fuss, and the missionary feels compelled to return (or not go in the first place). What would I do in such situations? Well, I don’t have to worry about that, because my parents would be thrilled if Pam and I became missionaries.

At any rate, Cuban’s words about personal and financial debts being dream-killers are well noted.

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“It is Good, and It is Love, and It is Triumphant”

This is a pretty amazing post on the Swerve blog, the words of a young woman who, at 26, succumbed to cancer. Oh, to have a love for and experience with God like Katie.

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Crash Course Learning

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, wrote an interesting piece called “What are You Destined to Be?” on his popular Blog Maverick blog.

“Going to college should be about experiencing as much academically as you possibly can, but more importantly, it should be about learning how to learn….Once you have learned how to learn, then you can try as many different things as you can….”

Upon reading that, I realized, “Hey–I’m good at learning.” Which is something I hadn’t really considered before.

In my work, I continually confront new learning curves, usually computer-related. (Lots of people do, so I’m not claiming any great uniqueness.)

I remember back around 1983, I returned from Christmas vacation in California to find an AT&T MS-DOS computer (2 floppy drives, no hard disk!), an Okidata dot-matrix printer, and several unopened software packages sitting on my desk. I’d never used a computer before. But I dug in, and a month later was producing the denominational magazine on that computer (actually, just putting the text on a floppy, which a printing company turned into long strips of typeset copy, which I laid out over a light table). Remember–this was MS-DOS, for goodness sakes! The entire user interface consisted of Courier text on a green monitor!

In 1988, when I got a Mac and a laser printer, I gave myself three weeks to learn Pagemaker and crank out the next issue of the magazine (this time, with little need for the light table).

The truth is, I enjoy conquering learning curves. And I enjoy the crash-course route. That love-of-the-last-minute may not be a good trait, but it’s most definitely an aptitude.

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One of Those Pictures

Observed: a 40-ish man standing outside the YMCA, dressed in his warm-up outfit, either concluding or waiting to start his workout. Smoking.

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A Fellow American Citizen

One of Pam’s tax clients is a young mother who immigrated from South America. She married an American guy, and they have two kids. Nice family. They are among Pam’s tax clients, and came for an appointment one afternoon this week.

Earlier that day, this woman had become an American citizen. She was beaming, so proud. Puts things in perspective, for those of us who tend to take our American citizenship for granted.

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Spinning Our Christian Wheels

clooney_darfur300.jpgThe March 3 Time magazine featured an article about George Clooney. I like him a lot. He’s got journalism roots, which brings a degree of open-mindedness, of considering both sides of an argument, plus a heavy dose of cynicism. Legions of celebrities think they’re smart, and flaunt their actual ignorance (Hail King Sean Penn!). Clooney is, indeed, smart, but he’s sufficiently wise to avoid over-using his celebrity platform. He views himself with realistic self-depredation.

This article (by the hilarious Joel Stein‚ÄîI always read his articles) mentions “Not On Our Watch,” an organization Clooney founded to help Darfur ($9 million so far). He had recently returned from Darfur. But instead of trumpeting his adventures and good deeds, Clooney mused about the futility of using celebrity to spotlight world problems. “I’m terrified that it isn’t in any way helping. That bringing attention can cause more damage. You dig a well or build a health-care facility, and they’re a target for somebody.”

Then he said this: “A lot more people know about Darfur, but absolutely nothing is different. Absolutely nothing.”

Think about the church. We regularly hear sermons and attend Sunday school classes in which we are reminded of the importance of prayer, of Bible reading, of witnessing, of not gossiping, of serving, of giving sacrificially. And yet, look over your fellow parishioners, who have dutifully absorbed these messages year after year. Is anything, truly, different? And if anything is different, is that a result of the abundance of words, or because of other dynamics?

There are certain causes I tackle on this blog–the plight of poor people, factory farming, US-sponsored torture. My mindless harping might bring a tiny bit of awareness to the six people who visit my online abode. But even if thousands of people tuned in, would anything be, in reality, different? Harping doesn’t work.

Barack Obama says the US keeps electing the same people to fight the same problems in the same way. Or something like that. It seems that we in the church spin our wheels in a parallel way, without behavior changing. Great things are happening in some churches, indeed. But it’s, sadly, not the norm.

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