Author Archives: Steve

American Idol Finale

Pam and I worked in the yard until 9 pm (thanks, Daylight Savings Time!), so we had to tape American Idol. But we watched it. The finale. Of course we watched it.

I doubt that the show changed anyone’s mind. Didn’t change mine. I think Taylor will win, and I want him to win. Some things in life are of transcendent importance, and this is one of them.

We’ll find out tomorrow. And after tomorrow, my life can ge back to normal. This addiction, this obsession, will at last be vanquished. Glory be.

P.S.–They practically coronated Taylor last night. If I were Kat, I’d be thinking, “Wow, everyone on the show really wants Taylor to win.”

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Anchor’s 2006 Battle of the Bands


Last Friday night, May 19, my church held its fourth annual Battle of the Bands, a competition for Christian hard-core bands in the Fort Wayne area. Pam and I have attended all three previous incarnations as volunteer workers. In the past, we’ve had 500-plus teens and young adults. This year, it was under 300, but more than enough to swarm over our church property. And there were 12 bands. We moved all of the chairs out of the sanctuary, cleared off the worship equipment and furniture, and let the bands take over.

Last Friday, I mostly hung out in the sound booth, which is located in an upper level room overlooking the sanctuary. I spent the evening taking photos and, in between, typing out lots of observations on my laptop. So here you go.

Pam and I arrived at 5 pm, which is when the doors opened. Bands were still lugging in their equipment. The show was supposed to begin at 6 pm, but timeliness is optional at these events. Terry Leatherman, one of the worship team guitarists, was already here. He’s one of the three judges tonight. I told him, “Wanna place bets on when the show begins? I say 6:45.” Terry said, “7:30.”

Well, it started at 6:30, so they showed us.

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What a Piano!

piano
Isn’t that an awesome piano? It’s called the Pegasus, and it’s made by the Schimmel Piano company in Germany. The modern exterior houses a traditional (as in non-electronic) grand piano. Though “traditional” doesn’t normally include a hydraulic lid or ergonomic keys with a slight curve. I think my church needs to get one. Are you paying attention, Pastor Tim?

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Thoughts on DaVinci, Halfway Through

I am halfway through The DaVinci Code. I’ve really enjoyed it…until last night. It’s the part where Langford and this British expert guy explain the conspiracies to Sophie. Constantine, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and lots of humanizing of Jesus are part of this discussion. And in his efforts to build a credible plot for his story, Brown resorts to rewriting history.

I like historical fiction. James Michener’s Poland and The Covenant place fictional characters into accurate historical contexts. Michener doesn’t change historical events. He only injects made-up persons into those events and lets us be entertained (and educated) as we watch his characters interact with those events.

Clive Cussler does something similar with thrillers. In Treasure, he imagines that the great Egyptian library at Alexandria was not destroyed, but was smuggled off to the Americas, where Dirk Pitt, of course, locates it. Each of his books takes some well-known story from history (the Titanic, Amelia Earhart, and the final days of Abraham Lincoln, as examples), creates an alternate but plausible scenario, and weaves it as a subplot into his contemporary thrillers. It’s a form of historical fiction, and I like it.

Biblical fiction does the same kind of thing, taking a familiar Bible character–Joseph, Sarah, Mary Magdalene, and others–and generating a full story about their lives. The story remains true to the tidbits we know from the Bible, but takes liberties in filling in the gaps.

Then you have fiction which creates what is called “alternate history.”For instance, a writer says, “Let’s pretend that the Germans won World War II. Here’s a story about a resistance group in London fighting the Nazi occupation.” The author rewrites history in order to create a new context. You could do the same thing by imagining that Napoleon conquered Russia during a particularly mild winter, or that Robert E. Lee won at Gettysburg and marched on to sack Washington D. C., and slavery was legalized throughout the USA. In such cases, the author only pretends that historical events turned out differently. (It’s also akin to last Saturday night’s hysterical opening to Saturday Night Live, which presented an alternate universe in which Al Gore won the election, and all the things which would be different as a result.)

Dan Brown tries to have it both ways, and in the process shows enormously flagrant intellectual dishonesty. He creates the context for his novel by rewriting what undisputed history tells us about the Dead Sea Scrolls, Constantine, Opus Dei, the Priory of Sion, DaVinci and his paintings, the life of Christ, and much much more–and yet, he insists that the events he cites are true. Imagine Michener writing Poland around the contention that it was the Poles who actually invaded Germany. James Michener has no doubt turned over several times in his grave over Brown’s literary transgressions.

I’ll finish the book. But Brown plays dishonestly with the rules, adjusting reality to fit his story while denying that he’s doing it. And that really really honks me off.

And I haven’t even gotten to the really good stuff yet.

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Idol – Justice Prevailed

Elliott is gone, and I actually felt sad about it, after seeing the video thingy they do before singing “You had a bad day” (which is a nice touch, don’t you think?). Yet I’m glad he’s the one who departed, and not Kat or Taylor. It should be a good final next week. I figure Taylor will win. But I may end up rooting for Katherine. I’ll be happy with either. As if I’m the be-all target demographic of American pop culture.

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Worship, Sacrifice, and the Sabbath

I’m always grateful when someone provides a biblical insight into something pretty basic to my faith, but which I, despite 50 years in the church, hadn’t heard before. This doesn’t happen a lot. But it did happen a few days ago when I read a blog entry by Michael Hines called “Biblical Worship.”

The whole post was excellent, talking about the sabbath and the intertwining of sacrifice with worship throughout the Old Testament. It provided a fine lesson in Bible history. The part that gave me a Eureka moment was, “The sabbath day was not set aside as a day of worship. It was, instead, a day of rest.” And then he quotes Exodus 20:10-11, which says exactly that. It doesn’t mean you can’t worship on Sunday. But he explained how people went to the temple to offer sacrifices during any day of the week, and that worship and sacrifice occurred together.

He brings it all together in the New Covenant with Romans 12:1, which says we are to make our bodies living sacrifices all week long, “which is your spiritual act of worship.” Suddenly, a bunch of things came together for me and fit snugly.

I thought of Willow Creek, where the believers come on Wednesday and Thursday for their worship service, or preaching service–at any rate, the counterpart to what most of us do on Sunday. I attended one of those services a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it felt odd (to me) doing this particularly thing during the middle of the week. Willow still holds services on Sunday, but those are outreach oriented, geared more for nonbelievers. But now I realize (dumbly) that Sunday wasn’t designed for worship, but for rest, which I’m confident includes watching football games. ALL of the days were designed for worship. (I’m sure I’ve heard these same ideas articulated in countless sermons. My sudden enlightenment probably speaks more to my attention span and general intelligence than anything else.)

Anyway, it’s a wonderful piece, and I learned a lot about something I assumed I was already knowledgeable about. Those surprises are nice.

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Idol Update: I Think I’m for Katherine

I shall continue hoping that, tonight, Mr. Tumnus goes bye-bye and breaks Paula “The Flake” Abdul’s heart. However, he obviously has a fan club. So it’ll probably be Kat who exits.

Which would be too bad. She has come on very strongly the last few weeks, finding and displaying personality (which was missing earlier in the season). After her performances last night, I think I want her to win. Even over Taylor.

Yeah, I’ve got McPheever. What a sad, sorry life I lead.

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Late Nights with the Phoenix Suns

I can’t believe I stayed up until 2:15 watching basketball. It was worth it, because my Phoenix Suns won in double overtime. But I’m gonna pay for it today, I’m afraid. Getting too old for this college-like nonsense. Throughout the playoffs thus far, the Suns games have gone past midnight. I’ve been watching until I can’t keep my eyes open, which is usually in the third quarter. Then I go to bed. But last night I saw the whole game.

The Phoenix Suns is (I realize, Mom, that that sounds ungrammatical) the only pro team in any sport that I have consistently rooted for since I was a kid. I’ve had my flings with the Vikings and Dolphins in football (now the Colts, of course), and with the Lakers and Kings in basketball (and now the Pacers, of course). But the Suns have always been on my rah-rah radar.

It goes back to my high school days in Arizona, when the Suns spent a preseason week at my school practicing and then held an exhibition game. I wrote about that previously.

Last night, the Suns looked tired. Or was that me, as I occasionally nodded off? Whatever. They were a well-oiled team against the Lakers, but now have trouble hitting threes and they make an uncharacteristic number of errors. Now they’re up 3-2 and they have three days before the next game. That’ll be good.

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Good for Larry Hughes

Larry HughesIt’s the NBA playoffs, the Cavaliers are battling the mighty Pistons, and Larry Hughes, one of the top Cav players, isn’t suiting up. In fact, he’s missed two games. His younger brother Justin died last Thursday, and he’s taking care of family business and mourning. He’s not playing on national TV because “That’s what Justin would have wanted.” No, he’s somewhere in St. Louis dealing with a gut-wrenching loss, and the attitude of the Cavaliers is, “If Larry comes back–fine. If not, that’s fine, too. But we’re leaving him alone.”

Good for Hughes, and good for the Cavs. Last November I wrote a blog item about athletes who experience a death in the family, but don’t miss a game because they argue that the family member would have wanted them to play. Which I don’t buy.

Larry Hughes could have gone to any college, but he stayed in St. Louis, his hometown, because of his brother’s condition. He turned pro early, in 1996, because his family truly needed the money, being overwhelmed with enormous medical bills and facing a heart transplant (which Justin got the next year). He took a trade to Cleveland to be near the Cleveland Clinic, a major heart center.

Now Justin is gone, and Larry is taking time away from the team to be with his family and to grieve. And the Cavs have no problem with that. In fact, today the whole team is attending the funeral in St. Louis, rather than preparing for the next crucial game.

It’s nice to see proper priorities every once in a while.

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Two Visitors Sunday

On Sunday we had a number of visitors. I met most of them. Two were young singles recently out of college who moved into town and are checking out churches. Both probably feel somewhat alone, moving into a new city by themselves. This was the first visit to Anchor for both of them. The fact that they are checking out churches, trying different ones, tells much about them.

The guy graduated a year ago from a Christian college in another city. He’s originally from around Cleveland, and just started a new job here in Fort Wayne. He found Anchor through our website. A lot of people do, we’ve found. If a church doesn’t have a listing on the web, they should. The girl graduated from Huntington University a year ago and moved to Fort Wayne in March. A wonderful girl with a UB background.

Both will probably decide on a church and become active there. They struck me as those kinds of kids. I don’t know if either will settle down at Anchor. But I’m delighted that we made them feel very comfortable and people spoke at length with both of them. Because I know that if they’re checking out other churches, they’ll encounter some where they slip in and out, and nobody seems to notice. At Anchor, we notice. And that makes me smile.

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