Photo by Apprenticeship Advisory Committee There is a principle that is espoused by many leadership and discipleship gurus. It is simply – I do, you watch; I do, you help; You do, I help; You do, I watch; You now show someone else. It is a pretty easy concept but many people fail to follow […]
Anger Can Kill You (Literally)
Dr. Rachel Lampert from Yale University recently did a study that appeared in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In her study, she gathered 62 patients who had some sort of heart disease and implantable heart defibrillators (ICD). She had the patients recount an angry moment in their lives […]
Lent 2009
It is about that time of the year again where we prepare ourselves for the week that leads up to Jesus’ death and resurrection. Every year it has been good to fast (give up something) for 40 days in order to prepare our hearts for the Passion Week. For some reason, this Lenten season has […]
Bollywood vs. Hollywood
AP Photo On Monday it was awesome to read that on the 81st Academy Awards (Oscars) “Slumdog Millionaire” won 8 Oscars. It is a great achievement, especially knowing that the some of the actors and actresses were directly from India. Christina and I have not watched it yet (it has been […]
Kids’ Piano Recital
Yesterday, our family headed out to the kids’ piano recital. It was a great seeing them practice all throughout the week to memorize their piece. We were so proud of them and all their hard work. The recital was made up of all the students of teacher Amber who is doing an awesome job of […]
Global ACCESS Retreat 2009
Tonight we are going to start the Global ACCESS (GA) Retreat. We started this ministry to international students because over the years we have noticed that more international students were coming out to our church. The needs are somewhat similar to any college student but yet they are very different because […]
Is Racism in the Eye of the Beholder?
Cartoon by Sean Delonas The above cartoon has been in the center of some controversy. The cartoonist, Sean Delonas who draws for the New York Post and Col Allan, the editor-in-chief have both vehemently denied that there was a racial overtone (comparing President Obama to a chimpanzee). Many people would ask, […]
My Girl Scout Daisy
The family and I went to Karissa’s Girl Scout special gathering. Some of the local troops in the Ann Arbor area got together to do various presentations for the parents as well as the other Girl Scouts. It was great seeing Karissa learning some good values of what it means to be a woman (or […]
Leadership Lesson: Walking in Their Shoes
Photo by Felix Carroll It is interesting to me that today it was announced that President Obama would authorize deploying “more than 17,000 troops to Afghanistan.” Barack Obama during his presidential campaign was strongly in favor of bringing the troops back home from Iraq, but now he will be sending some […]
Flexibility and God’s Sovereignty
A lesson that God is constantly teaching me over and over again is learning how to be flexible. There are a lot of things in life that does not go exactly as planned. In fact, there are a lot of disruptions and delays in life. The way we “roll with the punches” and our response […]
The Examined Life Series
We are starting up a whole new series today. The pastors and I talked about the need for our church members to be more Bible literate. Therefore, we decided to go over whole chunks of the Bible by preaching off whole books in the Bible. In light of where we are […]
Valentine’s Day 2009
Reuters Photo There were a lot of people out and about today. Many of them were paired up together. Even at the seafood restaurant where I took Christina, people were coming in as pairs. I have always wondered why it takes a day called Valentine’s Day to remind couples of their […]
What Not to Do in an Interview
Last night on David Letterman, Joaquin Phoenix came on to do an interview about his new movie, Two Lovers. This is probably the most hilarious interview on Letterman or any talk show for that matter. In the day-after, people are saying that he was on “something” therefore could not be coherent or functional. When I […]
Call + Response
I am so proud of our guys. Some of them decided to take a step of faith and “try” something different than the normal “Praise Night” that we have been having for the last 12 years to reach out to people. With this generation being the most activist or “caused-oriented” generation […]