6th Calendar Year
Archives
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Past Issues 2004 |
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Monday December 27, 2004 |
There are so many things I’d like to tell you about as the year 2004 comes to a close.
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Monday December 20, 2004 |
There’s a manger under the tree. It’s the center of attention. There is a mother and what appears to be a father. There are wise men bearing gifts. Shepherds, too. Even the animals seem aware. There’s a baby lying in the straw. A single star shines bright from above and illumines the scene. There’s a hint of light coming from the feeding trough, too. The child is no ordinary baby.
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Monday December 13, 2004 |
The technology of entertainment is changing by the day. Here’s one with eye-popping effects that’ll keep you going with a wide-eyed sense of wonder and amazement. It’s big budget animation. Catch it at Imax in 3-D and it’s even more spectacular.
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Monday December 6, 2004 |
Here we are again, smack dab in the season of giving. Pastor Todd prayed it this way: “Lord, help us to remember the reason for the season, even while we’re out there promoting it.” Todd knows - those of us who are in the business of articulating the meaning of the Christmas season can miss it, too. Just like everybody else.
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Monday November 29, 2004 |
An uneasy tension exists between the disciplines of science and religion. It’s nothing new. Some consider the two world views to be hopelessly irreconcilable. Others shrug off the differences, claiming non-contradiction.
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Monday November 22, 2004 |
In 1997, John Ortberg wrote a little book with an odd title – The Life You’ve Always Wanted. Ortberg is a serious writer; a skilled conversational writer; an adept, savvy writer. That he would give his watershed book such a superfluous name in itself got my attention.
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Monday November 15, 2004 |
This Sunday, we bid farewell to Ridgeview Church in Valley Center. Much of what you read from week to week in LeaderFOCUS has its genesis in our experience in the fellowship of this vibrant group of believers in our country town.
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Monday November 8, 2004 |
Andy is retired. How it could be that a contemporary of mine is retired, I can not say. It’s rather startling, really, to think that only a few short years ago, we were launching our careers. And now, he’s retired. (Am I repeating myself?) A Lt. Colonel, to be exact.
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Monday November 1, 2004 |
Well, last week I told you I would share what’s going on. So here goes. My brother, Roger, made the observation. I’ve spoken of changes in my life. They are real. I’ve tried to explain them, but the words are hard to find. It’s something deep. Something that transcends simple descriptive terms and phrases and metaphors. It’s like the proverbial shift in paradigm. It’s like a calling. But there are no discernable voices, no mystical epiphanies, no heavenly visions. Just a conviction. A longing. A new level of desire. An inescapable sense of what’s real.
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Monday October 25, 2004 |
It’s not hard to imagine the confusion. One wonders how this band of followers felt. What they talked about. According to Luke’s account, they were just days away since their final moments with their Master.
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Monday October 18, 2004 |
Of all the joys of grandparenthood, chief among them is the rediscovery of childhood games. “Peek-a-boo,” for example. “I’m gunna getchew (that’s get you).” “Where’s Mommy?” “Where’s Grandma?” (Pointing in the correct direction gets a cheer.) Games like that.
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Monday October 11, 2004 |
This weekend, we’ve been thinking about the elections in Afghanistan, not so much because we are in tune with the political and cultural dynamics at play - this part of the world that seems to distant, so far removed from our own. It’s more personal than that.
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Monday October 4, 2004 |
Then the Pastor encountered a stunning account of gore in the text, it raised a serious question. Why would such a graphic depiction be included in the Holy Scripture?
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Monday September 27, 2004 |
The handwritten letter arrived in the mail yesterday. It’s from a state prison, addressed in pencil. The stationary comes from a stack of lined school paper. The author, an early twenty-something woman, the daughter of a good friend, was two days away from her sentencing the day she wrote. I’ve since talked to her father. The news at the hearing was disappointing. She’ll be in prison longer than she hoped.
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Monday September 20, 2004 |
I wonder if it would surprise C.S. Lewis, the popular Oxford don who died in 1963, that for more than thirty five years, a Harvard Medical School professor taught a standing room only class comparing his work with that of Sigmund Freud. Perhaps not. Lewis knew wide popularity during his colorful career.
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Monday September 13, 2004 |
The first thing that strikes you here in Kansas City is how nice everyone is. There is a reason, apparently, why they call them Mid-western values. This is the heartland of America. Friendly is an American virtue. It permeates the place.
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Monday September 6, 2004 |
Just coming off two weeks of Olympic competition, we’ve been exposed to an overload of peak performances. One after another, athletes stood at the starting line or on the court or in the field at the ready, and in one moment’s effort, culminated a lifetime of preparation in hope of Olympic glory - all those hopes and dreams that brought them here, now on the starting line hanging in the balance. The drama was enough to hold our attention throughout the whole contest. Unforgettable stories emerged. Heroes and villains. Heart warming victories and heart breaking defeats. Plenty of each.
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Monday August 30, 2004 |
My buddy Doug walked across the stage and received his doctoral hood ten years ago now. I was there, joining in the celebration. Dr. Doug is a career pastor; but now is equipped at a new level. His focus of study was spiritual formation in men at mid-life.
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Monday August 23, 2004 |
Well, I’m hooked on the Olympics again. Names like Carly and Hamm and Phelps are now seared into the memory banks with more to come.
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Monday August 16, 2004 |
For those who will notice, the high Sierras always beckon. For me it was a return, a kind of comin’ home. It’s John Muir country; inspiration for poets and painters and artists of every sort. For hikers and climbers it’s a perpetual dare – do you have what it takes?
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Monday August 9, 2004 |
My new golfing buddy handed me a CD. “You’re gunna like this,” he said. It’s one of those business updates. Dennis, financial advisor and his partner, a technical sort, like to keep up. The marketplace is, well, fluid. Money news, as it streams over the Internet and cable television and screams headlines off the financial page, generally has an agenda attached. If it isn’t to sell a product or a service, it is clearly an attempt to grab an audience, boost the ratings, swell the ranks of readership, and increase advertising revenues, at the very least. If the tip makes it to air time or the magazine cover, or if the stock beats the street or the fund posts record high returns, you can guess that by the time you hear about it and invest, you’re too late. You missed it. A good advisor needs to tone down the expectations that he’ll hit the lottery with his next picks. But at the same time, he wants to be in tune with current trends.
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Monday August 2, 2004 |
I’m a soft touch for a good speech. Maybe it’s rooted in the growing up years, listening to sermons – some of them barnstormers, many of them sleepers. My dad remembered one of his favorite lines from the Lutheran minister he came to know in the first few years he was married to my mom. They attended a stuffy cathedral style church in the tree lined upscale community of Oak Park, complete with stained glass and missing only the flying buttresses of the Notre Dame Cathedral on the Seine River in Paris. (Come to think of it, they were married there.) While a bit smaller, it still looked like a European architectural marvel right in the heart of the residential community just outside the city of Chicago. Dad loved to quote their Norwegian Pastor who referred to his sermons as a weekly attempt to “pitch his verbal tents against the sands of time.”
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Monday July 26, 2004 |
It’s a phrase my friend George conjured up. A historian himself, by profession, Dr. George understands that history is dynamic and not static. There is a static element in history, to be sure. What happened, happened. It can not be changed. The past is over and by definition, unalterable. History is the record of those events. History is also the study of those records. Not all of the records are in written form. Some is contained in oral accounts and traditions and story. In the study of the historical record, there is room for interpretation. There is also the possibility of error. History can even be abused. That’s why, we might say, there exists both good history and bad history. A good historian aspires to good history.
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Monday July 19, 2004 |
It may be a bit too early to put her on the team, but all things considered, the girl some call the next Marion Jones is poised to fulfill her dream. She’s barely eighteen. And already, she’s blazing a trail to Athens. She’s only been sprinting four years. She gained national attention when as a student at Los Angeles Baptist High School she broke Marion Jones’ high school record in the 200 meter sprint. The teenager stunned the world in 1992 with a blistering 22.67, and then went on to win the Gold in Sydney. Just last year, a new rising star shocked her classmates, coaches and parents with a 22.51.
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Monday July 12, 2004 |
This year, we attended a good old American block party. To my complete surprise, there remain certain communities in California where Fourth of July fireworks are perfectly legal. What with all our raging fire-storms these past few years, one would think such activity would be forever banned. But not in our kids’ home-town.
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Monday July 5, 2004 |
If I were to shout a hearty AMEN in response to Bill Cosby’s most recent diatribes on the shortcomings of parents who ought to know better, I would run the risk of appearing insensitive. At best, some may accuse me of political incorrectness – a white male cheering the blistering critique of a certain black sub-culture. It’s just plain inappropriate. At worst, others might play that race card, and suggest that such enthusiasm for Cosby’s speeches betray some sort of foreboding, lingering prejudice - that I’m drawn to caricatures and stereotypes that are rooted in an antiquated bigotry that is unacceptable in this enlightened era.
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Monday June 28, 2004 |
Something about guys and fish stories. I asked a friend of mine just this weekend how the Alaskan cruise went. He just returned this week. His eyes widened, energy level went up a notch, he gestured broadly as he described the FORTY TWO POUND salmon he landed on the trip. “Took over a half an hour to reel him in,” Rick added, the tone of disbelief still lingering in his memory. “Whoa,” I replied, nodding my astonishment and approval. My eyes as wide as his.
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Monday June 21, 2004 |
This year, Father’s Day takes on new dimensions. Maybe it has something to do with the request that I prepare a Father’s Day sermon. Bill asked me to fill in this Sunday. So I’ve been thinking a lot about it. The place will be populated with dads of every sort, and at every stage in life’s journey. There will be guys in there who only imagine that someday they will be dads and others who became dads only recently. They are still not sure what hit them. Others have put a decade or so in, with multiple kids. They’ll be sitting there with blurry eyes and that face that exudes both pride and annoyance all at the same time.
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Monday June 14, 2004 |
Already some are complaining about over-exposure. There is a new right-wing conspiracy, some will say – to impose the god-father of modern conservatism on a reluctant world, advancing the cause at taxpayer and media expense, hijacking the headlines for a full week, pre-empting all-important news events, a blatant attempt to immortalize the contrived memory of a conservative icon. Well, not me. I’ve been transfixed by this milestone moment in the American experience, taking it all in with gratitude, the heartfelt inspiration, thankful for the ceasefire in the daily fare of partisan vitriol.
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Monday June 7, 2004 |
I was a wide-eyed student at UCLA fresh out of Bible school when Ronald Reagan was governor of our state. At the time (1969-1971) and on that campus, Mr. Reagan was despised and scorned and the subject of regular derision in the student newspaper, the Daily Bruin. He was hopelessly out-of-touch they wrote: a prototypical ESTABLISHMENT politician with corrupt loyalties to the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX whose concept of patriotism was in fact IMPERIALISM and a sinister guise for the rank EXPLOITATION of the poor. The Governor of California was the arch enemy of DIVERSITY and ACADEMIC FREEDOM and his policies must be PROTESTED. Which they were.
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Monday May 31, 2004 |
My brother Rob has the finest set of wheels in the entire family. That’s saying a lot because whenever the family gathers, out front on the curb is a pretty impressive fleet of automobiles. Kevin called up his uncle, and made the not-so-modest request. “Uncle Rob, you’ve got a fantastic car. Would it be possible for us to use it for the get-away – you know, from the church to the reception?” Rob’s generosity kicked in.
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Monday May 24, 2004 |
I don’t circulate in the world of high school much anymore. It doesn’t seem that long ago that our three lived in that world. And because they did, so did we. But now our children have moved on. We’re not only finished hanging around the high school, but college as well. We’re not scheduled to make regular appearances on the campus again until the grandchildren hit that stage; come to think of it – that’s a few years away. This week, I revisited that world.
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Monday May 17, 2004 |
Maybe it’s because we’re just two weeks away from our third (and final) wedding. All three of our children will be married as of this month. Perhaps it’s because of the proliferation of weddings in the extended family – the “cousins” are reaching that age now in increasing numbers (on both sides – Carolyn’s and mine). And even before my nephew asked a question that took me by complete surprise, I found myself in wistful contemplation of a role I played years ago, quite often to be sure, but by choice, let it go, in order to pursue a life in business.
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Monday May 10, 2004 |
When we sat on the step of the church office, and looked out over the valley at daybreak, we did not know that John and Brenda lost their house. We saw the flames at a distance, coming over the ridge. It was and early Sunday morning in October, and looking back on it now, it all seems so surreal. We thought we’d go ahead and have a worship service as scheduled. It didn’t happen. Down there in the valley, we saw the flashing lights of fire-trucks and emergency crews, and as close as it was, we didn’t feel the full impact. That would come later. It’s common for us Californians to think we’ve “been in an earthquake” because we felt a disturbing little trembler. The walls rattle. The vase teeters. The ground rumbles. We were there, we say. But that’s it. In a couple seconds, it’s over. We’re plenty far from the epicenter - and that’s where the real action is.
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Monday May 3, 2004 |
Lake Wobegon is an imaginary place, but not really. It’s the little town that time forgot way up north where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children above average. It’s home to the Chatterbox Café and Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Catholic Church and Pastor Ingvist and the Norwegian Lutheran bachelor farmers where the tomatoes grow fat in the summertime and the men poke holes in the ice to fish from inside a hut out on the frozen lake in winter. And when I hear that rich baritone voice open with the familiar line, “Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home town…” well, my blood pressure goes down, stress level diminishes, I kick off my shoes and settle back and through the medium of radio – the theater of the mind – I go back to my own home town, a place that time also forgot, and grow nostalgic for those simpler days.
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Monday April 26, 2004 |
Forget the name of the magazine - Esquire. They stole the word. There was a time when men aspired to be gentlemen (sadly, that word, in modern parlance, has been stolen, too). In those bygone days, such a man pursued the attributes of civility: a manner of style, of dress, of speech, of deportment. Care was given to diction, and polite conversation. Phrases were carefully honed, wit sharpened, humor subtle; nuanced. Certain things were deemed proper. Others not. It had little to do with upward mobility, and the need to climb ever higher on the escalator to top corporate positions. To be a gentleman was an end in itself.
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Monday April 20, 2004 |
I Came out of my chair. Couldn’t help it. I jumped up, both hands in the air, whistling and jumping around the room, whooping just like the thousands of golf enthusiasts surrounding the green at Augusta who saw it live - and the millions like me watching on television. Mickelson dropped the putt of his career, an eighteen footer, barely swirling it into the cup, and for one sweet moment in time, well, justice prevailed.
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Monday April 12, 2004 |
Most of us Christians would agree, this has been an Easter season like no other in recent memory. Everywhere we turn, people ask about Jesus. "Why did Jesus have to die?" So reads the bold print question on the cover of the largest national newsmagazine in the world. It’s TIME’s Easter Cover Story.
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Monday April 5, 2004 |
My ear. It itches. It’s all tingly. You know how your arm, if you sleep on it the wrong way, how it “falls asleep?” You stretch, you try to get the blood flowing again, so the numbness goes away. You rub it and it feels like pins and needles poking you from inside your skin… you know the feeling? I wonder if someday it will go away.
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Monday March 29, 2004 |
Frank Lloyd Wright built his first home in Oak Park, Illinois, my birthplace. Later, his residential masterpiece, thirty seven thousand square feet of living space he called Taliesin, emerged from the rolling green hills of Southern Wisconsin on the banks of the wide Wisconsin River just outside the village of Spring Green, where Carolyn’s parents live in retirement. The Master Architect, whose name to this day sparks vigorous architectural debate, this caped, top-hat-and-cane, self-styled aristocrat with a shock of wavy white hair, shares our geographic roots..
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Monday March 22, 2004 |
Red Pollard was just about as interesting as the thoroughbred that carried the jockey on a wild ride to the Hall of Fame. A quintessential first born, John (nicknamed Red for his fiery crop of red hair) valued independence as primary among all the virtues. He was taught self-reliance. He grew up in privilege.
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Monday March 15, 2004 |
We are currently in search of a youth pastor. Why? Because kids need a pastor, too. Maybe more than the rest of us. The transition from childhood to adulthood is a risky passage. Parents have a limited role to play. The kids are trying to figure out who they are and what route to take and they want to make the choice on their own, thank you. Parents had their chance at influence in the earlier years – but starting in junior high and then through the high school and on to the college years, parents soon learn the need for some distance, some separation. It’s painful, but necessary.
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Monday March 8, 2004 |
I remember as a young preaching pastor now just about three decades ago, coming to the conclusion that some believers, obsessed with the gloom and doom of the End Times, were saying more about themselves than they were about the state of the world in general.
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Monday March 1, 2004 |
We’re bombarded with it now. Passion-mania. Who would have imagined? Everywhere we turn another article about The Passion of the Christ appears. A review. A reply. A rebuttal. Surf the cable channels, and there he is, Mel Gibson, answering the same questions he was asked yesterday – this time by yet another interviewer. Every time he responds, it’s as though it’s the first time he’s heard the question. (He’s clearly passionate about The Passion.) The story of Jesus has captured the fascination, the curiosity, the disdain, the hearts of the masses. All at the same time.
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Monday February 23, 2004 |
The impact of the Paradise Fire on our little town remains. Now, nearly four months after the blaze, we are all a little closer to each other. In one way or another, our priorities got rearranged. We are less certain about the importance of physical things. We are more certain about the meaning of family, friendships, inter-dependence and community. We know a bit more about generosity and caring. A bit less about pretense.
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Monday February 16, 2004 |
People are talking about Jesus. His life remains, in the Western world at least, the most poignant of all stories. The significance of his appearance, his teachings, his demeanor, his ascendance to the world stage, the flat rejection by his own society, the subsequent embrace by believers from every nation, every culture, every language group, all of this triggers every sort of speculation. And to this day, this man Jesus provokes thoughtful consideration and cynical caricature on the movie screen and on the New York Times bestseller list.
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Monday February 9, 2004 |
The Democrats own the media spotlight these days. It’s primary season in presidential politics. There isn’t much of a contest on the Republican side. You might say the presumptive nominee pretty well has it sown up. All he needs to do now is the stuff Presidents do, reminding the world that he is the incumbent, and that things are really going pretty well.
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Monday February 2, 2004 |
Things are heating up on political platforms across the nation. Ideology has always driven the debates. One of the basics in dissecting the merit of one’s opinion is to peel back the layers of an argument and discern the fundamental assumptions of one’s point of view. What are the presuppositions? What is the world view? If you grasp these underlying forces, you can understand some of the conclusions drawn, and you have a basis for entering into the debate.
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Monday January 26, 2004 |
Dr. Stephen Maturin
and Captain Jack Aubrey teach us something about partnership. Any of us who
have attempted a working relationship with a peer have learned something about
give and take. Business partnerships are not marriages, but there are
similarities between the two. There are phases, cycles, in the working
relationship and more often than not, such attempts at a shared destiny end
badly. Sometimes, they last – like the captain and the surgeon. Often, the
difference between success and failure amounts to a shade of meaning, a nuance;
not a bomb blast.
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Monday January 19, 2004 |
The Horatio Alger thing is deeply woven into
the fabric of everything we call American. It’s the belief that in America,
hard work, persistence, overcoming the odds, solving the problems, sticking to
it, well, they all eventually pay off.
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Monday January 12, 2004 |
I suppose it’s one way to define celebrity.
It’s a room packed with over three thousand people, most of whom left a busy
work-day for the privilege of meeting him in person and a preview of his most
recent work. Somehow, I got an invitation, too. And like the
others, I dropped the demands of my day, and the plans I’d made for clearing my
desk of undone tasks, and made my way down the Interstate and into the
auditorium with all the others.
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Monday January 5, 2004 |
Where we live, we don’t see much of it.
Occasionally, the mountaintop off in the distance will be dusted white and
we all go out back to take a look. I’ll pull out the binoculars just to
see the stuff up close. Once, it even stuck in our back yard for a couple
of hours. That was a day to remember.
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