Do you play?

If it involves competition, the answer is yes. You name the sport and I'm up for playing or at least give it a try.

So recently when asked if I wanted to play in a foursome at a golf tournament, I said sure! By no stretch am I an avid golfer. I've played all of a total of no more than 5 rounds in my lifetime, but I've played. I don't own clubs and the last time I played was about 3-4 years ago. But in my book, do I play golf? Sure. It's no different than if you asked me if I play croquet, cricket or cross country skiing.

The tournament was last Friday and from the moment I arrived at the country club, I realized I was as they might say a few clubs short of a full golf bag. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the weather was almost perfect, but it's questionable whether you can call what I did for those 4+ hours, golf.

My scorecard read 97, but that included a good number of 6's where in the interest of time, I just picked my ball up. I think I lost about 12 golf balls, but found 1 for a net loss of 11 on the day. We yelled "fore" for only one of my shots, but no word yet on whether anyone sustained injuries. If you were driving south of Lancaster on Rt 222 and noticed some low flying golf balls... To my credit, our team used one of my 18 drives and I had two other decent shots in the round. But I spent most of the time just enjoying myself - I had so many slices the corner deli called offering me a job!

I identified several years ago that my affection for golf stems from my having no drive to improve. It's the one sport that I feel no desire to try and learn how to play better, no pursuit to perfect my swing. I just like to get out, swing away and watch the ball fly, regardless of the direction so long as no one is injured and no property is damaged.

And such was my mentality on Friday. Let me note here that I had my team sign disclaimers prior to the tournament that my joining their ranks was not going to further their pursuits of winning any of the tournament prizes. It was clear from the outset that this was the best groomed course on which I had ever played and with my game living up to it's billing I realized that I needed to take some unconventional steps to try and keep my score respectable, forgetting standard shot selection.

And so, on several occasions when I found myself in the fairway with 100+ yards downhill to the pin, I pulled out my putter and power-putted away. To everyones surprise, I did so with relative success, reaching the green several yards from the pin. By no means conventional, probably deemed disrepectful to the game by some, but when a fairway is as high quality grass as the ones we were playing - I've seen greens that looked worse than that fairway - why not pull out the putter?

So while it was an enjoyable day, I came to realize that while I'll always be up for a game of golf, I need to change my answer to the question, do you play golf? No, I'm not a golfer.

1am prayer call

Our Maintenance Director is on vacation this week, so I'm filling in. I'm sure he gets his fair share of 1am prayer calls and doesn't even tell me, but I received mine tonight after a full day.

The fire alarms, for which I now have a new-found appreciation after the fire last spring, went off around 12:40 this morning. After talking with the fire chief and cleaning the faulty sensor (oh yeah, it was a false alarm) I decided to stick around for a while to make sure the system was stable again.

So there I was laying in the dark lobby trying to catch a little shut-eye while I gave the system time to check itself and it hit me... it's not often I'm the only person in the building and in a mindset when I don't want to do anything at all. So I prayed...

"Lord, thanks for the ministry you've given me here and the way You are expanding Your Kingdom through us. I recognize that in the leadership position in which you've placed me that I often have to make decisions about our ministries, please give me wisdom in that decision-making and open my eyes to the things You want me to base those decisions on. And I ask that You would continue to work through us and through this building which You've provided for us, to change lives, to help each one of us grow closer in our walks with You."

Next time you hear a fire alarm sound, first exit the building to safety, then consider using it as a call to prayer.

Webpage needs a makeover

It’s been about two years since the church webpage has had a makeover. I can’t decide if I just like changing things or if I don’t feel like we’ve found the right setup yet; but either way a webpage makeover is on the horizon.

While our homepage is effective at highlighting a few key aspects of our ministry, it is difficult to find information on selective ministries until you get beyond the homepage. I know I often click on any link to access the lengthy menu that runs along the left side of the secondary level pages to get to the meat of the entire site. Aesthetically, we’ve made the homepage work, but I know to a graphic-oriented person, it comes off more like a puzzle pieces that were forced to fit together.

Our webpage has come a long way over it’s history; I recently found Tom Avey’s original proposal for the website from some 10+ years ago. I’d like to think that in each makeover its evolved a little bit better and that our next makeover will take us a few steps more in the right direction.

I do hope the new makeover includes:
Drop down menus of some kind at all levels of the site to replace the lengthy menu that currently exists on all secondary pages. While the current menu has been functional, it’s a list the length of my arm and looks like a kid who ran out of paper in class and had to resort to scribbling notes on his hand and on down toward his shoulder. Drop down menus should allow us to present the same lists in a more organized and eye-appealing structure.
A new color scheme – I like purple and Pepto-Bismol pink and all, but I’m ready for a new color scheme.
Find what I need to find – the current site is organized based on my logic, but not everyone thinks the way I do. Some pages are tucked away in corners that make sense to me, but if you don’t think like I do, you may never find them or even know they’re out there to be found.
Media bells and whistles – along with the audio/video techs, we hope to introduce some sort of streaming audio and/or video before long. Whether that’s a live stream of the service or archives remains to be seen.

And in case you’re wondering, I’ve developed the layout of the website for the past four or more years, so I’m criticizing my own work.

Happy Birthday PC!

Saturday, August 12, 2006 was the 25th birthday of the IBM PC which brought to mind my introduction to computers.

Truth be told, the first computer I came across was the abacus - seriously, it's viewed as the first computer ever.
Side note, I think it would be fun to give every stu
dent an abacus and advertise that we give
every student their own, custom-made personal computer. Back to your regularly scheduled
blog...
Store owners and even in the Philippine public schools, the abacus was used for calculating mathmetical functions. I vaguely recall seeing them in use as far back as 1978-79, but I never learned to use one.

My first exposure to an electronic computer was the Tandy TRS-80 Model 1. I was in 5th-grade at the time, attending Faith Academy. I don't know that there were computers elsewhere on campus, but the Middle School Principal had the TRS-80 in his office. Somehow, one of my friends received permission to play games on the machine afterschool and he took me along with him. I only remember doing that once, but it left an indelible impression.

As you might see from the picture, the Model 1 featured a cassette tape drive. If you never experienced a cassette tape drive, you're blessed! My memory recalls that programs took 15-30 minutes to load, but due to often poor audio quality, programs would often misload, requiring restarting the process all over again. We loaded a one dimensional airplane flying game. Contemplate that statement for awhile to grasp the crudeness of all this. In the end, I think the program gave us an error half-way through and by then it was almost dinner time. Though archaic compared to today's standards, something happened that day.

In the next year or two the school had a TRS-80 Model 3 that had a disk drive!!! I also recall taking a little class using an Apple II and learning some BASIC programming.

A reflection on computer history wouldn't be complete without bringing up the Mac/PC debate. I saw my first Mac sometime in early 1985. When you live half-a-world away, technological advances are introduced by the latest missionaries to arrive from the homeland. We never got to see the infamous Mac commercial that introduced it to the US market. No my introduction was Mr. Carlson, who'd just arrived from the US and apparently one of my teachers had asked him to bring his new Mac to class so we could see the newest and latest. I remember my immediate reaction, "Why isn't it in color?"



My family's first personal computer was the IBM PC Jr. which we purchased around 1985. Within a few weeks of getting the machine, my cousin and I wrote a simple BASIC program designed to make the machine appear to have malfunctioned. As a practical joke we ran the progam and yelled for Dad to come quick because something had happened to the computer. It worked to perfection.

From there I took as many computer courses as I could, learning BASIC and Turbo Pascal in high school and helping my parent's co-workers learn how to use WordPerfect and WordStar. When I started college, I went with the intention of pursuing Computer Science, picking up Fortran (not sure why I bothered) and the early parts of COBOL (again, why?!?). Soon thereafter I decided I'd had enough of programming and bugged-out of the program.

Today, computer work is a key role I fill. Between the daycare, school and church office, we have some 100 networked computers in the building. While I don't program, having that background has helped immensely in comprehending what's going on when things hit the fan or understanding new things like the church website.

Seeing how much Faith Academy's investment in computer hardware and education has impacted me, we've worked hard to equip Grace with up-to-date machines and my hope is that we'll be able to expose students to the possibilities in computers.

Happy Birthday PC!

Who moved my toothpaste?

I’m glad our flights to/from California were a few weeks ago and not today. Incidentally, the Distler’s got in last night, so they’ve missed today’s mayhem. Reading about what’s occurring at airports on both sides of the pond triggered thoughts about how much air travel has changed.

It is a challenge to maintaining a normal schedule while flying cross-country since the airlines don’t serve food on the flights. Our original travel plan was a two-flight journey Philly to Dallas, Dallas to Palm Springs. The flight to Dallas was delayed by over an hour, causing us to miss the flight to Palm Springs. That was the last flight to Palm Springs so we were left with the choice of staying overnight in Dallas and flying standby to Palm Springs the next day or switching to another airline and ultimately flying Dallas to Phoenix and Phoenix to Ontario (for non-CA residents, not that Ontario, Ontario, California – look at an atlas already, would you?!?). But in all of this, when were we gonna eat?

Same thing occurred on the return flight – again routed, Palm Springs to Dallas, Dallas to Philly. Fortunately, we had a 2-hour layover in Dallas allowing us time to eat at the TGI Friday’s at the DFW airport. If it hadn’t been for the 2-hour layover, we wouldn’t have had time to eat.

And don’t tell me about the little food boxes the airlines are starting to sell for $5, as the one Sesame Street bit used to say “that’s not even enough to feed a flea!”

In addition to the meal challenges, there's the security changes. I remember taking the Christmas turkey with me back to the Philippines as checked luggage and being able to watch the screen as it passed through the screener - can't do that anymore. And I’m picturing the passengers in lines this morning finding out that they can’t carry any liquid or paste. They must feel like Jonah’s shipmates having to throw so much overboard.

I must be quite the site going through security. Out of fear of tripping the sensors, I feel a need to empty all of the things on my person into one of the beautiful gray bins they provide. So there I am dumping all this stuff out of my pockets, trying to remember to take the computer out of its case, oh, don’t forget the camera too. Then rushing to untie my shoes and throw them on the conveyor. All the while attempting to do all of this with only 2 hands, trying to make sure I’m keeping track of all our valuables so we don’t loose anything and getting all of this done in under 30 seconds so I don’t hold up the line – faster than drive-thru service at McDonald’s.

Get through the screener and then it is the reverse process. Get re-clothed, gathering everything up and actually have to do it faster since there’s often less counter space after going through security than in the lines before security. And so I end up hastening away from security shoes untied, bags hanging around my neck, computer in one hand, camera in the other, looking for somewhere to get this all stowed-away again while trying to dodge people traffic. And that’s without kids!!!

Of course, the luggage thing has changed too. When we traveled to/from the Philippines, we were moving our life’s belongings with us, so we were packed to the max with as much if not more than the allotted checked luggage. I’m amazed at the number of passengers who were flying to/from California that didn’t check baggage but used extra-large carryon suitcases instead. I sure hope those overhead bins are as securely fastened as my seatbelt is supposed to be or else I’ll loose my head!

With the terrorists seemingly coming up with ways to turn every conceivable household item into a life-taking device, how long will it be before no luggage is allowed on board? Travel expenses will rise sharply... travel to California, buy clothes and toiletries to last your stay and before returning the rental car, don’t forget to donate your clothes from the week to the Salvation Army. Oh and that would also explain why cargo pants are all the rage.

Changing the room request system

I’m not sure when the system was created, but one of our reputations involves room requests. Our room request system is notorious for being a time consuming, headache producing system. It can take a week or more at times for someone to request a room for an upcoming event. There were valid reasons behind the system, though it wasn’t customer oriented.

The previous church I worked in used a multi-use approach to their facility. Every room in the building was considered a multi-use room that could be used by any ministry, as they needed. I’d imagine that approach could work well in most church ministries. However, a State-certified daycare and a full school program create challenges to a multi-use approach.

For one, the State requirements for the daycare are explicit when it comes to sanitary/cleanliness standards not only for the room, but also for all of the furniture and equipment in the room. That places a burden on the room users to be familiar with the codes and trained to abide by them.

A full school program comes with many extra-curricular activities on top of the daily educational schedule. There’s always a large block of time each day when the educational rooms, if not the entire educational wing is simply unavailable. The same applies to the daycare area since those rooms house children for 12-hours a day.

Our room request system tried to account for these unique challenges. The ministry leaders over each ministry that used a room had to approve every request. With some of our rooms that meant that upwards of four to five people needed to approve the request! As you can imagine, ministry leaders have a lot to administrate and signing off on a room request was often the least of their concerns and it wasn’t unusual for the requests to sit on desks for a day or two and for all the approvals to be secured in over a week. I once jokingly compared this process to NASA’s challenges in staying in contact with the Mars Orbiter.

Over the past couple of years, building use has increased and our ministries want to do more and more activities. It was clear that the laborious orbit-approval process was going to be too time consuming and take too long in order for us to function efficiently, so we’ve changed the system.

We’ll still be utilizing the same principles, daycare and school rooms have to primarily serve those ministries and the State codes must be enforced for the daycare rooms and the kitchens. What we are eliminating is the orbit procedure. We’ve centralized the approval process into one individual who knows the intricacies of each room but can approve requests on the spot.

This will definitely speed up the approval process and help us be more focused on serving our ministries and those who use the facility.

The McD and O'Dea Connection

Though it's some five years old, it struck such a chord with me that I keep a copy of it on the bulletin board at my desk... it's the want ad (text only) of a man named Brian O'Dea.

My first paid job was working for McDonald's in the Philippines while in high school. When I went to look for summer work during college, I didn't think my McDonald's experience was promotable material, but after seeing what Brian O'Dea was able to do with his employment history, I realized I was selling myself short.

The Philippine economy was such that working at McDonald's was considered a gainful employment, so as a high schooler I was working shoulder to shoulder with young adults who were building careers working for the golden arches. As a foreigner, my visa didn't allow for me to earn money for my work - technically, I was a McDonald's volunteer. As students we ran some fundraisers at school to raise the money which we would use to virtually pay ourselves. For reference, we raised enough money to get about $1/hour which due to the Philippine economy was still more than what the actual employees were making.

I vividly recall my initial training session, the trainer emphasizing what the name and logo stood for, to produce quality food in a timely fashion; the need to always provide a positive experience for the customers and doing it with a smile. Apparently, the conventional wisdom was that after working at McDonald's you'd grow to hate it and never be able to eat at the restaurant again. In my case the complete opposite occurred. From that first training session, I dove head first into the vat they call McD's. I simply ate it up. I worked in multiple stations: cleaning tables (in the Philippines, employees throw out the customer's trash once their done with their meal), working the register, making French fries, dressing the burgers, drive-thru and running the apple pie/fish filet station. Virtually earning $1/hour was nice, but I liked the free meal more than anything else.

While I was told that after working for a summer in McDonald's I'd never want to eat the food again, to this day I'm a frequent McD's customer. The condition and level of service at today's McD's leave me disheartened. The standards which were emphasized during my orientation and training have been lost. Cleanliness of the restaurants and cooking areas doesn't appear to be as high a priority as it was. Serving drive-thru customers in 30-seconds or less doesn't appear to be the goal. Greeting each customer with a friendly smile and a "Welcome to McDonald's how may I help you?" doesn't happen to me at each visit. I relished the challenge of trying to achieve those standards with each customer I had the honor of serving during my McDonald's years.

Here's the crazy part. I enjoyed working at McDonald's so much that I often worked 12-hour shifts for them. I just thoroughly enjoyed the work! That's the selling point I was missing.

Other California observations

A couple of other observations from our California visit - recognizing up front that my focus was on those things that relate to my involvement in church...

• The ministries we visited received their offerings at the very end.
• We saw everything from offering bags, baskets and even paint cans used to collect the offering.
• You know you're in a large church when people are using cell phones to figure out where their family members are sitting.
• The buildings appeared to have been designed with more emphasis on function and less on aesthetics. Not that they looked bad or ratty; they just weren't overly decorated.
• The seats were not overly comfortable; but they were functional.
• When seats were in demand, the ushers served throughout the entire service helping people find and fill every available seat.
• The California weather patterns give the churches an opportunity to do a lot of stuff outside which we in the Northeast aren't able to maximize.
• You know you're in a large church when people are worried about beating the traffic to get home in time for lunch.
• The services never officially ended with someone telling us to have a good week or whatever; each ended with a song which the band continued to play for several minutes as the crowd instinctively exited.
• The weekend meetings/services where focused on corporate worship - I didn't see a single Sunday School or ABF class. Keep in mind that I didn't see an entire weekend at each ministry, just one service so maybe it occurred at another time or maybe that's happening during the week.
• Except for the rented night club, the Auditoriums made ample use of natural light through large windows to make the rooms bright.
• The Auditoriums had open ceilings with the rafters and HVAC ducts clearly visible - functional.
• Tongue-in-cheek... for all the hype about Saddelback and their best practices, there's a lot of storage space they could be utilizing better - their was plenty of storage space in their hallways and a ton of space under their bleachers.

The Mayan

To this point in my life, I've found myself in two situations where, while I looked around and surveyed my surroundings, I found myself thinking "Who would've thought that I'd find myself here!"

My first such experience was when a group from Westerly Road Church went to the Tuesday night prayer meeting at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. We arrived early as we had heard seats were usually in short supply and they were that night as well. Even before the prayer meeting commenced, all of the women were invited forward to pray out loud at the front of the Auditorium while the men stayed praying in their seats. That went for about 30 minutes. Then the women were asked to be seated and the men were asked to the front. We prayed out loud for another 30 minutes before the service began. As the service was beginning, they asked all the men to fill the choir loft. Here I was, this missionary kid, in the middle of downtown Brooklyn, surrounded by strangers in the choir loft of the Brooklyn Tabernacle with a thousand or more people at the service. I remember looking over at our Associate Pastor, and thinking who would've thought we'd find ourselves here! Having only attended one of their prayer meetings, I don't know if it's a common practice, but in any event that's what they did that particular night.

I had a similar experience last weekend with another Pastor, different context, different city. I attended the Sunday night ministry of Mosaic - apparently a inner-city college ministry of their church. The church rents The Mayan theater which every other night of the week is a salsa club of some sort. From it's decor, you'd think the theater was one of the Survivor sets or something like that. And like a club, the worship music was cranked up. Here I was, in the middle of south-central LA, surrounded by college kids, and the bass creating CPR compressions on my chest. I looked over at Scott and thought, "Who would've thought we'd find ourselves here!

I've worshipped God in a variety of contexts, situations and locations. Each time, I marvel at how diverse the Church really is, how segregated we are because of our personal preferences and I wonder the shock we may endure when we worship God in every form imaginable during eternity.

Watch the Posting Times

I explained a few posts ago why the posting times of my entries are usually the same time each day. Though the date of the next game night is still in negotiations, the opposing team of the ultra-competitive gaming group is using the post as bulletin board fodder. Their rebuttal goes something like, "Andrew, rest up because you'll have to get up extra early to post your future blogs at 5:30!"

I hereby accept the challenge.

If our team wins the night, then I'll continue to post at 11:49 (or later if we set a new high score). If our team loses the night, I'll post the game low score. Watch the posting times!

p.s. I won't be using 38 anymore since Elliot Sadler announced he won't be driving the #38 Ford Fusion after this season.

Larger Message Files

Since publishing our message audio files to the web, we've worked hard to keep the files small for the segment of our audience without broadband. But in exchange for small file sizes we compromised audio quality.

As an aside, you may have noticed that Podzinger ceased to catalog our messages; after some digging I discovered this was directly linked to the quality of our audio files.

My IT Assistant for the summer, Phil, pointed out the difference in audio quality a few weeks back and I decided to upgrade. It may not be all that noticeable, but our messages are now being produced at a higher quality. Podzinger recognizes them now and should be fully functional.

The downside is it will take a bit longer to download or stream.
Check out our latest message series on the Book of James.

Planning ahead

After completing a course in college late in my Sophomore year, I turned into a planning nut - I wanted to have a clear sense of direction with every detail and every minute of my life channeled to help me reach my final destination. Several years later, with graduation on the horizon, I quickly realized that for all my planning and direction, I had no idea what the future held in store, no leads other than directly to unemployment. And out of the blue, God orchestrated a phone call that lead to a job offer that I hadn't seriously considered. That experience altered my view of planning.

I was involved in a ministry that after years of dreaming of facility expansion, made plans to put shovels in the ground. I've seen ministries with long-range projections which years later (with the benefit of hind-sight) look far-fetched and unrealistic. Those observations again altered my view of planning.

Today, planning to me is focused on trying to discern God's plan. Pastor Scott's blogged about some of the planning process we've been taking in recent weeks and there are several questions I've been asking myself and the staff throughout the process:

Where do we see evidence of God's work?
What ways is God opening up for us to join what He's already doing?

Our purpose, our vision of where we want to be in 10, 20, 30 years, our strategic objectives of how we'll get there and the specific goals all need to be centered on where God's working and the role we can play in His work.

I'm excited because it's a process I've been taught, one I've employed in specific areas under my leadership, but I've never seen it thoroughly put into practice for an entire ministry. Even more, recognizing that it's a real-time, ever-changing process, we plan to get together quarterly to discuss, evaluate, reassess where we see God working and how He wants to utilize us in those areas.

We've come up with our answers to these questions, but we're taking time to pray about them and make sure it's where we think God's at work. After that we'll be reviewing it in a couple of weeks before we start to move forward. Stay tuned.

More facility projects

Recognizing that we don't always look like we're one organization (instead appearing to be separate entities: daycare, school and a church), we're taking steps to create more unity in the building. In addition to the parking lot paving and carpeting I mentioned earlier this week, we hope to commence work on moving from two separate resource/break rooms for our daycare and school ministries into a single, shared resource/break room. We also hope to work out how it can be accessed and used by church ministries on Sunday mornings and possibly Wednesday nights as well.

The plan, approved by the Board of Education and the Elder Board is to remove the wall between rooms 401 and 402 - commonly known as the Home Ec. room and the Teacher's lounge. They're the rooms located across from the Fellowship Hall. We'll remove the wall between the two rooms to create a large room with enough space to store office supplies, an have office work area and a place for employees to take their lunch breaks.

UPDATE (7/21/2006): the wall is down; why didn't we do this several years ago?

It's audit time :)

Every year we have independent accountants come to conduct a financial audit of our financial operations. The accountants will be on site for the next 3-4 days, randomly reviewing our work over the past 12 months to verify that we've accounted for everything appropriately and done everything above board. I view this process as a learning experience as each year I come away with a little more knowledge of how to better lead the finance and accounting aspects of our ministry. It's an intense several days, but the results are worth it!

Upcoming facility projects

Work will be commencing on several facility projects by the end of July...

1. Parking Lot Paving
What is now considered a small soccer field, located on the western side of the 501 W Lincoln property, will be converted into 122 parking spaces. This project was presented to and approved by the congregation in June. The additional spaces will meet our current demand, but still leave little room for growth. Anybody want to car pool?

2. Carpeting
With about half of our building reaching the 15+ year mark, we've been attempting to keep up with key maintenance items. For example, we'll be replacing a lot of the hallway carpets in the next month as they're original to the 1990 addition (making them 16 years old). We'll be doing everything we can to minimize the impact on Sunday morning and Wednesday night ministries.

A Safe Assumption

Assumptions can be dangerous, but there's one assumption I rely upon almost daily... always assume there's something you don't know. I find that making that one assumption helps me keep a balanced approach to the issues I face daily; particularly when it comes to making judgment decisions.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I found a clear example of this while I watched the World Cup Final on Sunday. When I saw Zidane head-butt Materazzi, I quickly went to my assumption, there's something we don't know about the situation. Yes, the head-butt was a deplorable act, but we don't know what traspired to lead up to that point. ESPN2 re-aired the final match on Monday night and I caught parts of the game; it was interesting to watch it through a Zidane-focused lens. The Italians game plan was clear, whenever Zidane touched the ball he was hounded, not just defended, by two, sometimes three players, each harrassing him extra-physically. He was given no space on the pitch. He was roughed up from start to finish, even sustaining some type of shoulder injury late in the second half. In addition to the physical abuse, he was likely getting thrashed verbally as well, though it wasn't as evident from the camera angles. All that to say that in re-watching parts of the game, it was clear there were things we as a world audience didn't know or had forgotten once we saw the head-butt. Does that excuse him? No, but it does give a broader perspective on what happened.

Though in very different contexts, assuming that there's always something I don't know makes me dig deeper into the situations that come my way, to seek additional information before making a decision.

European Football

I'm not sure I've documented my enjoyment of European Football, but for the past month, the majority of the world has been fixated on the matches unfolding in Germany - aka the World Cup. And today, much of the world is focused on the final moments of the career of one Zinedine Zidane who in one moment was being referred to in the circles of John Elway and Bill Russell, sportsmen who ended at the top of their sports in the US and mentioning him in the same sentence as world-football greats, Pele and Maradona. And then in an instant, Zidane is relegated to the realms of Mike Tyson (who bit off part of the ear of Evander Holyfield) and other disgraced athletes. Of all the commentary I've seen, I've found the following article the most insightful.

As I told someone several years ago, but for the grace of God I am just as capable of such horrific and destructive acts, for I too am a sinner.

All said, it was indeed a shame.

Important Patriotic Service Info

If you're planning to join us Sunday morning at 10 a.m. in Lititz Springs Park for our Patriotic Service, in light of this week's flooding, please pay special attention to the following instructions...

It will be our privilege to be at Lititz Springs Park this weekend for our Patriotic Event. In many respects, we have the opportunity to "set the tone" for the rest of the park events. Even with the flooding at the park this week, the park assured us that they will have it ready by our event. However, the park has requested us to make an attempt to alleviate continued flooding damage with some simple steps we can take as entire church.

As a church when we arrive at Lititz Springs Park, please park at the Warwick High School (located behind the park). Please avoid cutting through the grass but use the paved macadam walk-ways to get to the band-shell area. Please fill up the bleachers and use lawn chairs on the blacktop walk-ways first…use grass areas for seating after these areas have filled up. While we realize with 2,000+ people coming to the park that people will most likely be sitting on the grass, we hope to leave the park with as minimal damage to the grounds as possible.

For participants in the Patriotic event, when unloading and loading equipment, there will be no parking on the grass next to the band shell. Vehicles on the grass will create ruts at this point. If you need to drop off equipment, please do so on the blacktop drive closest to the band shell and walk it across the grass to the band shell.

Church watching

I recently had the opportunity to visit a church facility for a community program - a facility I had never been to before. I enjoy such experiences, making observations of people, places and things to which I am a stranger.

First off, I apparently didn't follow my Google Maps directions accurately though I wouldn't say I was lost. But it did lead into another Norton tour - infamous for finding obscure points which aren't usually highlighted on the tourist brochures. In this case, I passed the former home of a U.S. President. I eventually found the location without too much difficulty.

From the outside, the facility looked something akin to a spaceship or a large egg standing on end - not a structure that would be immediately recognizable as a church. And whether coincidence or not, many of the cars in the parking lot had the same bumper stickers, "God Bless the Whole World with No Exceptions".

Inside the egg, the accoustics were good. Being an egg, the ceiling was huge and the room was surrounded by stained glass. It's interesting to contrast such an auditorium with our square windowless box. I guess many churches sacrifice accoustics and aesthetics in exchange for maximizing space to accomodate more people.

Beyond the physical characteristics and layout, I get a kick checking out what's in the pew racks of the churches I visit. Does the church utilize pew Bibles and what version do they use? Do they use giving envelopes and how many funds do they have? Do they use a registration/response card and what information to they solicit?

I learn a lot about a church from just these simple observations.

Numerology

Someone observantly noticed that I tend to publish my entries at the same time each day I publish. Here's why...

38 - thirty-eight is the number of my favorite NASCAR driver, Elliot Sadler. I like Elliot because he's a pretty good guy and he's sponsored by companies like M&Ms. Thirty-eight is also the number worn by Curt Schilling, but that's an ancillary reason as to why I like the number.

1149 - one thousand, one-hundred and forty-nine, which is usually represented in the blog as 11:49, is a number I recently came upon. My wife and I were recently invited to join a group that gathers for some regular game nights - and a very competitive group I might add. The last time we had a game night the men's team was in a groove and we put up 1,149 points.