Author: Charlie Pharis (page 51 of 165)

…you can bring Starbucks home!

You just get your coffee going, fire up XM Channel 75, get your books and notebook out, and there you go!

Well, almost…

OK, here’s the deal…you know when you get those pesky credit card offers in the mail and they have the fake credit card stuck to the paper with that “snot-like” adhesive? (Sorry!)

What’s that stuff called? And where would I find something like that, quickly and locally?

Thanks in advance for your vast storehouse of knowledge!

From the Starbucks in Canton, Georgia this morning…
The men’s group is out in full force, the coffee is hot, sweet, and strong, the muscles have a good afterburn, the sun is shining, the storm is gone, I slept a long, long time last night, I finished my workout strong, God is on the throne, and right now, it is well with my soul!

Oh, and did I mention that Louis Jordan’s “Let the Good Times Roll, ” Spike Jones’s “Cocktails for Two,” and the Ink Spots’ “Someone’s Rocking My Dream Boat” are providing the soundtrack for this gorgeous morning?

And Ephesians 1 and John Piper are providing the reading material…

It’s a rainy, potentially stormy Thursday in my neck of the woods. I’m sitting here thinking, reading, and praying. And some of those thoughts are leaking onto the pages of my Moleskine…

• My buddy Gary Lamb is in the war room right now. For something like only the second time in the history of the ‘Stone, they’re departing on short notice from the scheduled plan for Sunday. If you’ve got a minute in your busy schedule, lift up a word for the RidgeStone team.
• I know people die. I know death leaves a void in the lives of family and friends who are yet alive. I do have compassion for grieving people, especially when the death is particularly drawn-out or whatever. I know we have a responsibility to help meet others’ needs, especially those of the household of faith. But the mission goes on. And I need to have at least as much compassion for those who are dying spiritually, facing a Christless eternity separated from God, as I do for those whose physical death, while saddening and maddening, is a transition to an eternity in the presence of the One who makes all things new.
• Our denomination reports that 103,585 people live in a 5-mile radius of our church’s location. Median age, 35.6. Mostly “Up and Coming Families.” Mostly disconnected. Mostly unchurched. Mostly overwhelmed.

I don’t really remember exactly, but I think it was Steve McCoy who first pointed me toward Timothy Keller and the work of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.

Anyway, the latest print edition of Cutting Edge, the church planting magazine from the Vineyard churches, has a great article by Keller about developing city-center churches. (The issue is not online yet, but the print edition showed up in my mailbox yesterday.)

Good stuff! And it’s got me thinking about things like…

• How do these concepts relate to my place?
• Is it time to look at places like Woodstock, Georgia as still being the ‘edge’ of Atlanta?
• Or are smaller, growing cities like Woodstock ‘cities on their own’?

And these money quotes (among many!) from the article…

You can’t just disciple people on how to be Christians in their private lives, (e.g., prayer, witnessing, Bible study). Center-city people don’t have much in the way of a “private life.” If you are in finance, or art, or acting or medicine, your vocation dominates your life and your time. Discipleship must include how to be distinctively Christian within your job, including how to handle the peculiar temptations and ethical quandaries, and how to produce work in one’s own field from a distinctly Christian world-view.

If you speak and discourse as if your whole neighborhood is present eventually more and more of your neighborhood will find their way in or be invited. Why? Most Christians, even when they are very edified in church, know intuitively that their non-Christian friends would not appreciate the service. What you want is for a Christian to come to your church and say, “Oh! I wish my non-Christian friend could see (or hear) this!” If this is forgotten, soon even a growing church will be filled with Christians who commute in from various towns and communities far and wide rather than filling up with Christians and seekers from your church’s immediate neighborhood. (p. 23)

Although I took a month off from blogging, I kept the ol’ Moleskine hot. Here’s a little smörgåsbord of thoughts from the last month or so…

Saturday, February 3, 2007 8:37 a.m….

What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?
-Jay Gatsby, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, p. 157

Thursday, February 15, 2007 6:03 a.m.

…if you allow sloppy practice and don’t push your team to continually improve, sloppiness becomes a habit; then it’s tougher to get the team to focus on getting better when it most needs to.
-Ken Blanchard & Don Shula, Everyone’s a Coach, p. 21

Friday, February 16, 2007 8:34 a.m.

And more to the point, if [Tiger Woods] were trying to be some “whole person” defined by having to do it all, then he would probably not win the Masters, as he would be misusing his talents, spending time doing something he might not do well and not doing what only he can do.
-Henry Cloud, Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, p. 32

We need our gifts, but without wholeness of character – integrity as we are calling it – our gifts will become unusable or at least less fruitful. You can be the best designer in the world, but if no one will talk to you, or you can’t complete a proposal on time, you will be designing the inside of Dumpsters.
-Cloud, Integrity, p. 34

Among other things, I learned…

• People still check in on your blog, even though you said you were done. Cool!
• Blogging really is an itch that needs to be scratched! It’s not quite like Jeremiah’s fire in his bones, but it must be pretty dang close! Within 10 minutes of posting that “I’m done” post a month ago, I had three or four things I wanted to post!
• Perry Noble rocks!
• So does my buddy, Gary Lamb. (But I knew that before I took my blogging break!)
• My other buddy, Tony McCollum ain’t too shabby, either!
• There is no substitute for passion.
• There are a lot of things that keep our prayers from being answered.
• If my prayers don’t articulate God’s character, advance God’s Kingdom, and achieve God’s purpose and plan, they probably aren’t going to be answered.
• Some people “get it.” Some don’t. Some of the ones you think “get it” really don’t. And vice versa.
• Medeski, Martin, and Wood are perfect for a Tuesday night post-blogging-break Unwind.

Just now, I came across this article about when it’s time to stop blogging. The author, Lorelle VanFossen, lists 15 tips for how you know it’s time.

Well, for a lot of reasons, and unfortunately, some of the 15 apply directly, it may be that time. At least for a while.

Now, even as I typed that last sentence, I immediately thought about how often we wanna-be bloggers are so self-centered, so self-important, that we actually think our checking out of the blogosphere would somehow greatly affect the ebb and flow of the universe. So we advertise the fact that we’re giving it a rest. As though it matters.

Well, I’m probably not done for good, because I do love the give and take, the ability to put a little piece of yourself out there for the world, if they choose to or if they stumble upon your stuff en route somewhere else, to grasp and share. I like that a lot.

But our internet provider is about to change, I don’t really know if I want to mess with the hassle of shifting this whole monstrosity over to the “new” Blogger, I’m kicking around the idea of a domain name, I’m playing with WordPress, and a whole lot of other factors are going into my thought process right about now.

I guess Lorelle’s tips just kind of hit me at an opportune time.

I’ll keep checking in on you guys. I’ll keep learning and connecting and having those “hmmmm” and “aha!” moments, and probably before long, I’ll be back again.

Thanks for playing. Keep up your good stuff!

Today will be an adventure to be enjoyed, or an ordeal to be endured.

What makes the difference?