Thursday, January 15, 2004

The worship song for today is Draw Me Close. It was a song that we sang a lot at the conference and Smitty led us in that song after Above All after we saw The Passion.... It was hard to get through it without sobbing like a baby.

Draw Me Close
by Kelly Carpenter

Draw me close to You
Never let me go
I lay it all down again
To hear You say that I’m Your friend

You are my desire
Nothing else will do
Cause nothing else could take Your place
To feel the warmth of Your embrace
Help me find the way
Bring me back to You

You’re all I want
You’re all I’ve ever needed
You’re all I want
Help me know You are near

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.  Ephesians 3:14-21

Yep.

I forgot to mention that I got confirmation of this question while in Orlando. Ok, so a little background:

1. Baldwin wore Jesus t-shirts on the last Celebrity Mole (Hawai’i). And a huge ol’ cross, too. Remember that?

2. Then there was a news article my mother gave me about the new direction that Luis Palau has taken his outreach ministry - to include reaching X-games fans. To do that, he hired Baldwin to direct a video called Livin’ It for the skater culture.

3. At the conference last week, the hotel had channel 18 dedicated to Young Life programming. Static screens with the schedule would run on occasion, like commercial breaks. But most of the programming was just general stuff about the ministry - camping videos, a promo about women in ministry, promos about the ministry to teen moms and disabled kids. And then, on Sunday, I was in the room for maybe 10 minutes and I caught a bit of the promo for “Livin’ It” - with Stephen Baldwin in all his goofy glory, still wearing Jesus clothes and the bling cross around his neck, and excited about bringing the Gospel to skaters.

I’d love to hear his story.

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

It’s funny how God orchestrates things, because at the Young Life conference last week Chuck Colson talked to us about how important it is for youth ministers to be teaching teenagers how to have a Biblical worldview, especially before they get to college. Because we all know that most colleges are going to challenge, even deny the validity of, conservative, traditional, Biblical values and thought.

There’s a fascinating discussion over at Evangelical Outpost about what constitutes having a Biblical worldview. It stems from a recent poll by Barna Research that determined that only 51% of pastors have a “Biblical worldview.”

Barna’s believes that in order to claim a biblical worldview one must have a firm belief that:

--Absolute moral truths exist.
--Such truth is defined by the Bible;
--Jesus Christ lived a sinless life;
--God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He stills rules it today;
--Salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned;
--Satan is real;
--A Christian has a responsibility to share their faith in Christ with other people;
--The Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.

Am I missing something? Is this the definition that excludes 91% of Christians as Justin claims? Personally, I thought this was what all biblical Christians believed, not just a particular “brand of conservative fundamentalist evangelicalism.”

While I agree that this list doesn’t exhaust the beliefs necessary for a biblical worldview, I don’t see how you could build one without these foundations.

UPDATE (Thurs 9:52am): James at OTB, has a post with his own views on this topic. He says some interesting things that I, on a visceral level, disagree with and yet I have to admit that he’s somewhat correct in his assessment of a lot of people who profess to be Christians. An example:

Indeed, I’d guess a significant plurality of American Christians are, to coin a phrase, “Howard Dean Christians.” They believe in being nice to people, helping their neighbors, doing good works, living a decent life, and all the rest. But they don’t have a deep sense of the supernatural, mythological aspect of the faith.

[...]

None of this is to say that Christians are bad people or even hypocrites in any conscious sense. Most Christians--and I’d argue, most other people--try to behave decently and struggle with our natural impulses to do otherwise. It’s just that modernity, almost by definition, creates a non-mystical mindset that makes fundamentalism a poor fit.

UPDATE (Thurs 11:36am): I knew that Bryan at Clarity Amidst Chaos would have a great take on this topic. His post is excellent. A snippet, with which I agree 100%:

However, my stand is simple. If “fundamentalist” means taking God at His Word, that’s where I have pitched my tent. I wholly believe that there will come a day when God will examine me, as by fire. And when that happens, this conversation won’t:

God: Didn’t you read where I said…
Me: Of course I did, but I didn’t think you meant it.
God: Why would you have thought that?
Me: I thought you were going for a more symbolic idea...you know, not so literal.
God: Really?
Me: Don’t look so incredulous. You have to admit, a lot of that stuff didn’t make sense. It was pretty close-minded, doncha think?
God: You know, you’re right. I can’t believe I never saw it that way before...I sure appreciate you giving me a new perspective!
Me: Hey, always glad to help out. You don’t mind if I sit in that big throne, do you? It seems like I’ve been standing in line for *an eternity!*

Last night on the commute home, the talk guys I clicked into were discussing the acting merits of two former stand-up comedians. One considers the movie career/choices of one to be better than the other and vice versa. Both made excellent points about their favorite actor-comedian, both are hilarious and pretty good actors. So I thought I’d ask ya’ll, especially since it’s been a long time since I’ve posed a WiB question.

Which is Better? Robin Williams or Steve Martin?

Now to clarify, I’m talking about their movie careers only. So make your case and please list their movies to validate your arguments, pro and con. Let the debate begin!

Oh, and I’ll let you guys duke it out for a bit before I chime in with my own opinion.

I was watching Entertainment Tonight and they ran a promo for a feature they’re going to have tomorrow on The Passion.... They plan to show “new” clips from the movie and discuss the controversy surrounding it.

Consider this your public service announcement. You’ll want to check your local TV listings to see when that will air in your area. Typically it’s in the 7/6pm hour (eastern/central), just after the news on local channels.

I love Scrabble. I’ve seen this thing around the past few days, thought I’d give it a go...Given that my blog name is rather short, my score isn’t too bad.

Pholph’s Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 22. What is your score? Get it here.

ODDNESS: I’ve tried to cut and paste the code three times with the same weird result. I don’t know what’s happening to the code when I post. It’s supposed to say “Jen Speaks.”

The results for my real, full name (first, middle, last): 55 - there’s a Z in there.

[via Jay Solo]

My sister just told me the funniest thing that I’m not at liberty to share. I thought I’d give her a link anyway. ‘Cuz I love her and she makes me laugh. And she gave me a niece last year. She’s cool that way.

I had a rather tall stack of civil process on my desk when I returned to work yesterday. I also had many more voicemail message than I expected. Because I’m at the front desk I get a lot of phone calls, but most are for other people. I get maybe 5-10 voicemails in a week. I had over 50 and all but two hang-ups and three confused souls, they were all for me. Odd.

Anyway, after I putzed around with the photos this morning, I got cracking on the piles. I’m slowly making progress but I’m still getting a ton of phone calls and there have been a lot of visitors at the window too. And I’m breaking the computer rules today, because I haven’t reconnected the new computer back up yet. *pseudo-shivering in fear*

I just got off the phone with this supercilious lady from main Justice about some foreign criminal process that I was mailing back to her today (coincidentally). She demanded that I fax it to her right away, despite the fact that the envelope is already sealed and stamped. I told her I would fax my carbon copy and that would have to suffice. She didn’t like that one bit and hung up on me. Whatever.

And I have learned that there are going to be some significant personnel changes in our office after next week. First, two deputies are moving to our suboffices. Another is moving to the western half of Virginia. Yet another was promoted to be the supervisor of operations. And we have four new senior deputies coming here in a couple of weeks. MD asked about doing a luncheon for the folks who are departing - sure, we’ll just add that to the other additional duties I have in the hopper.

I’ve added new pics to the CootieGirl rotation as well as the masthead. You’ll see them on occasion.

The following are the few pictures I took while at Disney last week:

With my friend Jessel at Magic Kingdom.
At Epcot with the YL International Division crew.
Cindy doing her thang at her castle.

The little dog that flew to Orlando on my flight. He whined under my seat for most of the flight.

The pool at the hotel as seen from my balcony. I was on the 17th floor. View #2.

A bullrider at the rodeo we visited. That whole experience was a hoot and I would be more than happy to share stories, but you sort of have to know the people I was with and Young Life to get the humor. Another bullrider.

I did do the It’s a Small World ride. Here’s proof shot #2.

What’s funny is that because we weren’t allowed to take cameras into the room for the screening of The Passion..., I have no photographic proof of the events of that whole day. Nothing with Jim Caveziel or Jars of Clay. Dang.

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

I haven’t read it yet, but Molly J. Ringwraith has finally written and posted her The Condensed Parody Version of the FOTR Script. If it’s anything like her TTT and ROTK parodies, it’s hilarious.

LATER (9:12pm): I’m reading the parody while watching Celebrity Poker. It’s as funny as expected. A teaser:

RIVENDELL

FRODO awakens and looks around.

FRODO: Where am I? A candle store?

GANDALF: Rivendell. Close enough. Sorry I’m late, my boy. I got detained and had to catch a red-eye on Deus Ex Hawkina.

FRODO: What?

GANDALF: Never mind. Stupid pun.

ELROND strolls in.

ELROND: Welcome to Rivendell, Mister Anderson.

FRODO: Oh, so I took the blue pill? No wonder everything’s so soft and comfy.

ELROND: No, that’s just because it’s Elven. Long have my people studied feng shui.

It’s lovely when you give someone specific instructions several times and even leave a note and it’s all completely ignored.

I’ve been here for 90 minutes and have yet to start payroll. Why?

The new computers don’t have the software. They’re waiting until the new version is released to install it and won’t install the old software.

OK, so I planned to have my old computer here to use as the backup. Only it was nowhere to be found. I called my boss, who’s in another office today, and he just called me back.

My old computer was set up in one of the empty cubicles in the squadroom. So I’ve just unplugged it from there and am getting ready to plug it in here. I’m a little nervous that it won’t work. And then I’ll really panic.

UPDATE (3:02pm): It’s working. Yay! I said a quick little prayer that things would work with our new network and the Lord was faithful, as usual. So now I need to get cracking on these timesheets. ARGH!

I didn’t really miss TV while I was gone. I did check the news on occasion, but I wasn’t in my hotel room except to sleep most of the time.

I did set my VCRs to tape some specific shows though. I was a little concerned when I walked in to my apartment to see all clocks flashing a time that it wasn’t in actuality, but I figured that the power must have surged or something - it happens and doesn’t usually affect my VCR clocks because they both have a reserve feature.

Alas, not so, I had to reset the clocks on my VCRs as well, but I figured the power went out on Thursday or Friday when the cold front came in here and that I at least got a few of the shows taped. I checked the tapes in both to find that they were still cued at the beginning of the tape. So the power must have gone out sometime on the day that I departed for Florida (last Tuesday). Bummer.

But it’s just TV and I can catch repeats later. And on those shows that are serials (24, Alias), I can catch up on the action easily enough. I’m hoping that the Celebrity Poker episode from last week will be run early tonight before the finale.

Maripat at Right We Are (when did she return to blogging and how did I miss that?) has a post about The Passion movie that is an email from a friend who saw the movie (let me warn you that it’s very spoilerish, the emailer talks about specific scenes) and an additional message from another viewer who talks about the Q&A session with Mel Gibson after the screening.

There are links on the web for the movie:

The official site.
You can buy advance tickets.
The fan site.

Also, Maripat’s post reminded me that I forgot to mention how important prayer is on this thing. We need to be holding this project and the people associated with it in constant prayer. We know that The Evil One does not want the Truth of the message to be heard. We must pray, pray, pray.

Here’s how cool Jars of Clay were - the senior leadership of Young Life always do some B-grade comedy for the staff at these conferences. Really, Young Life is all about laughter, it why I love it so much. So last night after dinner they did Sunday Night Live - their parody of SNL, and for B-grade sketch comedy it was pretty hilarious. Denny was the host and the musical guest was Jars of Clay. They had parodies of the parody commercials that SNL does (I would explain the jokes, but they’re so inside YL, that it wouldn’t be funny to anyone outside of YL), Deep Thoughts, and other skits familiar to fans of SNL.

So, back to how cool JoC were - Denny came out, introduced Jars..., they played two songs, and then there was a Weekend Update skit! That was followed by an additional 20 minutes of comedy. Fantastic.  Jars of Clay later did a full concert, I stayed for about 40 minutes of it and then went to bed. They didn’t even start to play until about 11pm.

Cool Item #2 - this morning I was heading into the room for our last meeting and I saw a couple of the band guys talking with staff in the hallway. I went to get coffee and when I got back in there, the meeting had started and Jars of Clay was leading our worship. They were great - we did some really old hymns in new ways and they played quiet instrumentals during the Lord’s Supper (which I’ll never be able to observe again without thinking about The Passion).

It was a great way to end the conference. I really feel that God is blessing Young Life and has great things in store for the continued growth of the ministry. I’m proud to be associated with such a great group of ministers. It was a blessed time.

I’m not as eloquent as Jared is in his movie reviews. Of course, he’s more eloquent on most things. I look forward to his review when he sees The Passion of Christ for himself.

To my beloved fellow believers in the Christ - you MUST go see this movie when it opens. I have been encouraged (by Mel Gibson on video and by Jim Caveziel, who plays Jesus in the movie, in person) to implore you to go on opening weekend - I am more than thrilled to so do. I plan to be there opening night and I’m taking friends with me if I can talk them into it.

To my dear friends who don’t believe in God or Jesus, I beg you to consider going to see this movie - I would dearly love to hear what you think of it.

And now my thoughts:

1. Wow. Wow. WOW!

2. Mel gets it. Truly, I believe that he completely gets the Gospel message.

3. It’s beautiful and awful and brutal and wonderful and poignant and convicting and divine and powerful and true. I could go on ad nauseum. It’s a masterpiece.

4. The original Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin work. As do the subtitles.

5. The musical score is haunting.

6. I can’t wait to see the finished product.

7. The end, imho, is perfect and leaves the viewer with questions, which will open doors. This is what convinces me that Mel gets it (see #2).

8. I have a whole new perspective on Mary. I’m thankful for this and humbled.

9. Lives will be changed as a result of this movie. You can count on that.

And with those little tidbits, I’ll leave you hanging a bit. I’ll share what Jim Caveziel shared with us in the MORE section.

< official endorsement >

The Passion of Christ, directed by Oscar™ award winning Mel Gibson, starring Jim Caveziel in the role of Jesus Christ, is scheduled to open on Ash Wednesday, February 25, 2004. Please plan to go see this fine film on that opening weekend. Thank you.

< /official endorsement >