God's up to some stuff...

...like causing 14 students to make decisions to follow him at a Cal Poly large group last Friday night. (you read that right!)

...like bringing 30 Latino students to Fresno from 10 campuses for a night of worship and teaching on Saturday night. Hearing each one step up to the mic at the end of the night and say, "God, make me a prophet for my people" was breathtaking.

Quite a weekend. It's good to be on staff!

The SLO life

The Lord and I have a little deal going...that is, if he decides that he wants to send us back to San Luis Obispo sometime in our lives, our obedience will be instantaneous. Like that afternoon.

In the meantime, what a joy for me to go over and visit, to hang out with the staff, to eat the food (yesterday it was California Pizza Kitchen for lunch and then Cabo San Luis for dinner) and to just remember so many good times. For those of you who are Cal Poly alumni, the fellowship is off to a great start this year, and the big thing on the horizon is the Impact1 AIDS tent (more info here).

And so sorry it's post-trip, but for the record it was a JEEP Liberty (very cool ride), $62 bucks, Dollar again.

Not quite sure how this happened...

...but somehow this became a part of our morning routine. Picture the 5 of us dancing like maniacs around the living room before we leave to drop Josh off. Or don't picture it. Your choice...

As a one-time engineering major...

...I can be really impressed with San Diego's Coronado Bay Bridge:

Have you ever gone to the bathroom in the wrong bathroom?!?

I did. Yesterday. At a rest stop off the 5 near Camp Pendleton. I recorded my inner monologue. It went like this:

"Soooo great to finally be going to the bathroom. Lots to drink hours ago at the Burger King in Delano"
"Wait, what's missing in this place? Oh, no urinals. Weird."
"What was that? Someone glancing in at me through the door. Should have closed it all the way. Hold on! Was that a woman?!? What's she doing in here? What a freak...in the wrong bathroom!"
"Hmm, as I look over the stalls there is a small gaggle of women. And what's that one saying? Something about how they all need to wait until 'that man' is finished. Who's she talking about?"
"Oh crap. SHE'S TALKING ABOUT ME!!! @$&#!"
"You can do this. Walk quickly. Head down. No eye contact. Go straight to car. You fool."

Off to San Diego at noon...

Dinner with old CP alumni, some meetings with staff about Fall Conference, dinner with Amy's family and a coaching visit with the staff and students at Mesa College.

But you don't care about any of that...here's what you come to the blog for:

Dodge Charger
$177.05 for 4 days
Dollar Rent a Car

"You can never win a war against terror as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate"

That's Archbishop Desmond Tutu linking poverty and terrorism. Short article here.

"At age 30, the human body's major organs begin to decline"

Damn, I'm on the decline already?!?

Remind me of this...

It's far better to have a awkward conversation on the front end of a situation than a difficult conversation on the back end.

Thus saith the Rob...

This year, I dominate

For those of you following closely my personal quest to become InterVarsity's all time rental car champion, I've installed a tally on the sidebar to the right. It's all right there for you. No more needing to track me in your quiet time journals, or on your office white boards, or, like the Ekmekji's, on a post it on your fridge...

Multi-tripping

In this role I've been learning the art of dovetailing the travel. What I mean is that if I'm going to be out of town anyway, I may as well accomplish as many purposes as possible. So...tomorrow I'm off first to Northridge to get some time with the IV staff worker at CSUN, then down to the Cal Poly Chapter Camp at GPC, then over on Friday to the Regional Ignite Evangelism training days. Home Saturday night late.

And--wait for it--today it's a JEEP Liberty. $145 for the 5 days (week long rental price). Once again, Dollar doin' me right...

Right now, at 7:16pm, it is 102 degrees in Fresno

I'm just saying...

The war close to home

It was a bit weird to wake up this morning to our city of Clovis in the news. Today on NBC ran a piece on our "Saving Private Ryan" story of a local family who has tragically lost two of three brothers in the Iraq war. The third one, present on the ground in Iraq when the second one died last week, is being reassigned into a non-combat role. The Today show story is here. The story also headlined on cnn.com midday today and it's here.

Bovine Intervention

Early yesterday morning, Grace and I loaded up in the van and drove to the store for what is rapidly becoming a part of the morning routine...the milk run. We drove over to our local Savemart, picked out two gallons of 1% and plunked down $6.29 on the debit card. Milk comes from "happy cows," and makes for happy kids...

...but not so happy checking accounts. Amy and I have been paying attention, and let's just say we go through a lot of milk. A lot. To the tune of about 1 gallon a day when we're all home. And milk prices are going up. Heck, at $3.15 a gallon, I'm starting to wonder if we could train the kids to drink 87 unleaded. Just for the fun of it, I started to do the math:

I'm thinking that we go through, on average, 25 gallons of milk a month, taking into account people traveling, being sick, etc. At current prices, that translates to $78.75 a month, or $945 a year. Which means that if I managed to cajole my children into drinking, say, tap water, I could play another 47 rounds of golf this year! Sounds like a deal to me.

And so I'm wondering about buying a cow. Or a goat? But after reading this, that is clearly not an option. We can barely keep our plants alive. So what are we left with?!? A cool grand a year, until they all get bigger, and then up it goes until we're forced to start taking it out of their college funds...

Happy Birthday!!!

Everyone's favorite mischief maker turns 3 today. We had a princess party last weekend and below is my favorite shot. To get your full Lucy birthday photo fix, go here.

Book Review: Moneyball by Michael Lewis

I've blogged before about what a sports addict I am, and that baseball was my first love, so it will come as no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed Moneyball by Michael Lewis when I read it earlier this summer. Moneyball seeks to answer the baseball question of disparity; that is, why is it that a team like the Oakland A's with a payroll of $71 million can compete against, and even triumph over, a team like the New York Yankees with their bloated payroll of some $207 million. Good question, though, for the record, it looks like Oakland is going to come up short this year as we head toward September (sorry, Seth!).

And so l liked it for the baseball, but I loved it for the system. Because Moneyball is really about a process, created and nurtured by A's management, by which an outspent team triumphs over the "big boys". Put succinctly, the A's system is less concerned with the "feel" a scout would have after watching a prospective player than about, well, numbers and statistics, particularly those related to plate discipline. Fascinating. And revolutionary. Here's a quote that sums it up: "scoring runs was, in the new view, less an art or a talent than a process. If you made the process a routine--if you got every player doing his part on the production line--you could pay a lot less for runs than the going rate."

This is a new season for me in ministry. For the first Fall since 1995, I'm technically off campus; that is, I am purely supervising staff this year for the first time. And it's a bit freaky to be honest (I'm calling it "ministry menopause," or is it "minipause?"). And yet the thing that not staffing an outreach table, or making fliers, or filling out forms, has allowed me to do is a whole lot of systematizing. And I love it. If I am an artist at all, it's in the area of creating and articulating systems that help make life and ministry work for myself and others. My sorta joke lately has been that I'm on a mission to "make the intuitive intentional." Kinda like Billy Beane and the rest of the A's front office.

Bottom line: if you are interested in a look inside the major league front office, or if, like me, you want to see what systematizing looks like, I highly recommend Moneyball. And, by the way, for a review of another Michael Lewis book, The Blind Side, check out what Jeremy has to say here.

Conflicted

Having spent a lot of time enjoying corporate worship over the years (as a participant and as a leader), there's at least one thing that has always left me somewhat conflicted: singing about Satan in the context of worship. You know what I mean?!?

On one hand, I get all Harry Potter about it and Satan becomes "he who must not be named." I think, let's just not talk about him, because names have power and somehow naming him gives him honor. Toss in the context and I'm thinking that I certainly don't want to in any way honor the enemy in the midst of communal praise and worship!

On the other hand, since invariably Satan is mentioned in the context of his ultimate and utter defeat at the hands of Jesus, I really enjoy singing about him and it seems completely appropriate to do so. In fact, this past Sunday we sang the song "Sing to the King" (lyrics here), and when we got to the "Satan is vanquished" part, you'd better believe I was all up and standing with my hands raised!

I'm not sure what to do with it, but there you go. I suppose the bottom line is that in my view songwriters ought to use the name Satan only sparingly and judiciously. Now don't get me started about gender inclusion, songs that focus more on us than on God and how we need more multi-ethnic worship in the church...

My small screen debut...

It's time for school to start and what better way to kick off another year of InterVarsity at Fresno State than cutting up a bunch of watermelons and feeding them to excited, sweaty dormies?!?

This year channel 30 cruised by and filmed us. Here. And while we only make a few seconds in the report, there's a special treat six seconds in...don't blink or you may miss it.

Off to Bako this morning...

Ah, Bakersfield. It's a beautiful place. For those of you scoring at home, put me down for a 2 day rental from Dollar. Like $95 bucks. Dodge Avenger. Back Wednesday night.

And here's a question...when did we pick up a Kindergarten kid in our house?!?

Images

There are lots of images of motherhood out there.

There's the new mom serenely feeding her newborn by an open window in the morning light.

There's the "sack lunch" mom standing on the porch waving goodbye as her kids walk down to the bus.

And there's the mother of the groom, weeping quietly yet smiling proudly as her son stands at the altar awaiting his bride.

And then there's the one where the mom is on her hands and knees up in the police car module of a McDonald's Play Place with a half empty pack of Wet Wipes scrubbing furiously in an effort to clean up her 3 year old's feces...