who are you doing it with?

Met as a team on the first night and the sight of everyone brought a smile to my face.

Someone prayed a simple prayer of thanks:

"Thank you that we get to work with people that like each other. That's not necessarily a given. But, every one of us would work together if we had the choice. What a gift."

I love coming to work everyday, in part because it's not a job, it's a calling. But also because of the people I work with.

It's not about what you do as much as who you're doing it with.

Why wouldn't we?

Last night, I sat and overlooked the Chesapeake and its primal beauty and thought of a comment I once heard:

"I feel bad for atheists because when they look at an inspiring sunset, they have nobody to thank."

Felt so good to be able to brag about God to God.

The scene took me down a trail of vivid memories. I thought of all the places I've experienced the abundance of His creation, and an overwhelming desire to worship. Because let's be honest, worship to God with God could be easily understood as odd. It can be a seemingly strange practice, right?

It's moments like these that I cherish, that boldly remind me that I don't have to worship the One True God. I get to. I get to reposition my heart. I get to reconnect with the One who's formed me and knows me. I get to remind myself that EVERY good and perfect gift comes from above.

We were wired to worship. One way or another, we all do. The question then isn't why do we worship God? It's why wouldn't we? Why settle for anything less?

My friend wrote an email that was sent immediately following my time with the sun falling off the horizon. Thought it was so appropriate and in tune with what I was sensing on a more cosmic and biblical level:

"God’s covenant with Noah struck me as so incredibly profound. On more than one occasion, God tells Noah that this covenant would be with him and “all life on earth.” Brother, this means that if we are inheritors of the first and founding biblical covenant with God, we are covenanted with all of life. To covenant ourselves with this God is to unreservedly covenant ourselves with all of life, to bind ourselves to life, to sacredly devote our lives to “all life on earth.” I can say that I honestly believe that anything less than this is un-Christian or even anti-Christian.

Related to this, I’ve been meditating on the seemingly boring closing chapters of Exodus, where Moses is dictating all of the minute instructions about the construction of the Tabernacle. What is so radical about these chapters and their theology is that Moses is clearly modeling the building of the Tabernacle off of the creation of the world in Genesis 1. The underlying and larger point of the text seems to be that the earliest worship of Israel was a world-building worship. It was not just typical ancient Near Eastern exaltation of a divinity; it was a radical theological claim: Israel’s worship was to be patterned after and straining toward the re-building of the world, the healing of the world. In this way, it was to be a continuation of God’s covenant with Noah, now in a very precise ritual setting but with the exact spirit. And, brothers, this is where my own theology and spirituality is so resolutely landing: anything purportedly Christian that cannot answer to this larger “covenant with all of life on earth” and Jesus’ coming down “for the life of the world” is simply not Christian. It may be spiritual, religious, a spinoff of Christianity. But it is not Christian. Any criticism of the world that is not more foundationally for the world is not Christian. Any rejection of the ways of the world that is not simultaneously a subversive embodiment of a more original and authentic way of being worldly and in the world is not Christian.

Certainly, millions of Christians all over the world disagree with me, but at some point one must distill and sum up what one takes to be most fundamentally Christian, and this is it for me: “for the life of the world” in physical embodiment, gender, language, history, geography, culture, self-transcendence, finitude in all its forms. I’ve never felt more comfortable to cast my dye here."

cliff jumping

We were hopping in the car to take a bike ride around the Potomac when our neighbor came outside with his buddies, informing me that he was on his way to do some cliff jumping.

Really.

"We're following you," I responded immediately upon looking at the agreeable smile from Kate.

Turns out, Great Falls is amazing! And it's only 30 minutes from downtown with clear roads. So fun. Took me 30 minutes to muster the guts to jump. We were all guessing it was around 50ft.

Cool timing considering our push for more neighborhood connections. What a blast.

Pitts

It's always worth noting the things you do that exist outside the norm. Felt like today fit that description.

Had a Q & A session with Congressman Joe Pitts from Pennsylvania. Props to my cousin, Amanda Lahr, for setting this up.

Loved his office. He of course had some great meet 'n greet photographs with ambassadors and various heads of state. But he also had a corner highlighting his very own art. He had some great landscape paintings. Appreciated his own level of creativity.

I hadn't taken a Capitol tour in a while, nor had I been on the Hill to visit with staffers for a long period. There are well over 10,000 "staffers" on the hill, filling positions from internships, to staff assistants on up to a chief of staff.

NCC is a revolving door, having a 40% turnover rate/year. This summer we've got a host of Capitol Hill interns that are around for a semester or two.

Great reminder today of where and how our ministry is uniquely positioned to influence the influencers.

geographical impact

Was just thinking about the 10 most impacting places I've traveled to so far. Not sure I can do this justice....feel like I've got 50. Probably would need to narrow it into categories.

Old City, Jerusalem
More than any other place I've visited, history is a dimension of the present. To this day, I can recall my trip, from sun-up to sun-down.

Soi Cowboy, Thailand
Witnessing the sex trade first-hand. Witnessing the transforming power of the Holy Spirit through The Well first-hand.

San Salvador, El Salvador
First trip abroad. Felt a deep cultural malaise and the scrutiny of an ethnocentrism I never knew existed. This has become one of my most cherished emotional anchor points.

High Street, Edinburgh, Scotland
Two of the most difficult years. Two of the best years of my life.

Out West Camping
Our family took several month-long camping trips during summer vacation. Our trip to Oregon has the most vivid memories.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
First trip to Africa. Not my last.

Copenhagen, Denmark
Formative year for missions and exposing a faith that had not quite been my own.

Buenos Aires, Argentina
Building housing for bible students. European and Latin culture collide. Loved the city. Loved the people.

Lake Kjoested, Minnesota
Still my favorite place on earth. The only place with any real family history.

Lisbon, Portugal
Stayed at a farm that housed drug users curbing their addictions. Powerful conversation with a Bosnian man that shared of his experiences with the war.

Southern Germany
First trip to Europe in '97. My vivid memory is listening to Mozart while traveling through the Alps.

Feel like I could keep going. This has been therapeutic.

Movement

We're in the middle of an alignment small group and series initiative for the summer. Excited about it. It's not often we're all on the same page.

There are 613 commandments in hebrew scripture. Jesus simplified them into two: Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And, of equal importance, love your neighbor as yourself.

We're centering the discussion and action around 2 questions: Who is my Neighbor? What does it mean to love my Neighbor?

Your neighborhood could be your geographical location where you live, your marketplace neighborhood where you work, or the interest-based neighborhood where you play. 80 groups from all over DC are saturating the area.

We're still maintaining our "free-market" small group system though, and that's inspired a lot of creativity, anywhere from a small group that meets on Capitol Hill, to going to a Nationals Game, to Grillin' n Chillin' on the street corner, to landscaping little league fields, to picking up trash, to meeting the needs of refugees, to having a multi-ethnic choir, to learning sign-language......and the list goes on.

Jesus did not create a religion. He established a movement, which are people working together to advance their shared goals; whether it be social, physical or spiritual change. If Jesus had a mission statement, it was this:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."[Luke 4]

Share good news (spiritual), recover sight for the blind (physical), and proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (social). The whole gospel appears to represent all 3.

Loving thy neighbor is a movement that brings about the reconciliation and transformation of all three goals in Christ's redeeming message.

Important jobs in the 21st century

I've read this article several times because it's that good. Thomas Friedman has a way of making every solution sound so clear, so obvious, so simple. I love and hate that because he often avoids nuance, yet always makes so much sense. Love his writing though, love his speaking even more. Very engaging communicator.

Nayan Chanda (editor of Yale Global) sat down and discussed issues pertaining to globalization. I remember having discussions in undergrad back in 2001 about what exactly globalization was and whether it was here to stay. At the time, there was such an emergence of outsourcing and increased competition that many were really crying out for protectionist policy arrangements. Now, it's rather comical that we would have considered it to be avoidable.

Friedman noted 7 jobs that will represent the new middle-class in the 21st century. These are worth paying attention to.

"One is great collaborators. When so many more things are going to be made in global supply chains, the ability to be a great collaborator, to be able to work cross-culturally and multinationally, there's going to be a huge number of jobs around managing and coordinating these global supply chains. Second are great leveragers, people who can leverage technology, so one person can do the job of twenty. Rather than competing with India or China or Bangladesh, where twenty people might do the job of one, you make up for the labor cost by leveraging technology. Third are great explainers. There's going to be a whole industry in explaining. Because there's enormous complexity out there, so whether you're a teacher, a manager, a journalist, the ability to explain this complexity is going be in huge demand. Fourth, would be great localizers. These are people who can localize the global. What does that mean? They can take the power of this global platform and turn it into a local business. Now that's everything from the eBay entrepreneur, Mom and Pop who have now started a business on eBbay, to the garage owner in New Haven, who goes online one day and says to his partner, "Hey Bill, did you see this? We can get out hubcaps for half-price from Romania at half the cost that it would take us to get them from Rochester." So they're leveraging the global platform, by localizing the global. There'll be a huge industry in that, Nayan. Fifth, I'd say, are going to be people who are great adapters. People who can stay one step ahead of the forces of digitization and automation. And that's going to apply to a lot of people in a lot of industries. Sixth would be what I would call people who are passionate personalizers. If you can bring real passion and a personal touch to any vanilla task, there's going to be a job for you in the flat world. Seventh I would call anything green. Green technology is going to be the industry of the 21st century."

wild at heart and sacrificial

I'm notorious for missing friends' birthdays. It's assumed I'll forget. Yet I don't miss immediate families. Ever.

Scratch that.

Couldn't believe it when I realized I'd missed my own mother's birthday yesterday.

Ruined my day.

Today was my good friend Paul's birthday, so I headed there for a cookout. I wanted to bring something, so I grabbed a cake on the way. On my way up the second flight of stairs at his apartment complex, I tripped. In slow motion I watched the cake slip out of my hands and through the gap between the stairs, dropping two flights of stairs into an explosion of raspberry mousse goodness. Oh, we lit the candles and ate what remained anyways.

Rough day.



It being Father' Day as well, I spent the evening reflecting on the indelible impression my parents continue to make on my life.

I'll always think of how wild at heart my father is, and how sacrificial my mother is.

I've got 50 stories in my hip pocket for both my parents. However, the image branded in my mind is of a particular soccer practice. I must have been in junior high. I was on a traveling team for several years and we'd practice twice/week. I was often the last to be picked up. With 15 minutes remaining, most parents would have arrived, patiently waiting in their vehicles before our release.

Practice ends. It's 8:00.

8:10. There are a few kids left.

8:20. 2 kids.

8:30. The coach and I.

8:35, the sound of a loud, racing engine in the distance. The van emerges from the hidden trees weaving through traffic. Couple honks. Tight turn. Screeching tires.

8:36. My father's sheepish grin.


One of the most special moment's I can recall with my mom was dancing with her on my wedding day. She wore a beautiful red dress. Kate and I danced to "It had to be You." The DJ's computer crashed after that, beckoning me to demand a song to be played immediately; any song.

So my Mom and I danced to the familiar tune, "It had to be You.":)

I'll never forget walking up to her though and seeing this bright, proud, loving smile. She was beaming. And that's how she always is when I see her to this day.

What more could a son ask for. Really. Truly.

a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Stole this photo from my cousin. We live 2 blocks from my cousin Joel and Nina and a few days ago, their street was bombarded with DEA agents attempting to arrest a man wanted for first degree murder. Yikes!

They ended up catching the guy, who happened to live across the street from them. Yikes!

The story was tragic, until their daughter walked onto the porch and adorably waved to the agents.

I have a feeling this photograph will be used to tell a story that will one day include 200 DEA agents, a live shooting and Joel throwing on a vest and tackling the murder suspect.

Actually, no exaggeration required to make this story repeatable for years to come.

The Aftermath

The Invisible Children movement continues to roll on. They put together a recent highlight reel of their endeavor to mobilize a few months ago. 100 cities represented in this video, all to raise awareness of the over 3000 child soldiers forced from their homes to fight in Joseph Kony's army, the LRA.

This.......is a movement. This, is something the Church needs to pay attention to. How they're mobilizing, the clarity of message, the passion of its leaders, and the power of story.

Cool to contribute the DC footage in the film.

Katinas

Here's a blast from the past. I found the Katinas on youtube.

My rabbit trail is I was looking through celebrity playlists on itunes, and saw one for Natasha Bedingfield's "Pockets full of Sunshine" that had an interesting take on it. So I youtubed it and ran into a cover of it by, guess who, the Katinas.

The Katinas are a group of 5 brothers that always came to my former Church in Naperville. I always loved when they came, but haven't heard of them in like 15 years.

Turns out, these guys are still making music. This was a GREAT cover.

BL & Wht

On the Statton Island Ferry.
My bro and I.
My bro and his girlfriend Namrata in Bryant Park, NYC.
Don't you just want to be this couple?:)

yesterday's man

I was lost in my own world as I often am working on a video project earlier this afternoon, when I looked up and saw Sean Alexander standing over my desk.

Sean is a former NFL MVP running back for the Seattle Seahawks and had spoken a few months ago during our weekend services. He was meeting with Mark, when they walked by my desk and stopped long enough to allow Mark to introduce me.

Everyone likes to name drop. It's in our nature to associate ourselves with someone bigger and more recognizable in larger social circles. I can't say he's a friend, nor an acquaintance. I will say it was surreal and surprisingly normal to have a guy who's done what he's done and been where he's been standing in front of me. Intimidating? Check. Larger biceps? Check.

Love this guys heart though. I've glanced over his biography, Touchdown Alexander; have heard him share, and got to joke with him for a few minutes today. From what I've seen and heard, the guy is leveraging his influence to really make a difference in people's lives. I have to admit, success scares me. I have no expectation nor motivation to reach celebrity status, but success has historically been a real way of derailing what God has planned for an individual or society. Why? We confuse God-given anointing as our own. Pretty soon, it becomes more of me, less of Him. Such a common pattern in history, isn't it?

R.T. Kendall wrote in his book, Yesterday's Man: "A person with a tremendous anointing yesterday can continue to see the momentum of that anointing continuing to manifest itself. He or she may hastily conclude that 'the anointing is still with us' when it is but the momentum of yesterday's anointing. If I do not experience a fresh anointing every day, it is only a matter of time before I become yesterday's man."

NYC

Priceline hotel.
Learning the Subway.
Neo-Futurist's 30 plays in 60 minutes.
Why I have a Camera. Surfing.
Spice in Chelsea.
WTC.
Sleeping in.
All-u-can-eat breakfast.
Broadway tickets. Too expensive. Not a chance.
Central Park.
Central Park Rickshaw.
John Lennon, Dakota, Friends, Vanilla Sky, Wall Street, Big Daddy.
Bryant Park.
Crumb.
Broadway Lottery. We win. Front row. In the Heights. No longer expensive.
Broadway with my wife.
Washington Square.
Escalator.
Book of Questions.
Thinking about Ethiopia. Getting the bug to travel.
Statton Island Ferry.
Soho.
Indian food.
Brother. Namrata. Random friend Andrew.

=

Amazing weekend in NYC.

Rickshaw in central park

Check this off the life goal list. LOVING a ride and historical tour of Central Park with Kate.

So fun.

All about accumulating memorable experiences with people you love.



-- Post From My iPhone

8:17

Woke up. 8:17.

Bus leaves. 8:30. Not packed. Not dressed. Destination 10 minutes away. Taxi impossible to find. Rest of day buses sold out to NYC. Wife in NYC already. Fearing texting wife in NYC. Confusion. Rent a car?

No way.

Let's try.

Outside with "packed bags" in 4 minutes. 8:21.

Found Taxi in 3 minutes. 8:24.

Arrived at 10th and H NW. Watched the bus pull away. 8:32.

Flashes of wife getting the text and my brother laughing.

But wait. Serendipity. Another bus company delayed an hour.

Flashes of a proud father.

8:33. Headed to NYC.



Bolt Bus: $22. Taxi: $10. Megabus: $21.

Oversleeping but making it from eyes opening to the bus stop in 16 flat?

Priceless.

Bedford

Can't say happens often. What a gift it was to be invited to a opening screening of a documentary produced by a girl from NCC called, Bedford, The Town They Left Behind.

It's a story of the town of Bedford, VA and soldiers that died on D-Day on the beaches of Normandy on June 5, 1944. They lost 19 men, the highest killed per capita in the US.

Powerful, sad, tearful and triumphant story.

Coolest part? Watched it in a very private viewing at the Capitol building.


-- Post From My iPhone