To Write Love On Her Arms

This weekend we brought in Jamie Tworkowski from “To Write Love On Her Arms.” I interviewed him in our Third Format services and it was a very powerful weekend. We about doubled in our attendance and we showed a lot of people that the Church isn’t afraid of talking about issues like depression and suicide.

In addition, it was great to hang out with him and get to know him and his heart for people. You can tell he isn’t from Arizona because he’s wearing a long sleeve shirt in August (see pic below – this was taken before he stole my water). I love how TWLOHA are being the Church to people that have been turned off to the Church. If you haven’t checked out what they are doing then I would highly recommend you stop reading this and check them out. I’m serious. Click here.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Site updates

I’ve been tweaking a few things on the site and I wanted to let you all know. Didn’t notice anything different you say? Let me explain a few updated sections for your blogging enjoyment.

First, you’ll notice that the sidebar has been cleaned up a bit and now is more obvious and easy for you to subscribe. Look on the right hand column and enter in your email address or click on the light blue box that tells you the number of readers so that you can get automatic updates whenever there is new content on the site. I would recommend this.

Second, I’ve updated the pages at the top of the screen. The “About Me” page now includes other links to things I do online and more up-to-date info about me. I will be updating this more as my family is soon changing. I’m also looking for some better pics for it. The “Reading List” page is always being updated with every book that I read and I recommend that any readers out there check that part frequently; and the podcast page now includes a link that actually works. Sorry about that.

So hopefully this makes things easier to navigate and more efficient for our communication. Happy blogging.

Is Something Missing?

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

So I read an article in the Arizona Republic today about air-guitar competitions. Yes, you read that right. Air guitar. What are they playing? The air. And boy are they excited about it.

I saw this on TV awhile back and thought it was a joke. Now I realize I’ve been missing out on an entire industry of rock. Have we become this bored and over-saturated as a culture that we’ve turned to this for entertainment? As one contestant boldly proclaimed: “It’s what America needs right now.” Really?

What goes into air guitar competitions? I’m glad you asked. According to the article:

There definitely is technique involved. Judges, who openly down real beer during the competitions, look for stage presence, energy and authenticity. They also look for “airness.”

Authenticity and airness are a complicated formula. They look to see that competitors actually play the song. They look at wardrobe, which often includes fringed sleeves, tight pants and sunglasses. They look at shtick.

They interviewed a guy named Julian Vican about his aspirations of air-guitar-greatness. He recently competed in a contest where “A shirtless man dressed as a Viking ripped air and ripped off his plaid kilt to reveal a fur thong. He got points for the surprise factor.” Julian said this about his prep for the events:

“It’s kind of fun,” he said of the goofy nature of air guitar. “It’s like, ‘What am I getting nervous about?’ I don’t actually have to play the song.”

Brilliant. Now there is a competition worth watching. Hats off to our ever evolving culture of entertainment. If this is what America needs right now then we are in worse shape than I ever imagined.

What is your Walkscore?

Thanks to my friend Steve, I’ve been exposed to a great website called walkscore.com. It is a website that calculates your address based on what is within walking distance. It shows you where the closest coffee shops, restaurants, schools, parks, movie theaters and the like are. Your score is based on how many of these are available within reasonable walking distance from where you live.

This is very intriguing to me for many reasons. One, gas is ridiculously expensive. But more importantly, I would guess that the higher your home scores the more opportunity you have for community with others. People would be more likely to get out from behind their vehicles and would slow down enough to walk places. Sadly, my house scored a 28 out of 100. Walkscore determined that a car-dependent location.

So what if we factored this into where we chose to live? Could this change our view of community? Test it out yourself and share your walkscore as a comment on this post. I’d love to compare and see where everyone is on this scale.

Backstage at the Underoath Concert

Yesterday, one of my friends hooked me up with backstage passes so I was able to see my favorite band play from onstage. Underoath, or “Bloodoath” as my friend Paul calls them, was playing at the Mayhem tour. It was pretty amazing. Even though I almost died of heat-stroke at one point, it was totally worth it to stand on stage with them as they rocked it out.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Seattle Vacation – Last Day

We are now back in AZ but I didn’t have time yesterday with all of the travel to post our final experiences. We got to catch up with an old friend, Dean Kuest, who is the lead pastor at Pathways Church in Washington (and the guy who spoke at Central this past weekend). He took us to the waterfront and we had some authentic Seattle cuisine, Ivars, and fed some seagulls. I got up the courage to feed them directly (have you seen the size of their beaks?), but Dean was a little crazier and had them eating out of his hand. Showoff.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic
Image and video hosting by TinyPic

After that, we met back up with Kim Proctor, who was our friend/chauffeur/Seattle guide, and walked the beaches a bit.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Image and video hosting by TinyPic