George Carlin Baseball vs. Football

I was reminded of George Carlin's classic routine "Baseball vs. Football" last night when I saw the Rangers pitcher leave Game 2 of the World Series with a blister on his finger. Meanwhile, the news in the NFL this week is about Brett Favre playing this week with a fractured ankle.

My Life as a Full-time Writer

For one week each year, usually in October, I take a week of vacation to work on writing projects. This week has been my annual opportunity to live as a full-time writer. I have not slept in as I do on most vacations. I get up early as usual (6:30ish) and go through my normal morning routine, i.e., walk dog, coffee, Bible, prayer, coffee, write. Then I get cleaned up and ready for the day except instead of going to the office, I go to the computer for a full day of writing, reading, editing, revising, pondering, or dreaming.

I could get used to this but I won't. The life of a full-time writer is hard to achieve. The picture of the contemplative writer in his sweater at his desk smoking a pipe leisurely penning crafty phrases and quotable quotes day after day is a fantasy for most writers. Most authors aren't able to work at their craft as a full-time job. It takes years of work to generate enough interest in your work and royalties to make it as a full-timer. Though certainly, many writers are doing it, many more are not.

I'm in an ideal situation because I love my job and calling as a pastor at TrueNorth Church. I have an awesome boss, Stevie D, and a great staff to work with. As one of my co-workers Travis likes to say, "I don't have a job. I get to do ministry for a living."

But I have to say that it would be nice to devote more time to this writing thing. I try to give it at least an hour each morning but it would be awesome to have more time. For now, I must be content with my schedule as it is - and, believe me, I am content. In many ways, I am living the dream!

"So what's going on with the writing career and what is in the works?" only a couple of you may wonder.

Monday, I put the finishing touches (hopefully) on a journal/day-planner that I created. You'll probably hear more about it soon. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I worked on an ebook, 2 Big Questions, 1 Amazing Life, that will be one of the anchors for a new website that I am creating. More about that later too. I will continue to work on that ebook today and tomorrow as well as a second one that is near completion.

I have a novel that is being considered by a small publishing house and a literary agent is taking a look at it too. Agents are usually necessary to get into the larger publishing houses so a contract with her would be huge.

I'm sitting on a non-fiction book that I wrote a long time ago. It has been endorsed by some well-known people. I need to get it out of the computer at some point.

I'm halfway through another novel. Here's the synopsis:

Lesley Crumpler is an 81-year-old white widower and a former minor league baseball teammate of Jackie Robinson who finds himself helping out the baseball team at the local black college. D'Ante Cook is a thug from Washington, DC on the crossroads between a life of crime and a pro baseball career. When tragedy strikes the team, Les and D'Ante have to deal with the sins of their past in order to face the future.

Would you be interested in reading more?

I would LOVE to finish this book - mainly because I want to know what happens!! I don't even know yet. Which is the fun part about writing fiction. You can do whatever you want with the story.

Right now, however, my focus is on a new website. It will be a blog but the focus will be completely different than this. I hope you'll like it and spread the word. It's still a month or two away from going live. It may even be January. I'll let you know.

For now, I'll tarry on. This is my last day of vacation so I need to get busy.

A Life Changing Day

I originally posted this in 2005. Here it is again with a few changes:


32 years ago today, my life changed forever. It was on this day when I understood that if I was going to live a life with meaning and purpose I would need to hand it over to God. So I did. The night before, I called a Christian friend of mine, Richard Smith, and asked him what was up with all the Jesus stuff I'd been hearing about lately. In August 1978, some friends and I went on a fishing excursion one night. None of us were church-goers or religious at the time, but somehow the subject of the second coming of Christ came up. It intrigued me. I didn't know anything about it. I thought he'd already been here once. I didn't know he was coming again!

Later, as the school year progressed, there was a spiritual awakening going on at our school. I didn't realize it at the time but God was up to something as he was getting the attention of a lot of high school kids. A small group of Christian students were making quite an impact on our school. They weren't preachy or holier than thou. They were just loving life and all of those around them. I wanted what they had. My curiosity led me to learn the basics of the gospel and enough interest to attend a youth-oriented revival service at the local First Baptist Church. I attended that night with one of my fishing buddies. I knew that I needed to become a follower of Christ but I was scared. Thus, the call to Richard on the night of October 25.

After my conversation with Rich, I knew what I needed to do. I went to First Baptist again the next night and Don Brock, our youth pastor, showed me the way to Jesus. That one decision has changed my life.

Since becoming a fully devoted follower of Christ, he has blessed me immensely over and over and over again. Has it been easy? No way. The Christian life is not an easy life. But it is the most awesome thing in the universe to have my Creator, who loves me more than I can imagine, leading me every step of the way. I recommend it to everyone.

Where Are You Going?

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice says to the Chesire Cat, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care,” replied Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” responded the Cat.

As with Alice, so it is with us. Without goals and objectives, we have nowhere to go and we’ll just keep wandering aimlessly. Many people make resolutions and goals. Goals give hope. Goals inspire and motivate. To wake up in the morning with a clear objective for the day adds so much more to life. To begin a day with no hope or inspiration makes for a long, dreary day.

The apostle Paul speaks of “pressing on toward the goal” in his New Testament letter to the Philippians (3:14). His goal was to be all that God wanted him to be. That’s not a bad goal for each of us.

What are your goals for today? this week?
Where are you going?

Unconventional Book Tour w/ Chris Guillebeau

Last Sunday night, I drove to the Columbia area to meet author Chris Guillebeau. Chris is a professional blogger with a personal goal to travel to every country in the world before his 35th birthday. (He's getting really close and has about 2.5 years to go.) Chris is an expert "travel hacker," entrepreneur, and writer. He is currently traveling all 50 states during his "Unconventional Book Tour." We met up at a great little coffee shop in Lexington called Jamestown Coffee Company.

Chris' new book is The Art of Non-Conformity.



I told my wife Sunday afternoon that I had a "man-crush" on Chris. I really like his authenticity, transparency, honesty, and overall worldview. I admire how he has become a successful writer in just a few short years too. I was introduced to Chris last June through an article he wrote in Writer's Digest magazine. His blog was also listed in the Top 100 Blogs for Writers in the same issue. I've been intrigued with his stuff ever since. Chris' minimalist mindset, sense of adventure, and ability to say "no" to the American Dream is reminiscent of David Platt's recent book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

Chris' book is written for a general audience (unlike Platt's which is written directly to Christians) but they both cause you to think about your philosophy of life and create questions about what you really want to accomplish with your life. Is life about adventure and fulfilling your purpose and passions or is it about sacrificing adventure for a 30 year mortgage, car payments, credit card debt, and a 9-5 job that you endure rather than enjoy?

In Chris' words, you don't have to live your life the way other people expect you to. For the Christ-follower, we need to be reminded that we are told not to conform to this world (Romans 12:2). If we are going to make a difference, we must live different. I think that is why I am a big fan of Chris' work. He thinks outside the box. We need more people like him around.

Jesus was a non-conformist. Shouldn't we be too?

(For more on David Platt's book, Radical, see my review here.)

Wisdom from C.S. Lewis

I read this today and thought it was worth sharing:

I think that many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one or two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel (though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone. As we say "I never expected to be a saint, I only wanted to be a decent ordinary chap." And we imagine when we say this that we are being humble.

But this is the fatal mistake. Of course we never wanted, and never asked, to be made into the sort of creatures He is going to make us into. But the question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us. He is the inventor, we are only the machine. He is the painter, we are only the picture. How should we know what He means us to be like? You see, He has already made us something very different from what we were. Long ago, before we were born, when we were inside our mothers' bodies, we passed through various stages. We were once rather like vegetables, and once rather like fish: it was only at a later stage that we became like human babies. And if we had been conscious at those earlier stages, I daresay we should have been quite contented to stay as vegetables or fish - should not have wanted to be made into babies. But all the time He knew his plan for us and was determined to carry it out. Something the same is now happening at a higher level. We may be content to remain what we call "ordinary people": but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience.

(From Mere Christianity, quoted in A Year With C.S. Lewis, p. 212)

No Limits

(Originally posted in the Fall of 2006)


A few years ago Fast Company magazine profiled Doug Blevins, a man who had aspired all of his life to be an NFL coach. So he started blitzing New York Jets manager Dick Steinberg with faxes detailing the flaws of Cary Blanchard, the Jet’s place kicker at the time. Steinberg was evidently impressed with Blevins’s knowledge of the game and hired him as a kicking consultant in 1994. The amazing thing is that Blevins himself has never attempted a field goal. He’s never punted for any team, on any level, let alone in the NFL. Because he was born with cerebral palsy, he has, in fact, never even walked. (Fast Company, September 2000, 48)

Doug Blevins story should be a reminder to us that there are no limits when we put our minds to something. Most average thinking people would have discounted any possibility that a victim of cerebral palsy could coach in the NFL. If a person’s own will and determination can do that, how much more can we do with Christ at our side! “I can do everything through him that gives me strength” - Philippians 4:13.

God, keep me from being an “average thinker” and give me the strength to realize that, with you, there are no limits

Once in a Lifetime

Have you ever had a "once in a lifetime" experience?

Was it a chance encounter with a celebrity? Maybe you got a hole in one in a golf game. Did you win a contest, championship, or tournament? Maybe it was something like giving birth to your only child or giving your daughter away at her wedding.

If you stop and think about it, you can probably come up with a lot of once in a lifetime experiences. It can be fun or painful to go down memory lane thinking about the times when you did something that you will likely never do again. When these opportunities arise, we should take advantage of them. Savor them. Soak them in. Take in the experience and brand it in your memory banks as much as you can. These experiences become part of the highlight reel of your life.

I was reading Luke 1 Saturday about Zacharias (some Bibles spell his name, Zechariah). Zacharias was a priest, the husband of Elizabeth, and father of John the Baptist. As he was performing his priestly duties in the temple one day, he had two once in a lifetime experiences. First, verse 9 tells us that it was a custom of the priestly office to choose by lot which priest would enter the holiest place in the temple to burn incense. Each priest could do this only one time in his life. At this particular time, Zacharias was chosen. This would have been the ultimate in the career of any priest.

It is no coincidence that during this time of unusual and intimate communion with God that Zacharias had his second once in a lifetime experience. God spoke to Zacharias through an angel. The angel of the Lord announced that his prayers would be answered and that Elizabeth, who had been unable to have a child, will indeed have a son. The angel instructed him to name the boy, John. He would grow to serve God in a special way as a forerunner to the Messiah. Indeed, John the Baptist was a powerful force in the days of the coming of the Messiah. He prepared the people to receive the soon to come Son of God.

If you were to ask Zacharias today which of his once in a lifetime experiences was the most dramatic, I would venture to guess that the day in the holy of holies with the angel of the Lord would be at the top of his list.

What once in a lifetime experiences does God have in store for you this week? Are there any divine appointments awaiting you soon? God brings these encounters to us in his time, of course, but I believe that we can often miss these encounters if we are not spiritually prepared for them. We must be sensitive to his leading and be aware of what he may be trying to show us. Like in Zacharias' case, God often speaks to us during times of intense devotion and close encounters with him.

Are you spending intimate time with God in prayer and devotion? Are you giving him a chance to speak to you?