February 2010 Archives

Do you realize how uncomfortable your wooden church pews are? I don't care how much padding you added to them, because it's never enough. They're too narrow, too hard, the backs are terribly uncomfortable, and there's not enough leg room. Probably. Maybe. I'm generalizing.

You don't notice, because you're used to your pews. Discomfort is the norm. But not so for me.

The past two weeks, I've been in churches with wooden pews. I find myself constantly squirming, trying to get comfortable. I continually adjust, twisting this way and that, crossing my legs one way and then the other, never fully satisfying (for long) the complaints of my back and tailbone.

The lack of leg room can be pitiful, too, especially as you bump knees and shins on protruding hymnal racks. It's almost as bad a flying coach, except that pews don't recline and there's no neck support, no contours, no pillows, no armrests.... Come to think of it, it's a lot worse than flying coach.

I say this reluctantly, because I fully acknowledge the validity of all of these statements:

• It's unspiritual to be comfortable during worship.
• The churches in Acts had pews.
• A church with pews is more worshipful than a church without.
• The more ornate the wood, the more sacred the sanctuary.
• The Holy Spirit is far more present in churches with pews.
  
• If Jesus could hang on a cross for me, how can I complain about an hour sitting in a wooden pew?

We're spoiled at Anchor. When Anchor went through its "restart" in 1998, the wooden pews were yanked from the floor and replaced with green, heavily-padded chairs (like the one above). I can sit in them for hours without discomfort, whether sitting up straight or in my usual slouch. The cushioned seat is very wide, thereby accommodating persons who are amply endowed on the backside. We shallow, carnal churchgoers can fully concentrate on the sermon without once thinking about our aching backs or tailbones.

So when I go to a church with pews, I really struggle. I just can't get comfortable.

And that's probably how your church's visitors feel. They check out your service, and the lasting impression is, "Those pews really suck."

L-r: Stephanie, Luke, Jeremy, and me.



The group of teams competing just before us. (Click to enlarge)



There we are, ready to flaunt our trivia knowledge in front of 500 people.

Tonight I participated in The Brain Game, a big fundraiser for the Fort Wayne Center for Learning. It's a trivia contest. Companies and organizations and anyone else who wants to can sponsor (for a cost) a team in The Brain Game. Pam's CPA firm, Christen-Souers LLC, entered a team this year. Jeremy and Luke, two of the four partners, along with one of their employees, Stephanie, agreed to be on the team. When they couldn't think of a fourth, Pam suggested me. And so, this guy who is the total pits with numbers spent the evening representing a CPA firm.

There were over 40 teams. They divided them into groups of about 7, and the winner of each group made it into the finals. Our group went fourth (which means we got to hit the buffet before heading into battle). We were not expecting to do very good, and we started out in line with that expectation.

Our grouping was called the "Bora Bora Brainiacs." The other teams were from C. Henry Discount Steel, Fort Wayne Metals, Lifeline Youth & Family Services, OmniSource, the Chef's Academy, and radio station WMEE. Each team member held an electronic device on which you could punch in your answer--A, B, C, or D. There were ten questions, all multiple choice, and a team could gain a maximum of 4 points per question. We had ten seconds to record our answers, and could talk amongst ourselves. After each question, they showed the team standings on a screen.

After the first two questions, we still hadn't scored. The name "Christen Souers LLC" was nowhere to be found. But we got on a roll, and suddenly, we were in second place. The question that jumped us ahead was one I knew: "Where was Microsoft founded?" Most teams picked Washington or Massachusetts, but I knew it was Albuquerque, NM. We knew what TARP stood for. We knew that Norway had won more gold medals in Winter Olympics (over the years) than any other country. And suddenly, we were in first place, and remained there through the last four questions or so.



Two of the team members from Lifeline, who beat us. They had wonderful outfits, and went around the convention hall campaigning to get votes as the Best Dressed.

Going into the last question, we led by three points. The most points you could get on a question was 4. We knew that if we cast a vote on each answer on the last question, the worst that could happen is that we would be tied for the lead. The 10th question asked what Space Shuttle astronauts lost during a spacewalk in a year I can't remember. The answer was "tools," or a tool bag, or something like that, but the other answers sounded convincing, too. We cast one vote for each answer. Unfortunately, our closest competitor, Lifeline, gave all four answers on "tools," and they caught us.

Overtime! The other five teams were dismissed, leaving just us and Lifeline.

Question 11: still tied. Question 12: still tied. Then question 13: "What was the first face to appear on metal school lunchboxes?" Or something like that. The options: The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, and I can't remember the fourth. We put all four votes on "The Lone Ranger." The other team put all four votes on "Hopalong Cassidy." Drum role. Pregnant tension.

It was Hopalong.

We had expected to get trounced. But now, having come so close, we felt really really disappointed. But hey, that's how it goes. Life is filled with disappointments. But we could at least hold our heads a bit high.



The Spanish Inquisition guys would have had my vote for best costume...if I had voted.

The teams all came wearing costumes of some kind. There was a beach theme to the night, so we made it simple: matching Hawaiian shirts, khaki shorts, and sneakers or sandals. We had the most basic outfit of any team. There were some very, very elaborate and clever costumes. You could vote on your favorite, and that team automatically made it into the finals. I didn't vote, but my vote would have gone to The Spanish Inquisition, four guys who represented...well, I have no idea what they represented. I think they were just four guys who pitched in the money to field a team. They wore long, full red robes. But they didn't need my vote, because they won their "heat" and made it into the finals that way. I think they ultimately placed third.

The final round was a mini program in itself, with dancing acts, jump-roping, a girl ventriloquist, a high school choir, and other things interjected between questions. For a while, I thought the team from Shawnee Construction & Engineering, wearing hardhats, would win. Imagine that--construction workers winning a trivia contest (though they were probably from the engineering wing). But a team called "Parents and Teachers" ultimately won. 

Altogether, it was a very fun night. Definitely the most interesting fundraiser I've ever attended.

Very good article by Bob Hyatt on Next Wave ezine, called "Why I'm not Done with Church." I found myself amening frequently, as he gently admonished those who abandon the institutional church (which--disclaimer--has been my bread and butter throughout my adult life).

Then I got to the comments...and found some really good stuff by people who have left the institutional church.

The author makes a flippant parenthetical analogy about liking Jesus, but saying you can't stand his "wife." The church is the "bride of Christ," according to Scripture. I wish he had developed that a little further. Imagine saying, "I want to spend time with you, just as long as your wife isn't around, because I don't like her at all."

My thoughts on all of this are evolving. But as for me--I wouldn't function well as a Christian apart from the church. Maybe some people can, but not me. I need to be part of an organized church, regardless of how messy it is. It keeps me focused. Maybe I'm just undisciplined. No, I AM undisciplined. I probably wouldn't be good at running a home-based business; the office environment keeps me in line. I appreciate being part of social security, despite its flaws, because I would be a major flop at managing my own retirement funds.

Other people are different. But I'll bet not the majority of them. I suspect that most people who "give up on" the organized church have their occasional spurts of spirituality, but for the most part increasingly become Christians in name only--good people, but not people who conquer for Christ. Unfortunately, the exact same thing happens to hordes of people who faithfully sit in pews every Sunday. So casting stones is problematic.

But in the end, I still maintain with conviction: Christians need the church. Not necessarily that specific church down on the corner, but a fellowship of Christians along with all of their flaws.

You have to be careful in drawing comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam. There are significant differences in the governments of Afghanistan and South Vietnam, in the nature of and capabilities of the enemy forces, in the US military, and in our understanding of fighting a guerrilla army. But war historian Andrew West raises some valid questions.

He points out that in Vietnam, the South Vietnamese Army was, to a large extent, "Americanized" and designed to fight alongside American troops and logistical support. West says, "The plan worked remarkably well, as long as American forces and or support was close at hand. But the South Vietnamese military was never meant to fight on its own."

When we basically pulled out in 1973, South Vietnam fell within two years. He says the Vietnamese army was not sufficiently Vietnamese to survive our departure. When North Vietnam invaded, they found lots of high-quality, but unusable, American equipment which the South Vietnamese weren't able to maintain.

I remember reading a war memoir of a former South Vietnamese general. He said that before America entered the war in force, South Vietnam had amazing airplane mechanics who knew how to keep shot-up planes flying with the equivalent of duct tape and bailing wire. But when we entered the war, if an airplane engine wasn't working right, our solution was to replace the whole engine. That became the new way to do things. When we left, replacing engines was no longer an option, but they didn't know how to fix what was broken.

West looks ahead to America's eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan. Are we building an Afghan army that can do well fighting alongside American forces, but will crumble when we leave? Are we again trying to build a First World military out of a Third World country, something which is unsustainable in our absence?

These are valid questions, but are nothing new to our military leaders, who ever live in the enduring shadow of Vietnam.

When I saw the report this morning about Sven Kramer, the Dutch speedskater who was skating to a sure gold medal when his coach messed up and got him disqualified--well, it's a heart-breaking story. My sympathies immediately went out to the coach, who felt terrible for messing up.

Mika, on Morning Joe, felt the same way. And on CNN, when they showed the report, the host felt bad for the coach.

But as I drove to work this morning, I thought about that. Why was I instinctively drawn to the coach? Why wasn't my first reaction to feel bad for Sven Kramer?

After all, Kramer's the one who trained brutally hard for years and years, probably since he was a young kid. He's the one who sacrificed and punished his body in pursuit of a dream. He's the one who skated those 25 laps in Olympic record time. He's the one who would have received the Gold medal and gone into the history books. He's the one on whom the hopes of his country rested. He's the guy six million skating-obsessed Dutch viewers were watching. He's the one who truly lost something.

But my first thought was to feel bad for the coach. Why? Here's what I concluded.

I can't relate to Sven Kramer, an elite, world-class athlete. He exists in a different universe.

But I can relate to a poor dumb schmuck who screws up. That's where I live, the land of the ne'er-do-well, of the guy who squanders his chance, who gets confused under pressure, who blows it for everyone else, who makes a mistake which can never be redeemed. The coach--he's my kind of people.

Pastor Tim preached about Charlton Heston Moses and the Exodus today. As he talked about the final plague, the death of the firstborn sons, I began wondering:

How exactly did God define "firstborn son"? Was there an age cut-off?

There were plenty of fathers and grandfathers who were firstborn sons. Pharoah himself may  have been a firstborn son. Did the Angel of Death kill firstborn sons regardless of age, or did he concern himself only with dependent children?

What if a man had fooled around, and secretly had a son by another woman before having a son by his wife. Would that other boy have died, while the boy he was raising was spared (since he was not truly his firstborn son)? And did that make his wife suspicious?

Was it only a man's firstborn son that died, or the woman's firstborn son? In the latter case, one man could have lost multiple sons.

What did the Angel do when he came across a home with a hermaphrodite child? Such children, bearing both male and female sexual characteristics, occur 1-3 out of every 100,000 people, so there would have been some such Egyptian children. I'm just wondering.

These are the questions which keep me awake at night.

I just finished two books by April Smith, a new author to me. "North of Montana" and "Judas Horse" are two Black Lizard/Vintage Crime mysteries featuring Ana Grey, an FBI investigator. The books were written 15 years apart--1994 and 2008--which is a bit odd. But I went right from one to the other and didn't feel like I had missed much in Ana's life.

"North of Montana" revolves around a Hollywood star's claim that her doctor got her addicted to painkillers. Ana Grey is assigned to investigate--a chump chase, not anything she wanted. But swirling around this investigation are a whole bunch of other threads, all of which are tied up, one way or another, by the end of the book:

• What happened to Ana's father, an El Salvadoranian?
• Ana's relationship with her happily-married partner.
• Her relationship with Poppy, the bigoted cop/grandfather who raised her.
• The superior who squelches her quest for a promotion.
• The two Hispanic orphans, their mother gunned down, whom she is told are her cousins.

"North of Montana" was, in short, a wonderful book. Not a murder mystery, which I normally gravitate to; not a high-action book. But there was a lot going on, and it held my rapt attention.

"Judas Horse" was very different, yet equally superb. Ana Grey goes undercover to infiltrate a group of eco-terrorists. Smith didn't have lots of threads going in this one, but focused on Ana's undercover work and the collection of interesting personalities among these misguided criminals. Interestingly, Smith educates the reader about ecological causes, particularly regarding animals (mustang horses especially), and you feel sympathy for those causes (though I'm already inclined in that direction). And yet, you object strongly to the methods used to advance these causes. A variety of elements came together at the end, though not in the ways I was expecting. She surprised me in a number of ways.

April Smith is a skilled writer who knows all about dramatic tension and conflict. She is a thrice Emmy-nominated writer-producer with lots of credits on TV series and movies. I cannot emphasize how much I enjoyed her books. April Smith rocks!

Last night I watched the USA men's Curling team lose, in overtime, to the Swiss. It was a thrilling match which demonstrated the human spirit at its finest. Rarely have I been so proud to be an American.

Our finely tuned Curling athletes pushed themselves to the limit, extracting every last ounce of energy from their chiseled physiques, the determination showing on their faces as they dug deep within themselves for that last boost of adrenaline, dripping sweat betraying their exhaustion, drawing on untold years of crushing endurance training which would vanquish lesser men. But alas, it was not to be. Not this day.

Now let's give them all wedgies.

What a surprise this afternoon--that Evan Bayh won't seek re-election to the Senate. His speech, which I watched on the CNN site, was highly critical of the way Congress works, and it's clear that he has had enough. He's more of a CEO than a back-room, arm-twisting politician. He likes to get things done. And he apparently felt he was wasting his time in the Senate, even though he was part of the majority. It's nice to see a few politicians with principle.

Bayh was one of the dwindling group of moderates in the Senate. Both parties seem to be exorcising their moderates in favor or extremists. Polarization seems to be the name of the game. As moderates flee or get kicked out, government will become increasingly dysfunctional.

I voted for Bayh when he was governor of Indiana, and, I'm pretty sure, in each of his Senate campaigns. Before that, I voted for Dan Coats, a Republican, whose place Bayh took when Coats decided not to run again. Coats is a good man. I would have been torn, but would probably have voted for Coats. Now I won't need to make that decision.

With Bayh out of the picture, I greatly doubt that the Democrats can find somebody of caliber to beat Dan Coats. So that'll be another Senate pick-up for the Republicans. With Dick Lugar and Evan Bayh, Indiana has had two excellent senators, both of them common-sense moderates who prefer to be bi-partisan. I hope Dan Coats will continue that legacy.

I've been watching, and enjoying, Olympic figure skating since I was a kid. But I'm here to admit that I don't know what all those terms mean. I only get exposed to them every four years, and none of the announcers ever explain them. They just talk about them as if you, the casual viewer, know what the maneuver is.

Like the salchow. What's that? It always sounds like "sow-cow," which is what you get when you mate Mrs. Porky with Mr. Bessie. I couldn't tell the difference between a salchow and a lutz, or a triple toe-loop, for that matter. Or an axel. Or a camel. What makes an axel different from a salchow? What's easier, a double toe-loop or a double lutz?

Then there are different types of spins, lifts, jumps, flips, and spirals.  My favorite term is the death spiral (a move which I think I recognize). 

Right now, they're showing pairs figure skating. And the announcers are throwing all these terms around at us amateurs, as if we're thoroughly familiar with this insider lingo. I think they're on a power trip. They enjoy making us commoners think we're uncultured hicks.

Well, I've watched figure skating enough years without understanding these terms. No sense in learning now. Just enjoy the show.

During the last week I read two books by Swedish writer Hakan Nesser. Here is yet another very good Swedish mystery writer.

Nesser's protagonist is Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. I found nothing special about Veeteren (though I initially thought the same of Henning Mankell's hero, Kurt Wallander). Perhaps he will grow on me. Nevertheless, the plots were quite engaging.

Both books feature a team of police investigators trying to solve murders (as do Mankell's books). The Swedes aren't into the rugged individualist, man-against-the-system types common in American mysteries. In both books, interestingly, the investigation revolves around someone whom Van Veeteren suspects has been falsely convicted and imprisoned for a murder. And in both books, the investigation is set in motion when the accused is killed.

In "Mind's Eye," a man is sentenced to a mental institution for killing his wife, and then is brutally killed in his cell. The beginning chapters, about this man's court case, are utterly fascinating. It's a complex plot which twists and turns before reaching a satisfying conclusion.

In "The Return," Leopold Verhaven spends 12 years in prison for killing his wife, is free for a while, and then goes back to prison for another 12 years for killing another woman. On the day he is released from prison the second time, he is murdered. Did someone seek revenge? Or was he murdered by the actual murderer? Did Verhaven--himself a complex, disturbed person--commit one murder, both...or none?

While I was not particularly taken by Van Veeteren, the conclusion to "The Return" surprised me with its uniqueness, and made me want to read more about Veeteren. There's another Van Veeteren book in English, and no doubt others awaiting translation from the Swedish.

Nesser's books, like most of my favorite mysteries, are published under the Black Lizard imprint from Vintage Books (part of Random House).

I miss football already.

Football-wise, I came of age in the early 1970s. It was probably 1969 when I started caring about pro football, back in 7th grade. And in the next few years, I became a huge fan.

The first team I really cared about was the Minnesota Vikings, a team that would go on to dash my hopes repeatedly, including this year. I loved the way Fran Tarkenton played.

Right now, there's a lot of discussion about putting Drew Brees in the "elite quarterback" category, whose rarefied atmosphere also includes Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. Three elite quarterbacks.

Today's elites toil amongst a whole bunch of forgettable QBs. But I can still remember the quarterback for nearly every NFL team from the early 1970s, and there were a lot of really good ones. Here they are, off the top of my head:

Baltimore: Johnny Unitas
NY Jets: Joe Namath
Minnesota: Fran Tarkenton
Kansas City: Len Dawson
Pittsburgh: Terry Bradshaw
New Orleans: Archie Manning
Detroit: Greg Landry
Dallas: Robert Staubach and Craig Morton
Washington: Bill Kilmer and Sonny Jurgenson
Miami: Bob Griese
Oakland: Daryl Lamonica and George Blanda
LA Rams: Roman Gabriel
San Francisco: John Brodie
Cincinnati: Ken Anderson
New England: Steve Grogan
Buffalo: Joe Ferguson
St. Louis Cardinals: Jim Harte
San Diego: John Hadl
Houston: Charley Johnson and Dan Pastorini
Chicago: Bobby Douglas

That's a pretty impressive group. They make up one-third of the modern-era QBsin the Hall of Fame. A number of them were amazing scramblers--Tarkenton, Manning, Landry, Grogan, Staubach, Griese, Bradshaw. You don't see much of that today, because coaches and GMs don't want QBs to risk getting hurt. Wimps.

The only teams whose QB I can't recall are: Atlanta, NY Giants, Cleveland, Green Bay, and Philly. I couldn't come close to naming as many quarterbacks in the 1980s, 1990s, or the 2000s.

A Gallup World Religion Survey shows that 53% of Americans have a "not too favorable" or worse view of Muslims. That's not surprising, since we're at war with a group which tightly identifies itself with Islam.

But the survey also showed that a person who hates Jews is overwhelmingly likely to also hate Muslims. There is no "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing going on here. Anti-Semites are full-service bigots, it seems. I would guess that these people also dislike other groups as well (Hispanics, blacks, Asians, gays, Mac users, whatever). 

Pam and me at Anchor on Super Bowl Sunday.



The worship team. Terry (far left) hadn't donned his Marshall Faulk jersey yet. We're practicing the "We Will Rock You" stomp-stomp-clap, stomp-stomp-clap.



Lots of Colts fans at Anchor.



The kids come wandering through the sanctuary during sermon sequel, learning about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness.

Anchor is a great church for a lot of reasons. Super Bowl Sunday showed some of them.

• We were all encouraged to come to church clad in our Colts stuff, and a good number of us did--jerseys, T-shirts, hoods, jackets. Five of the eight worship team members wore the blue and white.
• To create a stadium atmosphere, we preceded the first song with the greatest stadium song of all time--"We Will Rock You." Stomp stomp clap, stomp stomp clap. The congregation did that four times, then sang "We will, we will, rock you" four times. And THEN we started into the first worship song. At Anchor, we want to rock your world!
• A lot of our people come from dysfunctional family situations. Pastor Tim turned over the sermon to a friend, who gave his testimony of growing up in a dysfunctional home, and of his efforts to deal with his father in reconciliation and forgiveness. Nobody could relate exactly with his situation, but parts of it, I'm sure, touched a great many listeners who also struggle with reconciliation, forgiveness, and what it means to honor parents who, from a worldly standpoint, don't deserve honor.
• In place of an adult Sunday school, we have what we call "sermon sequel." The children leave for an instruction time, but the adults stay put for an informal time of building on the sermon. Almost NOBODY leaves. I doubt that anyone left today. How many churches can say that their Sunday school attendance matches their worship attendance?
  
• Halfway through the sermon sequel, the back doors of the sanctuary opened and all the children came wandering in, led by Tara Hallman and a child carrying a crooked staff. They were being taught about Moses and the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. They wandered down the aisle and out a side door at the front of the sanctuary. Just a fun little interlude.
• When sermon sequel ended and the children had rejoined us, we sang our own version of "When the Saints Go Marching In."

When the Colts, go marching in,
Oh when the Colts go marching in.
How I'd love to be in Miami,
When the Colts go marching in.

Then we sang one final song, and dismissed. It was another great Sunday at Anchor.

I started the year reading four John Sandford novels. Back to back, to back, to back. (Do I need another "to back"? Not sure.)

First came "Dark of the Moon," Sandford's first novel starring investigator Virgil Flowers. I found Flowers to be quite an engaging character, even more interesting that the renowned Lucas Davenport from Sandford's "Prey" series. Flowers actually works for Davenport out of Minneapolis, Minn., and he regularly checks in with Davenport.

I liked "Dark of the Moon" so much--and Flowers so much--that I read the second Flowers book, "Heat Lightning." It, too, was a winner. And I realized I had drawn a very good mental picture of Flowers:

• Tall, lanky.
• Shoulder-length blonde hair.
• Always wears a T-shirt from a rock group (some well-known, like Sheryl Crow or AC/DC, others obscure groups), accompanied by a blazer and cowboy boots.
• He's a preacher's kid, who thinks about God a lot, but doesn't actively practice any religion.
• He's been married three times.

CNN deserves a lot of credit for their sustained reporting on Haiti, weeks after the earthquake actually happened. FoxNews has moved on to their political agenda, and I'm not sure MSNBC was ever much interested in Haiti. But CNN is still there, keeping us informed.

I suspect their ratings are suffering as a result. That's been the experience with disasters in the past. People have ADD when it comes to disasters--they get tired of hearing about it. So rather than lose viewers, TV shows change the subject to appease the fleeting tastes of their consumers. Yesterday's disaster gets left behind. It's still a disaster, still news, but it's not what viewers want anymore.

But CNN has held firm, insisting that Haiti is still an important story.

It's expensive, too, keeping reporters, camera crews, and producers on location. It's much cheaper to let Sean Hannity or Keith Olberman pontificate in suit-and-tie from a studio. By comparison, sending reporters into the field costs big bucks. Though you can bet Fox will spend that money to cover, in force, the upcoming National Tea Party Convention. It's a matter of priorities.

As James 2:19 states, "Even the demons believe--and tremble."

One of my snowblower tires was flat, and I couldn't get it to inflate. So what to do?

Take it to Dad, of course. Because he can fix anything. That's what I did a couple nights ago.

Tonight, after practice, I called Dad.

"Wondering if we can stop by to get the tire, since they say snow's coming tomorrow."

"Or, you could look in your garage," Dad said.

He had fixed the tire, then dropped by today and put it back on the snowblower. Ready to go.

That's one awesome Dad. Which I've known for a long, long time.

The Super Bowl halftime programmers have been real cautious since the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction in 2004. Since then, they've been booking the oldest rockers they can find, assuming them to be safe.

• 2005: Paul McCartney
• 2006: The Rolling Stones
• 2007: Prince (who was surprisingly good)
• 2008: Tom Petty
• 2009: Bruce Springsteen
• 2010: The Who

No young, skin-showing talent. Certainly no rappers.

I'm just wondering who they'll find in the years ahead. Here are some suggestions:

• Three Dog Night? They're still around. Used to be the biggest band in the world
• Alice Cooper?
• AC/DC?
• Chuck Berry? He's still kicking. I could hear "Johnny B. Goode" and "Maybellene" again.
• Aerosmith? (They were there in 2001, with Britney, 'N Sync, and Mary J. Blige)
  

Sometime, one of these rockers is gonna have a heart-attack right there at halftime, live before billions of people. In fact, it could be Pete Townsend.

Wikipedia, of course, has a complete list of Super Bowl halftime shows.

I would really really like an iPad. And I really really can't justify getting one. It doesn't plug any hole in my life. Doesn't do anything that I'm not doing in some other sufficient way.

In the "Tool? or Toy?" category, it would be a toy for me.

But Mark Cuban is excited about it: "You can book it right now that it will be the product that kids of this generation grow up with and look back on with affection just like we did with the first video games. Video games changed how we grew up. The IPad will change how kids grow up."

Wow, that's setting some high expectations.

Gary Anderson, a retired Marine colonel, published advice for US troops doing relief work in Haiti. I posted excerpts from that article. But I left out this one.

Beware of mission creep. Your job is to try to get Haiti back to something approaching the way it was seconds before the quake struck. If the President wants you to do nation-building, he'll let you know. Identify the things that only you as the American military can do and for how long you will need to do them....

Your best people are the ones who will get you into mission creep situations the fastest. Doctors and engineers always want to make things better, and in these kinds of operations, better is the enemy of good enough.

Think about that: Better is the enemy of good enough.

In our culture, we worship excellence. Don't do anything halfway. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. Go all-out. Give 110%. Don't give God second-best. Blah blah blah.

But just to be contrarian, let's think about "mission creep" in relation to the church.

We throw all kinds of money at church stuff, in pursuit of excellence. We hire professionals to run children's ministries, because ordinary volunteers aren't good enough. If your church has the money, you hire musicians, hire people to do pastoral care, hire janitors, hire multimedia people. We professionalize whenever we can, because they can do it "better." We'd prefer not to settle for a "good enough" volunteer, no matter how thoroughly anointed by God. Some people in large churches thumb their noses at the way resource-sparse churches like Anchor must do things (I've seen and heard plenty of such comments first-hand).

Is the pursuit of quality an example of mission creep? I think it often is. Excellence, I believe, can be a church idol.

Likewise with buildings. I admire the Vineyard people who rent facilities rather than erect their own cathedrals. For them, a rented school is good enough. And, for some inexplicable reason, God still uses them. Instead of yoking to a multi-year mortgage, they can pour money into ministry and missions.

The purchase and development of physical properties can constitute mission creep. It's not necessary. The churches of Jesus Christ can thrive without buildings.

Is political involvement mission creep? Does it go beyond the Great Commission? Lots of people feel it is. I don't believe that MUST be the case, but that it's pretty much the current situation in America. And yet, I don't want to restrict what God calls people to do. God gives different people different agendas. It's just that political action is so enticing, so distracting, to so many people.

And I must ask: how much of the stuff I do, for the Kingdom, is just mission creep? I'm a denominational Communications Director. Communication is important. The Apostle Paul used letters. Today we use newsletters and websites and email. But does a denominational Twitter feed really advance the Great Commission? How much effort should go into a United Brethren Facebook page? Where does "valuable communication" end and "mission creep" begin?

I can always do communication better. But when is good enough, good enough?