Happy Birthday Jaden!
Today my son Jaden turns 5. He and I went to lunch at Olive Garden (his choice) and then we went to see Hoodwinked. Which I'm not sure he understood, but he still thought it was hilarious.
For those of you who don't know him, J-man is his own guy. He loves Care Bears and his favorite color is pink. He loves to wrestle and he scares his other brother (who's a foot taller) when he starts throwing the punches. He's got a couple girls in his class that are his friends. When I picked him up from school on Monday, we were walking out with a little girl. We exited the building from different doors and he looked over at her and said, "Elise!" She looked over to him and he just smiled at here and kept walking. He's a player I think. I'll have to keep my eye on him.

I love you Jaden! I'm proud of you!

Etrek / Biblical Seminary
Here's a copy of a letter I wrote for the the Etrek / Biblical Seminary folks.

"Every week I talk to youth pastors who are living in a tension. They love teens but have significant questions about how to do youth ministry within their church. This tension often leads them to feel they need to resign from their position, or sadly they are fired. This tension has led to a call from youth pastors to move beyond our current understandings and models of youth ministry, to a way that will better support teens and their families. There is a need for church leaders to imagine a way of ministry to teens beyond the current reality, to ReImagine youth ministry. This Spring Etrek and Biblical Seminary are providing a forum for discussing the future of youth ministry. I'm excited to be facilitating this class as we engage the hearts and minds of a few of the leading thinkers currently shaping the future of youth ministry, including Kenda Dean, Steve Argue, Mike King, Ginny Olson, Dan Kimball, Mark Oestreicher, and Tony Jones. I hope you'll join us as together we discover some of the ways in which God is shaping the future of youth ministry.

Mark Riddle
President & Lead Consultant
The Riddle Group

Go here and sign up.

The Book of Daniel: Sinfully Bad TV

by the real live preacher at
salon magazine

I really like this article.

Here's a couple excerpts

"Jan. 9, 2006 I wanted so badly to like "The Book of Daniel," NBC's new series about an Episcopalian minister and his rather interesting family. I wanted to like it if only because some of the religious right are soundly condemning it. I usually can't pass up an opportunity to distance myself from those guys.

But I couldn't like it. I just couldn't. Not because it is sacrilegious, but because it is bad. It is very bad. This is a bad and boring show. I stayed with it as long as I could, but when the two bishops were having a torrid affair while the priest with the Mafia connections was calling in favors to find the missing $3.2 million, all the while trying to convince the reverend to hire a Mafia construction company -- something the reverend seems to be seriously considering -- I had to call it a night.

If you were watching and don't remember that part, it was right after Rev. Webster's daughter got caught selling pot so that she could buy a computer and draw Manga comics starring her gay brother having an affair with someone she was dating.


Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was just after that.

And the minister's children. Do they ever say anything nice to each other? And will they ever get tired of making snide and cutting remarks about their brother's homosexuality? Good God, I'm a Baptist preacher and even I was shouting, "OK, he's gay. Leave him alone, you heartless bastards!" "

"And then, of course, there's Jesus, who drops in now and again to see how the reverend is handling things. Only he looks like one of the Doobie Brothers, and all he does is hand out Life Savers and say things like, "Life is hard, but that's why there's a nice reward at the end."

That's no Jesus I ever heard of. Jesus was nice and all, but he was a straight-up ass kicker. Believe it.

So the TV show sucks. So OK, what else is new? But let's talk about something more interesting, namely the fact that more than one group of fundamentalist Christians have gotten their panties bunched up over yet another perceived slight by the culture at large. In this case, some vocal Christians are convinced that the folks at NBC created this show specifically to insult them and poke fun at our sacred traditions. There were the usual boycotts, and a couple of stations in Arkansas and Indiana actually pulled the plug on the show.

Pardon me for a moment; I need to talk to my people.

Yo, brothers and sisters in Christ. They weren't making fun of you. It's much worse than that. The folks at NBC don't care about you enough to make fun of you. They don't even know you exist. You are not a part of their world. They want to make money, that's all. This is no great mystery or secret. They're not hypocrites; they're capitalists.

This particular Christian church is simply a setting in which the TV people are playing out yet another dramatic comedy series. They use the same exaggeration and distortion when the shows are about police stations, hospitals, legal offices and entire ZIP codes like 90210. They don't care about you. They really don't care about anything except ratings.

Stop taking things so personally. You're giving the rest of us Christians a bad name. Learn to laugh at yourself, or do what I did. Just turn off your TV, look at the person next to you, and say, "Well, that sucked!"

But I think all the uproar from Christians is symptomatic of a more disturbing trend. More and more Christians seem to think that affirmation from our culture is where they will find their power. Since when do religions need affirmation from television stations? That's a little shallow, don't you think? What we should be doing is practicing our devotion and letting our changed lives speak for themselves.

And I've got news for you, Christian. If your faith isn't changing your life enough to make a difference in the world, you've got bigger problems than NBC.

Oh, there is something a little ironic that I want to mention. The first six chapters of the actual book of Daniel -- the one in the Bible -- are about a young man named Daniel and some of his friends who are trying to live out their faith in a very hostile foreign land. Trust me, the Babylonians were much worse than NBC. Daniel's solution was to doggedly worship God in their own way, and let their lives be a quiet and steady witness of their faith.

Their devotion produced a living and real goodness that even won the heart of the King in the end. And all of this happened because they were not foolish enough to try to change Babylon, but rather changed themselves."

I pick Day 2

Colts over the Steelers
Panthers over Chicago

I pick:

Seattle over Washington

Broncos over the Patriots (hopefully)

Kyle has the Greatest blonde joke ever!
Kyle's Blog

Would you take the money???
T. Boone Picken's is giving $165,000,000.00 to the Oklahoma State University.
He says he doesn't know much about football. The new Athletic Director was hand picked by him and they talk every single day. He want a say in who's picked for coaching changes. Is he buying influence at OSU? would you take it?

How about if it was your church?

Heartbreaking

Happy birthday Mom!
My mom turns 60 today! She looks great! The family took her to dinner last night at Logans!
I love you mom!

(Josh Fox, the birthday boy and Tony Jones)


Happy Birthday to John Raymond:
My good friend JR in Michigan is another year older today.
Happy Birthday John!

Vacation's Over
Had a great few weeks of vacation. Here are some of my highlights:

1. Hanging with the family!:
Man do I love to hang out with my wife and kids. There were countless lightsaber wars, wrestling matches and books that we read.



2. Alex Roller
Alex and I worked together at Asbury in Tulsa 4-6 years ago. He fell into the Oklahoma Pipeline and got sucked out to California by Mark Oestreicher, Journey church and now he currently works at Youth Specialties. He's a rock star now.

3. The Brian, Elisha, Ben, and Zach's visit
The Francis family spent the night at the Riddle Family bed and Breakfast, as they were driving from Michigan to their new home in San diego (El Cajon) My Zach and Jaden were very excited to see their friends again and they stayed up late reading books and planning on telling scary stories in the middle of the night.
Elisha and Pam got some good time together and Brian and I ate breakfast at BBD2, got some Starbucks and then walked to the park 3 doors down for an epic lightsaber battle involving a thermal detonator (read: football) and a fort shaped like a big toy at the park.. It was about 70 degrees. Then we explored the park and climbed a few "mountains" in the creekbottom followed by a serious rock throwing competition.

4.Christmas:
It was way busy, had a lot of fun. It was good to see some family I hadn't seen in quite a while.

5. New Years:
Friends came over and we broke out the card table. Pam won and tried to give back the $3 she won from everyone.

6. King King: I got to prepare to evacuate my inlaws from fire approaching their house and watch King Kong all in the same night! King Kong was a ride.