NPC Day one

I arrived today at the National Pastors Convention. I'm doing some work with YS providing consulting for pastors who are looking for support with their youth pastors or youth ministries.

A couple things on my mind.

The Big Girl Bed
First, Mikayla is in a big girl bed. Tonight is her third night in it. I've put her to bed the past two nights.
Night #1 I put her back in bed 94 times. Supernanny eat your heart out.
Night #2 I put her back in bed 21 times.
Tonight... Pam gets to put her to bed. Pam has a bad back, so I'm praying it goes well.

My Right Knee
My right knee hurts. I've agitated my hammy and it makes my knee ache. Advil is my friend.

Sun
The weather here is great.

Friends
I've run into several friends this evening. I'm rooming with my friend Scott Kail. I've run into Kyle Meador, Shelley and Doug Pagitt, DAn Kimball, John Raymond, John Frye, Tic Long and several other YS staffers.

Twas the Day before the Diet

Twas the day before I started eating better
Superbowl Sunday to be exact,
when Mike brought over the 10 lb snack.
Custom baked bun.
Smoke and grilled to perfection
A larger burger than I could ever imagine.
And it was tasty.

Odd Signage

Not the guy I'd call if I needed Tree work.

Oscars

My picks.

Best Picture
No Country for Old Men


Best Actor
Daniel Day Lewis


Best Actress
Laura Linney

Supporting Actor
Javier Bardem

Supporting Actress
Amy Ryan

Best Animation
Rattatouille

These movies could be good

Art Movies
The Visitor

Smart People


Guy movie
Ironman

Date movie:
Forgetting Sarah Marshall

And of course
Semi Pro

My Mom - Front Page News

"Teachers are making sure kids do their own homework by knowing CliffsNotes, SparkNotes and other resources as well as their students do.


Teachers either love them or hate them, but free, online study guides such as SparkNotes are rapidly becoming a primary student resource for everything from "The Scarlet Letter" to Shakespeare.

With the click of a mouse, students have access to a plot overview, chapter summaries, character analyses, and explanations of important quotations, themes, motifs, and symbols for hundreds of titles.

Memorial High School's Garnell Riddle and Owasso High School's Beverly Arnold represent opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to English teachers' views about SparkNotes.

Riddle, chairwoman of the English Department at Memorial, encourages her students to use them as a supplement, but not a substitute, for their class reading assignments, while Arnold categorically forbids the use of study guides. "

Way to go mom! Way to evolve your teaching to meet kids where they are!

Link

Workout: Deck of Cards

There was 6 of us today for my crossfit workout.
Today's workout Deck of Cards.
We spread out in a circle and Eric threw one card at a time on the floor in front of us. the card told us what we did.

Hearts - Push-ups
Diamonds - Sit-ups
Clubs - Supermans
Spades - Squats

Jokers = 15 Burpees

Number cards= do that many reps of the suited activity.
7 hearts = 7 push ups etc.

Face cards = 10
Ace = 11

We did the whole deck in 33:33.

Youth Pastor question

A few years ago I was leading a late night forum with Mike King, and Jim Hancock. I believe we were in Atlanta and there was about 100 youth workers in the room We were talking about the future of youth ministry.

During the conversation one youth pastor broke down and began to weep about his struggles and stress as a youth pastor. Another shared a personal story about past drug use and his desire to use less profanity. It was a rich conversation.

Mike mentioned that the Youth Pastor of the church he attends in KC doesn't lead programs.

Hands shot up everywhere in the room. There was suddenly a burning question in the room and people needed to know the answer to it. One young guy stood up and asked the question on the minds of many, "If your youth pastor doesn't lead programs... what does he do?"

There it was... floating out there...

But before Mike could respond, I made an observation.
with 100 youth workers in the room hoping for a new future in youth ministry, most seemed unable to understand a world in which they didn't lead programs.

This is a big problem for us all. chances are you weren't called to be a program director. chances are, when you said "yes" to God's calling to vocational ministry, your heart wasn't leaping for the opportunity to shop for industrial sized can's of chocolate pudding, writing bulletin announcements and sustaining a great program week in and week out. While feeling the pressure to outdo the week before.

Were you called to that?

This isn't an attack on programs, there have been enough of those in recent memory. (Maybe there's a way to keep your programs, and you not have to plan them.) Also, I'm not talking about working yourself out of a job... that's simply nonsense.

If you didn't have to lead programs or administrate a youth program, would you still have something to do? Anything of substance?

Forget about whether or not your church would by it, can you think outside of your current reality.

Denominational Leaders?

Are there any denominational leaders who read this blog?

Believe the Best

If you don't believe the best about your senior pastor/youth pastor then you won't hear the best they have to offer you. Believing the best about others is an act of humility.

just a thought.

Workout: 2-20-08

100 sprawls for time. (burpees minus the pushup and jump at the end)
My time - 20:57

I hated these because it takes a level of flexibility that I currently don't have. So I stumbled through them. (literally)

(Burpees Race)

BTW - the video's insane. They make it look way easy. But try doing 10 of those babies that fast. man o man.

Coming down from Writing the books

I will be blogging more on ministry soon. Writing two books on youth ministry left me without words for this venue. But I can feel them coming back.

Workout: 2-18-08 "Little Annie" +

So yesterday I did 65 minutes on the elliptical. I'm burning about 675 calories each cardio workout.

Today's workout was named "Annie", but Eric told me I should do a scaled version of it.

Annie is:
Double Unders (jump once, rope goes round twice)
Situps

50-40-30-20-10
(meaning 50 double unders, 50 situps, 40 double unders etc)
All for time.

My scaled down workout was 25-20-15-10-5 ( I named it "Little Annie")

I'm still not good at double unders and I wanted a good workout, so I did single unders. The thing is when you do single unders you have multiple the number of double unders you would be doing by 5.

So I did 125-100-75-50-25 single under jump-ropes
then 25-20-15-10-5 situps

My time 10:00 which felt great to me. (though there was a girl there who did the whole workout (annie) in 10:47. dang she was hauling. amazing.

then Eric thought I needed more (as well as another guy in there) so he had us do a 500m rowing sprint (damper on 10) which I did in 1:57.

I can feel a difference in my body. I'm still exhausted from the workout but I feel like I'm doing more.

Workout: Fran

So today my workout is named "Fran". In crossfit they name some of the benchmark workouts. Most are named after women, much like hurricanes. A few others I'm told are named after special forces soldiers.

here's a link to a video that shows the entire workout.
It will take me longer than this... way longer. and it will be jumping pullups instead...
i'm not looking forward to this.
I'll let you know how it goes

21 thrusters
21 pull ups
15 thrusters
15 pull ups
9 thrusters
9 pullups
for time.

Update: I did it. but instead of lifting 95lbs for the thrusters i did 45lbs. which still wasn't easy. and i did jumping pull ups.

My time: 6:47

Stephen Colbert on Evil

Stephen Colbert has the money quote of the day. It's the last thing he says to his guest at the end of the clip and how he teaches sunday school. But there's a word he uses I won't use here so go there and see it. It's a good interview.

Link

Polling Software

I thought this was cool. I'm sure there are some create folks out there who could use this kind of thing.

Link

Happy Birthday Mikayla

Today Mikayla turns 3.

Workout: 2-13-08

Yesterday I did 65 minutes of cardio on the elliptical. And as always there's the warm-up which includes lots of stretching, rowing 500m, pushups,jumping pullups and the like.

Today's Crossfit workout:

Here's the routine:
5 Double Unders - (Jumprope and the rope passes under your feet twice for each jump. For those who can't do double unders it's 25 single jump ropes) Sounds easy right?

10 One Handed Push-Ups - uh huh.. 5 with each arm. that's right baby. one freaking handed push ups. Eric taught us the technique. The other hand is counterbalance and can support (according to Eric) up to 40% of our weight if we need it to.) Yeah I needed it to.

20 deep lounges - Think big step forward, keeping the ball of the back foot in place and "lung" forward. With good form this is harder than it seems. but still the easiest of the others.

The workout: Do as many rounds of the routine as you can in 20 minutes.

My result: 7 rounds - not great, but definitely an improvement from last week.

My body is getting used to it. I feel like I'm going to puke less often and I'm recovering faster. Though my arms are really sore from doing different kinds of pushups friday, monday and today. I'm praying for a break from pushups on Friday.

Hope but Kinda Different

Don't know if you saw this. It's a parody on the Yes we can for Obama.
This is for McCain

Workout: 2-11-08

Today's workout was deemed easy by the folks who did it earlier in the morning. Folks posted times like 9:30 and 12:15. For them it's a 10-15 minute workout. I knew better before I started.


Pushups
Situps
Jumping pullups
Squats
25-20-15-10-5

For Time.

The numbers mean: do 25 of each. Then 20 of each, then 15 and so on.
No breaks.

Puke Factor 9+ out of 10.

My Time: 25:05.... slow, but as fast as I could go.

I'm loosing weight. I have a goal for the week. We'll see if I can make it.

Money Quote my Crossfit Trainer

The Money quote from my crossfit trainer Eric last Friday was:

"Pain is weakness leaving the body."

nice.
and I like it.

An Artist or an Ape?

I guess I'm in a monkey mood.






Take the test. Can you tell if the painting was created by an artist or a monkey?

I scored an 83%.

Gorilla Collins

(ht to Rustin)

Workout Today: You Go/ I Go

60 minutes of cardio yesterday. interval training on the elliptical.

Today:
I Partnered up Tiffany and completed the following:
Close Grip Pushups - Put your hands in front of you. Make a diamond with your index finger and thumb of each hand. do as many push ups as you can for one minute.


Good Mornings (45/30) = Put a 45 lbs barbell (I think that's what it's called. Bend over and work the hammy's. do as many as you can in 1 minute.

Underhand-grip Pullups - Yep. Pretty much what they sound like. as many as you can in a minute.

Leg Tosses - Lay on your back. Your partner stands over you. You bring your legs up to them and they push them toward the floor. (as many as you can in a minute)

Ring Rows - Lay back parallell with the floor and to pull ups using rings. (yep. as many as you can in a minute.

First person completes one minutes worth of the first exercise then rests for one minute while partner completes theirs. Immediately proceed to next exercise.
Continuous running clock for 3 rounds. No breaks.

Puke factor: I felt like puking twice. but never had to walk outside.
I'm going to feel this in the morning. I can't lift my cell phone to my head.

Reguarding my previous post on Cell phones

So a couple weeks ago I did a post on Cell phone porn. Pretty much just a link, with a small quote.

This week I've received 26 hits of people looking for cell phone porn.

I'm not sure what to think about that.

Today's workout

First let me say that I'm sore from Monday. Tuesday I did and hour on the elliptical machine, but it didn't help. I felt it walking down the stairs in my quads and my upper back (lats) were sore too. In fact I woke up 4 times last night from rolling over and feeling pain from moving my arms in a position my back didn't appreciate.

This is all good.

It means my body is responding to being active.
So today I worked out at my crossfit gym.

here's what I did today for my workout.

The Obstacle Course (7 stations each for 1 minute. no breaks. after all 7 are done. 1 minute break go as fast as you can.)

Ladder - Think hopscotch on speed. It's cardio, but it's also increasing agility.

Duck Unders - Picture a rope across the room 4 ft off the ground. Then ducking under witha certain form, back and forth. sounds easy right?

Quadrapedals - Bear Crawl on hands and feet (butt way up in the air) for one minute. sounds easy right?

Landmine Thrusts - Can't describe this one.

Hollow Rocks - didn't do this. too hard. instead we did situps.

Hammer Twist - 20 lb sledge. And twist to work the obliques (sp?)

Wall Sits - Sit against the wall. This is what hell will be like.

Truman on Kennedy (sound familiar?)

This is from meet the press.
for the whole transcript go here.

MR. RUSSERT: ...and we've been able to find exactly what Harry Truman said about John Kennedy back in July of 1960. Let's watch this.

(Videotape)

PRES. HARRY S. TRUMAN: Senator, you--are you certain that you are quite ready for the country, or the country is ready for you in the role of president in January 1961? I have no doubt about the political heights to which you are destined to rise, but I'm deeply concerned and troubled about the situation we are up against in the world now and in the immediate future. That is why I hope that someone with the greatest possible maturity and experience would be available at this time. May I urge you to be patient.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Incredible. Two days later, this is how John Kennedy responded to Harry Truman. Let's watch.

(Videotape)

PRES. JOHN F. KENNEDY: The world is changing. The old ways will not do. It is time for new generation of leadership to cope with new problems and new opportunities, for there is a new world to be won, a world of peace and good will, a world of hope and abundance, and I want America to lead the way to that new world.

Today I say to you, with full knowledge of the responsibilities of that high office, that if the people of the nation select me to be their president, I am ready.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Forty-eight years later, maturity, experience, "be patient," "I'm ready."

MR. CARVILLE: Yeah.

MR. SHRUM: It's the same debate.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah.

Crossfit

So today I started a new exercise regimen. I'm competing with Marko and 100 or so other youth workers to loose weight. 3 days a week I'm going to be doing cardio, elliptical mainly for about an hour each day. I did 45 minutes of interval training this morning.

Tonight I started Crossfit. Crossfit is best known for the type of training the actors in the movie "300" did for 4 months before they shot the movie. Link. Here's my local crossfit gym. Eric the leader of the class owns it and he kicked my tail.

I was toast after the warm-up.
Which included (as best as I remember)
400m jog
thorough stretching of my whole body
10 pushups
10 abmat sit ups
10 jumping pull ups
10 body weight squats
10 Wall Balls (squats and throwing a 14 pound medicine ball 8 feet up)
10 superman
10 body weight pull ups (picture reverse pull ups while hanging from gym rings)

then for the workout we were to:
Run 400 m
30 Wall Balls
15 jumping pull ups
X3 timed

I made it through once. barely. wow.
I'm going to do this three times a week with cardio the other days.
This combined with a good diet, I hope will help me loose some weight and reach my goal.

Hiring for the Future

Hiring a youth pastor to lead a program as it has always been done is not the way to the future. Chances are the for your church's youth ministry to work, it will make you uncomfortable. I might even venture to say, that if you are a church leader and your youth ministry feels nice and comfortable to you, then it's not reaching it's potential.

um.. wow

My Dream Team Conference Line up

Someone recently requested a list from me.
The list of people I'd love to hear at a conference.
Here's my list of my dream conference speakers:

John Stewart
Eugene Peterson
Seth Godin
Chris Argyris
Demond Tutu
Frederick Bueckner
Bono
Guy Kawasaki
Joe Myers
The Coen Brothers
Chuck Palahniuck
Ira Glass
Mike Rowe

Can't get enough

I can't get enough of this guy!

My Prediction - Upset Baby!

New England Patriots 35 - New York Football Giants - 37

I really have no idea what I'm talking about. But I thought I'd take a shot at it.

Dear Mr. Obama

Dear Mr. Obama,
I'm struggling here. Over the past year I've been listening and you've almost got me convinced to vote for you. Some of your policies I just can't agree with and I have a Republican candidate that I'm looking at as well. But you intrigue me the most of all the candidates. I really do think that you can be a unifying presence in our country. You have it in you to do that. But I'm struggling now because I keep seeing you with Ted Kennedy, and to me that particular Kennedy embodies everything a lot of what you speak against. It's difficult for me to think you are going to bring real change when you have Ted Kennedy stumping for you. I watching. I have no idea who I'm going to vote for. But this really is confusing for me. BTW, while I'm at it. If you do win the primary, picking Clinton as a running mate or the like will insure a vote in a different direction.

National Pastors Convention

I'll be in San Diego for the National Pastors Convention next month. I'll be providing consulting for church leaders (Senior Pastors and Executive Pastors) for the convention. If you are planning on being there, or if you live in the area let's connect!

mark@theriddlegroup.com