Category: Personal

MJ’s 60th Birthday

As if I needed another reason to think about my own mortality and the brevity of life… the headlines this morning say that Michael Jordan is turning 60.

It seems like just yesterday I sat in front of a little TV tuned to WGN, with a Rodman poster on my wall (hair personally decorated with my magic markers), a plate of Lunchable extra cheesy pizza kits to feed me, Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman before me, and watched the greatest NBA unit in the history of humanity that none of this stuff today will ever come close to matching in a gazillion years.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with this generation: they never got to experience the amazement of a little teenager who was pathetic at playing basketball but would stay outside all day and night with the goal in my driveway, waiting all day to tune in to WGN channel 9, watch the screen go dim, start hearing ♫ ba da beem ba da bom, ba da beem ba da bom ♫, the camera turn to the Jumbotron to show that animated bull running through the city of Chicago out to the United Center, and after an already loud and wild introduction of the first four players, the crowd go even crazier as Johnny Red Kerr announced, “And from North Carolina, 6’6”, at guard, number 23, Miichaaaaeeelll Joooorrrdaaaan.”

Maybe the next time I teach the youth group, I should do another lesson on “The enjoyment of God in all things due to common grace” and show them this video.

GTD and the Ministry

Seriously, there should be a semester long class in Bible colleges and seminaries to teach cluttering ministers like me how to develop a physical and electronic organizational system.

Week 1: A theology of productivity

This would be a good introduction from Tim Challies: https://www.challies.com/articles/the-best-tool-for-the-job/

Week 2: Getting and keeping your biblical info organized

Developing a system that stores any text-based information in a 66 folder system arranged from Genesis–Revelation → Then you know where to find that article you read about John 3:16.

Week 3: Getting and keeping your doctrinal info organized

Developing a system that stores any doctrine-based information in a system arranged using the 50–60 topics listed in something like Grudem’s ST or Lexham’s Survey of Theology → Then you know where to find that list of verses in that pamphlet about God’s love seen in redemption.

Week 4: Getting and keeping your ministry info organized

Develop a system that stores information specifically from your current church position. Receipts, permission forms, rosters, etc. When someone calls and asks did so and so go to such and such 18 months ago, you know exactly where to look.

Week 5: Making technology a gift and not a curse

Learning how to develop the habit of putting all content in an information app, all appointments and places to be in a calendar app, and all things to do in a tasks app. Learning how to use grammar tools and shortcut apps while trimming down alerts and distractions.

Week 6: From the scroll to the screen

How to use digital Bibles, books, and Bible software to their fullest potential.

Week 7: Putting it into practice

Pretend you are a 39-year-old who regrets not putting these systems into place on day one. You spend a day dumping every drawer and file into a huge pile. Travel back to your first day on the job and write a paper using what you have learned this semester to describe what tools, procedures, and practices you’ll implement as you begin your ministry.

1 𝑥 1 = -1

This line from a book on my Kindle that I take a gander at ever so often brought a smile to my face…

”The eminent linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford once gave a lecture in which he asserted that there are many languages in which a double negative makes a positive but none in which a double positive makes a negative to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, sitting in the audience, sarcastically replied, ‘Yeah, yeah.'”

The Joy Of X, page 17
Steven H. Strogatz