Steve Lavey | 20 Million Minutes
Reaching for Significance in the Next 20 Million Minutes
Man, I love the Tour de France….even though it is the most bizarre ten days I have ever watched! Who knows who will win this one — but a Frenchmen running away with the lead today? Quite bizarre…….
So what do you think of my blog graphic? It will be up for the duration for the Tour de France (or unitl Floyd Landis, David Zabriskie, and Levi Leipheimer drop out of the race), then its back to the more reflective motif.
Now come the mountains…my favorite part
As the summer rolls on, the World Cup (played in Germany this year) is seeing spectacular viewership climbing 65 percent while the Tour de France has lost almost 50 percent of its U.S. viewers versus a year ago. Clearly, the retirement of Lance Armstrong is the key reason, since he was the primary face/poster boy and champion of cycling to U.S. viewers.
It surely didn’t help that just 24 hours prior to the kickoff of the Tour, 22 riders and three of the key contenders Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and Alexander Vinokourov were kicked out as a result of the the ongoing Operación Puerto doping probe.
TV Watch has a great insight into the fickle US TV watchers when it comes to the Tour de France.
After much planning and design, Park Community Church has launched “8 Minutes With God”, a daily email reflection/devotional that drills down a little deeper on the previous Sunday message. As we are fresh off the first week in our series on Genesis called ACT ONE: Genesis, the devotional focuses on Genesis 1 and the Creation. We will run the devotional Mon-Fri each week, and it is written by the Teaching Pastors, based on the message from the previous Sunday.
At Park, we know that spending time reading the Bible will help our church family develop spiritually, and we are always searching to create ways for them to grow in thier journey with God and further their spiritual development. At our church, whether you are a stay-at-home mom trying to juggle the needs of three kids, or are in the marketplace trying to meet the deadline for the next company presentation, we know the hectic life of an urbanite, and have used this devotional to create a short 8 minute “spiritual oasis” during the day for folks to connect with God.
From a pastoral perspective, we have three goals with this daily email. First, we know that when we meet on Sunday for worship, there is only 30-35 minutes for the Teaching Pastors to discuss what the Bible says on the topic. The first goal is to allow the congregation to unpack the Bible verses and topics we heard on Sunday and spend more time in reflection on some of the key points during the week that follows. This allows us five more ”bites at the apple” to explain, get folks in the Word, and drill down on the Biblical topic from a Sunday.
Second, we hope that folks would be encouraged in their own lives by a daily look at what God has to say on the topic and begin to cultivate a deeper walk with God. Our surveys and discussions with other growing churches show us that those who spend time in the Word are generally growing faster in their spiritual walk than those who do not. This devotional email is helping to get some momentum in this area for those who do not have a regular Bible reading/quiet time.
Third, we hope that the reflection questions would serve as good conversation starters for our church family with their friends, co-workers, neighbors and loved ones. Genesis is a familiar story to most and provides an opportunity to have a spiritual discussion — we have exhorted the body to take a chance and go for it! There was lots of effort and a great job done by our crack Communications team, led by Kim Caifano.
I am in shock. After seven years of domination by Lance Armstrong, a cancer survivor, the Tour de France has now announced that one of the favorites of this year’s race, Floyd Landis, is riding with an arthritic hip so painful he plans to replace it with a prosthetic after the three-week race. Landis, who is riding in second place overall after eight stages (today is a rest day), said Monday that he broke his right hip in a crash on a training ride near his home in California in January 2003. He said the break completely severed the blood supply to the bone. Without it, the ball of Landis’ hip joint has been gradually dying and collapsing, causing gnawing pain, said his doctor, Brent Kay. The bone damage is “as bad as it can get,” Kay said. “Everything is pretty much worn down.” “Using it doesn’t in any way increase the chance that it will be unusable later. It is already ruined,” Landis said. “Whenever the pain gets too bad I will have it replaced, probably sooner than later.”
Man, if this guy wins this year — HE IS THE MAN! Imagine the pain he is enduring each day…and he may win the Tour. WOW!
Yesterday we launched our new series “ACT ONE: Genesis” at Park Community Church and Ron May’s intro message on creation was fantastic. As you start this journey, you have to first wrestle with the question of whether God created everything. Ron did a great job of explaining creation and how God created everything. You can listen or watch Ron’s message on our message downloads page. Just this week, I saw a great 40-second web graphical illustration of the creation story in Genesis — check it out.
Genesis is the first book of the Jewish Torah, the first book of the Jewish Tanakh and also the first book of the Christian Old Testament. The name Genesis is a transliteration of a Greek word meaning “generation,” “birth”, “origin,” or”beginning”. Genesis at its broadest can be looked as the story of four guys (Adam, Abraham, Jacob and Joseph) and four events (the creation, the fall, the flood and the tower of Babel). Without the book of Genesis, the rest of the Bible would make little sense. Genesis lays a solid foundation that allows us to look at and begin to answer the big questions in life, such as: Where did we come from? Why are we here? and where are we going? These are questions God answers more fully as the Bible story unfolds. Genesis describes the beginning of the world, of human beings and civilization, of families and nations, of sin and salvation.
If you are in Chicago, why don’t you join us over the next six weeks as we look into Genesis?
This weekend , we took the family and walked over to the Irish American Heritage Center for the annual IrishFest – check out the poster. Being 87% Irish (1/8th French Canadian), it is a chance to impart some my family heritage on my four kids. It was a great time with kids games, and a chance to hear some incredible Irish music. Patrick loved listening to the music and checking out the cool Irish t-shirts, Katie was firmly planted at the Celtic Art table, trying her hands at drawing Celtic Art, Ben was jumping on the Jumping Jack Moonwalk and Ryan loved trying the bean bag toss at the Baggo booth. We love the summer in Chicago because of festivals like this. Chicago has so many excellent festivals – I love living in the city and being able to walk or jump on public transportation to expose my family to my heritage and many other cultures living side by side here in this world class city!
At Park Community Church, we are a church that tries to understand relevant issues in our lives. A place where real people come, with their real problems, and their real questions. And while we know that coming to our church one Sunday won’t make everything perfect, we are a community of people on a similar journey - doing life in the city of Chicago, trying to juggle work and friends and a busy social calendar, and a little bit curious about what this whole God thing is all about. We are always looking to provide an environment where people can invite their friends, neighbors and co-workers to be part of the journey — to seek out truth that might mean something here for them, today, now.
We tell people to leave their expectations at the door. No one at Park is perfect. But we tell people: bring your questions, dare to ask if something better is out there. We meet on Sundays at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. at 108 W. Germania Place (near Clark/North Ave.) Visit our Website and learn more about what Park is all about.
As we continue to learn and grow about doing church in the city, and focus on creating an open, inviting environment for people to hear the Gospel, we have recently implemented a short 13-question Guest Feedback Survey. This survey has given us good information to help us create a better Sunday environment for people to bring their friends and co-workers. We have found that it takes about 6-8 minutes to complete and helps us address three areas: Pre-Service and Post-Service (focusing on greeting and hospitality teams), the Worship time, and the Message. We then finish with a couple of questions about the person giving the feedback. [Read more...]
As we pass the 4th of July weekend, we are just in the middle of the eighth annual Lifest, a huge 5-day Christian concert festival July 4-9, that should draw upwards of 85,000 to Oshkosh, WI, just to our north. This annual festival has become firmly entrenched as the largest Christian music festival in Wisconsin and one of the country’s most diverse – with bands from all of the Christian genres and excellent speakers. Lifest features more than 200 nationally recognized acts over the five days performing on seven stages. Artists include Relient K, Newsboys and the David Crowder Band. The event also had speakers such as pastor Erwin McManus and leading youth communicator Ryan Dobson. (see below for the entire list of artists and speakers) The big change this year was that Lifest expanded from four days to five this year with the Wednesday night concert set and an earlier ending time on Sunday after a 10 a.m. worship service followed by the David Crowder Band. If you went this year, or are going to make the journey up there, leave a comment and let us know your thoughts about this great event. [Read more...]
Wow – Now that we are into the trinity of sport this month — the World Cup, Wimbledon and the Tour de France, held respectively in Germany, England and France, there are lots of great quotes and interviews. With Lance Armstrong gone, others are filling the quote gap in the big race. Five-time Tour de France champion Eddy Merckx has ripped into tennis, claiming “it’s a sport for sissies” and incomparable to cycling;
“Eddy Merckx and fellow Belgian Tour legend Lucien van Impe have launched a scathing attack on tennis, a sport they claim to be played by “namby-pambies” and which shares none of cycling’s gruelling difficulties. Speaking to Belgium paper De Morgen, renowned curmudgeon Merckx said of women’s tennis (in a line that I love): “What annoys me each time I watch Roland-Garros or Wimbledon when the women make a right meal of everything. Every two games they need to sit down, wipe their brows and have a drink, and as soon as they feel the faintest suspicion of discomfort they call for their trainer. “Can you imagine the riders of the peloton sitting down on the verge after 20 kilometres of racing to ask for a massage? The stage would never finish.”"
Go Eddy!
What ever happened to the up and coming French rider Thomas Voeckler? I still remember his fairy tale ride as the holder of the maillot jaune in 2004 for 10 days? He has been nowhere on the TDF this year, finishing the first two stages in 43rd and 127th, netting him about 100th place in the race so far. He seems quite promising yet has not done much this year. Thoughts?
This week, the Red Eye newspaper (the Chicago Trib’s newspaper for 20s/30s) came out with an article that summarized what many of us have felt. Chicago has an explosion of college graduates, who find Chicago attractive, and affordable vis-a-vis the competition (California and New York). At Park Community Church, our demographic has alway between 20-40 year olds in our congregation of 1,200 and we have seen an explosion of 20-Somethings who have moved to the city, many without jobs, just knowing that they want to live in the Windy City.
Released last month, the survey is a follow-up to a 2005 CEOs for Cities report, “Young and Restless in a Knowledge Economy,” that found Chicago ranks first among metropolitan areas experiencing the fastest growth of young people at its center. According to an analysis of census data, 25- to 34-year-olds are about 79 percent more likely than the average resident to live within 3 miles of the city center, the report found.
“There is a continuing flow of young adults into Chicago, and that trend has been going on for some time,” said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at Loyola University. “It’s consistent across cities which still have viable downtowns, but less true in a place like Detroit or Cleveland.”
The most surprising fact was that “nearly two-thirds of highly mobile 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees, the “young and restless,” say they decide where to live first, then find a job, according to a new survey commissioned by CEOs for Cities, a national alliance of mayors and civic leaders.”
Chicago ranks seventh among the top 10 cities they would prefer to live in because of proximity to their families, diversity and arts. [Read more...]
After a strong showing at the Dauphine Libre (he won it all), Levi Leipheimer has kept a low profie in the first four stages of the Tour de France (or, as I like to call it, the Lance Armstrong classic). As of tonight, Levi is sitting in 27th spot overall after finishing 56th today.
People are questioning whether he peaked too early, or perhaps his low-key training regime between the DL and the TdF actually hurt him as he came down from peak physical shape. What do you think?
JULY 4 — Today is the Fourth of July….With that comes all the pageantry and hoopla associated with the celebration of our country’s founding. It also brings with it an annual event that many tune in for……yes, the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest arrives for its annual 15 minutes of fame later today, and if we go down to defeat again, our national self esteem may not be able to handle the blow. The winner for the past five years — in the sport that we invented — has been Takeru Kobayashi of Japan. Last year, “The Tsunami” Kobayashi, claimed his fifth straight Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest title, downing 49 hot dogs in 12 minutes, short of his personal best of 53-1/2 hot dogs.
The 5-foot 7-inch, 144-pound Kobayashi, also known as “The Prince,” was the clear winner, scarfing down 12 more hot dogs than the runner up, 5-foot 5-inch, 100-pound American Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas. The highly overrated 420-pound Eric “Badlands” Booker did not place in the top three. We need to find a champion! That someone just may be Joey Chestnut, a 6-foot-1, 230-pounder from San Jose, Calif., who holds the U.S. wiener-eating record of 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes. So the stage is set for the Fourth of July. We cannot lose again. So eat, Mr. Chestnut. Eat for all of us. But from a strategy point of view, hold the ketchup!
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY TO EVERYONE!!!
TRY SOME DAKOTA BEEF 100% ORGANIC BURGERS, AVAILABLE ON-LINE AND AT COSTCO
JULY 3 — At the Tour de France today, I watched intently to see if George Hincapie would exert the required effort to hold onto the yellow jersey, or whether he felt the longer race was more important. To my delight (and using good racing strategy), he forsook the short term reward to concentrate on the long term prize. That is how life is ………..yet, many of us exert all of our efforts on the short term win, rather than the long term prize. Why is that? We know life is a long race, yet we always use huge bursts of energy and focus on short term things…. What do you think? As an aside, I am feeling less confident about Floyd Landis and Levi Leipheimer (maybe its early and I am expecting too much in the first two stages) – can either of these guys win?
JULY 2 — Chicago has become quite bike-friendly in the last few years and we are working to make our new church building bike-friendly as well. Park Community Church’s 1,200 people are mostly a group of energetic folks in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s who love Chicago and its parks and lakefront, and love to bike all around the city. Being bike-friendly is an important value to them and to us.
Mayor Richard Daley is solidly behind initiatives to create a 500 mile network of bike paths and bicycle-friendly streets in Chicago. He wants chicago to be the most bicycle friendly city in the United Stwates. The Bike 2015 Plan is the City of Chicago’s vision to make bicycling an integral part of daily life in Chicago. The plan recommends projects, programs and policies for the next ten years to encourage use of this practical, non-polluting and affordable mode of transportation. The Bike 2015 Plan has two overall goals:
• To increase bicycle use, so that 5 percent of all trips less than five miles are by bicycle.
• To reduce the number of bicycle injuries by 50 percent from current levels.
These are the sorts of steps that need to be taken by all global cities to ensure that the city continues to remain livable. There are a number of environmental benefits to bicycling, including:
Did you know that:
• A short, four-mile round trip by bicycle keeps about 15 pounds of pollutants out of the air we breathe. (WorldWatch Institute)
• Air pollution contributes to the deaths of 60,000 people nationwide. In urban areas with poor air quality, asthma is becoming a more significant health concern. (Harvard
University School of Public Health).
• The health benefits of regular physical activity are far-reaching: reduced risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, and other chronic diseases; lower health care costs; and improved quality of life for people of all ages. Regular exercise provides a myriad of health benefits for senior adults including a stronger heart, a positive mental outlook and an increased chance of remaining indefinitely independent – a benefit that will become increasingly important as our population ages in the coming years.
• Many of the trips that Americans make every day are short enough to be accomplished on a bicycle, on foot or via wheelchair. The 1995 National Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) found that approximately 40% of all trips are less than 2 miles in length – which represents a 10-minute bike ride or a 30-minute walk. In fact, a 1995 Rodale Press survey found that Americans want the opportunity to walk or bike instead of drive: 40% of
U.S. adults say they wouldcommute by bike if safe facilities were available.
JULY 1 — I admit it…I love the Tour de France. Each year, I prep my wife and kids that July means “the Tour” and I need to have my 2.5 hours each night to stoke up the Tivo, and get ready for the world’s most grueling race. I love to bike around Chicago and the lakefront. However, at the Tour de France, I marvel at the pure physical punishment that these riders take day after day for the 21 days of the race. To think that Lance Armstrong won this race 7 times in a row is unbelievable — all the potential pitfalls, (sickness, heat, nutrition, bad tire (think about Floyd Landis today)
The Americans started very well yesterday and the Tour should be wide open this year — George Hincapie has the lead after the first stage and it should be an exciting first week. Maybe it’s time to Take a look at some awesome Tour photos, already loaded to the web! I also found an excellent historical perspective on the Tour from the 1930’s-2006! Check it out.
Did you know that Illinois added more jobs–23,100–in April than any other state in the nation? I was reading some economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this weekend and am proud that Illinois has risen to the top (albeit likely for one month) as a job creation center. In April, Chicago added 13,300 jobs and this is the first month since January 1995 in which Illinois led the nation in monthly job growth. This has now brought to 43,600 the number of new jobs created in February, March and April.
Check out this excellent new blog search tool called Sphere. As many of you know, it is downright impossible to keep up with the steady stream of posts on your favorite subject, like podcasting, urban ministry, emergent church, etc. We already have blog search engines (such as Technorati, Blogdigger) that help you find the latest blog postings/discussions on specific subjects.
However, the new blog search engine Sphere helps you search for blog postings with specific keywords, and it provides a facility for gathering web pages similar to the page being viewed. For instance, if you are reading an article on `church planting’ and want to find articles related to this subject, the `SphereIt’ facility of Sphere will come in handy. The `SphereIt’ bookmarklet analyses the content of the current page and brings in search results with links to pages that match the topic of the page being viewed. Definitely add this to your toolkit!
Recent Comments