“Green Houses”: The Inconvenient Truth

As energy prices continue to increase, I have searched for ways to reduce our cost of energy in our house — I am currently looking at solar power, wind energy and geothermal (although running a 300 foot deep pipe in the backyard doens’t seem feasible in the city) . If you like this stuff, check [...]

Great Reminder on Stewardship as a Leader

Tim Stevens, the Executive Pastor at Granger Community Church is a person I respect greatly, and he has another great nugget of wisdom for leaders of all types concerning how to get a strong financial framework in your life. As I move out of the church business and into my sports-oriented social networking start-up, FanFuego.com, [...]

Reminder: We are in the Hope Business

As we see more and more people step over the line of faith each week at Park Community Church, I was reminded this week in an article by John Ortberg, Senior Pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church that as Christians, we are in the hope business. And as a leader, the one task a leader [...]

Futurephone

As many of you know, I will be moving back into the marketplace upon the opening of our church’s new ministry center and I am beginning to raise money from investors and put in place the infrastructure for my fifth company start-up. Along with Josh Wright, we are working in our free time to build [...]

Piper on the Prosperity Gospel

I am a big John Piper fan and saw this video on YouTube where he displays a whole lot of energy about the prosperity gospel and its export from the US. Whoa — go John go! (and everybody get out of his way!)

Convictions About Worship – What are Yours?

I recently came across this list of Saddleback Church’s 12 Convictions about Worship and have been thinking a lot about worship in the Park Community Church context as we get ready to move into a new building and begin to explore potential how multi-site locations might further the work that God is doing in our [...]

Best Dunk Ever?

This weekend was the 2008 NBA Slam Dunk Contest in New Orleans and this dunk by Dwight Howard has to be one of the top 3 dunks of all time — and one that will be remembered as he threw down the ball from high above the rim…wow!

Chicago: Looking to Plan Out 2008 Best of City?

Are you trying to plan out all of 2008, with visits to your family, weddings, vacations, etc but still wnat to enjoy all that Chicago has to offer as America’s best summer city? Well festival season is months away, but you can get a jump on summer plans with this quick look at some of [...]

“Time of Your Life” – Jeff Recommended

Come on out and see “Time of Your Life, a Pulitzer prize-winning play by William Saroyan performed by Provision Theater Company at the Viaduct Theater at 3111 N Western Avenue in West Roscoe Village. Don’t miss this poetic tribute to optimism and dreams, starring Tim Gregory. A stellar 22-person ensemble cast brings to life Saroyan’s [...]

Slow Day Stats

Its a slow day here in Chicago and the weather outside is not very good so here are some superlatives I came across at Wikipedia about my alma mater, the University of Michigan, where I served as a manager of the football team under the General, Bo Schembechler, from 1979-1983. Program records and achievements Wins [...]

Signing Day Brings No. 8 Class to U-M

Michigan landed another top 10 recruiting class this year, with new head coach Rich Rodriguez only having about 8 weeks to recruit. (Interestingly, I don’t see my friend Joe Riccardi’s Florida Gators (who Michigan beat 41-35 in the Capital One Bowl) in the Top 10 this year…hmmmmm) Michigan’s class includes standouts such as Houston running [...]

Super Tuesday – Exercise your Most Significant Citizen Privilege

Folks, As citizens of this United States of Americ, we are given the right to elect our government officals.  Please take the time to figure out who you want to vote for and THEN DO IT. ABC NEWS has a good MATCH-O-MATIC candidate matcher that asks a number of questions thaen matches you up with [...]

Tom Brady: The Search for Meaning

Tonight, more than 100 million people will watch the Super Bowl in the US, and most expect that the key player for the Patriots will be Tom Brady (a Michigan alum, I might add). Tom Brady, the 3-time Super Bowl champion quarterback of the New England Patriots was featured recently in a 60 Minutes interview [...]

Appel, Frazee Out at Willow Creek

Not sure what is driving this, but last weekend, the Elders of Willow Creek announced that both Randy Frazee and Gene Appel, the two lead pastors, would be leaving Willow Creek. WOW! What a bombshell……The announcement is on the Willow Creek website: Today the Elders of Willow Creek are announcing that two senior staff leaders [...]