Friday Free Things: Kids & Kites

The entire family is invited for a free Chicago event on May 2 to Montrose Harbor in Lincoln Park for Mayor Daley’s Kids and Kites Festival.

Marriage Conference Featuring Paul Tripp

Just found out from the folks at Park Community Church there is a marriage conference being held in a couple of weeks (April 24-25) at Holy Trinity church in the city.  It is entitled “Marriage:  What Did You Expect?” and features renowned speaker and author, Dr. Paul Tripp.  Holy Trinity Church would love to have [...]

Nephew, Caleb Lavey, Hits the Big Time

My nephew, Caleb Lavey, now has 19 Division One Football Scholarship offers and got featured in a Michigan news article recently about his visit last weekend to Michigan.  My brother Mike and I were managers under Bo Schembechler in the 1975-1982 seasons and are huge Michigan fans.  He has been criss-crossing the country making unofficial [...]

Thanksgiving Top 20

In September of 1620, a small wooden ship called the Mayflower set sail from England, headed for the New World. Crowded on board were 102 passengers, most of them Christians who believed that God was leading them to establish a new community where they could worship freely. After sixty-five days of tossing on the sea [...]

The Joy of Abby-Jill

This weekend I sat with hundreds of others (really an old-timers Park alumni meeting, it seemed like) and celebrated the life of Abby-Jill Marie Brauhn, a friend and former staff-member at Park Community Church, who lost her battle with cancer this week. Rich Case did an excellent job in his message and Rich Johnson was [...]

In Memory of Abby-Jill — We Will Miss You

This week, Park Community Church suffered a great loss, when one of its former staff, Abby-Jill Brauhn , lost her fight with cancer and went to be with the Lord on Tuesday morning, surrounded by her family in Wisconsin. Abby-Jill was a Godly woman who loved the Lord and loved people. She made a huge [...]

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, [...]

Happy Birthday Sue!

Just a quick wish of the bestest birthday to the love of my life, Sue Lavey, who is enjoying her birthday week this week. You will always be the best!

VeggieTales Trailer and Questions: The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything

“The children’s franchise delivers an entertaining spoof as the vegetables find the heroes in themselves.” — LA TIMES “Most Entertaining” – Hollywood Reporter “Pirates imparts the Bible-inspired storytelling parents and kids have come to expect from VeggieTales in a less obvious but as-fun-as-always package.” – Christianity Today DISCUSSION STARTERS: Here are some questions from Christianity [...]

New Year’s Resolutions

Each year, I read about lots of people’s new year’s resolutions. Long lists of things they want to accomplish in the current year — many of which are abandoned before the long winter nights of February are through. I am not doing the list of 57 things this year. This year, I am setting five [...]

Off to Dallas – Have a Great Christmas!

Each year we rotate the Christmas/Thanksgiving holidays and this year we spent Thanksgiving in the mountains of North Carolina with Sue’s parents.  Now we are headed out for Dallas (McKinney TX to be exact) to my parents and as a bonus, we get to see my nephews, Josh Lavey and Caleb Lavey, play for the Texas [...]

Sliding into Vacation

Wisconsin Dells, Here We Come! I am off with the whole family for some quick R&R in the Wisconsin Dells. Got a great deal at Wilderness Resort and looking forward to a couple of mid-day naps with my IPod going (and dreaming about getting one of the precious IPhones)! Katie turns 8 this week and [...]

Family Nights Rock Out!

We had more than 65 adults and kids out for our first family fun night!  It was a great time of community, games, pizaa and friends.  Big thanks to Jeff and Angela Koch, who ran the games and to Sarah Chambers, our in-house resident AWANA games expert….Next week on Wednesday, we are plannnig to separate [...]

The $138K Mom

AP — I knew I had a valuable wife, who stays home with our four lovely (and precocious children), but this confirms it! (Salary.com) If the typical stay-at-home mother in the United States were paid for her work as a housekeeper, cook and psychologist among other roles, she would earn $138,095 a year, according to [...]

Materialism in our Kids Generation

A recent article ran in the Chicago Tribune entitled “Material Kids: Wealth is a Top Priority for Today’s Youth“. How do we counteract this trend in the church? The key statistics in the article were: UCLA’s annual survey of college freshman, released in January 2007, found that nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in 2006 thought [...]

Park’s 1st Leader Zone Meeting a Success!

In 2007, we are striving to be more intentional about growing and developing our leadership community at Park Community Church. One of the ways we are going to invest in our leaders is through quarterly meetings, where we will bring the entire leadership community together for a dinner, here about what God is doing through [...]

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I sit around with friends and family, I extend my heartfelt wishes for a wonderful day for all of you with friends and family! Today, as my father-in-law is making the turkey, I am reminded of the power of smell. I know all the Thanksgiving smells…..the turkey roasting in the over, the potatoes being [...]

Family Caregiving 101

With aging parents and in-laws, this is an issue near and dear to me. I am so thankful to come across this post in The Outbox: Many families in America are caught in the double bind of caring for aging parents while still raising children at home. I see the scenario of caregiving needs playing [...]

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