As winter turns to spring, and the golf world warms up in anticipation of the Masters tournament in Augusta, GA next week, the annual guy’s golf trip in upon us.  So tomorrow morning, sixteen of us head off for four days of golf, golf, and more golf in the southeastern US.  It will be great to hang out, tell “the hole-in-one that got away” stories, and just relax with a great group of friends.

Can anyone say FORE!

Happy April Fools Day!
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With all the concern in the country over the beef recall of the last few months, sales at Dakota Beef LLC, the country’s largest organic beef company, are exploding as we see in this report on CNBC. If you would like to buy direct and have the organic beef delivered right to your door, please click here. Dakota Beef can also be found at Costco stores all over the country.

To watch the video, please click here.

Organic Foods Are Booming

The Organic Trade Association’s latest survey cites beef as the organic industry’s fastest growing segment. The U.S. organic food industry grew 21% to reach $16.7 billion in consumer sales in 2006. Organic foods are one of the fast growing market segments within the food industry, with sales growing at an annual rate of 20.9% in 2006. Looking forward, the survey anticipates growth of approximately 18 percent overall each year on average for 2007 through 2010 for organic food products.

About Dakota Beef

Dakota Beef LLC is the leading certified organic beef company in the United States, operating its own USDA inspected, certified organic processing plant in Howard, South Dakota. Founded in 2003, the company only sells certified organic beef products guaranteed to be free of antibiotics, growth-promoting hormones and pesticides. Dakota Beef cattle are humanely raised on pasture and fed a proprietary diet of organic grains, resulting in consistently flavorful and tender beef. Dakota Beef has recently announced a partnership with one of largest organic Angus ranches in the country.

Jim Poole, an excellent actor (at Steep Theater) and someone who worked at Park Community Church here in the city as Artistic Director for nearly 18 years (as well as doing a number of voices in the Veggie Tales video series), provides a guest commentary each Tuesday morning at 5:4o am and 8:4o am on Moody Radio. This week, he used his commentary to talk about those people in our lives who model what it is to give of themselves to help others without thinking twice and to tell us what can we learn from people like this. He used Abby-Jill Brauhn from Park as an example and here is what he said:

I walked up the steps to a place that was once a home to attend a memorial service. I counted this my fifth such service, as five unique women, all from our same church community, had died battling cancer. All were in their prime. And yet all seemed to live extraordinary lives – and I don’t say that lightly. Four of these services occurred in the past three years, this most recent one on the Saturday before Holy Week. The extraordinary life of Abby-Jill Brauhn was celebrated in grand fashion.

Over 300 people came – not that I counted, and not that a large number mattered unless she actually and significantly touched the lives of these people… which she did, in meaningful and practical ways. Abby-Jill served as the director of missions at Park Community Church, but she operated much more like a special concierge: connecting people, helping them network and land jobs, find apartments, get a deal on renting a truck, …helping you move in and stocking your pantry with groceries. If you were sick, her skill set from her nursing days kicked in, and she got you set up with the best medicine. It seemed like she had an inside track on everything from travel plans to fashion tips and she was generous with it all – she gave me my favorite fleece sweatshirt for no other reason than that’s how she rolled.

I suppose one of the most significant ways she made an impact on people was through the short-term mission trips she led, most often to an orphanage in Mexico. One friend who spoke at the memorial service described his experience this way: “Immediately, I was in the company of someone who could juggle and multi-task with excellence. But it was not only what she did, but how she treated other people. I was in a van riding for six hours and the word “non-judgmental” comes to mind. For her to break her way through my crusty exterior, she had to be that way. I mark our conversation in that van as very significant in opening me up for the rest of the trip and for the church community as a whole.”

Another woman who spoke said that “it was like one week I did not know the powerful force that was Abby-Jill, and then the next week I was calling her on the phone for a late night personal conversation as if we were friends, just like that – that’s just how she was.”

Afterwards, many remarked at how inspiring the memorial service was, and yet it seemed also to create a sense of longing, or yearning, for a life well lived, for a community of friendship like many of us had once called home, but has since scattered. C. S. Lewis has said that longing is a part of the human experience. It’s developed and comes from times when we hold a baby, or experience true fellowship during a dinner party conversation, and times when we glimpse peace. And I would add, times like the memorial service for Abby-Jill.

It’s these feelings of longing deep within us that point to things beyond our world. They point to what the resurrection of Jesus reveals: that His Kingdom is here now, but not yet fully realized. And so, it is a holy longing. And the timing of Abby-Jill’s service just before Holy Week couldn’t have been more fitting.

Don’t know what to do with all your old cell phones, IPods, and printer cartridges?

U.S. Postal Service has just announced a vital new service that lets you recycle cell phones, iPods and other electronics — as well as printer inkjet cartridges — via mail.

For free!

To use the “Mail Back” program, find one of the 1,500 post offices that offers special free envelopes. Drop in your recyclable electronics item, and mail it without postage. It goes to Clover Technologies Group, which recycles, remanufactures and remarkets inkjet cartridges, laser cartridges and small electronics. Best of all, for those of us who live on the road, you can take as many “Mail Back” envelopes as you please, and use them to mail your electronics from anywhere. It’s a great idea to tuck one into your carry-on laptop bag. When something dies on the road, you can drop it in the envelope and give it to your hotel’s front desk to mail — no need to carry the extra weight home.

Currently the program is a trial, and is focused on ten cities, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego. If successful, it will go nationwide in the fall, according to the Postal Service.

Details here.

Today we as Christians celebrate Resurrection Sunday, when Jesus rose from the dead and conquered death and began God’s work of redemption in all of us. Look at how Philippians 2 describes Jesus:

5…………..Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in very nature God,did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! 9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

In the first book of Corinthians, Paul describes the essential nature of what we celebrate on Resurrection Sunday with the following two verses:

…if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is vain.”

…and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17).”

There are a number of people who would argue that Jesus did not have to have a bodily resurrection or some even argue that Jesus’ death alone was enough, but we agree with Paul when he tells us that anything short of a bodily resurrection ignores the victory of God. God does not want to just rescue people from this material world — God wants to restore all things. God CHOSE to send His son to die on the cross for OUR sins.

Jesus’ resurrection reminds us of three things..

God has defeated death.

God has defeated evil.

God has begun the redemptive work.

For those of us believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we celebrate that good news this Resurrection Sunday.

If you have some questions or want more information, check out these in-depth questions and answers about Jesus here.

I sat here tonight, thinking about how God works…He has given me excellent marketplace skills that have allowed me to start and grow four successful companies (as I yet embark on my fifth start-up –fanfuego.com), just as He gave Abby-Jill Brauhn a tremendous love for people and their well being and development, and a heart for the orphan children in Mexico. God has created each of us with unique skills and talents to help grow the Kingdom. Some things I can do and some things I can’t, but each of us has a role to play in God’s orchestra.

God gave a close friend, Mat Barber Kennedy, a tremendous gift of painting — I look at some of his pieces that hang in my house, and I marvel at God’s continuing orchestration of life. I don’t have the painting skills that Mat does — yet God has given me other skills and experiences — all which He asks me to use to bring glory to Himself. While I may be frustrated that I cannot paint, God can be glorified through my marketplace efforts in other ways. By the way, Mat’s painting of the new building and its place in the skyline gets me more excited to be living in this world-class city!

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Abby-Jill’s death has been hard on me.

It has caused me to slow down and reflect on what is happening in my life and more importantly, what is important. God wants us to love him and love our neighbor — seems pretty simple.

But sometimes I find myself doing too much other stuff to slow down and enjoy the relationships that God has brought to me. I am operating in a whirlwind, a seasonoflife where everything is moving too fast. Abby was always good at making the emergency slow down to stay connected with other people and their lives. Putting her agenda and tasks on the back burner so that she could invest time into someone else’s life, like Janelle Keller or others. This is a HUGE lesson I am trying to learn each and every day now. Stop….smell the roses….enjoy each day as if it were your last, they say…I am trying….

Earth Hour 2008 is happening on Saturday, March 29 from 8pm to 9pm. It is an event to raise awareness about conserving electricity. To participate, individuals, business and cities all around the world are invited to switch off non-essential lighting and electronic equipment for an hour at this specific time and date.

The idea was first adopted in Sydney last year and resulted in a pretty spectacular event with the lights shutting out on several landmarks including the Sydney Harbour Bridge as well as Sydney Opera House. On March 31st of last year, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour — they called it “Earth Hour.” It is a simple concept, with could have some far-reaching, movement -sortof implications. They wanted to see what would happen if everyone, in the entire world, turned off their lights for one hour at the same time?

The world has taken notice. Inspired by the collective effort of millions during last years event in Sydney, many major global cities are joining Earth Hour in 2008, turning a symbolic event into a global movement.

Five Things You Can Do:

1. Join the effort! Turn out your lights for one hour on 3/29/08 from 8-9pm.
2. Spread the word. Tell your friends, family, community members, & businesses.
3. Host a Earth Hour party by candle light. Invite others over for Earth Hour. You can have food, drinks, board games, a barbecue, all by candlelight!
4. Use the time to discuss other ways to reduce your carbon and electricity footprint. Whether it be replacing your light bulbs or car pooling – there’s a lot you can do.
5. Use the time to replace your standard light bulbs with energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.

Fermi Blog asks some great questions for us to ponder –

How much do we rely on electricity in our daily lives?
How does electricity impact our ability to live in community?
If we did not have electricity, how would our daily lives be different?
How would communication with our family increase or decrease without electricity?
How thankful are we that we have electricity?
How does electricity define us on a daily basis?
Would our prayer life be better if we did not have electricity?
How do we view our home when it is candle lit?
What is life like in remote places where people do not have electricity?
How long could I live without electricity?

Let’s all do this and see what impact our little effort can have. Join me in this hour of quiet reflection with your lights off and ponder some of these questions with me.

www.earthhour.org

More than 1,500 burger buffs, who paid $150 each for the privilege of tasting and judging eighteen chef-created versions of America’s favorite sandwich, have voted: The winner of the Amstel Light Burger Bash, held during the 2008 Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival in Miami Beach (Feb. 21-Feb. 24), was Radius, one of Boston’s most acclaimed fine-dining restaurants. Chicago’s own Art Smith of Table 52 restaurant (Oprah’s personal chef) was one of the participants.

The burger was made with USDA Prime aged beef from Allen Brothers, from right here in Chicago, the leading supplier of America’s finest beef, USDA Prime, to the nation’s top steakhouses and restaurants. I love their meats and you can drive down to their store or get it delievered direct to your door. Click here to order your own burger deliveries! http://www.allenbrothers.com/

The star-studded, event-packed annual festival, arguably America’s premier culinary happening, was hosted by Rachael Ray and is and attended by celebrity chefs, wine and spirits producers, culinary personalities, food lovers and the major media. It attracted 30,000 visitors this, its seventh year.

Eighteen of the nation’s most talented restaurant chefs fired up their grills and unleashed their culinary creativity in a heated competition that Allen Brothers president Todd Hatoff described as “the World Series of the burger world.” . After each chef’s mini-burgers were sampled by the burger lovers and the votes tabulated, the coveted Burger Bash People’s Choice Award went to Radius chef and co-owner Michael Schlow for his “Schlow Burger.”Mr. Schlow selected his prime ingredient, Prime beef, from Allen Brothers. His prize-winning burger’s toppings were cheddar cheese, crispy onions and black pepper horseradish sauce.

On Sunday, Jackson Crum of Park Community Church spoke passionately about the forgiveness that is available through Jesus Christ.  In setting up the message from Romans 3, he showed an extremely powerful clip from the TV show, “ER”.

In this intense clip, the naked reality of a guilty heart and the intense yearning for forgiveness is amazingly and powerfully exposed in this clip from the NBC hit show, ER (so unusual for a network show – way to go NBC). The story unfolds as a dying man seeks forgiveness due to the weight of his sin — murder. He knows he will be judged after his death. As he lay in his hospital bed, this man seeks the truth from a squishy, new age hospital chaplain that cannot give him the truth because she does not know the truth herself.

The man asked her how he can find forgiveness, and told her that her new age religion was not helping. She kept saying that she just wanted to comfort him, to which his response was that he didn’t want comfort, he wanted the truth. He wanted to real chaplain who believed in forgiveness and hell…because he needed to know and hear it. He needed answers and wanted someone to look him in the eye and tell him how to  find forgiveness.

After playing the clip, Jackson quizzed the congregation – “What would we as Christians tell this man?”

I wonder if we are afraid to offend people? This man was hurting. He wanted to hear the truth…the truth that he was a sinner and that because of his sin, he deserved hell. He also needed to hear about Christ’s atoning death on the cross and the forgiveness that is available to all who seek it. He got a squishy message that God is good and loving (which of course He is) and each of us need to interpret what that means for ourselves, when he really wanted to hear is that God is just and righteous. And what he needed to hear was that only God can take away the weight of your sin. I would hope that if we are ever in a similar situation, we would tell the truth of God’s just anger at our sinfulness and the freedom from that sin that is found only in Christ Jesus.

Poweful, powerful stuff and a reminder that God can forgive anything.

I made it.

It is long (although a month shorter now) but I got through the long winter of central standard time and now we are set to get back top Daylight Saving Time, which brightens my spirit immeasurably! So now it is time to put the clocks forward one hour so that we have a longer evening sun.

Did you know that it was already time to move the clocks? Were you surprised to learn that Daylight Saving Time begins again this weekend? Here are some facts and figures about the time change:

1. On August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates for Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. Because of the Act, beginning in 2007, most of the [Read more...]

Soon to reach its 1,000th translation, the “JESUS” film remains the most translated and widely distributed film in cinema history. With more than 6 billion exposures globally, “JESUS” tops Oscar greats such as “Gone With the Wind,” “The Sound of Music” and “The Wizard of Oz.” We used this movie each time our church, Park Community Church, visited an orphanage and the nearby migrant worker camps in the Baja of Mexico and each time I saw it, I saw the Gospel come alive on the screen.

Shortly following the film’s United States premiere in October 1979, requests poured in from around the world for additional translations, as people yearned to hear Jesus speak their heart language. Using stopwatch technology, Campus Crusade for Christ staff produced the first 30 translations of “JESUS” in 1980. This began the film team strategy, a major evangelism thrust for Campus Crusade, which continues to the present time.

In 1986, the completion of the Tok Pisin version for Papua New Guinea marked the “JESUS” film’s 100th translation. At this time, merely seven years after the film’s release, more than 315 million viewers worldwide had watched “JESUS.” When South Africa’s Tsonga “JESUS” film premiered in October 1991 as the 200th translation, a local dignitary introduced the film by saying, “We are proud as a people that the film is now in our language, so that it will go to the heart of our people, [to] teach them the real condition of life.” India’s Kashmiri speakers received “JESUS” in their heart language in 1994, marking the film’s 300th language translation.

Circling the globe to West Africa’s Ivory Coast, the “JESUS” film’s 400th translation into the Cebaara Senoufo language enabled the 862,000 primary speakers to hear the gospel in their own language. By April 1997, [Read more...]

Easter this year is early:   Sunday March 23, 2008.

As you may know, Easter is always the 1st Sunday after the 1st full moon after the Spring Equinox (which is March 20).

This dating of Easter is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew people used to identify Passover, which is why it moves around on our Roman calendar.

In the course of my investigations, I came across several items I thought were interesting. Based on the above, the earliest Easter can actually be is only be one day earlier than this year (March 22) but that is pretty rare. This year is the earliest Easter any of us will ever see the rest of our lives!  The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913 (so if you’re 95 or older, you are the only ones that were around for that!). The next time it will be the earliest possible date , March 22, will be in the year 2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818. So, no one alive today has or will ever see it any earlier than this year!

As one of the top global cities in the world, Chicago has been viewed by many as a livable New York, and a less expensive one at that. However, our elected Democratic officials continue to spend, spend, spend on the backs of hard working Chicagoans, with no regard for the cost to its citizens.

Early Saturday, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger struck a deal with board members, who approved a 1 percent increase in the sales tax – driving Chicago’s overall sales tax to double digits at 10.25 percent, easily among the highest of any big city. And it will be enacted just in time for the Christmas shopping season. Business leaders and others predicted immediate negative ramifications. “Chicago now has the unfortunate notoriety of having the highest sales tax in the country, and our region will now be a more expensive place to visit, live, work and operate a business,” said Jerry Roper, head of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. “The people of our region should be outraged.”.

Do Todd Stroger and the other Cook County officials not think that people will take ride out to Lake County to Costco, Target, Wal-Mart and other stores for their much lower 7% sales tax?

Josh Wright, Steve Raquel and I are making great strides in building out the underlying technology for Fanfuego.com, the premier social network for sportsfans, whcih will launch in early April (and all of you will love it and regular users!).

As we get ready for the launch, we are beginning a multi-episode series looking at five players who are hoping to get drafted in the 2008 NFL draft in late April.  There will be a new episode each week, and each episode will be roughly 3-4 minutes.

Check out the series — it chronicles the ups and downs and real-life experience of athletes who want to move up to “the big dance” .

Here is the promo — please help us by passing this along to others.