Super Bowl XLI

J-Lou is inviting you to his Spanish style house at 812 S 2nd St, Alhambra, CA for a Super Bowl party. If you are a regular reader and contributor, you are very welcome to stop by and join us. (Jeremy, i will be so offended if you do not catch an early flight from ny for this event.) I will bbq the traditional chicken and trip tip. And yes, if you have never eaten it, i will tell you how to make it afterwards because you will be asking. In regards to the rest of the food... that is up to you. I have one confirmation for spanish rice. so please reply here with what you are bringing. ie fruit plate, salad, beans, dessert, drinks, or whatever else.

The game starts at 3 pm, so if you want to come over any time after 2pm that would be great. Hope to see some of you at mi casa. Peace.

The Starfish and the Spider

"The Starfish and the Spider
The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations"

ok. i was turned on to this book by a friend and i literally read the book in three days and have not been able to get it out of my head or stop telling people about it. it is the definition of a page turner. if you are running a church, organization or non profit this is a must read. here is the basic premise of the book... if you hit a spider in the head you kill it, but if you hit a starfish in the head you create five starfish. it gives some amazing stories about how decentralized organizations destroy centralized command and control orgs. i promise you will love it, but i will not be able to refund your money if you don't. haha. if you have read it let me know what you think. peace.

OIKOS Family On You Tube

thanks to ben for posting this up, paul for shooting and thanks for yesenia, tim and james for sharing a little bit of their lives.

BELIEVE IS ON!

the last few weeks have been crazy for mary glenn (from kingdom causes alhambra) and myself as the concept of BELIEVE that was in our heads and discussed with local churches about supporting the young people in the city of alhambra. but it has taken on enormous potential and life. mary had a meeting with the alhambra pd on wednesday, while i was freezing my butt off in chi-town. the meeting was amazing. they want to continue the conversation about us creating a mentoring program... they actually want to partner with us, but more conversation is needed to work out the details. they want us to have 7 mentors trained and passed life scans in the next month. these mentors would be placed with 3 students each that are first time or multiple offenders. they are interested in placing tons of students in this program. we are scrambling next wednesday to meet and figure out our strategy. but if you live near or in alhambra and have talked about being apart of BELIEVE. this is the time to step up and be at the beginning of something that could change our community.

the mentoring program is just the begining. the school district is also interested in talking with us about supporting and staffing after school programs at every elementary school in the city.
this has tremendous potential for huge kingdom impact. so please pray for doors to continue to open and for mary and myself to understand how to navigate these relationships. we are very excited to see where this goes. but BELIEVE is going to happen. amen.

socal for life... dang chicago is cold

well j-lou jumped on a plane last night and headed to the windy city for a day. i am going to a chicago reload meeting for uwyi. letting fred stay home and chill with his family. he has been on the road way too much and i remember my days of 2 or 3 trips a month in the name of reload. i am glad i do not do that anymore.

i am currently blogging while riding the el train. as i was waiting for the train, i was reminded of why i live in socal as my ears were about to fall off and shatter upon impact on the ground. i also realized that converse all stars are trendy and cool looking for j-lou in socal. i have thick socks on and my toes are still freezing while i am sitting my but on the train. so i know noel, chris, marcos, phil, ginny, alison and so many other dear friends live here in chicago, but i will enjoy my flight back tomorrow morning and not complain about the 40 - 50 degree weather that we have been experiencing in socal and we all thought that was cold.

well i am going to be at my stop soon, so i better post. peace.

memories...

ok. i was hanging out with a few friends last night from high school. it was nava's bday, so a few of us met up at tgif's in brea for dinner. nava is regular reader of this blog, so i thought i'd give him some love and share a story that he reminded us of from high school. a few of my friends had gone to a house party near la habra and ended up drinking way too much. if you grew up in socal in the early 90's it was the time of the house party. these house parties would have a few kegs and usually some type of jungle juice or something else. well, this one night nava, who was about 2 or 3 years older than us ended up driving this one girls car. the rest of the group (which i was not a part of that night) had been trashed. i mean they were gone. one had fallen asleep on a diving board at the house. as chris got them all in the car the adventure really began... he was driving and one need to throw up, so they rolled the window down, but it was one of the child proof windows that only go down about half way. so johnny puked first into the window which started the chain reaction. everyone in the car was letting loose. chris was like... what in the world am i suppose to do. he pulled over in the heights and drug them out of the car and stripped them down to their underwear. we than proceeded to throw them back in the car and decided that we would deliver them each home. we went to each house... drug them out of the car onto the lawn close to the door. he would than ring the door bell a bunch take of running to the car and drive away. he dropped dio and johnny off at dio's house together. he than dropped of the girls whose car he was driving at her house. he left her in the car with the lights on facing the door and rang her door bell and than took off running home. he walked a good two miles home, but had gotten everyone home.

the next morning, dio and johnny woke up in dio's room. they looked at each other, not knowing anything about chris' adventure in getting them home and said we made it. we made it home. than dio's sister came in the room and was like oooooooh. you were so drunk. me and mom had to drag you in last night from the front yard. when the girls whose car he was driving woke up and looked in the back of her car, she found like three to four inches of puke.

i am not sure why i share this story, but i laughed the first time i heard it, i laugh every time someone tells me it again and i had such a huge smile as i was retelling it. i hope you laughed or smiled and i think even dio's mom would laugh about it now, but i am sure when she was dragging her son and his friend in the house in just their boxers she was not laughing.

Mere Mission

my friend mary emailed over a link to this article by n.t. wright. it is a great dialogue about the difference between sharing with people about jesus now in our time and what that looked like when cs lewis was writing. n.t. wright is a huge fan of cs lewis and states that he is a modern thinker but he lays out a number of ideas that do get in the way of people understanding the meaning and purpose of jesus. here is the article, a great read and the following is a few quotes that really stuck out to me.

"For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery.

The longer that I've gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were actually talking about, the more it's been borne in on me that that distinction is one that we modern Westerners bring to the text rather than finding in the text. Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with working for God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord's Prayer, and how we've managed for years to say the Lord's Prayer without realizing that Jesus really meant it is very curious. Our Western culture since the 18th century has made a virtue of separating out religion from real life, or faith from politics.When I lecture about this, people will pop up and say, "Surely Jesus said my kingdom is not of this world." And the answer is no, what Jesus said in John 18 is, "My kingdom is not from this world." That's ek tou kosmoutoutou. It's quite clear in the text that Jesus' kingdom doesn't start with this world. It isn't a worldly kingdom, but it is for this world. It's from somewhere else, but it's for this world."

Networking with Urban Leaders via UrbNet Meetings

a group of urban leaders gathered in orlando, fl this week hosted by urbnet and were discussing issues with the urban church and youth ministry. jeremy del rio has posted virginia ward's notes for the meeting to try and get more conversation on the ideas brought to the table from some other urban leaders who were not able to attend the meetings. here is the link back to the notes of the meeting, so please comment with your thoughts about the topics and lets keep the conversation going. peace.

A Little Late... But They Made Me Think

here are three posts that i read today about the hanging of suddam. i grew up in a family that were huge advocates for the death penalty and i for so many years never really thought about it too much. i watched the hanging of saddam on the computer last week and jim wallis nailed my feeling... i felt dirty. i did not really have the words for it than but i think that best explained it. here are the three posts from shane claiborne, jim wallis, and brian mcclaren. these posts are short but each layout good questions for us to think about in regards to justice vs revenge, the death penalty, and what it means to truly be pro-life.

Some Interesting Posts that I have been reading

How Many Deaths in Iraq Before U.S. Churches Say Enough? , by Robert Parham the executive director of the baptist center for ethics.

Living Wage Calculator for Alhambra, CA , the living wage is a better reality to determine if a family can meet the needs for them in a certain area of the country. Here is a website that explains the the Living Wage. The other link shows what a person would have to make to actually meet all of their needs in Alhambra (where J-Lou lives with his two boys). I also would like someone to find some housing in Alhambra for $1100 a month. I am sure it would be grabbed up quick. And the main site that speaks about poverty in america.

the gods must be crazy

as i sat in my living room with some friends to watch the dismantling of the michigan wolverines who by all means deserved to be in the bcs championship game. they had one lost to ohio st and beat Wisconsin, Notre Dame and the rest of the Big Ten. the usc team showed up that played like a portion of the season... not the usc team that lost and almost lost other games. we killed them and i mean killed them. we made them look average. it brought joy to my heart and made me jump around like a little school boy. i love it. i have been waiting to post this until i found the pic of jarret going deep on the secondary. my quote was from the quarterback coach and offensive coordinator when they said we will not run again and the next 30 plays were 28 passes and 2 quarterback sneaks for first downs. the play calling the 2nd was beautiful and the ability of pete carrol to get a defense ready to play was obvious. mike hart had like 40 yards. it was sweeeeeet. jeremy i would appreciate some love.... you hater. haha.

oh yeah... thanks to the lost by sc to the care bears (nice showing in the emerald bowl) i did not have to use money to get to the championship game so like j-lou said in an earlier post i got hooked up by pauls tv (the king of big screens) and got myself a 57 inch HD TV to watch the rose bowl. i do not have to pay paul til 2010. i may be dead by than anyways. lol