Go ahead and laugh...

I had to preach in the Sunday Morning service this week. It's the second time. My total preaching stats are now 2 morning services and 3 evening ones (2 at Southside Baptist in Concord and 3 at Miami Baptist Church in Concord).

You want to hear it? Well, the sermon is available on our church web site and it's also in our sermon podcast. I was pretty inspired by Thomas Young's messages during the local Baptist Association's youth revival last week. I spoke from the book of Isaiah as well but on a different theme and from a different section. It was about how awesome it is that God loves something so insignificant as humanity.

So you can listen to me say, "um" a lot and then email me a tell me what a heretic I am. I can take it.

Mission Vacations

First let me explain what a "Mission Vacation" is. A Mission Vacation is a short-term Christian Missionary trip undertaken by a person who probably got very little preparation to work in a mission field. An example would be an upper-middle class American business man who decides to spend a week out of his summer in an African country doing "mission work."

I've always felt conflicted about mission vacations because it'll cost 2-3 grand to send a housewife, or a businessman or a retiree to a remote, and impoverished nation. And we'll put them to work entertaining children with crafts and stories about Jesus or doing light construction work. We could have paid a local person who desperately needs the money to do the same work and had money left over to buy cattle, import medicine or drill wells. Yet, for some reason, churches all over the country think its more important to put their own people on a plane and send them, qualified or not, into the mission field.

I was listening to a commentator on NPR talk about poverty tonight. I realized mission vacations do serve an important purpose. In fact, everyone should go at least once. Not because there's so much work to do out there. We have to take mission vacations because Americans live our lives disconnected from the rest of the world.

We need to go in order to learn compassion. The $2,000-3,000 investment in a mission vacation could inspire a lifetime of charitable work. The cultural impact of giving our people a global perspective is worth the cost of a plane ticket to South America. A heart broken and changed will return the investment many times over.

You're Invited!

Hi,

Some people didn't get their Fantasy League Invite this morning and even if you did you've probably had problems signing up. If you want to play then you need to sign up and get your picks in before 8pm tonight. Here are some tips to help you out because the CBS web site is full of bugs.

1) Your login information from last season will probably not work this season. They have a new registration system for all of CBS.com so hopefully this registration will carry through all CBS shows as well as future seasons. So to register go to:

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor11/fantasy/register.php

Fill out the form and submit it. You should be redirected to the page where you pick the Survivors that you want on your team. The pictures on this page may or may not work. Pick 4 survivors and click the button at the bottom of the page

At this point your web browser may hang up and eventually return an error. Don't worry, your registration has been accepted and your team is set up.

2) To view your tribe and sign up to be on the private tribe with me and maybe 7 other people that you may or may not know go to this page:

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/survivor11/fantasy/myteam.php

Look for "Join a Private Tribe" and click the link there. On the next page enter:

Private Tribe Name: Huracan
Password: hello

Click on join tribe and you may find the web site fails again but just like last time your settings have been saved and if you'll return to the My Team page (see link above) you will see that you on the Private Tribe (you may have to refresh the browser).

3) Don't forget to add bonus points to your players. You can join a public tribe too if you like.

That's it!

You can forward this message to anyone else that you know is a big Survivor fan. 4 of the 8 available slots on the tribe are already gone.

Tags: Survivor

Where art thou, Fantasy League?

You may have been wondering, "Why hasn't CBS started the Fantasy League yet?" The second show (traditionally the first scored by the Fantasy League) is only two days away and the Fantasy League link is still inactive on the main CBS web site.

Well, it appears that CBS is unifying their online registrations. So your Big Brother Fantasy League team name will carry over to the Survivor Fantasy League and you can manage your the CBS newsletter subscriptions all from one convenient login. I noticed when I logged into the Survivor Season 10 Fantasy League page that the Survivors' names where all Big Brother house guests. I guess the transition to a single CBS.com registration system has been a little buggy. I'm going to guess that is the cause of the Survivor Fantasy League delay. It's fine with me if they work out their bugs with the Big Brother people as long they have it right in time for me to select my tribe for Thursday night.

I did notice tonight that the Fantasy League section is coming together behind the scenes. However, my old login doesn't work and neither does the registration. I even tried to register at the Big Brother site and bring that username over into the new Survivor page. All of these attempts failed. Check it out for yourself.

I fully expect that the league will be open tomorrow. I'll probably get up at 5am just to check it. If you notice that it's online and you ahaven't heard from me, go ahead and register a team and join a public tribe. As soon as I can get our private tribe created I'll send invites out to all of you with information on how to join.

I've been racking my brains trying to come up with a good name for our Private Tribe this year and I just can't think of any. I'm accepting nominations. Please forward your suggestions. Also, if you know of anyone who is fan of the show and has the endurance to hang with the Fantasy for the whole season, send me their email address and I'll include them in the invites.

There are 8 slots on a private tribe and me and Angel get 2. It'll be first come first serve on the other 6.

Tags: Survivor

Avast ye!

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Survivor Season Opener

Survivor Guatemala has begun. I had to watch it on tape because of a meeting at church last night but it looks like it's going to be good. The first episode lived up to the hype was truly the most brutal ever. I'm not that excited to see Stephenie and Bobby Jon back. They had their chance last season and I'm just not sure I want either to be the central storyline this season. I kind of hope both are early boots.

Speaking of boots... It doesn't look like this season has been spoiled yet. This time last year the boot list for the entire season was online. And, one of the most reliable spoilers didn't even try last night. All the other spoilers still correctly picked Jim so as a group they're still pretty accurate. But then, maybe Jim was just an easy call. A lack of insider spoiling could make the Fantasy League especially interesting this year.

Several people have asked me about Fantasy League. Yesterday the Palau Fantasy League page briefly appeared in Guatemala's folder on the CBS web site. Today that directory is "Forbidden" by the server. The new Guatemala web site is finally up and the Fantasy League is a link in the menu but is not active. The fact that they're working on it and that there's a space for Fantasy in the main page menu leaves me very confident that the league is coming. They never score the first episode anyway. I'll let you know when it's up.

Past survivors are blogging about this season (all filtered by CBS.com's editorial staff). Rumor has it that the Survivor Live call-in show will be Podcasted.

Tags: Survivor

Hurricane Relief | Miami Baptist Church of Concord, NC

It probably would be a good idea to link anyone who's reading this to our church's hurricane relief page. We're coordinating a trip to Mississippi with 3 other area churches.

Visit our web site to find out how you can help.

Hurricane Relief | Miami Baptist Church of Concord, NC

(This is also my first post using the "Blog This" button in my Google Toolbar. It's pretty neat.)

Franklin Avenue

I've been watching the news to see how one of my favorite places in New Orleans made it through the hurricane and flooding. Google maps' satellite imagery reveals that Frankin Avenue Baptist Church is located in a pretty severely flooded out part of the City.

A few years ago when I was on a mission trip with a youth group to New Orleans we got spend Sunday morning worhsipping with the congregation of Franklin Avenue. In fact, we got stranded in the city by floodwaters from a tropical storm and got to spend two Sunday mornings in Franklin Avenue Baptist Church. The people there are friendly and hospitable and their worship is as authentic as it is energetic.

It saddens me to see that church surrounded by flood waters. But, I know that in the coming months Pastor Luter and his congregation will be back ministering in that community and leading the effort to rebuild New Orleans. They'll do it with a hammer in one hand and the Word of God in the other.

Satellite Photos: Google Maps
Web Site: FranklinABC.com
Tags: new orleans

Update: Baptist Press

Anne Rice on Jesus Christ

This is pretty fascinating,

"Vampire Chronicles" author, Anne Rice has a book coming out about the childhood of Christ written from the perspective of the 7 year-old Jesus. It is also reported that Anne Rice has returned to her Catholic faith

"If I can make vampires so real that people would call me up at home and ask about them, can I make them feel the presence of Jesus Christ?"
~ Anne Rice

The publisher's notes (found attached to every internet pre-sale site), say that she did a lot of research into Biblical scholarship in developing the work. Still, I believe it's cataloged as fiction so it will be interesting to see how she handles the subject. If she will be true to tradition or try to put a new spin on the life of Jesus (a la "The DaVinci Code") remains to be seen.

Apparently, her publisher is trying to push the book to Christian Retail. Can you imagine Anne Rice doing book signings at a Christian bookstore? Think about her fans (disproportionately goth) lining up outside of Lifeway. What will they think our collections of Jesus jewelry, bumperstickers and knick knacks?

On November 1st, world's collide.

Web Site: Anne Rice
Pre-order: Amazon.com
Tags: Anne Rice

The difference between "Finding" and "Looting"

There's a big conspiracy theory (furthered by the irresponsible remarks of Kanye West) that the press refers to white people as "finding" and black people as "looting."

People latch onto a rumor like this because it confirms what they already believe. If you see racism hiding around every corner you're likely to accept this rumor about the news media as a fact. You will assume it's true because it is consistent with what you already believe. (For the people who heard my sermon last Sunday this is a another example of "confirmation bias.")

In this case you would be wrong. The urban legend experts at snopes.com have already investigated and thoroughly debunked this one. The rumor is technically true but the cirmstances around each photo are completely different.

Loot Loops: Snopes.com

Nice one Kanye!

Open letter to Kanye West,

You exploited a charity telethon for hurricane victims to make an outrageous personal attack against George Bush. You've succeeded further dividing our nation at a moment when we were coming together to help people in need. You've suceeded in making yourself a headline when the whole country was transfixed on New Orleans. Oh but that's right, your new album just dropped two days ago.

So we're supposed to believe that you ripped Bush during NBC's fundraiser not because you are opportunistic but because you really care about the hurricane survivors? Pardon my incredulity.

Video: "George Bush doesn't care about black people"
Newsroll: Google News - Yahoo News
Tags: kanye west
Do something positive: Samaritan's Purse - North American Mission Board

Odds on Survivor: Guatemala

Sportsbook has posted their odds on the cast of the eleventh season of Survivor. Here's how it breaks down:

Gary 9-2 Brooke 10-1
Brandon 6-1 Jamie 10-1
Danni 6-1 Morgan 10-1
Amy 7-1 Jim 12-1
Cindy 7-1 Judd 15-1
Blake 8-1 Brianna 18-1
Brian 8-1 Lydia 20-1
Rafe 8-1 Margaret 20-1

Source: Sportsbook.com

Get ready for Fantasy League by watching the Survivor videos on CBS.com