Some of the best advice I’ve heard lately was:

“Live every week like it’s Shark Week.”

-Tracy Jordan (30 Rock)

And I was wondering the same thing. Why don’t we live every week like it’s Shark Week? Or like every day is Christmas? Sometimes we get so stuck in where we’re at that we lose all perspective. We get so caught up in the busyness of life that we forget to live because:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

-Ferris Bueller (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)

Do we ever stop? I doesn’t seem that way. We’re always trying to get ahead in life. To make more for ourselves. And because of that we must remember:

“The first key to your own prosperity, is to make me prosperous first…”

-Joely Ostein (Joely Ostein’s Prosperity Plus)

How different would our lives be if we took more advice from fictitious people?

Any great fake advice you’ve received lately?

I was reading a movie review this morning and ran across the word: zeitgeist. I had no idea what it meant, so I looked it up and found something interesting. Learning a new word is good thing, but this was a really interesting word.

zeitgeist (n) - the spirit of the time; the spirit characteristic of an age or generation.

So it led me to ponder this question, when considering youth ministry/culture…

What would you say is the zeitgeist of this generation?

[WoD Challenge: work this word in to casual conversation today and tell us how you used it in the comments area.]

Saturday we took a few kids on a hike to the old mining town of Monte Cristo (in the Northern Cascade Mountains).  It was a beautiful day for a hike and a great time for going deeper with students. You’d be surprised at the discussion you can get into hiking 8 miles on a chilly day. There’s something amazing that happens when you just have a couple of hours to spend with teens. It gave me an appreciation of why Jesus spent a lot of time hiking between towns with his disciples.  No programs. Nothing planned. Just quality time.

There’s been so much buzz around Joel Osteen lately. Some love him, others hate him. While I don’t hate him, I think he’s seriously off course.

The Gospel of Joel Osteen comes down to this (read with his southern drawl for full effect): “Life is like an ice cream sundae with whipped cream and a cherry on top…. if you have Jesus.” I’ve said this before, Jesus didn’t come to give us the American Dream, he came to kill it. It’s not about what God can do for us, it’s about what we can do for Him. And I believe that that statement is directly contrary to what Mr. Osteen preaches. Osteen’s Jesus is a vending machine, here to serve us to live a victorious (i.e. wealthy and prosperous) life. If you listen to Osteen, you begin to believe that Jesus is all about the bling!

I’ll leave you with this, Mark Driscoll’s opinion (to which I subscribe):

[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IuiUOapK1w]

Phil Wickham opened last week for Crowder at the Moore Theater in Seattle.  He was a lot of fun and did a great job.

[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeTzIuZr0wI]