I am 31 now. By all doctor’s accounts growing up, I should be dead by now. I am here for a purpose: to serve. I have the most wonderful wife who completes me mentally, physically, and spiritually and helps me talk through issues we encounter. It was mentioned yesterday about having a rough year – we have likewise had a rough year in ways we haven’t had before. This has prepared us with life experiences and a perspective that I believe has a purpose now.

We are a blessed congregation

The sermon yesterday was about serving. Serving the “have nots,” the “shut outs,” the “let downs,” and the “kicked arounds.” Pastor Paul spent at least 10 minutes of his sermon time praising our body for the services of individuals, groups, and the corporate body to the church, the neighborhood, and the world. We are so blessed to live in this country to be able to worship in a public place without fear of becoming one of the “locked ups” of other countries. We have elderly members serving with free counseling, youth group, and the Naomi’s ministry. They surely can’t think everything they encounter is to their taste of worship – yet they serve anyway. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, servants.

Yet we complained and complained.

We have servants using their gifts in audio/visual arts

Chris works full time and devotes significant time to coordinating with the leadership to convey a look, feel, and sound that is going to reach the lost and bless them while feeding and lifting up current believers. We have a young man who has a passion for the visual arts spending countless hours using his God-given gifts to bring Him glory and attempt to enhance the worship experience and focus our attention on the Word being presented both in song and presentation of a sermon. We need to lift them up. They should not dread Sundays!! We, as a body, will force that burden on them very, very soon if we haven’t already. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, visual man. Thank you sound and music team.

Yet we complained and complained.

Worship and culture – finding balance

There were some valid points given about certain aspects of the physical appearance and state of the building, such as the safety of having blacked out windows that don’t allow you to see who is on the other side. I missed the first 20 minutes of Q&A because the Bloodmobile took longer for a first-time donation that I expected, but I read the notes afterward, and I’m shocked at the level of discontent in the body over such a small part of our lives. Twenty minutes of worship and 80 minutes of community time in a congregational setting with decor that doesn’t suit one should not have such a negative effect on one’s soul or demeanor – yet think of the positive impact it has on a seeker who wouldn’t step foot into your grandparents’ church with pews, hymns, suits, and 20 people under the age of 50 or even 60.

We left this church for the better part of 15 months for a variety of reasons, none of them being the visual/audio arts or Paul’s leadership – yet that was ultimately, in conjunction with the warm, open arms of a new small group invitation, what brought us back. There are churches in Tampa that are pitch black with no windows and a pure rock concert atmosphere. There are churches that bring in visitors in droves, never to be seen again.

We need diversity of the generations

We can’t stop changing with the culture or times. While we are to be the salt of the earth, we are still on this earth and have to reach the culture we live in. We aren’t going to be wearing traditional African garb and playing on tom toms in Tampa, but if we were trying to reach our neighbors while living in Western Africa we would. Nothing of the Bible is being lost here, but if we lose members in the 45+ age group, we will be losing a treasure. Without those people, the dynamics of the body would change in ways you can’t imagine if you haven’t been around to churches where that is the situation. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to see people my grandparents’ age at church again after being in other churches. Their very presence is an affirmation of the solid teaching of the Word and a comfort that you can fight the good fight into old age. Thank you, Margaret and Dick and Jane, et al.

The grass is always greener where you water it

There will be something to complain about at any church you attend for long enough to feel entitled to your way. It’s called human nature in our culture and it’s called sin nature in the Bible – and I am just as guilty of that as anyone who spoke up yesterday. It’s just that in this area of my walk, I’ve been on that journey, and I didn’t like the person I was while I was on that journey. It’s a bitter, lonely place to be. Don’t be bitter about what you see or hear. Is there worship going on? Is God being praised? Are hearts being touched?

We just saw a slide of a Haitian church meeting outside for 2 hours every day to give thanks. Give thanks for what!? For being saved, because they don’t have anything else. We all should have hit “rewind” on yesterday’s sermon in the middle of the Q&A session and taken a hard look at ourselves in the mirror.

This is a matter of the heart, my friends. We are there to worship. If Sunday morning between 10am and 11:15am is all you get out of your spiritual life and what you see and hear bothers you so much that you feel depressed and can’t see the good going on around you, I say shame on you. We have servants all around us who wouldn’t necessarily choose the music or the lights, but they come to serve their God and His people week in and week out; day in and day out.

I ask you one question:

Would you have said all of those things if the Minister of Celebration Arts and the young man doing the lighting were sitting on the stage in those interview chairs used earlier to talk about serving in Haiti?

By sitting on him.

So I hear this story on the radio this morning and instantly get this picture of a big mama with a skinny as a rail man sitting in his recliner or laying back on the couch and she threatens him with something like, “I’m going to sit on you if you don’t shut your mouth!”

Turns out that I wasn’t wrong. She was estimated at 300 lbs at the time (how much has she gained since then?) and he was not much bigger than me at 120 lbs.

Because he was the baby daddy and they had 3 kids together (surprise!), said fat woman was sentenced to 3 years in jail, was booked, and immediately released to go home.

Who knew killing people was so easy?!

Source: Fox 8 – Cleveland

The class was a modern literature evening course, Junior level at USF, with a professor with tenure leading the charge every Tuesday night from 6pm-9:50pm. Great times, as you can imagine! The current assignment was Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The main topics of the book were racism and imperialism in the British Empire in Africa back in the 1800s, which is always a great topic in a racially mixed class because some are “over it,” some are listening intently to a history lesson, some people are racists, and some people just want to get along and sing Kumbaya naked around a campfire.

In some strange shift of normal diversification (I guess bussing doesn’t work for college), there was only one lone black person: an older woman of about 45-50 who dressed and carried herself as an office or cubicle worker of some sort who was just getting off work like half of the rest of the class who doesn’t sleep until 2pm and come in their sweats and PJs.

The professor constantly looked over her way every time she mentioned something about how “African Americans” or “Africans” think, feel, remember, anything having to do with what was clearly being distinguished as “you/them” to the only person of significant skin coloring in the room. She was the de-facto black person to consult, of course, right?

Hehe!

After about 90 minutes of this crap, the professor finally posed one of her factual statements as a question by ending it with, “is that about right?” to our de-facto black person. After taking a second from her note-taking to realize the talking had stopped because the prof was looking at her, she responded in a thick accent, “I’m Jamaican. I am not like all of these people with these feelings of retribution. I am not “African American” nor do I identify myself with any racial movement by Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton.”

BOO-YEAH!

I’d love to see what she puts down on demographic surveys where the options are Caucasian, African-American, Asian, Latino. I hope she throws the book at them every time. I’ll bet Peruvian immigrants feel the same getting blasted by Mexican stereotypes.

I know I sure as heck don’t call myself “German-American” because 5-6 generations ago my people came over on a ship. The only people who can say that are the first or second generations coming over for each given family. Who’s my leader of the German descendants in the US?

There’s a little food for thought for your Tuesday.

There are two major problem types of users at this point:

1. Pure spammers – dummy accounts with a photo or website or single update for the purpose of spreading information a manner recognized by society as spam.
2. “Follow me” spammers – I’ve dubbed them “follow me” spammers because their methodology of spreading their agenda, product, website, or whatever is to follow as many people as Twitter will allow in hopes of reciprocating followers in a general 1:5 ratio. If they follow 2,000 users, they are betting that 400 people will follow them so they can annoy them.

Of course there is nothing wrong with a bunch of empty-headed tweets all day long about what you ate, what your dog barfed up, where you’re driving, or that you’re going to bed late followed by one that you’re tired; no one is going to follow people like that. They’re boring!

Here is how to NOT get followers:

• follow the 1:5 model of following, regardless of update frequency, but especially low updates (like 1 or 0)
• post the same tweet (or a set of tweets) over and over again with the same shortened URL
• use an auto-direct message service to EITHER spam the person who just followed you or thanking them; impersonal tweets are crap and will get you unfollowed or blocked
• be unoriginal: just re-tweet others’ content or send a steady stream of links about what you’re reading
• cuss & swear in your tweets and badmouth well-respected members of the Twitter community
• ignore @ replies to you

As long as you do the opposite of those faux pas, you should be a rather successful Twitterer. I’m available at @jpetersen if you’d like to respond on Twitter about this rather than using the comment form.

That has changed, and it wonderfully started changing when I met my wife. I say “started” because it wasn’t too long ago that I still fell into old habits more than a man nearing 30 should. I started taking my food back to the counter or back to the kitchen. I discovered that returning an item at the store does not cause a rift in the universe. Did you know that you can return a toaster after 2 years? Inside family story, but true, nonetheless.

Then along came our house-buying time. I was a pushover in accepting our first agent. It was a disastrous 20-30 houses, me doing the looking, and all sorts of things, that made it hard to get a place as property virgins. I finally fired her, got a new agent, and we bought a house the next day. Things happen when you move like that, you’ll see more as I go on. During signing for the sales contract, the lender made a mistake that was going to add $4,000 to our closing costs over what we were shown an hour earlier. I simply told him, “I liked that other number, so how about you get that number back to the table because I don’t want to pay for your mistake.” About 5 minutes later, we were signing a contract with an extra four grand in our pockets… because I put my foot down on that service we were receiving.

I’d finally had enough with paying Verizon so much for our FiOS services, especially since we were already having to pay for basic cable and Internet with our HOA and not getting a thing for that out of Verizon. We were told when we bought our house that Brighthouse wasn’t available, but after seeing a dozen or so service vans in the neighborhood somebody was getting Brighthouse, so I wanted it back, too. I called them up, got it sorted out, and switched back to save a ton of money because we got a credit for what we were paying the HOA since the HOA was paying Brighthouse’s subsidiary.

Then Today…

Today was a last straw of epic proportions. I was sitting with my laptop, minding my own business (literally), when State Farm called to see if I had life insurance and if I was interested in getting it through them. BIG mistake! That implies that: 1) I am not planning for the future for my family, 2) I’m too stupid to connect the dots that if I really wanted to get life insurance that State Farm sells it and would give me a multi-policy discount. My rule: don’t call me, I’ll call you! If I wanted your stuff so badly, I’d already have it.

That was rude, yes, but the killer was two parts waiting to unfold. I told her that I’d be more open to getting more services from them if I was happy with the service I was already paying for. I’d requested a lower rate TWICE because I work from home and drive well under 400 miles per month, sometimes 150 miles. There is no reason for a 30-year-old with a 9 year old sedan to be paying $1,000/yr to drive 4,000 miles per year. That’s just my car, and I’m the old one here! Sure, we’ve got a killer policy, but those figures are unacceptable for how little I am exposed to the need for insurance (i.e., in my car–driving!). All set with that? The next part is going to require duct tape around your head to keep your brain from exploding.

She called me back and asked me for my milage records from my oil changes. Lady, I’m a man… I change my own oil. I ain’t paying someone to walk under my car, remove my filter, put a new one on, and use a metered pump to put in sub-standard oil into my car. I want to know what I’m getting and that it’s done right, and I’m not paying $70 to get the kind of oil I use that costs me $20 at the store to buy. Get your own milage figures.

Next she suggested that every time I take my car into the shop for work, they write down my milage. What!? They do? Idiot! What self-respecting man doesn’t know this about cars, either? Lady, I’m a man… and I drive a Nissan Altima. Hear me? Reliable car, going to get 200k+ miles out of it. I haven’t had my car repaired since I had the A/C fixed back in June, long before I started working at home.

So she decided it was a good idea to transfer me to her supervisor to convince me that I needed to cough up these numbers or be stuck with our current policy rate. Now this just so happens to be my actual agent’s branch, not a call center. These are supposed to be MY people. I own them. “Underwriting will reject this request to decrease your milage without proof of usage.” WELL, those numbers are going to have to come after the fact, and you’re going to have to give me the discount now and charge me if I’m lying to you.

I called my wife to be sure she wasn’t attached to them as our insurers and found out that a policy with a competitor with the same, and even better, coverages costs 55% less. Had they not called to remind me that I was mad at them–not to mention throwing gas on the fire–I would have just kept paying my bill.

Tomorrow we’re switching to Progressive.

(for some reason, neither Geico’s nor Progressive’s sites questioned me about my milage claim…)

Jesse’s Supremo Mashed Potatoes

4lbs of potatoes
1tbs garlic powder
1tbs onion powder
1/2tbs salt
1/2 tbs Italian seasoning
1/2 tbs basil
butter and milk to consistency (1/3 – 1/2 cup milk and a couple of pats of butter)

Peel the potatoes and cut into 1″ cubes into a large pot and boil until soft when poking with a fork (15-25 min). Use a good old potato masher to mush it up and leave some chunks if that’s how you like them. Whipping later won’t really rid it of all chunks if you leave them there at this point. Add the seasoning, butter, and the minimum amount of milk and whip with a mixer on low until you have a good whipped consistency, then crank it up to medium. Mix for a minute or so and add season more to taste if necessary. Serves at least 8-10. Add cheddar cheese to the top and bake leftovers in the oven at 350 until the cheese melts for twice-baked potatoes.

Trust me–it almost doesn’t need gravy (can’t NOT do holiday gravy, man!), though I love my salt and pepper and added as I usually do at the table.

One of the most commonly known tidbits about His life is that he recruited 12 men to live, follow, learn, and ultimately come to an intellectual and spiritual knowledge of his divine identity. What most of us don’t think about is the makeup of his troupe and how diverse they were, which is what blew my mind in a fit of deep thought that prompted this writing. Let’s run down a few of them, as that will be enough to boggle minds worldwide:

• Jude: a farmer, a man of the land.
• Matthew: a tax collector – worse than today’s IRS, these guys pocketed money for themselves and often charged as much as they could regardless of the tax rate.
• Simon Peter: a fisherman, so think Cape Cod fishy dude with rough hands and smelly hair.
• Simon: a zealot – we have those today. They are called terrorists. Zealots in the day would attack and kill Roman soldiers and other gov’t officials. Terrorism isn’t anything new.

Let’s try to put a religious terrorist extremist (Hamas or KKK, take your pick), corrupt IRS agent, the Gorton fisherman, and a redneck farmboy from Iowa in a dormitory setting with someone, anyone, as their mentor and let’s see how long everyone stays together… or alive. That must have been some group that would automatically generate respect and admiration from local authorities in today’s media hungry society looking for a shocking story.

That’s all I have for now, and maybe I’ll have more later, maybe not.

Last night’s complaint was no different as far as the noise goes. Beauty just said that we don’t stay up all night and turn everything off when we go to bed. We thought that it was perhaps my coughing, so she said that I have cystic fibrosis and that wasn’t going to change any time soon. “No, no. I hear it ALL day,” she said. She’s called to file a police report for disturbing the peace, but they said to come over and talk it over first.

So after calling me to talk about it, we decided to turn on all the fans and go over and see if that’s what she hears, because we run our bedroom fan on all night. That wasn’t it, but she took her over to her living room wall, adjacent to our entertainment system, and asked if she heard that. It was pretty much like, “hear what!?” She hears a noise, and says it’s louder at night.

I came home. It was dead quiet. We watched the baseball game, turned off the TV, and it was… dead quiet.

Wait! Do you hear that? Really? Do you hear that? [thump, thump] I can hear it. It [is] A LOW, DULL, QUICK SOUND — MUCH SUCH A SOUND AS A WATCH MAKES WHEN ENVELOPED IN COTTON. hark! louder! louder! louder! LOUDER!

I bought the Brochure template pack this morning and I just wanted to drop you a note to say thank you. Thanks not only for providing an excellent quality product but also for making it available at such an outstanding price. I’m absolutely delighted with every aspect of dealing with iThemes from start to finish. I got my site up and running very quickly and then wanted to make a change which I couldn’t figure out. I looked around the support forum and in spite of my best efforts I couldn’t spot the answer. I posted a request for help and expected a response in a day or so. Within 15 minutes Jesse had a reply up there which hit the spot directly! As we say here in Yorkshire I’m “chuffed to bits.” –Nigel G.

http://ithemes.com/testimonials/

Then, to make things even better, my boss sent it to me, along with his reply to the customer affirming my role and superb work for the company. Amazingly, he was “chuffed to bits” over a response as simple and polite as this: “See if this topic helps you: http://forum.ithemes.com/index.php?topic=444.0” That one little thread started the rest of the day’s happy notes of affirmation.

Okay, bragging done, time for some meat… this has truly changed the way I will go about my day when someone impresses me with their performance on the job. If someone beats my expectation, I will now, at the very least, tell them that I appreciate them.

You never know when someone is having a miserable day, and this sort of thing can keep someone going on one compliment for days or weeks if they don’t get daily affirmation elsewhere. Few things in life feel as good as a verbal hug from a complete stranger.

-Note: just in case a certain client is reading this, I really adored and cherished your personal note earlier in the day, as well. I am very happy to be on your project and honored to have your appreciation.

I just found out about this special day about 7pm while I was sitting in class and my eyes perked up a bit. My mind flashed to this post and it became a creation in an instant. I didn’t have time to put together anything elaborate, but I hope this has some meaning to all of us who know Liz. Cue story.

The day was December 2006, and I had just stumbled across Liz’s blog through a link from some of the big blogs I started delving into in order to learn how to write better content and reach more readers. I saw her hypothetical questions and a post by some guy called Chris Cree. Skimming some more, I found SOBs and B.A.D. bloggers, too.

Then I did it. I left a comment.

My blogging life changed. After a couple of more comments and always seeing a cheerful “voice” on the other side of the comment form, I felt welcome and at home on Successful Blog(gers). On December 26, 2006, I sent her an article from my heart because I realized that she had the power to connect people who are making a difference; I wanted to make a difference. We connected and strong online relationships formed that week.

Since then, I’ve flown to Chicago twice to enjoy two fabulous weekends with a bunch of SOBs and I plan on doing it every year. SOBs are great people.

Getting to the meat of my birthday wishes, though, I’d like to remind Liz how special she is to all her peeps, readers, SOBs, and fans. Do you remember the standing ovation we gave you on May 4th? We meant it. I meant it.

Keep on being the best you you can be, and we will be doing the same right by your side.

Happy Birthday, Liz!