IM bowling

In working with the campus ministry, USF recognizes me as "courtesy" staff and gives me many of the same benefits as other faculty. One of those fringe benefits is that I'm allowed to play intramural sports. I usually only play a few, but one of the ones I've played each year is bowling. Call me what you want, but I love it. Reminds me of being in college when every Monday night a bunch of the guys from the baseball team would go to a local bowling alley, draw names out of a hat for teams and bowl three games. The bottom half of the teams in total pins would pay for the top half. A lot of good times.

The last two years, I bowled with Travis, Andy (who both work with USF athletics) and Tyler (a student from the ministry). Last year, we had a slim lead going into the fifth and final week when we had a complete meltdown and finished second. This year was a different story. In second place and down by 186 pins starting the night, we were bowling heads up against the team in first, VSA (Vietnamese Student Association). We made up 153 of that over the first two games. Then we absolutely lit it up the last game with a team 766, averaging out to over 191 per person. Needless to say, we dominated all three games and took home the crown.

And for the record, our team name was Cobra Kai, the bad-boy dojo from Karate Kid. Nothing like paying homage to one of the greatest movies of all-time with our comeback victory. In the immortal words of Sensei John Kreese, "Defeat is not an option in this dojo, is it?!" No Sensei!

Reading some more

I'm not big into New Year's resolutions because most of the time I find that people rarely keep them, but I did make sort of a pseudo-resolution at the beginning of this year. Very simply, it was to read more. And by reading, I mean books. I've never been afraid of a newspaper's Sports section, good magazine or the Bible, but those don't count toward this commitment. Nothing too overwhelming yet. I'm mainly looking for ones between 120 and 300 pages right now. My origninal goal - very modest at best, but a monumental leap for me - was to read 12 books this year, averaging out to one a month. I've decided to up that to 15 because I should be done with book number 3 by the end of February.

I finished The Ragamuffin Gospel (Brennan Manning) in January and then read through The Barbarian Way (Erwin McManus) in a few sittings the first week of February. I really enjoyed both - Manning's for his grasp of God's grace and McManus' for his challenge to avoid "comfort" and the "taming" of one's faith. The Barbarian Way was similar in many ways to Wild At Heart, but it's a message that was worth hearing again.

Now I've kind of shifted gears and am reading Lincoln on Leadership by Donald T. Phillips. It's kind of funny because this is a book that I bought for a class in my MBA program at USF, but never read. (sad to say, but that was a fairly recurring theme for me throughout college) It's billed as "executive strategies for tough times", which makes it sound very business focused. That's not the case at all. Even though each chapter is focused on a specific leadership principle, the book is really more Lincoln's life story. Phillips illustrates the trials Lincoln faced and successes he achieved, then recognizes the leadership qualities that made him great. And the principles highlighted in the book are good for any leadership situation and life in general. Anyway, enough of my amateur review of a book I haven't even finished yet. Still, I am amazed at all the things Lincoln faced before and during his presidency and looking forward to learning a little more about him.

Random thoughts, updates and venting

I forgot to mention this after my "Recruiting Junkie" post, but FSU reeled in another top 5 class this year. They always seem to pull this off with big names in the last week, so I wasn't really surprised. I'm also pretty sure you don't really care.

Could someone please explain to me what's so hard to understand about a 4-way stop?! If you pull up and other cars are already there, wait for them (whether it's 1, 2 or 3 cars) to go and then it's your turn. Why do so many drivers in Tampa who come to the 4-way stop between Fletcher and Bruce B. Downs not get this??

On another "driver's ed" note, what's so hard to understand about roundabouts?? Cars coming up to a roundabout are supposed to yield to cars already in the roundabout, but 95% of the people that live in our complex have no clue about this. I couldn't tell you how many times I've almost had the front of my truck taken off by some idiot who doesn't get this. Can't we just put that clip from European Vacation ("Big Ben, Parliament...") on every state's driver's license test as a visual aid to explain this?

This past weekend I helped out with Impact, a football tournament for Jr. High/High School youth groups at Florida Christian College. This year, more than 70 teams participated in the event, which is now split up into "Fun" and "Competitive" divisions. It's funny to me how big this has gotten because it all began with a single game between two church youth groups that they called the Toilet Bowl.

One of our local Tampa news stations just said that there is actually the possibility of a brief snow flurry in our area tonight. Must be due to that whole 'global warming' thing I keep hearing about.

I never posted anything about it right after the Super Bowl, but the officiating in that and other playoff games was terrible. Mainly with football and basketball, I'm starting to turn into a mild conspiracy theorist when it comes to possible biases on the part of officials, the league (pro) or conference (college), and their influence on the outcome of games. Outside of deliberate bias, I think they get too caught up with pleasing the crowd. Think about the homecourt "advantage" in basketball. The number of fouls called on visiting teams and, therefore, free throws attempted by home teams is almost always higher and usually by a significant margin. Someone please do a study on this. I bet we'd see a similar trend with penalties and penalty yardage in football. You think that maybe the officials/refs get a little caught up in wanting to please the home crowd?? I say yes. Whatever the case it all needs to stop because they're ruining a lot of good games.

Finally, the Olympics have started ... and I didn't even know it until today. Someone tell me how we did when it's all over.

Levi Lais

A couple weeks ago I was at the Grassroots Music site browsing around to check out some new artists or ones that were just new to me. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, grassroots is an independent music site primarily for Christian artisits with some crossover. I love this site because you can listen to 30-second samples of each song on almost any CD they sell. That's how I found Light My Skies by Levi Lais. Lately, I've been into mellow, acoustic sounds, which is what Lais brings to the table. His soft vocals blend well with the overall tone of the CD, but the lyrics are strong. I've really enjoyed listening to it. So if you're looking for something with a folk style, acoustic sounds and wouldn't mind trying something new, check out Light My Skies.

Retreat

It's been awhile since I posted, but last week was a little busier than usual. This past weekend we (a bunch of us from the campus ministry at USF) went to Lake Wales for an annual statewide retreat. Groups from FSU, UF, UCF and Florida Gulf Coast University were there and I've always enjoyed them (gone the last 5 years, first two as a student) for that simple reason. It's encouraging to see others from across the state's campuses with Christ as the common factor.

Our speaker this year was Mark Cahill, former Auburn basketball player turned passionate follower of Christ. His message for us was a stark contrast from last year's speaker, Tommy Oaks. Oaks is a musically-gifted, emotional and energetic speaker who challenged us to improved character while encouraging us to see God's love, forgiveness and grace with the wonder of a child. Cahill is equally passionate, while direct and challenging in calling Christ-followers to share this love with others. Although the tone and content of each was completely different, there really was a natural progression there. While Oaks basically said "get to know and celebrate God's love for you", Cahill followed that up by asking us "why would we ever keep that to ourselves?!".

From everything others have said and the stories he told, Mark Cahill practices what he preaches. He will share Jesus Christ anywhere with anyone. I talked with a few of our students about what they thought and they seemed to have similar reactions to him. I was a little concerned by this. Each of them seemed to focus on only one or two things they didn't like about what he said or the way he does things and that's all they talked about. It seemed the heart of what he was saying - to share God's love with others - was lost in a defensive reaction to his directness. However, I don't believe the things they said were the real issue. I think it had much more to do with the fact that Cahill was calling us to actually use words and talk about our faith.

Let's face it. That's a scary proposition to most Christians. Most figure they'll let their actions do all the talking. It's more comfortable to let others try to figure it out on their own than actually get it out in the open in a real conversation. You've probably heard the famous quote attributed to Francis of Assisi that most Christ-followers have unconsciously made their spiritual life's motto: "Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words." There's truth in that, but there's also a lot of fear-motivated adherence to those words and most have practiced it to the point that they're paralyzed when challenged or given the opportunity to actually talk about their faith in God. I know. I've been there. That's what Mark Cahill was challenging. But not just that we wouldn't be afraid to talk about Christ, but that we would be genuinely motivated by Love to tell others about Love.

Before I had the chance to personally listen to the heart of Mark Cahill, I had questions about some of the ways he shares his faith. There's still some difference of opinion there, but there are no questions about his love for people and his desire for the "other" to be loved by God.