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- monday has turned into the day i hang out with james (my homeless, pirate talking friend)...last monday we shot james' new rifle (which he was able to buy due to a job he's started working recently...a great development), we tossed our frisbee around (we finally bought a real disk!), and then went and got some ice cream...what a beautiful day.

while we were choosing our ice cream flavors, james leaned over to me and said, "hey, i've got this," and pulled some bills out of his wallet to pay for us. i said, "no james, i've got it." he insisted, though, that he pay for it. eventually i relented, but the moment has stuck with me this last week. it was difficult for me to admit, but i realized i had reduced james to an object, or a project, and i had a hard time recieving his gift because it's not supposed to work like that...i was supposed to pay for him (i have money, a steady job, etc)...and yet allowing him to pay for me gave him a great sense of dignity and also revealed how much i still have to learn about what it means to accept grace and to treat james like a person, not a project.

- i just finished the book "Jim And Casper Go To Church." I was excited to read this book for a couple of reasons, most of them due to a sick curiosity. the premise of the book is this guy, Jim, who has a parachurch evanglelism ministry, hires an athiest, Matt Casper, to visit churches with him to get a total outsiders perspective on attending a church service. the idea was to evaluate the church services to see what "we" (i use we loosely as you will see in a minute) can do differently to reduce the barriers people have to overcome when they attend a church service.

i have three criticisms of this book. (1) the book is very poorly written, which i never really got over the whole time i was reading it...(2) for the most part they visited only the biggest name/highest profile churches in America (i.e Willow, Saddleback, Joel Osteen's church, T.D. Jakes church, Mars Hill in Seattle, Mosaic)...and only two "normal" churches. as a result, most of the criticisms are things like: "it's just a big, pre-programmed show"....i can see many pastors and church leaders reading this book and saying "none of this really applies to my church...(3) Casper is one guy, and a highly intelligent, savy, hip, musician at that...i found it difficult to believe that he was really a good representative of the average church visitor. it felt like a very select individual, evaluating a very select "level" of church....that being said, if you know of the churches they visited it is really interesting to read this guy's thoughts.

- last, but not least, a fantasy baseball update...with 8 weeks to go i lead the Enraged Echidnas 101 to 85...it's still to early to celebrate, but it's close to being over!