Recently the leadership at our church has been praying for a building space. Currently, we meet for worship at a hotel on Sunday mornings. As we outgrow this space, we’ve been looking for the next location where we can meet. We came across this great office building that houses the company that created the mechanical liver (we’re in Berkeley, California). However, the entire upstairs is open which would make a great meeting space for worship and other activities. It has been vacant for a while and there are no takers, so the realtor suggested we offer a fraction of what.. || Continue Reading →

I was at a District Council for the Northern California and Nevada District last night.  A well-known Washington D.C. speaker ended the evening talking about something that sparked some thoughts. It started when Mark Batterson asked the room full of church leaders if they had ever known anyone who no matter what their circumstances were they always had something negative to say? I totally related with that. I am that. Even though nobody ever talks about postmodernism anymore it’s residue still lingers in the culture of the Millennials.  The good thing about the generations.. || Continue Reading →

Recently a new film hit the box offices. It’s called Madea’s Big Happy Family. This is the 11th film that Tyler Perry has written, directed, produced and starred in. It seems as if his main character Madea just wins the hearts of everyone in America. Well, almost everyone… Spike Lee was quoted saying it is “coonery bafoonery” (talking about Tyler Perry’s movies and television shows).  He explains that this type of entertainment is taking us [African Americans] backwards, as we now have a black president and we’re [film makers] going back to the stereotypes of.. || Continue Reading →

Time slows down and the chatter disappears as the world has been waiting…   United States President Barack Obama announces that Osama bin Laden, the Saudi extremist whose al-Qaida terrorist organization killed more than 3,000 people in coordinated attacks from Sept. 11, 2001, is dead following a military operation in Pakistan and the U.S. has recovered his body.   “Justice has been done,” the president declared as crowds formed outside the White House to celebrate, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “We Are the Champions,”   U.S. officials say.. || Continue Reading →

This little girl with red hair and a green flowery dress screams over the hustle of shoppers and talkers at a courtyard in an outdoor mall.   I sit in one of the big lounge chairs that are surrounded by big potted flowers and plants.   She screams, “Daddy!  Daddy!  Are you watching me!?”  And she screams this right before her barely 4 year-old legs jump off of a concrete ledge into a plateau of soft grass.   My first thought is… this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.   Then, by the sixth time it starts to get annoying.  The little girl had just.. || Continue Reading →

Some time ago my girlfriend (at the time) and I went to a birthday party for one of her good friends. It was a pajama party. Basically a local party that you couldn’t enter unless you were wearing pajamas. It was a lot of fun. I met a lot of new people. Sometimes meeting new people is fun. This fun I speak of was recorded with a camera. Pictures were taken. Meeting new people… making relationships, friendships, sharing our lives together, and having fun. These pictures captured the essence of what it looked like to genuinely connect with people on their turf and to create.. || Continue Reading →

I thought that I had it all figured out.  I thought that I was the ultimate ladies man.  And not because I was beefed up and had rippling abs like Jacob from ‘Twilight’.  I was actually the opposite.  I was somewhere in between the gay best friend of the hot girl in most chick flicks and the super sanguine, metro-sexual radio personality Ryan Seacrest. In college I purposely didn’t date anybody until the tail end.  I wanted to observe other relationships and evaluate them until I discovered key ingredients.  Needless to say my science experiment left me high and.. || Continue Reading →

It has been said that religion is merely a crutch for the weak of intellect. The idea is that people turn to religion as the means of reassuring themselves that their difficult, poverty-stricken lives are worthwhile in view of the afterlife. A crutch is a device for helping people who are wounded. It helps them to function and to heal.  Once the person has healed, they no longer need the crutch. When turning your life over to God becomes a long stick with a crosspiece at the top used as support under the armpit sometimes you can get an inaccurate picture of who God is. A couple.. || Continue Reading →

Las Vegas is interesting.  Everything is compelling.  Everywhere you look there’s something calling for your attention.  From all the bright colorful lights that illuminate the dark royal blue sky that hangs over everyone below. People wander the streets that are filled with little pieces of discarded paper with pictures of naked women on them.  The souls of everyone’s sticky shoes reek of beer and urine while people gather with friends into massive casinos where they will give lots of money to the establishment based upon how bad they are at predicting the future. Women.. || Continue Reading →

Recently I’ve been becoming aware that in everything we do and say we make the world either better or worse. I was at Union Square in San Francisco on the fifth floor of a Macy’s Department store (where the Starbucks is located) when I felt the call of nature.  I momentarily departed from the over-priced coffee chain to use the restroom. A zigzagged escalator and a few stairs later I reach the restroom.  Like a museum, the bathroom was large with two sides containing long rows of urinals and stalls.  No sooner than a moment later the worst thing that could happen to a.. || Continue Reading →