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Ever been feelin it? You know - those times of the day when you’re either just on fire and getting stuff done or the otherside of things where you’re just worn out and and you can see the wall coming but you just can’t get moving quick enough to get out of the way. That’s feelin it.

I wonder - what do you do when you’re feelin’ it?

There is a smell in our house and in our neighborhood tonight.

It isn’t me.

It isn’t Lovey (pretty girls don’t fart - they poof).

It isn’t the dogs and I sure hope it’s not the cat.

I think that we are the victims of a drive-by skunk attack. My eyes are watering, I’ve got a headache, the smell is absolutely horrible. Lovey keeps blaming me, but it isn’t me. I have no idea what it is or where it is coming from, but I promise you - it’s not me.

As a technology pastor, I am constantly working to make the mission of the church compatible with the technology that is used in the church. One of the blogs that I read regularly posted this article and I’m just buzzing about how to use these concepts in reaching the lost! Here’s the link to the article - I’d recommend reading it! I’ll probably work through this a bit later and try to make it relevant to to the work that I do.

A couple of quotes from the article that I want to remember for later!

The reality is that people are passionate about some things, and not at all about others. They love some activities and don’t care about others. The activity is what they’re passionate about (not the technology) and when they’re passionate enough they’ll learn the necessary technology as they find appropriate. Passion depends upon the activity in question.

It simply means that technology came along to help them practice their passion better, and so they adopted it because the value proposition made sense to them.

The activity is the thing to focus on, not the technology. Technology enables the activity, and people will get excited about the technology if they’re excited about the activity first and the benefits of the technology has been explained to them. But you don’t make passionate photographers by showing them lenses, you make passionate photographers by showing them pictures that rip your heart out.

A much larger population (although much more fractured) are those people who are already passionate about some activity or other, and can become passionate about new technology as it relates to that activity, but they just haven’t been introduced properly.

In other words, the task is not always to make people passionate about something, it’s to show them how technology (or your product, etc) can make them even better at what they’re passionate about.

Technology is merely the enabler of that activity.

So while yes, you should take advantage of early adopters, learning from them and focusing some of your effort on them, you can’t assume that just because people aren’t early adopters they’re not passionate. Passion is more about doing an activity well than it is about using the latest technology to do it.

I hope Joshua won’t mind me posting these quotes - they are just way too good to not share and I don’t want to miss them later!

By Mark Batterson

A couple of weeks ago, I received a twitter from Mark Batterson inviting fellow twitters and bloggers to write in for the opportunity to review his new book, Wild Goose Chase (www.chasethegoose.com). It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I quickly wrote in pleading my case so that I could be a reviewer!

I was selected (thank you to who ever selected me - I really appreciate it!) and got my book a couple of days ago. I sat down today and made the decision to read the book outside with a pen, a bowl of cherries, a Coke and my feet in the grass. In addition to gaining a respectable sunburn, I had the opportunity to read a book that encouraged and strengthened some of the key lessons that God is currently teaching me in my everyday life!

For those of you who don’t know, Mark Batterson is the lead pastor of Washington, DC’s National Community Church, widely recognized as one of America’s most innovative churches. NCC meets in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the city, as well as in a church-owned coffee house near Union Station. More than seventy percent of NCC’ers are single twentysomethings who live or work on Capitol Hill. Mark is the author of the best-selling In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day and a widely read blogger (www.markbatterson.com). He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife, Lora, and their three children.

I’ve read In a Pit With A Lion On a Snowy Day and followed Batterson’s tweets and his blog for quite a while now. I am impressed by his blog and with what he twitters about. As I began to read Wild Goose Chase, I was curious to see if his book would stand up to what I’ve read about him. It does in a big way.

Here’s the thing about Batterson, he doesn’t play games - he hits it hard and just doesn’t stop. I tried to start the book a couple of times this week but just couldn’t get any traction with it. I think the problem was that I didn’t have a pen to underline stuff with. Once I had a pen, and of course a fresh bowl of cherries, I was ready to go. After 2 hrs, the cherries were gone, the sunburn was radiating and the book was underlined so much that I’m going to have to get Lovey her own book so she can read it objectively.

There’s a couple things that I’m going to be taking away from this book. Here they are in no particular order:

• I have to be more interested in the adventure of following Christ, even if that pushes me far out of my comfort zone.
• When I’ve become bored with my spiritual life, chances are that I’m trying to have God serve MY purposes instead of serving God’s purposes.
• The practice of setting up an ebenezer or alter to serve as a constant reminder of God’s faithfulness is something that I need to put into regular practice in my life.
• I need to pace and take time for myself so that I don’t miss the divine appointments that God is strategically placing in my life.
• It’s not about what I can do for God, it’s what He has done for me that matters most. I know this - but knowing is not enough, I need to start living this out everyday.
• If I focus all my energy on my past failures, I will have no energy left over to dream kingdom dreams or pursue kingdom purposes. This one hurts because I spend a lot of energy driving truck over my past mistakes and I can’t do that if I truly desire to be kingdom minded.
• And finally, I’ve got to intentionally choose to live by faith so that my fears do not dictate my decisions.

There is so much that I could write about after reading this book. For his second book, I think Batterson hit a homerun. I specifically liked the continuity of thought between his first book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, and this one.

My recommendation is that you head on over to Amazon (www.amazon.com) and pick it up. If you haven’t read In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, pick that one up as well. I think both books are worth the read. I think that Wild Goose Chase bears a message that needs to be said and thought about in today’s world. Most importantly, I think that it will challenge you like it challenged me. So I guess now all I need to do now is start my own Wild Goose chase!

I just read this on Foxnews and if you have the ability to record this I would! I’ll be candid, I don’t really trust the the mainstream media for all the obvious reasons. I don’t really follow the political circus that much, I’m more of a Jesus for President kind of guy. However, I trust Rick Warren’s ability to seek the truth and to gain the truth. Rick Warren, if you don’t already know is the planting pastor of Saddleback Church and the author of several books including The Purpose Driven Life.

I sense this is important and so that’s why I’m advocating watching this!

Here’s the link if you want to read more about this!