I was the drummer for ZZ Top...

...in my dream last night.

Does it have anything to do with being in graduate school?

In my dream I landed the gig of drummer for ZZ Top in order to fill in for one night. Who knows what happened to their real drummer? At this point in their career, the band had pulled a Charlie Daniels and gone Christian.

So, they were getting set up at this megachurch somewhere in middle America. Sound checks and testing of equipment and all that was going on when I arrived on the scene. I walked down the aisle to where the stage was set and I saw the drumset I was to play later than night. It was a big and shiny drumset (with classic ZZ Top furry stuff on it), the best one I had ever seen in my life. It was centered on the stage for everyone to see. I would be flanked by the two bearded gutarists.

Above and slightly behind the set was a huge screen with the titles of the songs we were to play that night. "Good News," "God," "Gospel Rock," "More God." The song titles were exactly what you might think former southern rockers who had been around the drugs and alcohol block about a hundred time and then suddely turned Christian might title their songs.

There was an excitement brewing as more tech people and stage hands made the set look more and more ready for a show. The sun was setting, it was near evening, and soon people would be arriving to see the show.

In the dream, I never knew how I got to be invited to be the drummer for ZZ Top. We had no prior connection. I'd never met anyone in the band or associated with the band. I was just there and knew I had agreed to be their drummer for the night.

Why I never mentioned the fact that I don't know how to drum is the most perplexing part of the dream. My anxiety surged as the time neared to put on the show. There was a voice screaming in my mind, "Tell them you can't drum! You can still get out of this." But I didn't listen to it. Time was drawing near, but I just couldn't utter the words. The inevitible humiliation was poised to swallow me whole.

And then it was the next day and I was at a Sunday morning church service at the very same megachurch I was supposed to perform at the night before. The service had yet to begin and people were milling about and I saw Spence Smith (perhaps this Spence Smith), also milling about. In my dream (and was it also in real life?) Spense was a very talented drummer. I couldn't believe I saw him and was so excited to tell him something. I told him that I wished I had seen him the night before because I could have landed him a terrific gig with the newly Christianized ZZ Top.

Spence was uninterested, depressed, and hungover (not at all like the real life Spense Smith). He had the skills and talent, but too much was in his way to ever be interested in doing something like that. He shrugged and didn't really want to talk.

The dream ended without any sense that I did actually drum that night with ZZ Top, and if I did, how poorly I performed.

What is clear is that I survived the situation enough to make it to church with a relatively in tact self-esteem.

All of you dream interpreters out there, give it to me.

This is genius

Click here to see what is genius.

He Would Be 61

My dad would have turned 61 today. Today marks the second birthday of his we have had to miss because of his death. I took a canvass chair out to the cemetary, stuck it in the melting snow next to his grave stone, slouched down on it and wept.

It's a warm day for January in Minnesota. Forty-one degrees gets the snow to melting pretty fast. It rained a little as well. It was the kind of light sprinkle that makes you think or even say, "Is it raining?" It was the perfect day to visit dad at the cemetary.

Were he alive still today, we would have eaten pizza, watched a football game, and talked about politics. I would have asked him if he thought America could be grown up enough to have a Black man or a woman as president and he would have spoken cynically to both sides of the issues, but being careful not to offend his idea of how Republican I am - even though he would be mistaken.

I would have asked him his opinion on what I should do for a supporting progam in my PhD program. He wouldn't be able to offer any good advice in specific, but he would have made me feel great just for being in a PhD prgram.

We would have downed too many cans of Diet Pepsi, eaten too much pizza and laughed a bit - maybe a lot. My wife and kids would have been there part of the time, but not all of it. It would have been a good day.

But none of that is going to happen. The days of the constant work of repair with my father are over. The constant work of repair means that we were making up for lost time in little things like having conversations about this and that. These conversations, no matter what they were about, would wear away at his regret for being a lousy father when I was younger and being a somewhat incapable father when I was older. They were his chance to release some guilt and my chance to connect.

I love my father and always have. There were times when I hated him and loved him with equal intensities and at the very same time, but I never didn't love him.

My love for him today comes in the form of missing him, of feeling a sense of dread at times when I am stressed out, of telling stories about him to my children. This love is not so pleasant at times and there is this little piece of me that wishes I never cared. But the larger, wiser, spiritual part of me holds no regrets. If the truth about the Spirit is that only through love there can be redemption, then love is worth every bit of pain connected to it.

...and then this came out

"You know, you'd think it would be easy for a guy to know himself, but it is getting more difficult. Don't kids always think that adults have arrived? Human development theory says you get all of this identity stuff sorted out in adolescence, but I don't believe it. If God has set eternity in our hearts, as it says somewhere in the good book, then who are we to think that we can sort ourselves out? What little we solve in moments of insight and moments of integration gives us only enough sense to finally recognize that complexity which we could never have understood as complexity prior to the insight.

Perhaps this is learning the depth of one's identity, perhaps it is the unraveling of one's identity and experienced as anxiety, perhaps it is what it means to be fallen, perhaps it is what it means to be redeemed one little piece at a time.

All I know is that when I hang on to the idea that I am going to arrive at some sort of permanent identity, full of peace and immutable, it is an invitation for disappointment, disillusionment, and fear. When I find the courage within me to embrace the unknown (of this world and of myself and of God) and release my felt responsibility to always and only succeed, then I do much better."

A Little Something

Some Twin Cities Photos

It's About Time. The NHL finally gets it.

Must Christmas end? Or should the work now begin?

Two books for the new year. Book 1. Book 2.

Church Innovations

I have this hunch that there are some really creative and innovative things that churches are doing in this world of ours. I would like to get your participation in answering the following question:

What innovative things are churches or ministries doing?

By innovative I do not mean that the innovation has to be something necessarily new, but rather something that might be challenging or risky or require creativity. What I am looking for is outside the box efforts that might be experimental or unconventional. For example, using the church building for a junior high lock-in will fall into the not innovative category. However, using the church building as a service center for the growing population of immigrant workers in the community would be an innovative use of the building.

If it helps, below is a framework for thinking. Use it or don't. But please share as much as you know about the church or ministry you find innovative. Also, if it is appropriate (usually it will be), please provide a url or link to the church or ministry if you have it.

1. Innovative use of church facilities.

2. Innovative service in local community (within 2 miles of the central location of the building).

3. Innovative use of budget or capital campaign (ie not to build more structures for member use).

4. Innovative local cross-cultural outreach.

5. Innovative use of volunteers (not teaching Bible class or VBS).

6. Innovative work or ministry fighting poverty.

7. Innovative ministry collaborations across denominational lines.

8. Innovative staffing.

9. Innovative use of worship arts (praise team and powerpoints is not innovative. Themed art gallery of work by church members or local artists is innovative).

10. Innovative ways of telling the story of Jesus (in any context) outside of traditional use of sermons.

Finally, I would love for you to copy this post and post this to your blog (if you're feeling generous and interested in the topic). It would be really cool to share and learn from each other.

Christian Servants

We had a wonderful Christmas breakfast loaded with made to order everything. It was fabulous. Afterwards, all four of us shared clean up duties.

As she was carrying her plate to the kitchen, my 9 year old daughter said, "Sometimes I wish that we had servants." Clearly this was the low point of her Christmas breakfast.

I felt the need to respond to her comment in a teachable moment kind of way. I told her that Jesus was a servant and so serving is being kind of like Jesus.

"Well," she said without missing a beat, "then we need to make sure we have Christian servants."

Clearly she had a teachable moment of her own that she felt the need to impose upon me.

Christians Need Christmas

Garrison Keillor says, in his usual satire and critique, that Christmas is that special time of the year when Christians around the world do good things in order to make up for all of the cruelties they have done throughout hisotry in the name of God.

Christians need Christmas. It is a reminder of the kinds if risks God takes in order to love the people he has created. To entrust himself as a baby to the people who he created is insane - and perfect. To place oneself at risk for the sake of love is beautiful and crazy at the same time. Christians need this Christmas reminder to take risks for the sake of love.

Jesus entered the world vulnerable and found a way to remain vulnerable. He exercised power by being innocent, but wise. He could see the religious and political power structures for what they were and did not allow them to make decisions for him. Rather, he allowed those systems to assist him in his plan - which in no way fit the religious and political agendas of the day.

Why can't Christianity treat religion and politics like Jesus did?

Why can't it be Christmas all year round?

Mike Huckabee

Click here to see me and my good friend Mike Huckabee. We go way back.

Greatest Christmas Movies

What are your top 5 Christmas movies?