I am not a political person. I don’t care much for politics. I normally don’t like politicians. I normally don’t pay much attention to what is going on the political world. I am normally bored by anything political. I will never win an argument on why someone should win a certain office. And, I don’t know much about John McCain or Barack Obama.

BUT, I am sick and tired of the way the media has attacked Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter. They are trying to find every way possible, and every piece of dirt on Palin so that they can throw her as far under the bus as possible. Yes, Sarah Palin is a sinner. Her daughter is a sinner. John McCain is a sinner. And guess what? Barack Obama is a sinner. Joe Biden is a sinner. WE ALL HAVE DIRT! WE ALL SIN. WE ALL HAVE DONE THINGS WE ARE ASHAMED OF!. I’m sure that Sarah Palin would prefer her daughter wasn’t pregnant. But people make mistakes.

What frustrates me even more is how much coverage the media provides for people like Brittney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and others such as Brittney Spears’ sister who is pregnant. They make these people seem like the coolest people in the world. Here they are drugged up, drunk, partying hard, telling stories about their sex lives, having numerous kids outside of marriage, but yet the media glorifies the lives that they lead. But when the daughter of a potential president is pregnant, the media goes CRAZY. They have been relentless on their attack of Palin’s family and Palin’s history as governor. I wonder if Barack had a daughter who was pregnant outside of marriage if it would be made in to the same story that it is now. What do you think?

You don’t have to dig very deep to find sin in peoples lives. We are all fallen and unfortunately we have all done things we would be embarrassed about if others knew. Here’s some scripture for all of you haters out there.

John 8:7 “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

So, it seems that this church that had the $3 million lottery prize donated to them is a pretty neat church from what I can tell. I found it interesting to find this on the front of their webpage this morning.

Regarding our recent news:

As you can imagine, this news is being carried by media outlets nationwide and we are getting bombarded with requests and solicitations. The funds we are expecting have already been allocated, and we are distributing the funds to charities and non-profit organizations. We are being made aware of the needs of hundreds of people (more and more every minute!) and it’s not our desire to be insensitive, but 100% of what we are giving away has already been spoken for.

It sucks that when a church (or any business or person for that matter) gets a large sum of money, people come crawling out of the woodwork. Fortunately, it seems that True North has made the right deciscions on what to do with the money, and it sounds like an awesome blessing from God in my opinion.

Check out this post from one of their pastors. It explains what they are going to be doing with the money, and I found it to be a very interesting and great post.

You may remember reading my post a couple of weeks ago about the church who declined to accept an offering from a guy who won the lottery.

Well, here is another story that came across the news wires today. This guy won $3 MILLION! What’s even more incredible is that he gave it ALL to his church. And they actually ACCEPTED it. The church, True North Community Church in New York, will receive $102,000 each year until the year 2028.  The church has promised to give the first years donation away to charity, and then give at least 20% each additional year to various charities. According to the story, some of the money will be used to build a new building for the church.

The church has 650 members and was founded 3 years ago. I guess it sounds like they’ve got a good idea of what they will do with the money. I still think that if I was in this situation I would accept this gift, but I think you have to be extremely careful in order to keep the money from changing or diverting the church from its original purpose.

Each Tuesday morning, it’s guaranteed that I will begin the day by looking on I-Tunes to check the new releases. Normally I scroll through the main page first, then click through the folk and Christian pages. I don’t typically keep up with upcoming albums unless it’s somebody I really love, but even then, I tend to be behind on those types of things.

This morning I noticed that Jars of Clay has a new 5-song EP out. It’s called “Closer - EP.” I rarely buy anything off I-Tunes that I haven’t been planning in advance to buy, but this little album was definitely an exception to that rule. I previewed every song and within 2 minutes had the whole thing downloaded.

This is the first stuff that they have put out since becoming independent of their music label. It seems to have an experimental/electronic type feel to certain parts of the short EP. It still has a “band” feel to it, but with some neat instrumentation/electronic stuff thrown underneath it all.

Jars of Clay

You’ll recognize 2 songs from their very first album - Love Song for a Savior and Flood. Both have been re-done in a way that stays true to the original, but doesn’t sound 13 years old. I love the new version of Love Song for a Savior, but Flood on the other hand is not very well-done in my opinion.

When I was in middle school learning to play guitar, Jars of Clay’s first album had to be one of my favorites ever. I listened to it over and over, but never tired of hearing those songs. I didn’t like most of their material that came after that until the album Who We Are Instead. Good Monsters is the only other album that I really like. But nothing will ever touch the greatness of that first album.

With this new EP, there are basically only 3 new songs (1 of which isn’t completely new, it apparently was played at the end of some documentary called Sons of Lwala), but each one is a great addition to the Jars of Clay library. If it’s any indication of the future direction that they are headed as an independent band, I would say that the future looks bright.

John Mayer Charlotte

Setlist:

Bigger Than My Body
Belief
I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)
Crossroads
Wheel
Free Falling
Good Love is On the Way
Mercy
Vultures
Find Another You -> Stitched Up
No Such Thing -> Why Georgia
Waiting on the World to Change
Gravity
-encore-
Who Did You Think I Was
Boy In The Bubble
Say

So Ashley and I went to see old Johnny Boy last night in Charlotte. I’ve spent the day so far trying to rate the concert experience. We had great seats, so nothing to complain about there.
On the way home from the concert, I thought, man that was great, but the more I think about it I feel like it wasn’t as great as I hoped it would be.

First of all, I didn’t think that the sound mix was that great. From where we sat the bass was very muddy. Of course the kick was dominating the mix. I don’t have a huge problem with that, but I seldom heard what the bass player was doing. And you know that Johnny Boy’s guitar sounded great. At times it was a little ear-piercing, but that doesn’t bother me. His tone is something amazing though. There aren’t many pickers out there with a better tone than what he’s working with. I don’t think it the sound was a problem because of where we were sitting, I walked around some and it seemed the same way across the board.

The set list was very intersting. He did 4 covers. 2 which I didn’t know (one Paul Simon, one slow blues jam that I didn’t know). 1 which I kind of knew (Crossroads). And 1 that I knew (Free Fallin’), but I really don’t like his version of it at all. The set consisted of 16 songs total (4 of which were covers). The ones that were missing were Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, I Don’t Need No Doctor, The Heart of Life, and Stop This Train. He started the show with Bigger Than My Body which was surprising. Gravity, Belief, I Don’t Trust Myself With Loving You, and Vultures, which are probably my favorites off of the newest album, all sounded great. One of my older favorite songs from John Mayer is Wheel. This was probably my favorite song of the night, and one that I didn’t expect to hear. But it really was beautifully done. Fortunately he played 2 songs from the John Mayer Trio - Good Love Is On The Way and Who Did You Think I Was. The 2 songs couldn’t have been farther apart from each other. Good Love Is On The Way was awesome with the full band. Who Did You Think I Was completley sucked. He did the song with just his electric by himself as the first song of the encore. It just didn’t work at all in my opinion. The encore as a whole was a major let down - Who Did You Think I Was, Paul Simon cover, and Say.

Am I glad I went? heck yeah.
Would I go see him again? only if it was in columbia.

I’m glad that I had the chance to see him, but I don’t think it lived up to my expectations. Watching the new DVD on a huge flat screen with a great sound system would have been just as good. Maybe he was just having a hard night from his recent break up with Jennifer Anniston - who knows.

Here’s my grade for the concert:
Sound: C
Lights/Production: B+
Set List: B-
Overall: B

Yesterday, August 18, 2008, Troy Carpenter passed away peacefully. He was taken off of life support and died shortly after. Thanks to those of you who have been praying for him and his family during this time. I know many of you who visit here did not know Troy, but you would have been better off if you had been able to spend some time with him.

If I had to sum up the life of Troy in word, “generosity” would be the word I would chose. Troy was an incredibly generous person. I won’t go into the list of all the things that Troy did for me or for the church, but he was very giving of his resources.  Troy wasn’t very interested in church until he started coming to Village Church. He ended up being more dedicated to the church than just about anybody else. He also loved the music. He ran sound for the band each week, and always did a great job even though he had never had any experience doing it before. He was tons of fun to work with each week. He would always say, “I like y’all’s version better than the original.” I always told him he was too nice, or he was listening to the wrong version.

Troy also loved the Gamecocks. We went to numerous basketball and football games together and had some great times doing that. To say the least, it will be hard to be at any games and not think about Troy.

It’s always hard to accept the passing of someone you care for, but thankfully, we can rejoice in the fact that he is in heaven today and that we will one day join him there. Please continue to pray for his wife Lydia as she deals with this. It’s easy for me to say that God is in control and He won’t let go of us, but I imagine it’s much harder for someone who just lost their spouse.

Here are some words from a recent post with some lyrics to a great song from Jars of Clay

So, weep not for me my friends,When my time below does end
For my life belongs to Him Who will raise the dead again.

If you live anywhere in South Carolina, chances are that it rained all day last Wednesday. This was also the day where I happened to drive across a screw somewhere in between the house and work. As a proud member of AAA, I did what any real man would do - I dialed the phone, and asked them to come change my tire. I had a suit on and it was raining. I WAS NOT CHANGING THAT TIRE!

So once I got the little donut on, I drove to the tire place to get the tire fixed up. However, I wasn’t that lucky. The tire just barely pierced the sidewall, which totally ruined the tire. So I had to pay $98 to get a new tire. I learned that if I had paid $20 when I bought the tires that I would not have been charged for the new tire replacement. Lesson learned! Thankfully this place has always taken good care of me, and fixed my alignment for free as well. It just sucks that I had to pay for a new tire, when the old one was less than 6 months old. YIPEE!!

So, there is this story in the news today of a man who tried to donate $600,000 to his church in Florida. It was 10% of his recent lottery winnings. In an interesting turn of events, the church denied taking the money.

I tried to put myself in the shoes of a church pastor, and this seems like it’d be a difficult place to be. I think I’d end up taking the money. Don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not, but if the money could be used to further God’s kingdom, then what’s the problem. Pastor’s aren’t supposed to know who is giving what, where they got their money from, or anything else right? With that being said, I do understand why the church wouldn’t take an offering from lottery proceeds. To do that opens up a whole new can of worms. People might be saying things like, “Next up that church will be taking an offering from Jim Beam, Budweiser, and Playboy magazine.” However, I seriously doubt any of those institutions will be giving any of their profits to the church, but that won’t stop people from making that argument.

All of this brings up another question. Should pastors know who is giving what in the church?

Here is what I think. If you are a leader in the church, I think the pastor has a right to know what your giving record is. I think that is a good sign of the commitment level to ones church. But, for a pastor to know the giving records of everyone in the church, that could pose significant problems in the future. Mainly, that pastor could be inclined to treat others in a way more special than that of the rest of the congregation. Even if that pastor tries to shield himself from treating people differently, it’s bound to happen. I don’t even know people’s giving records, and I am prone to treating people differently. Yes, I know I am sinful. Unfortunately, I believe that if we all looked at each others giving records, there would be a lot of people embarrassed. I think we’d be embarrassed to see just HOW MUCH some people give, and HOW LITTLE some other people give. Especially when we line that up with the truth that Jesus gave HIS LIFE for us, and we can’t even manage to give 10% back to HIM. Now that’s embarrassing.

That’s all for now, I’m headed to the nearest gas station to pick up my Powerball ticket. (Don’t freak out Mama Dody (grandma) I’m just kidding.)

I’d love to know what some other people think about all of this!

**As far as a pastor looking or not looking at giving records, I have no scripture to prove a point either way. This isn’t absolute truth that I’m speaking. This is my opinion, and how I personally feel. Please understand I’m not trying to say what is right and what is wrong, but if you’re worried about your pastor viewing what you have given in the last year, chances are it’s because you’re not giving!! **

I just read a great story/interview with a son of an Islamic leader who converted to Christianity. It’s an amazing story that you should go read. There is also a video that you can watch of the interview.

Islamic man converts to christianity