Vote for JakeBouma.com in the Iowa Web Awards!

Exciting news in these parts: Your very own JakeBouma.com is up for a 2008 Iowa Web Award in the Best Religion Blog category.

It’s a tight race, and I’m up against some stiff competition, so I need your help!

Cast your vote for JakeBouma.com by clicking on this link and then checking the box next to my name and hitting “Vote”! Yes, it’s really that simple, and every vote counts — so what are you waiting for?!

Thanks in advance for your support. If I win, I’ll take you all out for dinner. Figuratively.

Oh, and while you’re there, take a look around the other categories and cast your votes!

• Jim Wallis is interviewed on Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly about how the financial crisis may affect the presidential campaign. “Wallis describes how the candidates should be framing the moral dimensions of the crisis and what principles he thinks voters should be considering at the ballot box.” I like this quote from early in the interview: “There’s a deeper issue here. I think the nation needs to be pastored through this… Pastoral care may be as important as politics here.” 09/29/2008

The Monday brief: Extravaganza edition

Highlight of the week: I found out this week that I’ll be presenting a workshop at the 2009 Extravaganza in New Orleans. The Extravaganza is a yearly a conference for ELCA youth workers, not unlike Youth Specialties’ National Youth Workers Conventions, but on a smaller scale.

Book(s) I’m reading: Still reading How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie and Tom Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America.

Music I’m digging: Still enjoying Matt Wertz’s Under Summer Sun (link opens in iTunes)

Something(s) that blew my mind: This picture of Barack Obama that was taken immediately before the first Presidential Debate. Reminded me of a Thomas Paine quote: “Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”

Ministry update: Getting ready for a couple of fall events: Church Youth Fest for the high schoolers and Blitz for the junior highers. Unfortunately they’re the same weekend, which means I can’t be at both. Thank God for killer volunteers.

Seminary/ordination update: Finishing up the application this week!

Looking forward to: A couple of things: William Fitzsimmons‘ new album releases tomorrow, the Cubs begin their path to the World Series on Wednesday night, I’m getting an iPhone on Wednesday or Thursday, and some amazing things are happening at my church (how’s that for vague?).

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That’s it for the Monday brief. Feel free to leave a comment, and if you’re feeling extra frisky, check out the Monday brief archives.

• Matt Cleaver ponders The Bailout, Education, and Youth Ministry. “What should youth ministry’s role be in situations like this? When significant things are happening in our society aren’t being covered by the schools should we step in? Why aren’t school addressing this?” 09/26/2008
• The Emergent/-ing Church Movement as a New Social Movement. “Churchy people may think this is about theological or methodological innovation — or both — but it’s really not. It’s really about new ways that human beings organize themselves, understand their world, and endeavor to change society. The ECM is a religious iteration of a much larger phenomenon, and it’s not going away anytime soon… no matter what you call it.” 09/24/2008

The Monday brief

Highlight of the week: I saw Man on Wire on Friday night, which was one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen (remember Mad Hot Ballroom?), and of course The Cubs clinching a playoff berth (in back-to-back years for the first time since 1908) was pretty huge.

Book(s) I’m reading: Still reading How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie and Tom Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America. It’s been a busy week.

Music I’m digging: Matt Wertz, Under Summer Sun (link opens in iTunes)

Something(s) that blew my mind: A 12-year old boy genius from Beaverton, Oregon, has developed a new 3D solar cell which “provides 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than the cutting-edge, three dimensional solar cell.” Also, this graph puts into perspective just how much new offshore drilling will really “help” US oil consumption (hint: it’s negligible at best).

Ministry update: Chugging along. The high schoolers have begun fundraising for the trip next summer. Junior highers are working through the 10 commandments; one commandment per week.

Seminary/ordination update: Nothing new.

Looking forward to: I know that I’m growing old, because I’m really looking forward to the first Presidential Debate this Friday night. Lame. Awesome, but lame.

That’s it for the Monday brief. Feel free to leave a comment, and if you’re feeling extra frisky, check out the Monday brief archives.

David Foster Wallace on self-centeredness

Poignant words from the late David Foster Wallace:¹

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here’s one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real — you get the idea. But please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called “virtues.” This is not a matter of virtue — it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

People who can adjust their natural default-setting this way are often described as being “well adjusted,” which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

May we all learn to be “well-adjusted”.

HT: Andrew Sullivan, via Frank Wilson.

1. Image pictured is David Foster Wallace, courtesy of Steve Rhodes. ↩

• Pro-Life and Pro-Obama. An utterly fantastic article from Will Samson… I suggest reading the entire thing. Several times. “Few American Evangelical Christians have felt called to condemn the blatant lies of the McCain-Palin team, even though there are over 50 verses in the Bible condemning lying, far more than the best-case scenario of ten verses of scripture that deal with abortion. There is a phrase for this – it is called moral relativism.” 09/21/2008

1 Corinthians 13 paraphrased for youth workers

If I speak using the language of Rob Bell and Doug Fields, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.¹

If I have a years of youth ministry experience and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have hundreds of students in my youth group, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all my time to my church and surrender my body during youth group games, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are empty programs, they will cease; where there are hollow relationships, they will be stilled; where there is indifference, it will pass away. For we know in part and we hope in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in the bumper of a 16-passenger van; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love… and overnight events. But the point is, the greatest of these is love.

1. I got this idea from James McGrath’s 1 Corinthians 13 paraphrased for academics. I also found this video later, and any similarities are totally coincidental. ↩

• Ten surprising things Darwin said about religious faith. “‘It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.’ (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)” 09/19/2008
• Religious faith may prompt the brain to put a hurt on pain. “‘Our data suggest that religious belief alters the brain in a way that changes how a person responds to pain,’ says Oxford neuroscientist and study coauthor Irene Tracey… In contrast, professed atheists and agnostics derived no pain relief from viewing the same religious image while getting uncomfortably zapped on the hand.” So basically, atheism is literally painful. 09/17/2008
• Obama’s Youth Movement is a great article that discusses how and why Millennials could play a key role for Obama.

  Campus activists… view the Obama campaign as a means to catalyze a new progressive youth movement among the Millennial (18- to 29-year-old) generation that they hope, unlike the political crusades of the 1960s youth rebellion, will be part of a broader, multigenerational coalition… With 44 million eligible voters, the Millennials comprise almost one-quarter of the potential electorate.

  Related: Tony Jones thinks Obama needs to honestly talk about abortion in order to win the younger evangelical vote. 09/16/2008

The Monday brief

Highlight of the week: I had a pretty good week, but Carolos Zambrano’s no-hitter for the Cubs on Sunday night pretty much topped it off.

Book(s) I’m reading: I’m still reading How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I’m also a ways into Tom Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America, which I’m reading with a couple of friends.

Music I’m digging: Peter Bradley Adams, Leavetaking (link opens in iTunes)

Something that blew my mind: Did I already mention Carlos Zambrano’s no-hitter?

Ministry update: CREW and Eikon both started last week and they were both lots of fun! Next summer my high school students will be going to the ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans, and registration opened Monday “morning” at 12:01am. By the time I was done registering my group at 1:30am, more than 10,000 of the 36,000 spots had already been registered. I registered 26 students and 5 adults, which I’m super excited about.

Seminary/ordination update: Not much to update here. I’m working on getting my recommendations into Luther Seminary, and I have a couple of other things to do before my application is complete.

Looking forward to: At this very moment, I’m looking forward to seeing Burn After Reading in a little bit.

That’s it for the Monday brief. Feel free to leave a comment, and if you’re feeling extra frisky, check out the Monday brief archives.

• Here’s a nifty little tool called the World Names Profiler that provides a map and statistics about where your last name is most popular around the world. “Bouma” is the most popular in the Netherlands (duh) with a 398 FPM; it’s only 7 FPM in the United States. 09/11/2008

A trip down yearbook lane…

Your turn… Yearbook yourself.

Related: Type-ified and I’ve been Simpsonized.

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