Today I had the great fortune of being in a town in Illinois that has a Taco John's. Being able to eat lunch there made my week - maybe even my month. If you don't know, Taco John's is a fast food restaurant specializing in Mexican food. Think Taco Bell, but gloriously delicious. Almost as good as Amigos.
In spite of a huge difference in population, Illinois only has 13 Taco Johns locations while my home state of Nebraska claims 39. It is almost unfair of the fine people of Nebraska to hoard them so.
Today I noticed the illustrious Mr. Todd Zastrow discussing the merits of another regional Mexican fast food joint - Taco Bueno. I can imagine there are similarities and it begs the question - is this all just a matter of familiarity?
As a Nebraskan, I love Taco John's and Amigo's even though I rarely get to enjoy them. I also have an unnatural affinity for a little place named Runza - a chain that makes their business selling, of all things, German stuffed sandwiches consisting of dough stuffed with beef, onions, sauerkraut, and happiness.
Because I am from McCook, I am also a historically frequent patron of Mac's Drive In. Since moving away, I have never missed the chance to eat there while in town. The same is true of most people from that area. Our experience there has clued us into the fact that Mac's serves the best little hamburgers in the universe. Their onion rings, mushrooms, fries, and more are also impossible to top.
According to me... but maybe I am biased - these are some of my favorites from growing up. That isn't to say they aren't wonderful places to eat and that Taco John's and Amigo's render Taco Bell basically useless - because those things are fact. I am merely suggesting that nostalgia and the comfort of their familiarity add to the experience.
Seeing familiar faces behind the counter at Mac's are a part of that experience. I don't recall a time that I have visited Mac's on a trip home without running into at least a few people or groups of people that I know and am excited to stop and talk to.
It's like that.
I had been talking up Mac's to my wife so much at one point before a recent visit that I started to wonder if I was overselling it. Dining there the next week confirmed that I had not been overselling the place in the least.
I have stories attached to my experiences with the places I named.
I remember the time when I used my drink cup to get an unhealthy amount of nacho cheese from Amigo's lobby cheese pump for the bus ride home after some school event in high school.
I also remember the time I was eating a Taco John's taco while driving in North Platte. I was so distracted by said taco that I ran a red light and narrowly escaped having my '89 Ford Escort crushed.
Today, I consider myself an expert in eating-while-driving, but even 10+ years after that incident I remember it to the extent of changing my behavior. At lunchtime, I enjoyed my Taco John's tacos from the comfort of my car... safely parked in its own cozy little spot.
Learning from experiences and mistakes is maybe the essence of personal growth. In my life, though I have seen this extrapolated to a comical extent.
One bad experience often causes people to swear off a wealth of potentially rich episodes of life.
The fact that I ran a red light while eating a taco does not lead me to believe I should no longer enjoy a taco at all - just that I shouldn't drive while distracted by something so mouth-watering. At the same time, one fantastic taco-eating experience shouldn't convince me that I should only eat taco's at the Taco John's in North Platte, Nebraska.
The world beyond Taco John's is full of scrumptious tacos, and even the menu AT Taco John's holds wonders that exceed their tacos - namely Potato Ole's.
If I had never tried something beyond that, I would never know the wonders that are Amigo's Chicken Soft Taco and Crisp Meat Burrito, and my life would be much smaller for it.
Learning from experiences, negative and positive, isn't equitable to being limited by them.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The Making of a Minister
In the past couple of years, several books that use numbers, real life examples, and hard facts to find the root causes for different trends have have been published and popularized.
The book "UnChristian" used polls and the resulting statistics in an effort to analyze how people see Christians.
"Breakout Churches" looked at churches who had moved from a state of stagnancy to a growing state and examined how exactly that change took place.
I am currently reading a book titled "Outliers" that studies the true underlying causes for success.
This is a pretty prevalent style of writing in recent years - maybe before but I wouldn't know - and it leads the reader to some really cool insights and a new way of thinking. Maybe this is why I came to identify a peculiar trend I was familiar with from a few years back and ask the question - why would so many students from such a small church in such a small town choose ministry in such a short amount of time?
I won't suggest that this blog is anything like those books or even that it is written well, but it was inspired by them in a way. Read on.
If you are from Nebraska, you may familiar with all this, but it may be that you are not - in which case that information is irrelevant. I talked to my friend Arick today to get some of the details about this church. Arick is currently preaching at a church in Washington - and he is one of no fewer than 7 who are either in full time ministry or are married to someone who is... all in the span of 5 high school classes.
This town has a population of about 850 people and the church wasn't any bigger than 200. They didn't have a second minister on staff until these students were at a fairly advanced age. The youth ministry was larger than what is normal for the church size, but not exceptionally so. Taken at face value, it doesn't look like there was much reason for most of them to make the decisions they did. Some very large churches with great youth ministries aren't sending people into full time ministry or Bible College at that rate.
Now, I know the preaching minister at the time was a great guy, and the couple doing the youth ministry was doing a really good job. I also know that many of these students came from good families with parents who had attended Bible College themselves. A few indicators of this sort of thing existed, but I think those things exist elsewhere without such results.
From 1999-2004, no fewer than 17 of their graduating Seniors went on to attend Bible College - with most of them earning at least an associate's degree. At least 5 are currently in full time ministry, and two ended up marrying guys who are currently full time ministers. One more was an army chaplain and another has spent time doing ministry. Those are not standard numbers.
While I was in college, three different churches sent abnormal amounts of students to school. This one and another were small towns with no great explanation as to why... except that both had this in common - they gave their students great scholarships.
The town about which I am writing has a "Timothy Fund" that pays 1/2 tuition. They were serious about wanting their students to continue their Bible education and continue into ministry.
I would suggest that many more are called to full time vocational ministry than ever do it. It seems like this church managed to narrow the gap between the dids and the didn'ts - at least in this span of 5 years.
Yeah, that small church and small town happened to have an exceptional group of students - but I would venture a guess that half of them wouldn't or couldn't have attended Bible college or gone into ministry without their church's bold statement.
If churches really want their students to take a bold step, they need to put their money where their mouth is!
The book "UnChristian" used polls and the resulting statistics in an effort to analyze how people see Christians.
"Breakout Churches" looked at churches who had moved from a state of stagnancy to a growing state and examined how exactly that change took place.
I am currently reading a book titled "Outliers" that studies the true underlying causes for success.
This is a pretty prevalent style of writing in recent years - maybe before but I wouldn't know - and it leads the reader to some really cool insights and a new way of thinking. Maybe this is why I came to identify a peculiar trend I was familiar with from a few years back and ask the question - why would so many students from such a small church in such a small town choose ministry in such a short amount of time?
I won't suggest that this blog is anything like those books or even that it is written well, but it was inspired by them in a way. Read on.
If you are from Nebraska, you may familiar with all this, but it may be that you are not - in which case that information is irrelevant. I talked to my friend Arick today to get some of the details about this church. Arick is currently preaching at a church in Washington - and he is one of no fewer than 7 who are either in full time ministry or are married to someone who is... all in the span of 5 high school classes.
This town has a population of about 850 people and the church wasn't any bigger than 200. They didn't have a second minister on staff until these students were at a fairly advanced age. The youth ministry was larger than what is normal for the church size, but not exceptionally so. Taken at face value, it doesn't look like there was much reason for most of them to make the decisions they did. Some very large churches with great youth ministries aren't sending people into full time ministry or Bible College at that rate.
Now, I know the preaching minister at the time was a great guy, and the couple doing the youth ministry was doing a really good job. I also know that many of these students came from good families with parents who had attended Bible College themselves. A few indicators of this sort of thing existed, but I think those things exist elsewhere without such results.
From 1999-2004, no fewer than 17 of their graduating Seniors went on to attend Bible College - with most of them earning at least an associate's degree. At least 5 are currently in full time ministry, and two ended up marrying guys who are currently full time ministers. One more was an army chaplain and another has spent time doing ministry. Those are not standard numbers.
While I was in college, three different churches sent abnormal amounts of students to school. This one and another were small towns with no great explanation as to why... except that both had this in common - they gave their students great scholarships.
The town about which I am writing has a "Timothy Fund" that pays 1/2 tuition. They were serious about wanting their students to continue their Bible education and continue into ministry.
I would suggest that many more are called to full time vocational ministry than ever do it. It seems like this church managed to narrow the gap between the dids and the didn'ts - at least in this span of 5 years.
Yeah, that small church and small town happened to have an exceptional group of students - but I would venture a guess that half of them wouldn't or couldn't have attended Bible college or gone into ministry without their church's bold statement.
If churches really want their students to take a bold step, they need to put their money where their mouth is!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
You aren't right unless you know why...
In the last few days an all-too-common occurrence has revealed to me a nice little epiphany - you aren't right unless you know why.
We have no shortage of loud mouths proclaiming "truth" today, and it is pretty difficult to find two mouths proclaiming that same truth if you change to a different media outlet. Thousands of leaders each have millions of followers who buy into their mantras whole hog. I suppose most of all that is a matter of opinion. I can't say what governmental processes will and will not work, and neither can anyone else. The best we can do is to try different things and say - well that didn't work either...
I suppose I don't have a huge problem with anyone claiming to have the answer, but my recent experiences have left me overexposed to something of a different ilk - those who have answers that, by all accounts, are accurate but have no reasons why.
When you take a math test, no teachers let you just write down the answers without showing at least part of HOW you got those answers. Putting down an accurate solution doesn't prove you can do long division - it proves that either you can use calculator or that you have a good view of your neighbor's paper.
What really caught my attention was someone stating absolutes, then using faulty reasoning to prove said absolutes. To be honest, the reasoning wasn't even quite faulty - it was closer to being silly or just plain nonexistent.
In another instance, I heard someone make a crazy claim, then cite a source for that claim. In taking the simple steps to see if there was any credence to the claim, I realized that it was just as ridiculous as I initially surmised - there was absolutely no connection between the source and the suggestion. It would have been laughable if it weren't quite so disturbing.
Later on, someone questioned the conclusion the first person came to. I was hoping to listen in and find out that the initial explanation had just been an incomplete or poorly worded version of what the person had said - but their only response was to say, oh you are reading into that a bit too much... basically the answer was, no I am right and you aren't. period. What?
Show your work. I know that, in this case, you are actually right. Do you KNOW that?
All too often, I think we fail to question the conclusions we are delivered. Political. Religious. Academic. Social. These answers need to stand up to your own scrutiny otherwise they have zero chance of standing up to the scrutiny of someone else.
Everyone wants to be right so bad that they rush to the end. They find someone to tell them what is right so they can simply point at them and say, that guy is right. Sadly, often "that guy" can't even retrace the steps from conjecture to proclamation.
In the end, it isn't all about being right - it is also about knowing the reasons why.
Ask the Pharisees...
We have no shortage of loud mouths proclaiming "truth" today, and it is pretty difficult to find two mouths proclaiming that same truth if you change to a different media outlet. Thousands of leaders each have millions of followers who buy into their mantras whole hog. I suppose most of all that is a matter of opinion. I can't say what governmental processes will and will not work, and neither can anyone else. The best we can do is to try different things and say - well that didn't work either...
I suppose I don't have a huge problem with anyone claiming to have the answer, but my recent experiences have left me overexposed to something of a different ilk - those who have answers that, by all accounts, are accurate but have no reasons why.
When you take a math test, no teachers let you just write down the answers without showing at least part of HOW you got those answers. Putting down an accurate solution doesn't prove you can do long division - it proves that either you can use calculator or that you have a good view of your neighbor's paper.
What really caught my attention was someone stating absolutes, then using faulty reasoning to prove said absolutes. To be honest, the reasoning wasn't even quite faulty - it was closer to being silly or just plain nonexistent.
In another instance, I heard someone make a crazy claim, then cite a source for that claim. In taking the simple steps to see if there was any credence to the claim, I realized that it was just as ridiculous as I initially surmised - there was absolutely no connection between the source and the suggestion. It would have been laughable if it weren't quite so disturbing.
Later on, someone questioned the conclusion the first person came to. I was hoping to listen in and find out that the initial explanation had just been an incomplete or poorly worded version of what the person had said - but their only response was to say, oh you are reading into that a bit too much... basically the answer was, no I am right and you aren't. period. What?
Show your work. I know that, in this case, you are actually right. Do you KNOW that?
All too often, I think we fail to question the conclusions we are delivered. Political. Religious. Academic. Social. These answers need to stand up to your own scrutiny otherwise they have zero chance of standing up to the scrutiny of someone else.
Everyone wants to be right so bad that they rush to the end. They find someone to tell them what is right so they can simply point at them and say, that guy is right. Sadly, often "that guy" can't even retrace the steps from conjecture to proclamation.
In the end, it isn't all about being right - it is also about knowing the reasons why.
Ask the Pharisees...
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