I need to change the look of this site. I meant to do it a while ago. This look was just supposed to be temporary. But things come up. You know?

I’m in Orlando at SETC. Drew and I have watched almost 500 theater students audition for summer work. It’s exhausting. Why? Our theory is that it’s because they’re not that entertaining. Everyone’s monologues sound about the same. Everyone’s songs sound about the same. Everyone moves the same. Everyone talks the same. And the worst part is that it’s not how people really sound, move or talk. How is your performance based in any kind of truth or reality when you look so fake, like your acting? It is encouraging to talk to other Christ-lovers down here doing their thing. It’s also nice to touch base with the other two members of our Christian theater triumverate: Tonya from the Holy Land Experience and Sandy from Sight and Sound. By the way, Sight and Sound will be opening their second theater in Branson, MO in 2008. Some of you should consider checking them out. It is also great to see friends and even employees or former employees down here checking out other stuff. It’s good for them and good for us for them to be doing other things. They become better which makes us better. After all, we’re not Shakespeare. That’s for sure.

Which brings me to: this time of year at Student Life. It’s recruitment/hiring season. This is never easy for me. It’s tough to find the balance in making the right decisions. The decisions that best serve the company and the individual which ultimately results, hopefully, in the decision that best serves God and that He desires. I actually mean that. That’s the approach I take. Still, it’s never easy and sometimes it can suck. If people really had insight into the process and what all we go through, I think they might feel differently about us. “Respect” and “appreciation” are some words that come to mind, though from what I hear, “fear” and “resentment” and “pride” are words that are probably more fitting for how people feel. How can I live with myself?

The first meeeting of the Church for Birmingham didn’t go that great. It was definitely a learning experience, though. There’s still a lot of decisions to be made, and I find myself often thinking what have I got myself into and does God really want this of me. These questions are both exhilerating and humbling, which I believe is a good place to be.

I read Rob Bell’s book, Velvet Elvis. You should go get it and read it. Or you can borrow my copy.

I’ve also been trying to grow in my theater education lately. Mostly by reading. I’m currently studying Viola Spolin’s method of teaching improv, which is the method that led to the founding of Second City and that they continue to teach today. It’s fascination. I went to the wrong school. Or else I worry that I need to go to another one. I think that’s more for validation. I shouldn’t keep feeling the need to apologize for doing the type of dramatic work that I do. But I do feel that way. Argh!

The Oscars are Sunday night. Predictions? Acting awards for Hoffman, Witherspoon, Clooney, and Williams. Writing for Brokeback and Crash. Director: Ang Lee for Brokeback. And best picture: Crash. That’s right. Brokeback won’t carry the same punch on the small screen, which is how so many members view the noms. Anyway, that’s what I think. I’m currently downloading the shorts that are nominated from iTunes. We’ll see how they are. (Again, thanks for the iPod).

All right. That’s a good post for now. I’m really trying to recommit to this thing.

Holla.

First: the other news.
1.  Liza had a wreck.  She ran off the interstate Friday night on her way to Jackson.  It was raining.  I was in Ft. Worth.  She was/is fine.  I hate her Camaro with the very fiber of my being.  I’m going to get rid of it.
2.  I lied about the youth scripts coming along.
3.  Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day.
4.  The video iPod has changed my life.  Literally.
5.  The new Battlestar Galactica is indeed one of the best shows on television (you may all snicker now behind my back about this claim).

Now… since an email has been sent out about this little project with my name listed in its contents, I feel a need to address this here.

Many of you know at least bits and pieces of the journey God has been taking me on over the past couple of years, particularly with regard to the Church (note the big “C”).  It is also certainly no secret that my current church (note the little “c”) has been having its share of, let’s say, issues lately.  A question arises for Liza and me about whether we should continue being a part of this particular church.  I’m not one to just bail on it (though I certainly have wanted to do so).  However, I have to do some real searching about what is the right thing to do.  The difficulty is trying to separate what I believe is the right thing for me to do from what is the right thing for Brook Hills to do.  I don’t agree with the direction in which it is heading.  I also have trust issues with the leadership there.  But it may be going through changes that the leadership wants and that will minister to a particular group of people.  I have come to the conclusion, though, that I will not be one of those particular people.  So where does that leave Liza and me?

Well, we’ve been here in Birmingham for a few years now.  We spent a great deal of time visiting churches to try and find the right one.  We thought we had, and maybe we did for a time.  But not now.  (Let me say clearly that this is not out of hatred or bitterness or anger towards Brook Hills.  It will be what it needs to be.  I have no doubt.  God is still actively at work in the life of that congregation.  But He has called me away from it.)  Also, nothing has changed to make us think that any of those churches we visited before will now be the “right” one for us.  I have also come to realize that God has been birthing desires and questions in me that I believe are good and could hold some relevance for the Church and particularly for churches with whom I’m associated.  All that to say that I have come together with a group of people interested in seeking God’s will about the possibility of starting a new church in Birmingham.  Currently it’s called the Church for Birmingham (clever, huh?).

Now, if you’re like I was the first time I heard about this possibility, you’ve got tons of questions.  The first is probably something like “aren’t there enough churches in Birmingham?”  Trust me.  I understand.  I’ve got all the same questions, and tons more.  What is exciting, though, is that I believe I have found a place where there is a group of people of whom I might be a part to help answer those questions.  Visit the web site and get a vague idea of what we’re talking about.  Email me or IM me about it.  Give me a call.  There’s no way I can even begin to cover all the reasons and answer all the questions here.  Plus, we don’t have all the answers yet, obviously.  All I can say is that I truly believe that whether or not I think Birmingham needs a new church, God is starting one here.

I’ll probably write more about my reasons later.  But this is enough for now.

If you’re interested in more info, I’ll paste the content of an email about it below.  Blessings.

Is it time for a new church?  This is the question we are prayerfully
considering for 90 days between February 1st -April 30.

Hear Our Heart      (more stories Hear Our Heart stories on the web)

To whomever gave me the iPod: words cannot express the gratitude.

I got my passport in.  It made me giddy like a school girl.  Thailand and South Africa, here I come.

Dead Poets Society still makes me cry.  I’m ridiculous.

Camp is coming along possibly.  Slowly but surely.

I know.  I know.  Sorry.  Sorry.

I have kept starting posts that require some measure of length in order to complete the thought.  However, because of my crazy schedule, I never finish them.  So, they sit on my computer for some time until I delete them only to begin a new one some time later.  With that being said, this will not be one of those posts.  Instead, I’ll just mention a few things.  (But know that I am still working on my thesis entitled “In Defense of (Christian) Teenagers”)

Drew and I were at UPTA this weekend.  I realized a few things:
1.  I’m convinced that the really good actors and actresses must be working (at least I hope they are) because they’re not at these audition conferences.
2.  Either that or people don’t have the interest in theater anymore and are just trying to get film work (which, the statistics say, almost all of them are not).
3.  They don’t teach theater students how to audition anymore.
4.  A Shakespeare company will call you back for a good audition with a modern monologue though the reverse is not true.
5.  Red Bull is essential to viewing the auditions of five hundred actors.

I’m not too pumped about camp right now.  Why?  I have no interest in writing another after school special where there are a group of students living in a glossed over version of the world in which real teenagers live who learn a Bible lesson in fifteen minutes.  Drew told me I needed to do something different so I could get excited about it again.  Maybe he’s right.  I don’t know.  We’ll see, though, won’t we?

That’s enough for now.

I’m sick.

It sucks.

I’ll be updating more soon about some ongoing conversations on other sites.

I’m very opinionated if you don’t know.

Blah…

24 rules!

Jack is back.

Merry Christmas, Xangans.  For this very special Christmas post, I’d like to include a Buechner quote from Whistling in the Dark.

Christmas
    The lovely old carols played and replayed till their effect is like a dentist’s drill or a jack hammer, the bathetic banalities of the pulpit and the chilling commercialism of almost everything else, people spending money they can’t afford on presents you neither need nor want, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the plastic tree, the cornball creche, the Hallmark Virgin.  Yet for all our efforts, we’ve never quite managed to ruin it.  That in itself is part of the miracle, a part you can see.  Most of the miracle you can’t see, or don’t.
    The young clergyman and his wife do all the things you do on Christmas Eve.  They string the lights and hang the ornaments.  They supervise the hanging of the stockings.  They tuck in the children.  They lug the presents down out of hiding and pile them under the tree.  Just as they’re about to fall exhausted into bed, the husband remembers his neighbor’s sheep.  The man asked him to feed them for him while he was away, and in the press of other matters that night he forgot all about them.  So down the hill he goes through knee-deep snow.  He gets two bales of hay from the barn and carries them out to the shed.  There’s a forty-watt bulb hanging by its cord from the low roof, and he lights it.  The sheep huddle in a corner watching as he snaps the baling twine, shakes the squares of hay apart and starts scattering it.  Then they come bumbling and shoving to get at it with their foolish, mild faces, the puffs of their breath showing in the air.  He is reaching to turn off the bulb and leave when suddenly he realizes where he is.  The winter darkness.  The glimmer of light.  The smell of the hay and the sound of the animals eating.  Where he is, of course, is the manger.
    He only just saw it.  He whose business it is above everything else to have an eye for such things is all but blind in that eye.  He who on his best days believes that everything that is most precious anywhere comes from that manger might easily have gone home to bed never knowing that he had himself just been in the manger.  The world is the manger.  It is only by grace that he happens to see this other part of the miracle.
    Christmas itself is by grace.  It could never have survived our own blindness and deppredations otherwise.  It could never have happened otherwise.  Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it.  We have tried to make it habitable.  We have roofed it in and furnished it.  We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one.  But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed – as a matter of cold, hard fact – all it’s cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.
    The Word became flesh.  Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed.  Incarnation.  It is not tame.  It is not touching.  It is not beautiful.  It is uninhabitable terror.  It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light.  Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself.  You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God . . . who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.
    Came down.  Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see.  It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms.  It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.

Blessings.

ALL HAIL THE KING!

No, not Aslan.

No, not Kong.

I of course mean Peter Jackson.

Kudos.

It is with great reluctance and fond memory that I announce my resignation from the presidency of the Supper Club. Amber Montgomery will serve in my stead until another President can be chosen. To those with whom I have been since the beginning, it was the best of times. To those who will continue into the future, may it bring you as much joy as it has me. Cheers.