Archive - August, 2010

Building benches instead of frisbees.

My dad uses his feet like hands, much like a gorilla opening a banana, when he loses frisbees in the pond at the disc golf course.

He’s not above stripping down to his shorts and diving in to recover discs. The pond is dark brown and is populated with turtles, snakes and frogs. If his disc lands in it, he walks around with his bare feet feeling in calf deep mud for it. Just typing that last sentence made me squirm a little.

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Trying to find a new church.

Last weekend, my wife and I started looking for a new church after attending North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia for 6 years. We went to Cross Point, which is where Pete Wilson preaches and we loved it.

During the service, we found ourselves comparing notes between the two, trying to feel out this new place that over a period of years, if not decades, will play an important role in our lives. And I realized 5 things about finding a new church:

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Quietly distancing ourselves from Mel Gibson.

Every day that he’s in heaven, Solomon better literally thank God that TMZ and paparazzi didn’t exist when he was doing his nonsense.

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Seinfeld vs. U-Haul & what’s your craziest moving story?

Recently U-Haul sent my youngest brother, who like me moved last week, an email.

It was about 40 hours before he was supposed to pick up a truck for 12 hours on Saturday from 4AM until 4PM. With an 8-month old and a young wife he was excited and nervous about their first big move. What did U-Haul’s email say?

It confirmed for him that he would be picking up a truck on Friday for 6 hours, instead of Saturday for 12 hours. My brother, a lawyer, instantly recognized this trick. Instead of calling someone, you email them something completely different than what you’ve agreed upon and see if they go for it. You tell the girl who just dumped you, “I am so glad we are still dating and that our love is strong!”

But Bennett is smarter than that, so he called up U-Haul and reminded them that he had made a reservation for Saturday. They assured him that they had the reservation, they just didn’t have a truck for him on Saturday. Instead, they said he could use one on Friday from 10-4.

He had two choices at that moment: 1. Tell them, “Great, I’m one of those first year lawyers who works from 7-10, then takes a 6-hour lunch break, and then works again from 4-8.” Or 2. He could recite the Seinfeld, “The whole point of a reservation is to hold the vehicle,” speech.

He opted for the second choice and then almost word-by-word had the Seinfeld skit with the U-Haul guy. He talked to someone at corporate. He called other U-Haul locations. He tried his hardest. And then he was forced to get the truck a day earlier for half the time U-Haul had promised him. With no refund or rate reduction.

Epic U-Haul fail.

But moving is like that, right? Crazy, weird things happen. Last time I moved, my father-in-law and I got kicked off the New Jersey Turnpike for being too heavy. I also dropped our television and broke it. In my current move I had to google the phrase, “How do you repair an antique bed your wife spent three years finding that you broke with a rubber mallet?”

Moves can be a bit disastrous. Today, in a short Saturday question, let’s talk about that.

What’s your craziest move story?

5 people you meet in any small group.

(I’ve hung out with Greg Darley a lot. Whenever I’m at a conference and feel like I don’t know anyone, Greg will magically appear and everything is right with the world. He’s got a great heart for ministry and a great sense of humor. I thought his post today was funny and true. I hope you do too.)

The obvious and most chosen route is to go with in a small group setting is the book option. You all choose a book, which the first one brought up has to be the 5 Love Languages. But in every group there’s one couple that has “already done that like 7 times”, a couple that “read that a long time ago” and the couple that has no clue what a love tank is. So, after much debate, you by pass the 5 Love Languages and move on to another title. The goal is to read a chapter a week and discuss the following meeting. Ahhhh. Such lofty goals. But, after a few weeks, you discover the following type of group members.

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Nouning ourselves.

Last week, I made the brief mistake of getting into an argument with author Donald Miller on Twitter about the concept of “story.”

I say “mistake” because Donald Miller is an expert on story. Arguing with Donald Miller about storytelling is like arguing with Billy Graham on running a Crusade or arguing with the Situation on the Gym/Laundry/Tan approach to life. (A Billy Graham reference and a Jersey Shore reference in the same sentence? I should be so simile ashamed of myself.)

I say the mistake was “brief” because like most of my Twitter arguments it quickly devolved into Donald Miller and I trying to figure out how we could both get cast on a Mexican soap opera.

But in the midst of that discussion I did something unexpected …

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Not knowing whether to sprint or be still.

On Sunday afternoon, my wife sent me to Costco to “buy a mattress,” with my brother Will. That is exactly what we did. We bought a mattress. Hours later, back at the house, she said, “Where’s the box springs?” I, having not been told to purchase box springs, said, “What box springs?”

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Reacting to Anne Rice.

Christian blogging law requires that you write a post about what world famous author Anne Rice recently said about Christianity.

I wasn’t going to, but Cornelius, the white dove who brings me official Christian blogging rules, made it pretty clear I had little choice.

So what did Anne Rice, who wrote about vampires long before it was all twilighty and cool, say? Here is what she posted on Facebook:

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We moved to Nashville.

Two days ago, the Acuff family packed up our things in Atlanta and moved to Nashville.

Why?

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