I've finally arrived

Since I've been at NewPointe people have been very accepting of me and have encouraged my growth as a spiritual leader. But despite every ones kindness I never really felt like I belonged.

I wracked my brain over and over to try to figure out why this could be. What was missing in my ministry experienced? What was I lacking that was keeping me from really being a part of the ministry team?



I thought it was my complete and utter lack of basket-ball skills. Watching me play basketball is like a combination between pin the tail on the donkey and the Shot-put except without being blindfolded and without recently having severe head trauma.*



But one day Dave took me aside and told me that you don't have to be good at "shooting the rock" (as my boyz down at NP say) to be a minister. But he did recommend that I not actually play in front of anyone that I wanted to take me seriously for the rest of my tenure at the church.



I just couldn't get any love. They weren't linking my blog to the staff website, and they didn't even take my picture to update the registry. It was like I was invisible. But then finally my friend and mentor, Kevin West, took me aside and explained the secret of ministry in our post-modern contemporary society.


He said "Dude, if you wanna kick it up a couple notches and skyrocket this thing into a hole nutha level you gotta start talkin the talk. These cats don't get you 'till the dome shines like chrome. You gotta turn up the freak factor on your noggin until little Jonny and Susy are saying 'you gotta see this' Whoop!"

(Danny Bunelle was also very instrumental [no pun intended] in encouraging this move, but Kevin is easier to imitate)

In Layman's terms it turns out that there is an inversely proportional relationship between the amount of hair a man has and his ability to lead in a church. Check out this verse I found "When a man has lost his hair and is bald, he is clean" (lev 13:40)**

Thanks Kevin. You've shown me the light. I feel like part of the team now. Have Dave add my staff picture to the website when he gets back from Bigstuf.





*Severe head trauma has nothing to do with the shot put, but I threw shot in high school and to save face my coach always told the other coaches that I had recently suffered some severe head trauma.

** The Bible doesn't say anything about facial hair but since all the other guys were doing it I thought it wouldn't hurt.

A story

Hey all you faithful bloggers. This video is a testimonial that we used in our highschool service when we were talking about why bad things happen to good people. I guess that Dave and Matt count me as "good people."

This has been out for a while and has actually been circling the Internet a little bit. Apparently it is being used in a Sunday service at Grace Church in Wooster. And in case you were wondering...no, I don't know anyone who works there. The Internet is a crazy thing isn't it? But the reason I'm posting this now is because it's very personal and I thought it would be difficult for my dad to see it. Well he did watch it and we talked about it last night, so now I'm ready to share it with the three or four people that actually read my blog. Just so everyone knows, I still love my Dad.

Enough is Enough

So I'm kinda poor. Now, a college kid can say that and mean a few different things. Some of my friends have about $30 in their checking accounts and then their spent. I don't mean that. In fact I have quite a bit of money saved up by the standards of a twenty two year old. However, I owe more money to Taylor University than I currently have. My net worth is somewhere in the negatives.

And yet I live my life as if this wasn't true. I have probably spent more money this summer than I ever have in any other time in my life. Now part of this is probably because I've started paying car insurance, and gas has been a million billion dollars a gallon. Also I HAD to go sky-diving.

But you know a stupid place where I spend money? I buy books. And I haven't even READ all the books I HAVE yet. Not even close. And there's this thing called the library where they let you borrow books at a rate of zero dollars a day! Also, I used to buy video games, but I haven't even PLAYED (let alone beat) many of the games I have. I also buy CDs on occasion. And then when my birthday roles around I don't know what to tell people to get me because I already bought it. Then I tell my mom to cancel my birthday and she WONT because it would make HER sad so I have to pretend to want stuff I do NOT want and I smile a fake smile when I open my presents and I die a little inside.

So here is my proclamation. No more books. No more music. No more movies. No more video games. I am not buying ANY MORE...for ONE YEAR! Anyone is welcome to hold me accountable to this. In fact, the next book I will buy will be "A memory of Light" by Robert Jordan, which is scheduled to come out late 2009.

Just so everyone knows, however. I am still accepting donations to the Steven Conn Literary Fast in the form of actual books. I will accept used reading material in any condition, and I will accept it greatfully because books are like crack to me.

Book Review Eight

I think that there isn't really a lot to say about this book because you really have to read it for yourself (then why are you writing about it Steve?)

But I will tell you this, it was very interesting to read some literature about the Arabic culture and the country of Afghanistan because I think that this is not a commonly explored topic in America. Although this story isn't about poverty, politics, or war, you can't tell the story of an Afghan man's life without bringing these topics to light.

Most of all this story is about friendship, loyalty, betrayal, rejection, and ultimately redemption. It's very powerful and gripping. The main character makes some mistakes in his life and you would be tempted to think that you would have played your cards differently. But to be honest, I'm not so sure I would have.

And that's what makes it so sad. That something that is a world away can seem so real, because despite the fact that this book was a work of fiction it is based on the real Afghanistan.

Kite Runner is officially the Steven Conn book of the month. But don't take MY word for it....

(reading rainbow anyone?)

A Personal Vendetta

I've just realized that because my blog has become a public forum
that regularly reaches millions of readers a day; it has become my responsibility to use this opportunity for the good of the nation,

Many* people ask me on a regular basis "Steve, what do you stand for?" Well I stand for a lot of things: Lower gas prices, the fight against poverty, putting Welcome Back Kotter back on the air, getting Nicolas Cage banned from film, and spreading the word of Ender's Game to the farthest corners of the world.

But there is one thing that I am passionate about above all. The never ending quest to rid the world of pennies.

A few years ago my brother-in-law and I began throwing away our pennies. At first it was just a penny here, a penny there, but before long it was every red cent we had the misfortune of coming in contact with.

PENNY FACT: Red is the color of the devil and of communism

If enough people throw away enough pennies the government will eventually take notice. "Oh dear!" they will say "we've made such a blunder minting these little terrors! We've been flushing our money (and souls) down the drain in ridiculously small increments!"

PENNY FACT: A penny saved is not a penny earned. It remains a penny saved


"But Steve" you might say "if you SAVED all those pennies together you could eventually cash them in for a pack of gum!" It is true that when several pennies are amassed together you are tempted to think that they have value. But I GUARANTEE you that the enjoyment you get from throwing pennies away is much greater than their actual monetary value. Besides which, change is never gained without sacrifice.

PENNY FACT: Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver (possibly pennies)

Be a part of the revolution before you are swept away by it. Every time you hear the tinkling sound of YOUR pennies hitting the pavement you are hearing the sound of progress.

PENNY FACT: Pop machines don't even take pennies

If you've ever wanted to live your life for purpose, for meaning, or to be a part of something bigger than yourselves, this is your opportunity. Because even though our individual efforts may mean little, if we combine our strengths we can make a difference. Which is ENTIRELY unlike pennies.

*zero

Book Review Seven

Most people tell me that they skip my book reviews. But sometimes I may be reviewing something that you actually want to read yourself, so don't be so quick to discard them.

I think I've been reading Victory over the Darkness for about 1,000 years. But I finally finished it. In case you were wondering...no, it's not much of a page turner.

But it is very good. At first it started out with some basic and boring information that any Christian who ever took a class in anything would probably already know. But by the end of the book each chapter was powerful and backed with life altering truth. Anderson is a counselor and much of this book is dedicated to spiritual and emotional health. He asks us to discover the lies we are believing and to free ourselves of those things.

He talks about clarifying your goals and distinguishing them from your desires. The only real goal is to become closer to Christ, and the only person who can block that is you. so why are you so mad at everyone else? He talks about man's need for significance, acceptance, and security. He talks about rejection in relationships and what it means to be free in Christ.

Larry Crabb said that we wouldn't need mental health professionals if more people were better at being in tune with themselves and helping the people around them. Except for neurological disorder's I think Larry is right. And I also think that Larry would want you to read this book because it has a lot to say to everyone. True, it meant a lot to me personally because of some of the things with which I am currently struggling, but I think we could all be a little more free.

Closer than they appear

Here at Newpointe I've learned a lot. Not always the way that I've expected to, but I'm learning non the less. Well recently I heard my pastor say that your past is like yoru rear-view mirror.

I heard it as a comment in passing, and I wasn't really sure what he meant. But I was bored cuase I was at work so I gave it some thought. And you want to know something? Your past is like a rear view mirror.

I think that people very often don't deal with their past appropriately, and they fall into two different camps.

There are those who live in total bondage to their past. "Oh my gosh I had a lousy mom now I'm gonna be a bad mom and I can't help that I'm so mean to people!" Or "I will never be able to forgive him for what he did to me..." People who grew up in dysfunctional homes, who have been hurt, or don't know how to forgive themselves. These people live in their past. Sometimes I'm one of these people. But Neil Anderson says We are not truly held in bondage by our pasts, we are held in bondage by the lies Satan tells about us based on a false interpretation of the past.*

Then you have the other end of the spectrum. The people who say "I'm not going to be anything like my parents, and I'm not going to dwell on the past, I'm FINE. That's not going to follow me."
Sometimes I fall into this group too.

Well guess what? It IS gonna follow you. And you have to acknowledge your past and own it or it is gonna screw with your and your loved ones. The past is like a rear view mirror because for the most part you need to keep your eyes on the road, and not just dwell on where you've been or else you wont see what's coming. but if you don't check your mirrors you are going to be driving with huge blind spots and someday it's gonna make you get into an accident. And you might not be the only one in the car at the time.

I could talk for a long time about this but I won't. I assure you, however, that I haven't exhausted this analogy; you could give it a little bit of thought yourself. And feel free to disagree with me, becuase even if you do it might cause you to look in your mirrors.

*That quote is from Victory over the Darkness, but I paraphrased it a LOT since I couldn't find the quote

A sobering truth

So adulthood has made another power play and I'm afraid it is gradually winning the battle against my efforts to remain a child forever. My best friend from Highschool just got married this weekend. That is the first time that has ever happened. I mean people from highschool have gotten married before, but they were generally pregnant first. Brandon and Brittany were legit.

Well congrats Brandon, and good luck. The idea of me getting married at this point in life makes me want to huddle up in a corner and whimper. But that's cool because my whimpering corner hasn't been used in a while.

And it wont be used for a while yet because in case any of you didn't know I am invincible. So whoever out there cursed me or is trying to kill me or has a small voodoo doll shaped like me you can just give up cause I'm not going anywhere.

Why do I say that you ask? Because I've made a habit of defying death this weekend.

On Thursday the breaks went out on my uncle's truck while I was driving it down a hill.

On Saturday a tornado came and (rudely) interrupted Brandon and Brittany's wedding reception. 300 guests filed into the basement where we were crammed cheek to jowl making nervous small talk. (The cheeks weren't so bad but I was not a fan of the jowls.) I found my jowls* next to my highschool French teacher Madame Hackette. That was an interesting conversation. The power went out and broken French was involved.

On the way home from the wedding I might have been swerving a little bit whilst trying to fetch a few Pringles from the bottom of that attractive yet inconveniently shaped tube when an officer of the law decided he wanted to have a talk with me.

I pulled over wondering whether or not I could get an additional ticket for having a broken rear view mirror and he asked me the one question I did not want to hear. "Where are you coming from?"

"Why yes officer, I am a 22 year old man swerving through the night after attending a wedding reception, thank you for asking! Oh, you want to know what that bottle of prescription drugs is doing on my dashboard? Why that anti-depressant is for my OCD, I'm supposed to have it I SWEAR! No of course I wouldn't mind stepping out of the car."

The officer was very polite as he asked me to put my hands on his car and he proceeded to frisk me. Then I got IN his car and he gave me a sobriety test, which I passed. The end result--I got a warning.

I arrived home at 2:30 AM. Which was perfect because I didn't have to get up until 6:30. And that was sweet because after sleeping in all I had to do the next day was run a jr. high camp for a weekend. But that's a post for another day.

In short I just want to apologize to death for embarrassing him, and I want to thank Newpointe for forcing me to abstain from alcohol.

* Are you weirded out by the word "Jowl" yet?

Shame, another form of Pride

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and deathFor what the law was powerless to do in that it was
weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man,

Romans 8 again ladies and gentlemen. One of my favorites.

You know we "good Christians" can often times forgive ourselves for isolated incidents that have occur ed in our past-no matter how bad they are. But we can't get over habitual sins and attitudes. I'm prideful by the way. Maybe people who know me should know that. And even though I might actually be less prideful this year than I was last year I am far more AWARE of the depths of my pride than I ever was before. So sadly, despite my growth in Christ over the past year I feel more prideful and arrogant than I ever have in my life.

Tough stuff. Especially because our Christian walk means trying to become more Christlike but continuously becoming more aware of just how desperately un-Christlike we are. It's a bit like climbing to the top of a mountain and only then realizing that you are still in the foothills.

Oh the shame! How Prideful is man! How selfish, how wicked, bent and cruel, how destitute. If you are being honest with yourself you are an ugly person on the inside. And while a shallow person is blind to these things it is the soul searching seeker of Christ that finds them within and is crushed.

But continuing to be ashamed of what has already been forgiven is to elevate the power of your own sin over the power of Christ's forgiveness. A very good friend of mine said that he spent years trying to get over a particular sin in his life and finally it hit him as if God said "Who are you to not forgive someone that I have already forgiven?" (see Job 38)

I once met a man who said that he would not become a Christian because he didn't feel right about the idea of some guy just forgiving him. He BELIEVED in Heaven and Hell. And he looked me in the eye and told me that if I wanted to go to Heaven that was fine, but it wasn't for Him because he was the kinda guy to settle his own accounts. He didn't deserve to be forgiven. That is the most distressing and the most arrogant statement I have ever heard. '

None of us like the idea of "cheap grace." But guess what, it aint cheap, Jesus died for it, and it would be narcissistic in the extreme to think for even a second that it didn't redeem every little part of us and make us holy. You can't make dirty what God has cleaned, and you can't make cleaner what God has cleaned. So stop being embarrassed by the "mess" and stop trying to clean up after him, that's insulting.

National Treasure

So I've ben told by my many thousands of readers that they always skip my book reviews. And that's just fine; as a mater of fact I didn't write reviews for my last two reads to spare you all from having to read more praise for Robert Jordan.

However, I could not go without writing a review for this most recent movie I watched because I haven't felt so strongly about a film since the time Phantom Menace came along and destroyed George Lucas' dignity.

But the real reason I am writing to you about this movie is two-fold. The first being that if any of you out there read this post in time I might be able to give you the gift of an hour and a half of your life gone un-wasted. Do not watch this movie. But I also write because there are some people out there who honestly enjoy this movie and therefore I must express to the rest of your my resulting disillusionment with humanity.

When I saw this movie it made me think that there was some county wide contest among fifth grade social studies classes to write a screen play for a movie loosely related to vocabulary words in their text books and the class who submitted "National Treasure" came in third.*+

In case you wanted to know, yes, Nicholas Cage (who for some reason continues to find work) does discover a city made entirely of gold buried under Mount Rushmore after following a series of clues found in a secret presidential book to which he is allowed access after kidnapping the president--and in doing so simultaneously clears his great grandfather's name of any wrong-doing in the Lincoln assassination by uncovering a secret involving several monarchs, three countries, and every president the United States has ever had. I hope that the fact that more gold than could possibly exist in the world was recently discovered by one man does not have any far flung implications on the economy.

If you could imagine the most far fetched episode of 24 you have ever seen, and subtract the excitement, the swearing, the killing, the lovable characters, the plot-line, and any of the negative consequences ensuing from failure (terrorism/death-as opposed to history books remaining the same as they currently are)...then you would have National Treasure

I intend to make one intelligent comment in this post, and it is this: mixing historical fact with far fetched fiction is a bad move because grounding a movie in reality does not require the audience to suspend its disbelief. And the rest of the fantastical stuff that makes up this "movie" is way out of context. For example: "Gandalf rides unicorn." Not true, but plausible. "Adolf Hitler rides a Unicorn." Funny, but if the movie is NOT a comedy, but rather something that is supposed to be taken more or less as a legitimate piece of writing...well you've lost me.

*The first place class denied Hollywood the rights to make their screenplay into a movie because they have a healthy distaste for Nicholas Cage. The second place was later disqualified when it was discovered that they just cut and pasted the wikipedia article about the toledo war

+ There were five entries.