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 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

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?

Free Fallin'

Remember how I said that I had a big weekend? This Monday I topped it all off by jumping out of a plane.

My friend Brandon is getting married, so we decided, "hey, why not shove him out of a plane?" Not seeing anything at all wrong with this idea me and some of my best friends from highschool went skydiving in Lebanon Ohio.

I'm not going to lie, it was really cool, but It's kinda hard to describe a skydiving experience in a blog. Let me just say that it's really really fast.

It would have been a lot better if I had some pictures to show you, but sadly, I have none. Like a true group of men the six of us came prepared with a total of zero cameras. Now, we could have had a video taken of us by the sky-diving company, but they charge $90 for that service.

So, lacking a better option I have decided to make my own pictures so I could more accurately share with you my experience. I trust that after you look at this picture you will feel as if you had gone skydiving yourself. I have baically saved you $150 with this drawing. And now you can tell your friends that you too have jumped out of a plane.

(Click image to enlarge, seriously)

The Mini (part deux)

This has been the biggest and most expensive weekend of my life. So I'm going to try to break it down day by day.

Ok, so it finally happened. After months of pretending to train, and weeks of actually training--I finally ran a mini marathon.

You might think that I would have learned from last years experience when I was FORCED to run it, and was very happy when I lucked out by tearing a muscle in my groin two days before the race, resulting in what a DOCTOR called "the biggest bruise [he's] ever seen."

(You might ask why that's lucky, and you might ask how I did it. It's lucky because it prevented me from running a mini in which a lot of girls I go to school with were going to kick my butt. I did it by trying to jump over ben blake while playing in the mud. Very manly I know. I believe that there is actually video footage of this somewhere)

But I didn't learn. So I bought the place of my injured friend, Veronika Vlaslov.
For those of you who don't know anything about running races (me) let me explain what happens.

because literally tens of thousands of people are in this race they put you in a HOPELESSLY long line based on how fast you claim to be able to run. Because I had taken the spot of a girl who didn't believe in herself I was near the back in section "V." No, that's not the roman numeral for 5. that's the letter "V", as in Veronika. Coincidence I'm sure, but an inconvenient one. It took me 28 minutes to reach the starting line.

However, this was alright because I was in a group of middle aged women and heavy-set men. In their eyes I was the very image of youth and athletic prowess. For seven miles I sped effortlessly past the elderly and the obese while making smalltalk and jokes with my good friend Andrew Lehr.

What a beautiful and glorious seven mile run that was. We drank Gatorade, we laughed, we passed a guy that kinda looked like Steve Austin, we ran in the Indianapolis motor speedway, and we enjoyed ourselves

I trained to run ten miles. And they say that if you can run ten, you can do thirteen because the adrenaline kicks in. Those people are freaking liars.

I'm not even going to attempt to describe what it felt like to run those last three miles. Because it would be much easier to just hit your legs with a hockey stick until you cried and then made you put on pants made of broken glass before making you take a couple of laps around the track with a station wagon on your back.*

So after about 18 years I crossed the finish line. For the last 100 Meters I was running pretty hard because I was "A" Listening to "Only in Dreams" on my iPod, and "B" was trying to impress Cortney (More on her later) After completing the race my right leg decided to cramp in a fit of joy.

By which I mean it cramped so totally that I was unable to haul my tubby self off the track because I had literally lost the use of my right leg. I was carried away in a stretcher to a tent where I was given a massage by the physical therapy team. this was my favorite part of the race.

In all seriousness though, my time 2:20:30 I might have come in second or third, I'm not sure.

The winner ran in 1:06:00. Yes he was Kenyan, He really was.

(*Also there is someone you hate in the station wagon)

Conn Air

Ok so my Cousin Jeff is a college freshmen and he almost has his pilot's licence. Yes it's surprising to me too. Jeff flies a plane and he plays guitar. Could he BE a bigger chick magnet? Maybe if he was also a fire-fighter. But I think he's doing well enough. The ladies at MVNU just can't get enough. I on the other hand stopped learning to play the guitar when I got a girlfriend. Then after we broke up I realized I had lost all my skillz and now I have nothing.

But we can bemoan my pitiful life later in great detail. At the moment we are here to recognize the fact that yesterday was beautiful. It passed the Journey test. That's when I open up my sunroof and play "Any Way You Want It" while singing in a falsetto until people start staring. And if it feels right you know that Old Man Winter will not be coming around again that year.

So Jeff says. "hey it's a nice day, let's go flying" So I changed into my flying shorts (seen here) and called his bluff. Turns out...the guy owns a plane! Well, I'll be. We flew all the way to Cincinnati and I learned a lot of technical mumbo jumbo about planes. I can now read an Altimiter and I know that if you get caught in the vortex of a commercial airliner you will die (The fluffy white lines that the airplane leaves behind...). Him and I are going to go into business together as our own two-man commericial airline. We can only haul two passangers at once, so ticketts are a little hard to come by. Also he's not lisenced yet so we are very illegal. For flight reservations E-mail me at steve_conn@tayloru.edu. Conn-Air is open for business.

My Musical Debut

So this is old news but I’ll tell you anyway in case you some-how managed to miss this. It was Easter two Sundays ago!

Now the only reason I bring this up NOW is because I finally got a picture of some poser pretending to be a musician, and I thought it would go well with this post.
Rumor has it that I (Danger) used to play trombone in high school. Rumor circulated to the worship leader here at Newpointe and he asked if I wanted in the “horn section” for this years Easter service. Steve Conn? On Stage? Yes please.

But I was once again made aware of the vast difference between being vaguely aware how to play in instrument (mouth goes on the small end, noise comes out the big end) and being a musician (the “ends” are called “the mouthpiece” and “the bell”).

But for real I was standing next to two band teachers and an intimidatingly attractive older woman who were discussing the various ways to play their sixteenth note “runs.” They pulled their well preserved and loved instruments out of cases that looked like they had seen better days, but were as reliable and cherished as old friends. Their brightly polished horns produced golden tones as they tuned to each other by ear. The hands of artists at work.

I on the other hand found my discarded horn in my basement without a case. And by “my” horn I mean a trombone I stole from the Wauseon High school band-room junior year because I BELIEVE it belonged to Joel Barber and I knew he wouldn’t care. You might ask what happened to MY trombone. That’s a good question. But I know it wouldn’t have fit into a case either because the mouthpiece was permanently stuck in the slide.

Also, it is important to lubricate the slide of a trombone like the valves of a trumpet because it will stick or make a grating noise. It’s harder to play and doesn’t sound good to listen to. They recommend that you oil your slide before every use. I believe that this horn was last oiled in 2004. But that’s ok because I sprayed it down with Lemon Pledge.

When I arrived I practiced with the full band. Which made me feel unbelievably cool because the other people on stage were Good, and no one had yet figured out that I didn’t belong there. This MIGHT be because my part looked like it had been written for an 8th grader. And I don’t mean to brag, but if you gave me a month to practice I would probably dominate 8th grade band try-outs.

Afterwards a bearded trumpet player who I am assuming was related to Louis Armstrong (despite being white) asked me to play a note so he could tune to me. I failed to tell him that my tuning slide fell out on the way to the car and not remembering where it belonged, I shoved it back on haphazardly. But he said I sounded good.

Anyway, I got to play, it was a lot of fun, and it was actually an amazing worship set. Humor aside, it was sweet to see so many people being involved in worship. I couldn’t see an empty seat in the house, becuase people flooded in from all over to take part in our Easter service. We average 2,500 attendees on a given Sunday, but this week we had 3,500. Which means 1,000 people who might not know Jesus got a chance to hear the Gospel from Dwight. And I like that.
I love Easter more than any other day of the year, and I was excited to be taking part in it any way I could.

Clearly we can see that there is a direct correlation between Steve performing onstage and attendance spiking through the roof. If the administration at Newpointe understands how to capitalize on this trend we could experience some big growth in the future.

(Newpointe community church is committed to quality a worship experience because excellence honors God. Despite my comidic description I assure that my performance was "adequate" and that their services are not "run by children."

For further proof see here: http://www.newpointe.org/content.cfm?id=2006. )

Come from the land of the ice and snow

Hello again. Let me tell you something, weather is a harsh mistres. My mother was snowed in work in Wooster for almost three days and all I have to say about that is DANG.

For those of you who don't know, I, the Chevalier Sir Steven M Danger C Conn Esq have taken it upon myself to be the "champion of spring" and for the last eight years I have been the one who fearlessly declares when spring has officially started. Upon declaring the beginning of Spring we are obligated to wear nothing but shorts (or short pants as I like to call them) until I offically declare it winter. I'm not really a fan of fall so we skip it.

Now you might be wondering to yourself "self, how is Steve the champion of Spring? Do we get to just claim these things? Is this like the time that Justin Timberlake took it upon himself to bring sexy back?" Well if you are asking these questions good for you! An inquisitive mind is to be encouraged, but in this instance it will not be rewarded.

I tell you all this to inform you of one thing. That I almost declared it spring four days ago and I am glad that I did not. I have been "shame-faced" like this in the past. Sophemore year the first day of spring was March first. It snowed. And I looked like an idiot. And my legs were cold. But I have made that mistake too many times to make it again. No this time it's still winter.

Allthough we changed time? Daylight savings is rediculous, it just recently got light enough that I wasn't depressed to wake up in the morning. Guess that's over.