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I just got back from skiing with the Jr. Highers at Wilmot Mountain in Wisconsin. This is an annual event, but for some unknown reason, I decided to rent a snowboard instead of skis.

Now, I’ve only skied 3 or 4 times, so I’m not great, but I do okay. I’ve watched the snowboarders the past couple of years and thought it would be easy to pick up.

Wrong.

I’ve never spent as much time in the snow as I did today. I am officially awful at snowboarding. Now, I need to add that our instructor was probably 10 years younger than me and it seemed like it was his first time teaching. The whole lesson was a joke. I’ve never had a teacher so out of touch with basic communication techniques and skills.

The day was good, though. No one was injured and everybody seemed to have a great time. Now I just need to get some sleep.

This isn’t intended to be political (though it does address that), but rather theological. This video is only about a minute long, but it’s been running through my mind non-stop since I saw it last night. I don’t know much about Osteen. He has a large church, smiles a lot and has quite a following. I’ve never listened any of his messages.

A quick google search taught me that he’s gotten a lot of national attention. He’s appeared in magazines including Business Week and USA Today. He was one of Barbara Walter’s “10 Most Fascinating People of 2006″ and was also named “Most Influential Person of 2006″ by the Church Report.

The bottom line is that this guy is big and has a lot of people’s attention. And that is exactly what is pathetic about the following video.

Today I went to my brother’s house to see my week-old niece. Infants are simply amazing. The miracle of life just leaves me speechless. Even though Bethany and I have been through it twice, I forget how tiny and dependent newborns are. They are a wonderful gift and a huge responsibility.

Ironically, I came across a list of “Do’s and Don’ts with Babies” this evening. They are presented as pictures and I’ve included some of my favorite tips here (the rest can be found on the previous link).

In our youth service tonight, we began our series “We’re Talking About It”. For the next several weeks we’ll be dealing with difficult issues that the church tends to ignore or not really deal with. Tonight we dealt with homosexuality.

My plan was to speak from some of the main texts that deal with the issue and then have a short time for questions and discussion and then finish the evening with worship and a challenge to love people dealing with this issue and to extend grace to them (instead of judgment and condemnation).

The night started out as planned, but our question and discussion time ended up taking up the remainder of our service. I was surprised to see a variety of students interacting and wrestling with the issues. Now, there were some who didn’t quite engage as much, but overall I was very pleased with how the night went.

Just before I spoke, I showed the following trailer for a movie that won several awards at the latest Sundance Film Festival. It puts this issue into perspective and reveals how important it is that we wrestle with this issue and interact effectively with our culture (i.e. boycotting and holding signs isn’t cutting it).

Here’s our graphic for our next series of messages at crew that will deal with “taboo” issues.