Well, it’s been a frustrating day. I thought twice about posting this but what good is a blog if you only write when you’re feeling content and reflective? Part of this is for the sake of authenticity and another part is catharsis. So here we go.
During our Sunday worship service, my Macbook was stolen out of my church office. The power cord and case were taken as well. Even the case! I like to imagine the thief’s thought process, “Well, I better protect my hard-earned investment. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
Having been one who has lost data, I backup about twice a month. Initially, I thought I had only lost the last two weeks of data but after checking my external hard drive, it looks like it was an incomplete back up and the last complete one was Dec. 28th. So it looks like part of digital life will be entering in 2010 again.
The data lost was not only the last month’s worth of work but also work that I’ve had been picking at, like most importantly our upcoming winter retreat. Pretty frustrated about that. Not because we won’t be ready, nor will it alter the retreat, I’ll get it done but I am frustrated that I’ll have to redo my outlines from memory. But who knows, maybe they’ll turn out better.
That’s the attitude I want. But if I’m being honest, just as quickly as I write that, I’m consumed with anger that this person took from out of my church office. And while I’ve contacted my banks and credit cards and off shore money laundering services, I’m frustrated that I will live in a bit of paranoia as I monitor my financial accounts.
Jesus talks a bit about this like in Matthew 6, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven …” It’s an excellent big picture perspective to keep in mind. So much in life is temporary and trivial. And so many other parts are essential and eternal.
I know this will pass and like December is to me, a month from now, the non-financial data will have less value to me and would have been part of the archive. We’ll see how things play out between insurance claims and other factors moving forward. There is a bit of potential awkwardness but I am hopeful that things will go well. It’s been nice to feel the support of some friends. It’s only a laptop and data but some people get it and that’s cool.
We keep saying that it’s a shame that it happened in a church and that carries a sense of violation with me, it also tells us that we do have at least one more sinner in our midst. So it’s me and this jerk and maybe a couple others. We’ve stolen more from God and others and I hope that keeps my anger and frustration in check.
While I cannot honestly say that DCLA is cheese-free (sorry Lost & Found), at least it’s focused on its mission. I do not claim to know the behind the scenes decisions, nor do I know specifics and I would only guess the names but from where I sit, it seems that after YS took over, the event underwent quite the paradigm shift. This year’s theme was “Be, Love, Serve, Repeat”. Perfect for our group. There were no bigger than CCM-life bands but it was cool that Family Force 5, Hawk Nelson, KJ-52 were there. All of us had a good time, we laughed, we were entertained and at times overloaded by it all but what I loved is that the focus on loving Christ and others was central. If you didn’t see it, you were daydreaming about Toby Mac and Mac Powell flying down from the rafters.
Shane Claiborne – we were debating whether to change our youth group name to the Shane Fan Club but another group already did that. They grew out their hair, had dreds, made their own clothes and ran their cell phones off of solar power. We were willing to do that and convert the church music room into a homeless shelter but we lost our momentum over the lifelong celibacy vow. In seriousness, judging from the low attendance at Shane’s seminars, he’s not the superstar to this age group as he is to X’ers and older Millennials but by Monday, everyone knew who he was. (Ours did of course, because Claiborne worshippers like 
- Kendall Payne – I’m pretty sure she’s not signed to a label but a true indie artist. I admit I almost missed the boat on Kendall. She had released some kind of anti skinny model looking girls song that encouraged girls to appreciate themselves for who they were and to pursue a healthy sense of identity but she probably didn’t hear how it sounded with a bunch of 14 year old girls singing it in the church van (a moment from a few years ago that resulted in Bose, noise-cancelling headphones to all youth leaders). The rest of her work is brilliant (like Scratch and I personally like the Grown album.) I usually don’t like to talk about the cover songs of talented artists but she did two that are worth mentioning. One was “What if God Was One of Us?” which was pretty controversial back recorded by Joan Osborne back in 1995. It seemed to me that too many of us Christians perceived it as an attack on God’s deity but instead, it said and asked a lot more. She also did a cover of U2′s “One”. It was smooth and slow and I hope one day a youtube clip of it appears. As a fan of U2 (Sept 26 at Giants Stadium can’t come 
fast enough!), this song is so overdone, but Kendall did a fantastic job.
- … the focus on our worship wasn’t on Starfield’s lead singer so much. With access to multiple camera angles, a million different types of backgrounds, a million more that motion backgrounds and the idea of flat worship, Tim’s face was on the big screen way too much and it got distracting. I know that is not Tim’s, Starfield’s or YS’s intention but it seemed considerably more than at NYW Conferences. This isn’t a criticism of Starfield, I like them but just the way we did worship seemed too focused on them. I didn’t mention this until one of our students brought it up. It led to a great conversation regarding worship.
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