Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Blackhawks to draft #1

Maybe I should pledge my loyalty to something else (like winning the lottery). Yesterday the NHL announced that my beloved Chicago Blackhawks will draft #1 overall in this summers draft. A complete first for the team. We've drafted as high as #3 overall before (including last year). So to say the least I'm excited.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Pledge my loyalty

As the regular season for the NHL winds down, I thought I would post something in retrospect. For those of you who don't know I'm a loyal Chicago Blackhawks fan and have been ever since my grandfather introduced me to the game of hockey when I was so young, I don't know how old I was. But the state of the Blackhawks has left something to be desired. We will miss the playoffs again this year and that makes basically a decade out of the postseason (minus the 1st round exit in 01-02 season).

So never the less I'm a bit depressed as we've gone 31-40-9 for 71 points (that includes winning these meaning-less last 4 games) and haven't even managed to score 200 goals as a team. It's been a pretty depressing season even though things started out looking up. We acquired Martin Havlat who is a legit 1st line forward we've lacked since the departure of my beloved Tony Amonte. We got Handzus from Philly even though we had to give up Calder. Handzus is the type of player that every team needs, he's a huge, skilled, center who can play against the opponents best line and still manage to score from time to time. But then Handzus went down with a season ending injury (stupid knees) and Havlat got hurt (high ankle sprain) and to make matters worse was Habby followed suit. Anyways a long season, a coaching change, and other things later I feel rather depressed.

Handzus is an unrestricted free agent and we've got gaping holes to fill in our top 6 forwards (we probably truly need 2 more). Our young defense has started to grow together more and that's a plus. I love what I've seen from Seabrook (my new favorite hawk) as he's been physical and played pretty well at both ends of the ice. Plus he's a born leader always sticking up for teammates. Anyways next year with Duncan Keith, Barker, and Seabrook back their we should be ok, even though Aucoin has at best been described as a bust (not the player he used to be on the island). Anyways...

Next year seems bright, Toews seems like a real keeper, Skille's made progress, Bolland's gotten better after getting off to a slow start with Norfolk. Bertram seems to be a gamer (he scored 2 goals tonight for BC in the frozen four). So their does seem to be hope at the end of the tunnel.

Anyways the Chicago Daily Herald is doing a decent series about the state of Hawk Hockey so if your interested check it out...Part one and two are already up...three is still to come...

btw; if you want great hawks hockey commentary and such check out "The 300 Level"

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Where do I belong?

Lately I'm having to start making choices post seminary that will effect largely the circles and arena's in which my ministry will take place and I'm having a heck of a time deciding where I fit in the landscape of Churchianity.

Ok, for those of you who don't know it. I'm kind of a misfit when it comes to Churchianity. I range across the differing range of denominational experience, theological, and praxis issues. I don't know of a denomination that really fits what it is that I want to do in the way that I want to do it (emergent friendly, congregational polity, open theological interpretations, and money for developing new churches). You see I come out a youth ministry background (at a interesting multi-denominational church) that we tried to base it in the contemplative realm (for what I was striving towards check out Mark Yaconelli and The Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project). That along with a bunch of other things lead Julia and I to move to San Francisco for me to attend San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS). So even though I'm not Presbyterian, I thought if this school can support this awesome project then I'm interested in learning from these people. It fit fine with my current denominational alignment (Disciples of Christ)...plus I always figured I could figure out the denom thing later (later being now). Once at SFTS I hooked up with some cool fellow postmodern folk, one being Derrick who brought me to a really cool community in MBCC and through a series of interesting twists and turns I'm doing my SFTS necessary internship here currently. Through my exposure with MBCC (which is a PCUSA), I've pretty much figured that the area of growth for me in my leadership of the church is in New Church Development (the presby term) or church planting in the arena of emerging church movement.

So that brings me back to the topic of this post, Where do I belong? Should I continue down the path for ordination in the DOC where I might have to give up time with MBCC to go to a disciples congregation? Should I switch and pursue ordination in the PCUSA (where I'm not sure theologically I fit as well)? The PCUSA does a decent amount of church planting based off of the emerging church philosophy of doing church and probably would be easiest to raise funds to plant a pomo church? Should I stay with DOC but try to integrate some of the things learned at MBCC and through presbymergent ideas to work in their church planting area and goal of a 1000 churches by 2020?

Arg. Where do I belong? Isn't it ironic that this question of identity which is staring me in the face now is so similar to Jesus' question in the gospel accounts (who do you say I am?)?