What's a Hollister?

My friend Phil started working recently at the Hollister clothing store in the Mall of America as a manager. In his short time there, he has shared some remarkable things from his experience. 

#1. On Friday, Hollister at the MOA location sold over 16,000 individual items. That's about an item every 2.5 seconds that the store is open. It's simply mind blowing to me that a store could sell that many articles of clothing. 

#2. Besides print ads, the major way that Hollister advertises is by decking their employees in their brand of clothing. Technically they are only required to wear clothing that "looks" Hollister and can at least correspond to something similar that is available at Hollister. However there a huge discount price being given to the employees in exchange for representing the brand. You must imagine, that if you are getting such a good deal on clothes, that you'll wear those clothes out in public a ton and basically be a walking billboard. It's really smart marketing: hire young, attractive people and deck them  out in something "cool" and then have them just live life, while helping you sell jeans. Hollister has decided that the best way to market clothes, is through it's employees - just living life, but in all moments wearing Hollister. 

In church today, Steve Weins shared that he strongly believes something that has a similar ring to Hollister marketing style. He said:  The best program our church has is Christ in you. 

What a strong and powerful claim. Christ is working in us - to further his mission of ushering in the Kingdom now and forever and it's better then any program or scheme of the church. The challenge is being open to how God might be at work inside and outside of "regular church time." It's about walking a faith in both Karios and Chronos moments. As Hollister wants it's employees to be a channel for the Hollister brand at all times - to follow Christ is to be open to what Christ has for us at all times.

Scripture to chew on: Colossians 4:2-6

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

Read this interesting article about Hosea and Gomer:

http://bible.org/seriespage/undying-love%E2%80%94i-story-hosea-and-gomeri

Found it very interesting how God used someones personal journey to parallel his story with his people.

What I'm wrestling with is how would God let someone fall in love with someone who would keep breaking his heart?

A quick life update

A. Wanted to share a few wanderings and ramblings from live.

B. I saw the avengers at 12:01 last night. It was EPIC. I can't say it's for everyone, but it was pretty freaking sweet for a comic book story, if you've seen most of the titles in the series (Iron Man I & II, Captain America, Thor, Hulk) you will really enjoy this movie. I am only running on four hours of sleep, but it was worth it. Plus as you know for a few years this lack of sleep has be my mode of operation, so it's not strange territory.

C. Went to Disney and to visit Darby on vacation a few weeks ago. It was really great. Lot's of great prayer time and 48 attractions in 2 days. Can't wait to go back.

D. This spring, I've developed some really close, but unexpected friends. Kelly, who works with me, and Reba her best friend, who recently moved up here. We have ended up spending a lot of time together. It's been awesome. Besides YF activities, playing trivia, grabbing diner and other general hangouts, one of the major activities they really like to do is to go see theater performances, which I do too. Back in high school I was pretty big into the theater, but in college this pastime waned. But, since they are both working as actors in the twin cities, they love to go see shows. So, this spring I've seen:

Narnia: The musical
The Lark
Fiddler on The roof
Kingdom Undone
Three Sisters
Deal: The musical
Spring Awakening

E. Blue Like Jazz the movie came out. See it sometime. Maybe on DVD. It's the most real look at being a young christian that the christian media market has produced. It wasn't perfect, but it was better then a lot of junk that comes out of that genre. Also, my name is in the credits. No joke.

F. Reading a book called Radical. It had kind of messed me up a bit. The thesis of the book asks the question, has the american dream highjacked the radical Christianity that Jesus taught. It's good. Don't agree with all of it, (have I ever?) but it raises some hair raising good points.


G. I've been very convicted to write about sexuality and my own experiences as I feel like God has had it be a major topic in my life this year. I'm writing a long blog post about it, but will likely end up only posting a small section of it. But, it's be very self revealing on how I'm wired and who I am becoming. 

Youth Ministry Friends!

Youth Ministry friends! Get on this...

http://www.only144.com/

It's a 144 hour sale of several thousand dollars of resources for less then $100. Pretty stoked about it.

Day off!

So today - I've got a day off! It was a planned day off, but then I decided to make it a work day because Kelly my co-worker has been sick all week and she was planning on coming in. She then decided that she should probably rest for our big program retreat this weekend. Once again, the day is free. Which is really good. I'm not the best at taking days off.

I'm feeling rather unfocussed today.... So here are some pearls and nuggets I've picked up recently.

- Short stay vacations - You can rent random peoples homes for a weekend. Fully decked out with everything you need and very affordable. Here is  a link one I'm renting out for the program retreat:

- Joan of Arc - I went to see Theater in the Round's production of The Lark. The play told the wild story of Joan of Arc. She felt God was telling her to lead a revolution in France. Her English captors did not feel that God could tell her that. It was very convicting and has me wrestling the issues of what if God tells different pepole different things and what is the value of your word.

- Sky Deck, run by game works, is a pretty awesome arcade/restaurant. A cool place to go on dates, because you can have some fun playing arcade games before you chow down on generic bar and grill food.

- For camp this summer we are going to use a Tripple Head-To-Go to do three separate video screens for camp. It's going to be epic!

Lint and Lent are one vowel off.

I read this cool article that got me jazzed up about lent. Article

I went to a very different Ash Wednesday service then I'm use to tonight. It had liturgical dancers and the sermon was a presented as a monologue from Herod Antipas. It was very interesting, some parts were cool to me, others were overwhelming.  The service was just a few blocks from my house. 

For lent, I thought that I would like to try to and focus on being more covertly intentional with the humanity around me and how God is at work with and in them.

1.I'll be trying to eat one meal a day with another person and durring that meal turn off my cell phone in order to be present with them. I'll also try to eat at the pace of the person I'm breaking bread with. 

2. I'm going to try to go to church in the community that I live in. Normally I drive to a big mega church in Maple Grove, but I'm going to try and think more about my community, vrs what church best serves my needs. I'm going to try and only go to church that is walking distance from my house. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. 

Neverland games

I love games. Playing them, making them up. Playing them with a camp or just a few friends, it doesn't matter. I'm not super-competitive, I just enjoy being in a different world with rules that you have to follow. Some of the games I love most are complex board games. Even though I'm not the best at them. I enjoy the experience of the adventure. On of my favorites from childhood, was Buck Rodgers battle for the 25the century. The game is a lot like risk, but in space. 

Over Christmas, some of my high school friends got together and tried to play the game. It didn't go well. The game was slow, clunky and not super inviting. But dang, the board looked cool. The game has so much potential to be rock-solid, but it failed. 

Things that I liked:

- Cool movement system

- Space narrative that affects game play

- Epic combat

- Childhood nostalgia 

Things I didn't like:

-No currency system

-Turns took forever 

-Killer Satellite Units too powerful 

One thing that was awesome was the game ended in a 2 on 3 invasion of mars as the two power players took on the refugees of the solar system. That's what I like. If only it didn't take 3+ hrs to get there.

When designing games make sure the story draws you in, people want to play them and they are engaging enough to keep you wanting to play them the whole time it takes to play the game.