Ohne Finke, hab' wir keine Chance!

My favorite sports-writer is not a Chicago Tribune writer following the Bears or a Tallahassee reporter covering the Noles. It's ESPN Soccernet's Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger. Uli (I'm not going to re-write his last name) writes columns about the Bundesliga, so I'm already biased in his favor. But what makes him stand out above his colleagues is that he avoids the tabloid gossip issues that everyone else is stuck on. Everyone else can cover the sensations about whether Thierry Henry goes to Barcelona or whether Erikson will coach Manchester City. He finds fascinating stories within the historical context of soccer, which is a lot more interesting.

My favorite soccer team, by default, is SC Freiburg. I lived in Freiburg for two years, and both years they were in the Bunesliga. They have no superstars, but they played hard that first year and competed with the Bayerns and Werders of the league. However, the next year, they were terrible, finishing dead last and were relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga where they have been since. I saw two games, one a 2:0 dismantling of this year's Bundesliga champion VfB Stuttgart. It was one of the few bright spots of the season.

Well, now Uli is chronicling the rise and fall of Freiburg's legendary coach, Volker Finke, the most beloved Breisgau coach not named Loew. I remember being near the stadium after Freiburg got thumped by one of the league giants. Some fans grumbled about the coach, but many sang "ohne Finke hab' wir keine Chance!" Without Finke, we have no chance.

Anyway, part II of the series is here. Part I was a lot of background, not all of it necessary. Part III will be here soon.

Stories...

Here is a short story Christianity Today published. It's a very interesting concept, though the story itself seems incomplete. What I appreciate is its attempt to engage a moral complexity we face (in this case, genetics). There is a lot being said, and presumably being done, about using stories to better engage post-moderns with the Gospel. This article is encouraging, because it uses the same idea with one of the many issues we face in the public square. Such stories should be done in a manner that is not mean-spirited (unlike a cartoon I saw in a Christian publication cynically portraying a young worker being fired for posting party pictures on MySpace); indeed it should be loving. It should also be honest about complexities, as well as appropriately appreciative of the other sides in the debates. This story is a step in the right direction, and kudos to Agnieszka Tennant for writing it.

Wine-growers prepared to use violence

Radical Basque separatists, Hamas, Al Qaida and now... French wine-growers. The BBC reports that a groups of masked Frenchmen called "the Crav," who look a lot like the shadowy jihadis kidnapping soldiers and journalists, are prepared to use violence if the French government doesn't meet its demands.

The question remains for wine lovers: does consuming wine from the Languedoc region mean giving into the terrorists? Or are these guerrillas freedom fighters, preventing excellent wine from being watered down by global competition?

A commentary you can't refuse

The Economist online has an interesting commentary on The Soparanos, American culture and the way the rest of the world sees us. Read it here.

Bada Bing!

Love and the art of feeding sheep

Today the worship team I'm not, as well as worship teams from several other churches, received worship training from Andy Piercy (www.andypiercy.com). He's an interesting character, an original Christian who was also a rocker, who toured with Queen (a fact I think is really cool) 10 years before any of us in the Christian bubble were debating whether that kind of thing was "going secular" and "selling out."

Among many excellent points one stood out that seems so intuitive and correct I'm amazed that tonight's the first night I thought about it. Towards the end of the presentation he spoke of the shepherding role of a worship leader, siting Jesus' final command to the future leader of his church (John 21). To be a shepherd as Christ, Andy reminded us, we need to love our congregation. It's easy to think of it as serving, or worse, performing for a congregation. Love eliminates any need to perform and ignites the desire to serve.

I've led worship for a relatively long time, and leading worship in small group settings is one thing I can say I do well. Andy's challenge will enrich all of this. While working in the ministry, it was easier to remember to love those I was evangelizing. There's no other logical reason to walk up to strangers and try to challenge their beliefs, much less try to win them over to yours. The only other reason would be out of a self-righteous love for your own beliefs (rather than the object of your beliefs) and that has always had disastrous results. God's love for me enabled me to love him, to worship him and lead others to do the same. God's command and the completion of worship is to love these others as well.

Loving your neighbor at 15,000 feet

I experience flying the same way I experience a restless night's sleep. Every step of the process rushes through my mind like a surreal sequence of dreams. My senses take in, but are not allowed to react to sounds, sights, smells and temperatures that occur so little in my day-to-day life that they are unnatural and intrusive.

Yet, I really like travel. I love airports. Anyone who has seen Love Actually will remember how it opens and closes at Heathrow airport, a collage of people who love each other, people of all different shapes and flavors, saying hello or good bye in the profound little intimacies that only occur at these moments. I love that part.

My 8-hour layover in Heathrow saw little of that. I was in the "passengers only" area, which has been separated from those Love Actually moments since 9-11. However, there is an unspoken camaraderie among the passengers. No matter where we're going, we're all on the same boat. It's a place where different cultures, races, ethnicities and religions go through so many of the same rituals. We take off our shoes, take out our lap-tops, empty our pockets, pray that we won't be picked to have strangers rummage through our belongings, pray harder that we won't be picked out to be frisked, we wait in lines, we find caffeine or alcohol or simply something to read, we watch each other and observe what country we're from, discerning accents and languages (is that Russian? It's definitely something Eastern European), check our tickets, read signs, watch these amazing machines that will transport us to Istanbul, New York, Johannesburg, Barcelona, Stuttgart. I find I like all the people I'm waiting in line with. I look knowingly at all of the impatient expressions. I wonder if the long cue will cause me to miss the 17:30 take-off as well.

On my flight back to DC, however, I found myself sitting next to someone I found difficult to like. My father always tells me stories of the interesting people he meets on flights. He has these great conversations with fantastic world travelers. I'm usually sitting next to some tired business man has his headphones on and his gin and tonic out before the flight attendants are finished with their safety speech, twisting his entire body to communicate that communication is the last thing he wants for the next eight hours. This time, however, I had the opposite problem. I sat next to an elderly lady. She also drank gin and tonic, but she talked more as more drinks came. She also smelled. It was difficult to face her. She was the sort of old woman who would ramble about nothing in particular. She seemed very rich. She had just come back from a northern cruise and she had a huge pearl ring on her left hand. Her constant talking was intruding on the reason we introverts love flying: where else can you read with so little of life distracting you? I wanted to hide in my own headphones.

My attitude reminded me, though, of how far from Christ I often am. He seemed to like the unlikable. He even liked the tax-collectors. He made it a point to like them. I don't think we're required to like everybody, but we are required, and hopefully with time and growth, enabled to love as he does. I looked up from my book and listened. I think (ok, I'm sure) Christ would have listened better, would have loved her better and would have sewed seeds of Gospel into the heart of this drunk, smelly, rich old woman. I fell short on all accounts, to my shame. Yet, I believe that was his working that pulled me from myself so I could make the attempt, and in that I have hope that I am growing in the right direction. Even in the middle of this strange sequence of dreams.