Sport

Why I Coach Little Leaguers

I've been a Little League coach for the last 4 years. I've coached two championship teams for our local Little League. I've coached all stars. We've won an all star tournament. And I've also coached teams that came really close but couldn't finish. Winning is a lot of fun and what you shoot for, but sometimes getting really close is an amazing teacher and builder of character. I'm no great baseball coach though some of my teams have done well, but I love the kids and their families and caring about people sometimes takes you a lot further than skill and is more rewarding than winning.

Case in point. Watch David Belisle's post-elimination talk with his Little League World Series team from the New England region. You can coach good baseball as a jerk. I know guys who do that. But when a coach cares about kids, about families, it's something more. 

Black Sox - World Series Footage

This is, according to Deadspin, the only known surviving footage of the 1919 World Series that was thrown by the White Sox (Black Sox). This footage was "part of a cache of newsreels from the Canadian Yukon that were at one point used to fill in a swimming pool that was being converted into a hockey rink. The newsreels were discovered in 1978, and sat in an archive until this year, when a White Sox fan working on a documentary about the lost films stumbled on them. Good luck for him, and better luck for us." (via)

Pretty cool. Watch a piece of history.


Response to UK Win

This is so great. Here's the Christian Student Fellowship at the University of Kentucky watching the thrilling end to the UK win over Wisconsin in the NCAA Final Four. Love it. I miss working at UK and being a part of stuff like this.

Lots-o-Links 2.5.14

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I Don't Worship God By Singing. I Connect With Him Elsewhere by Donald Miller -- This is an important post and an important issue. I don't agree with Miller but he speaks for many and evangelicals and pastors need to talk about the issues Miller brings up and respond reasonably and not just react.

So, do I attend church? Not often, to be honest.

Like I said, it’s not how I learn.

Miller's follow up post - Miller responds to certain comments he received after the initial post and elaborates on what he's already said.

While I love the traditional church, I love it like a foundational part of my past, as though it were a University I’ve graduated from to join a much larger church those still in the University program are quite suspicious of.

[...]

I’d say half of the most impactful people I know, who love Jesus and tear up at the mention of His name, who reach out to the poor and lonely and are fundamentally sound in their theology, who create institutions that feed hundreds of thousands, do not attend a traditional church service. Many of them even speak at churches, but they have no home church and don’t long for one. They aren’t wired to be intimate with God by attending a lecture and hearing singing (which there is NOTHING wrong with) they are wired to experience God by working with Him.

Journalists at Sochi Tweeting Their Experiences -- If you aren't following Sochi journalists, now is the time to start. This is frightening, sad, and ridiculous. 

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Romans 1-7 For You by Tim Keller is out. About this series of books...

• READ: As a guide to this wonderful letter, helping you appreciate the great gift of righteousness with God.
• FEED: As a daily devotional to help you grow in Christ as you read and meditate on this portion of God’s word.
• LEAD: As notes to aid you in explaining, illustrating and applying Romans 1–7 as you preach or lead a Bible study.

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Worldview Responses to the 2014 Grammys -- I love the idea of collecting short-ish responses to a cultural event. You get very different thoughts often from people who view the event from very different angles. I love the response from Greg Thornbury of King's College. Here's the opening paragraph of it...

If you heard the sound of yawning around America this morning, it wasn't because the country stayed up too late watching the Grammys, it's because we've gotten bored with them. The Grammys once mattered because pop music mattered. Once upon a time, J. Edgar Hoover monitored the movement of rock stars like John Lennon because he was a perceived political threat, because he was anti-establishment. Nowadays, our rock stars are the establishment, and that's not very, well, rock and roll.

I'm Terrified

One of the greatest first person perspective videos of a sport I've ever seen. With a background in mountain biking, it's even more terrifying because I know what it feels like to be on the edge of something. But NOT on both sides!