Ok, so I am posting something from Dr. Housing Bubble tonite.
What is interesting is that these numbers are adjusted for inflation. Just look at TAXES!
We are being taxed to death.
The Good Doctor analyzes the rest – the two-income family trap and how housing prices are still 25% inflated on a national level..
Robert J. Samuelson wrote a brillian Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post this week titled, “America’s Parent Trap”. He wrote about how Federal tax policy has taken its toll on the American family, and how it is having an effect on families and how many children they can afford to have.
In a nutshell: The Feds punish families for having kids through tax policy and explosive over-spending on social programs that have literally bankrupted the Treasury.
Samuelson says it better:
We need to avoid Western Europe’s mix of high taxes, low birth rates and feeble economic growth. Young Americans already face a bleak labor market that cannot instill confidence about having children. Piling on higher taxes won’t help. “If higher taxes make it more expensive to raise children,” says demographer Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, “people will think more about having another child.” That seems common sense, despite the multiple influences on becoming parents.
How to reconcile this with deficit reduction is unclear. From 2011 to 2020, the Obama administration projects budget deficits of $8.5 trillion. Other estimates are higher. Even if spending and benefits for the elderly are cut — as they should be — higher taxes will still almost certainly be needed. Parents ought to be shielded from the steepest increases.
Any tax system rewards some activities and punishes others. A case in point is the mortgage interest rate deduction that rewards people for buying larger homes with more debt. We might reduce this dubious subsidy and shift some savings toward children. Stein advocates combining pro-child tax breaks (the personal exemption, the child tax credit, the child-care credit and the adoption credit) into one generous credit. Whatever the details, policies should have a pro-family bias because parenting is, as he writes, “one of the most important services any American can perform.”
Read the whole article here.
Consider this my World Cup “afterglow”.
Set List for our first interim service at the Monrovia Community Center:
1. Never Looking Back
2. He Reigns
3. More Than A Friend
4. Isn’t He
5. How He Loves
Ministry: You Never Let Go / Consuming Fire
Worship Together is offering free chord sheets and listens to 10 great Christmas songs for worship leaders.
Check it out at:
http://blog.worshiptogether.com/worshiptogether/2009/11/10-free-christmas-worship-songs.html
Christmas is coming right up, and that means worship leaders around the world are digging through their archives in search of those chord sheets and arrangements of traditional Christmas songs made for guitar and full-band situations. Chris Tomlin is handing all of us an early gift with this CD.
Tomlin has done well with giving freshness to the hymns, and I’m looking forward to giving this Christmas CD a listen.
Francis Petruziello of the Cleveland leader has a full review at http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/11678.
As I was reading over this week’s Lectionary (RCL/B), the obvious theme is waiting and trusting in the Lord. The song I Will Trust You jumped out at me as I read the passages for this week, as the song talks about waiting on God, and his comfort in the waiting. It’s a great song by a really neat guy named Chris Lizotte (for those of you who read that aren’t plugged into Vineyard Music’s latest stuff). Chris has been giving the Vineyard a number of great songs that are so passionate and also so congregational and useful for worship leaders. Great stuff!
Jesus Culture again has inspired us to bring out a classic song and put a new spin on it. I love their interpretation of “We Exalt Thee”, and their arrangement of “Lord You’re Beautiful” is nice.
The final response of a new Matt Redman song is, “You alone can rescue and save, and we respond in praise as we lift up our eyes to the Giver of Life”. I want to do about four more songs off of Matt’s new record titled We Will Not Be Shaken.
It’s Monday, and been a week since I posted already. I’ve committed myself to posting more often, but getting into the swing of things has been tough with everything going on. Busy-ness is “no bueno”.
Friday was a hectic day at work. It was the last day with my boss gone, and I was carrying a lot of stuff on my plate at work. I came home, and fired up the grill (grill therapy works) and spent some time talking with friends. The horrible week I had just melted away.
Saturday was a busy day. I helped out a friend of mine with a sound “workshop” at a local church here in SoCal. It wasn’t really a true workshop, because I’m not really very qualified to teach much on sound, but I shared what I knew. But through the workshop I found out that the hardest part of running sound is dealing with the relationships involved (this might be true of all ministry???).
So instead of teaching in depth about gain, eq, and mixing, we talked, listened and prayed for the sound team. I think it was good. It is a little hard to tell. I hope I helped. By the end I just need some Starbucks to get through the rest of the day. It was an early morning (for Saturday)
And what a Sunday we had with Darren and friends at the La Habra Vineyard! Melisa and I had a chance to be a part of their worship celebration yesterday morning, and join in worship with some great friends of ours. It was a lot of fun. The people there worshiped with all that they had to give, and we joined in with them. It was a lot of fun to play electric for Darren. He gave the team the authority and freedom to play out and sing out as God led us, or as our hearts desired to. God blessed us all yesterday, and I came away feeling so free and refreshed. God is good.
The bonus is that Melisa got the large order of Fish ‘n Chips so I could have leftovers tonight (Monday) after work. She’s a nice lady.
As I drove into work today, I was pretty tired. I knew it was going to be a “recovery Monday” for me, but it was totally worth it.
Monday. It gets a bad rap. It takes the brunt of our disappointment that the weekend is over, and introduces us to a whole new week of stresses, challenges, and labor. But I have found that Monday evening is a good time for me to slow things down. After the fun of the weekend, and the sometimes morning and evening services I lead or play at, Monday seems easy sometimes because we keep things simple and low key.
Tonight was one of those nights. Melisa got home around 5, and I jetted past Guitar Center to pick up a few things, and came home to fire up the grill and make some BBQ chicken. I love to grill. The smells, the fire, the act of cooking in the elements, the whole experience is relaxing to me. We currently live in an apartment, so I have to grill in this community “grilling area”, so It’s not ideal, but I still enjoy it. Maybe it’s because when you cook on the grill, things slow down. If you want things cooked right, you can’t rush the process. This process gives me a chance to take a breath, to think, to pray, to ponder.
C.S. Lewis was known to be a pipe smoker. I think that this habit, this passtime, gave him more opportunities to think, pray, and ponder. In today’s world of insta-everything, we often leave little room in oiur lives for this kind of “slow” time. I need, somehow, to find more of this time.
Varietal Records recently released a highly anticipated sophomore release from Jeremy Riddle, a release that did not disappoint. Riddle’s second full-length solo project for Varietal, “The Now and Not Yet” is a powerful record that combines themes of worship with the sonic textures of U2 and Coldplay, yet is delivered in a unique way.
Varietal Records is a sub-label of Vineyard Music, which historically has produced congregational worship albums. Riddle’s effort, however, goes beyond congregational worship on most songs. But the themes involved are deep and powerful. On Track 3, Prayer for the Church, Riddle calls for the church to live without comprimise, and in full integrity, and does it in a creative way that reaches the listener in a very non-churchy way.
The production on the album is absolutely stunning, and I have had my copy stuck in the CD player in my car for about a month. It’s really a great album. I’ll leave the witty album review up to others, but I recommend this record to anyone who likes good music, especially if you’re into U2.
A couple of the songs can be adapated for corporate worship. At Live Oak, we used “Christ Is Risen” for the weeks leading up to and including Easter, and the congregation was able to grab onto the song fairly quickly.
Here’s more from Christianity Today:
Jeremy Riddle
The Now and Not Yet (Varietal Records)
Released March 2009
reviewed by Andrew Greer
[3½ Stars - Good]
Sounds like … the energetic worship rock of Delirious and recent Sonicflood with the mainstream sensibility of U2 and vocal sensitivity of Coldplay’s Chris Martin.
At a glance … modern pop/rock worship with more emphasis on rock than pop.
Track Listing
1. Christ is Risen
2. Prepare the Way of the Lord
3. Prayer for the Church
4. Bless His Name
5. As Above, So Below
6. Among the Poor
7. One Thing
8. To be Like You
9. Surrendered in Praise
10. The One and the Only
11. Joyful Noise
12. I Am Redeemer
Jeremy Riddle considers himself more of a worship leader than a performing artist. And without a doubt, his years of experience leading worship corporately have heavily influenced his song catalog.
But Vineyard Music created Varietal Records, Riddle’s home base, with the implicit purpose of commercially exposing a wider audience to the unique voices and individual artistry of standout worship leaders and their songs.
In an effort to do just that, Riddle’s sophomore set, The Now and Not Yet, showcases layers of delayed guitars, thick programmed beats, and tons of gutsy vocals, giving the twelve-song set a broader commercial appeal than say, a Passion CD, and more grit than the acoustic leanings of Chris Tomlin’s best-known work.
Don’t be alarmed. Riddle is not shying away from his roots. Rather, in the same way Delirious fans have come to expect elements of a rock show during a night of worship, so Riddle is expanding his sonic platform to encompass broader audiences that will surely benefit from his modern hymnody.
Hitting it hard from the top, “Christ is Risen” boldly proclaims belief in Christ’s resurrection, coupling Riddle’s rock proclivities with congregation-ready lyrics in a perfect introduction to his corporate and commercial combo. Read the rest at ChristianityToday.com
So I spent my weekend at “The Spirit & The Bride Say Come”, a worship conference at the Pomona Vineyard. It was an intimate weekend, with group of about 60 or 70 people who all came to meet with God. It was great. The teach over the weekend really focused on living a full life of worship. One of the quote that stood out was from Randy Butler. I am paraphrasing, but he essentially said:
If you think you are walking a life of love and worship, simply replace ever place in the Bible that says, “Love your neighbor” with “Love your drivers”! It was profound, considering all of the tailgating, honking, and bad driving I was guilty of on my way to the Friday night session in rush hour traffice.
Another friend, Ellie, taught on living a life of worship, and how our ’service’ to the church is separate from our relationship with God in so many ways.
The whole weekend emphasized how important the “wholistic” Chrisian life is. If we aren’t walking out faith, hope, and love in our daily lives, are we really living lives or worship.
The teachingwas pretty hard-hitting, and I was corrected and blessed by all of it.
Here’s what we *probably* will be doing as a set at LOV tomorrow. You never know what could change.
As we start into the Lent season, I wanted some songs that focus on repentance, need and making the way for Christ to come forth. It fits the season, and reflects the scriptures that we are studying during Lent.
I’ve got roll. I’m late for Mens’ Breakfast.
Alhambra 710 jam. Ugh. 1 week agoGotta love big aggro - RT @KFINEWS FDA found rodents, seeping manure and even maggots at the Iowa egg farms linked to Salmonella outbreak 1 week agoNom Nom truck is a one one trick pony. Boring. #GreatAmericanFoosTruckRace #foodnetwork 1 week agoWe are taking a break from packing tonight. Some football and chill time is perfect. 1 week agoCarried gear up two flights of stairs for the last time today! No steps at the new crib! 1 week ago