Watch this interview with Francis Chan, Mark Driscoll, and Josh Harris as they talk about Francis’ recent decision to leave his church.  It’s an amazing example of 3 men asking each other hard questions; giving humble, honest answers; and challenging each other to love Jesus, the church, and others more.

Do your community groups, Bible studies, friendships, or heck, marriages have this directness, humility, and openness?

(via The Gospel Coalition)

I grew up listening to Peter Gabriel’s So in my parent’s car - actually if I had to create a playlist from what I remember from my childhood it would feature Peter Gabriel, the Beatles, Paul Simon, and Joe Cocker.

Even though I grew up soaking in great vocalists and music it took me awhile to really appreciate Tom Waits. Whereas all of the artists I mentioned were great songwriters, Tom Waits takes the song and turns it into its own person, entity, and experience. That can often make it hard to get down to the actual melodies and story, but if you’re patient, you can see what a great storyteller and image-painter he is.

Here is a video from The Voice Project where artists cover eachother’s songs to raise awareness for war-torn portions of Africa. Great cause, great project, great video.

I think we sang songs like this together for about an hour. The tradition is that when the bowl of airag (fermented horse milk) is passed to you that you pick the song and everyone sings together. The bowl goes around the circle three times. :)  Kim and I ended up singing shakey duets of two hymns, The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven”, and John Lennon’s “Stand By Me”.

I tried not to be too invasive with the camera but as I pan around you can see how the elder hosts at the house sit on one end of the room (right side of the camera); the tower of bread, dried horse milk, and candy (the height is determined by the age of the host); the buuz (goat meat dumplings, on the table); and the traditional backside of the goat.

Thousands of miles from any coastline, we taught the girls the patented Miskov shaka.

This is the 4th video in my wife’s series of videos on her students. Javzaa is definitely one of our favorites. We teach her English every Friday and Kim has had her in both of her photography classes. She is also part of the really great crew that comes over for dinner and movie nights once a month. Javzaa is ridiculously smart (she speaks Mongolian, English, and Turkish), endearingly sweet, and endlessly kind. As you watch this video though, pay attention to what she says about parents, teachers, and why she wants to be a teacher.

January 5th, 2008.