But to improve we have to change. To not change may be safe and comforting, but it is boring. Typically change will only happen as a result of a crisis. Things have to become so bad that we have no other choice but to change. I suppose a little change is better than no change at all, but we could have so much more. Why wait for the Great Depression, or a church collapse, or being at the end of your rope before you change? Why not change for the better when things are going well? If your business made $1 million, why not see if you can make $2 million? If your church saw 50 people come to the Lord this year, why not try for 100 next year?

Most of the organizations I’ve observed in my adult life have started out with a bang. After the first few years the pioneer spirit dies, the innovation stops, and people repeat over and over again what was done before. If it’s a business, there are processes in place to sell and build product. If it’s a church, there is a certain way things are done in meetings and a certain belief system. These organizations will act like they are pressing forward by setting every increasing goals like more sales or more people in the church, but nothing is changed to bring this increase about. If things don’t go as well as expected all other avenues will be tried before anything changes. And change will only come through long deliberation. Once the changes are made and the crisis is averted then the natural tendency is to fall back into the sleepy way of life, just repeating things week in week out. There will then be another crisis looming and the cycle will repeat indefinitely.

The only way out of this mad cycle is to create a value for continuous improvement in all areas of our lives – our jobs, relationships, and church life. This means that we turn off automatic pilot and take control of our lives. We stop doing things because that is the way they’ve always been done. We probe. We think. We pray. We discuss. And then we do.

This is especially important for those in leadership. Leaders naturally strive for control and certainty amid all the variables of life. But people want to belong to something dynamic. They want to go to work excited about what they are going to do. And people want to go to church wondering what might happen. Reruns can be fun, but they get old real quick.

1. Rose in Bloom by Louise May Alcott
This is far and away my favorite novel. I have some parts of it memorized from reading it so much. I still cry when I read it. Not one, but two love stories. This is the sequel to “Eight Cousins”. Reading “Eight Cousins” first would be helpful, but I don’t think it is necessary.

2. These Three Remain by Pamela Aidan
This is the third in a series of books, which show the events from the novel “Pride and Prejudice” from Darcy’s perspective. Another book that still makes me cry and I’m on my way to memorizing it as well. Probably would need to know the storyline of “Pride and Prejudice” or have read the first two in the series to get the full effect.

3. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
This book revolves around a girl from a poor manufacturing town in England during the nineteenth century. Most books from this era are about the upper classes, but Gaskell worked among the poor and so wrote a lot about how the lower classes lived and the class struggles that existed at this time. A reviewer from the time this is written said that if you wanted to understand why people become communists read “Mary Barton.” Very powerful.

4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
A massive book. Do yourself a favor and skip the historic background chapters that don’t seem to add anything to the story. Several powerful storylines interweaving about post Revolutionary France. If you are like me you will cry when it is over.

5. Persuasion by Jane Austin
I haven’t read this book in a while so I don’t know why this is above “Pride and Prejudice”, but as I made this list a year ago I’ll defer to the wisdom of 29 year old James.

6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
In my opinion the best plot ever with some of the best characters ever. I like Aidan’s retelling better because it is less dense, which I suppose makes it less impressive because Austin can say so much with so little, but at the end of a weary day I prefer easier reading.

7. Middlemarch by George Elliot
Anne Lamott described this as the perfect book. The only problem is that it is very long. That is a good thing though because you get more involved with the characters that way. I’ve only read it once, but really enjoyed it that one time.

8. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orcy
This is a fun book that is more manly than the rest. It’s really only great the first time, because there is a big twist and once you know what it is the book isn’t as exciting anymore. Still a great book.

Right now I’m trying to learn how to sing. After I put the kids to bed I go down to my basement, get in the closet, close the door, and sing for twenty to twenty-five minutes. I hum for ten minutes and do lip rolls for ten minutes and then maybe a little something more. Based on this schedule I will master my voice at the age of 96. Do I want to be the next Andrea Bocelli? Well, actually, yes but I’m not banking on it. All I really want to be able to do is sing worship songs; not opera. That doesn’t require vocal mastery. But I think it might require me to practice more than twenty minutes a day; particularly as I take some time during every practice session to hit myself out of frustration.

The thing about increasing my practice time is that it really starts to eat into my day. Say I want go from 25 minutes to an hour. During the weekend that’s not a big deal. I can break that into two half hour sessions. But I can’t during the week. That means I have to put the kids down at 7:45 and go in my basement closet until 8:45. Ouch! Not much time left in the day now. Commitment. Discipline. What hard words!

Now maybe I decide that music isn’t important enough to me to put that much time into it. That’s fine. But I’m not ok saying music is that important but I’m too weak to put in the time it takes. For me, that is the struggle. Being strong enough as a person to push through those times when I would rather be doing something else like staring into space. Even if we really enjoy our hobby there are going to be times when we would rather be doing something else. We have to practice anyway. Do you think Michael Jordan had more fun playing basketball than you have working at your job? Of course he did. So why did he get to play basketball for a living? Because he spent all those hours practicing when he didn’t feel like it. The pay for the long hours is the joy of excelling at your craft and hopefully bringing joy to others through what you do.

By the way, I imagine most people who think liver is gross just had it cooked poorly. Liver should be rare to medium rare. Throw in some bacon, garlic, onions and the like. Slice the liver thin and put it on lettuce if you want. It will taste almost like a tender steak.

Take margarine, for example. This was created as a healthier butter replacement. We now know that margarine is about the most unhealthy thing you can eat. I wonder how many people died prematurely because of this guess.

This post is me summing up “Body by Science” by Doug McGuff and John Little. If you want more details, get the book. I’m not going to try to go through it in order. If something seems wrong or doesn’t make sense it is likely a deficiency in my explanation or understanding.

First off, they make a distinction between health and fitness. For them being fit means you are maximizing your physical capacity. Being healthy means the absence of disease and a balance between the body tearing itself down and building itself up. The idea with exercise then is to maximize fitness without damaging health. Sounds like a plan to me.

In the next section of the book they explain metabolism and exercise. It’s pretty technical so I won’t summarize. I’ll quote a bit that I think is helpful – “Over several decades, all sorts of positive health benefits became associated with this specific metabolic adaptation (related to aerobic exercise – my comment). Soon, it became a foregone conclusion that aerobic conditioning was cardiovascular conditioning and that the two were interchangeable. What never seemed to have been pointed out is that the heart and blood vessels support the entire functioning of the cell, not just the mitochondria.” They then go on to say that strength training is the best way to train the cardiovascular system since it stimulates all the components of metabolism. The point is that doing aerobic exercise conditions only a part of our cardiovascular system, while strength training trains all of our cardiovascular system. Why do aerobic exercise, unless of course you really enjoy it?

McGuff and Little quote two studies that were done showing that a few minutes of intense exercise is as good as or better than several hours of “cardio” exercise. Check out the links below
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/06/06/sprint.training/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7429028/Short-blasts-of-exercise-as-good-as-hours-of-training-scientists-find.html

Another issue with doing low intensity repetitive exercise is body wear and tear. Remember, the idea with exercise is to maximize fitness while improving, or at least not damaging, health. Doing exercises that impact your joints over and over are clearly out (who thought high impact aerobics was a good idea?). I forget the percent of runners who are injured every year, but I believe it’s over half.

As an aside, studies have been done showing that marathon runners seem to have more heart problems than the average person. I wonder if this is from the stress that running puts on your heart?
http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/11/1/cardio-causes-heart-disease.html

Back to the book. Putting this together, then what we want to do is intensely stimulate our muscles while minimizing impact on our joints. What “Body by Science” recommends is one set each of a few exercises that hit all the major muscle groups in your body. The exercises are to be done slowly, say 20 seconds per rep, for roughly 90 seconds. The weight should be such that you are at failure after the set. You then wait for your muscles to rebuild, which varies for everyone, but roughly a week. They then go into advice on various routines and exercises you can do and what equipment to use.

There are many wonderful things about this method of exercise but maybe the best is people who want to be fit get their lives back. People no longer need to be on the trail or treadmill an hour every day. Fifteen minutes a week is enough. Plus for men, we get to look buff instead of gaunt.

Buy the book.

One of the main concerns with universal complete health care is the cost. How in the world do you pay for such a thing? Well I have an interesting partial solution that has the added benefit of acting as preventative medicine as well.

Here’s my plan:

· Pay for 55% the health care budget by taxes and tariffs on products that are known to cause “diseases of civilization.” There is some disagreement over what those products would consist of, but at the minimum those items should include products with fructose in them and gluten in them. Then you could do smaller taxes on things like skim milk, where they are removing fat soluble vitamins, or items that screw up our omega 6 / 3 balance like vegetable oils.

· Remove subsidies on products known to cause “diseases of civilization.”

· Subsidize products that are healthy like vegetables and pastured meats using 5% of the health care budget, which is paid for by the unhealthy guys.

This plan does several things. First off it shows the true costs of eating bad foods since the real total cost will be more fully seen in the food prices. Second, it will pay for the care of people who have eaten badly in the past. Third it will discourage people from eating foods that will hurt them hopefully lowering health care costs in the future.

Leave the eggs out until they come to room temperature (or you could put them in warm water for a while to speed up the process). This first step is important, because if you put them in cold the shells will burst. Heat enough water to cover your eggs to a boil. Take it off the burner while you put the eggs in. Put them all in as close to the same time as you can. Then put the pan back on the burner. Set heat for a gentle boil. Cook 9:30 to 10 minutes. 9:30 is good for eating by themselves. 10 min is good if you are putting the eggs into a recipe like egg salad. Pull them out as soon as possible and put into cold water. Leave for a minute and then change the water. After another couple minutes takes the eggs out and peel them. The shells should come right off.

The first step to becoming good at something is to really that you CAN become good at it. Our society believes deeply in the importance of talent, but the interesting thing about talent is that it doesn’t appear to actually exist. What I mean is that there are people who’s life work it is to look into talent, how it occurs etc. And guess what? They’ve never found it. There is always a practical explanation about why so and so was so good at music or sport or whatever. Now there is something I will call capacity. If you want to be a world class sprinter you pretty much have to be descended from a certain tribe in Kenya. If you want to play in the NBA it helps to be tall. If you want to be an astro-physicist you need a certain IQ. But the good news is that for 95% of the things we want to do even capacity isn’t a limiting factor.

What matters is intentional practice and lots of it. Simply put you learn how a skill is supposed to be performed and then you practice doing that skill until it becomes second nature. You have to spend your practice time doing what is hard for you to get rid of your weaknesses. Not too hard mind you or you will get discouraged and give up. The skill just needs to be hard enough to present a challenge. It is important to have some mechanism to tell you if you are performing the skill correctly or not. If you don’t have feedback then you won’t know that adjustments need to be made and will keep doing the skill incorrectly. This is why having a coach is so important.

The last point bears repeating. Practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes permanent. If you practice something incorrectly all you are doing is reinforcing your incorrect method and making the wrong way second nature. You need feedback when you practice!

The problem with intentional practice is that it isn’t much fun. That is why we don’t do it. It is much more fun to practice things we can already do. We don’t get frustrated, but we don’t grow either.

My issue is not some much knowing how to do things, but actually practicing them. I can tell you how to swing a tennis racket, workout, I know as much about cooking as most chefs, play guitar, sing, etc. But I can’t do any of these things. My problem is that I enjoy learning too much. It is so much easier than doing. There is always something new to be learn in whatever field I happen to be interested in at a given time and so I can save myself the bother of practicing. If you are like me my advice to you is turn off the tv, close your book, get off the internet and practice.

That brings me to my last point. Remember I said that what was needed was intentional practice and lots of it. When researchers went looking for talent what they found was that the two things separating exceptional performers from the rest of us was quality of practice time and quantity of practice. At the end of the day, it’s about how many hours you put in. We have to be consistent about practicing. Think of it like this. I want to get good at guitar so I practice three hours on Saturday. I feel really good about myself. That’s a lot of practice. But now I’m kind of burned out so I don’t touch the guitar for another week. Next week I decide to forgo the marathon session and practice an hour a day. Suddenly I’ve got 7 good hours under my belt. There’s no way I can make up that time with a few one off marathon practice sessions. Slow and steady wins the race.

Happy practicing!

At the heart of our decision is a plain straight forward reading of the Bible. For those who don’t know me very well one of the main things that I can’t stand is compromise. I’m not talking about weakness because I certainly understand that. I’m talking about knowing something to be true and saying I don’t care I’m going to do something else. This is an issue with most of traditional Protestant church life. Take the church meeting itself for example. The New Testament gives us basic guidelines on what to do when gathered and why we should do it in the first place. In short, the reason we go to “church” (the statement itself showing you how far off we’ve gone) is to use our gifts to encourage one another. The only real rules are that the results of our participation have to be edifying and that everyone should be allowed to participate. God, on purpose, made up the church so that we would need everyone’s participation when we come together. Are these simple guidelines followed? No. Why not? I can’t answer that, but I would presume the answer is that that is not the way things have been done. And because we don’t understand the goal of the church in the first place (coming to the fullness of Christ, which requires the use of the gifts of the Spirit, which requires Biblical gatherings)

On another point, take the role of the pastor. Do we ever see a pastor participating in a church gathering led alone running the meeting in the Bible? No. Should they participate? Of course, but as part of the body. Why are 99% of churches run the way they are? Again I can’t answer that, but it isn’t ok. It hurts the leaders and it hurts the church. How did we go from shepherds caring for people to shepherds becoming administrators and charismatic public speakers?

Lets move to the teaching itself. When Jesus sent his disciples out he said “go and preach the gospel saying, ‘the kingdom of God has come near.’” Paul was accused of treason because of his gospel preaching. The gospel as preached in the churches I’ve been in has been something akin to “ask Jesus to come into your heart and you will be saved.” Do you see the difference there? We have gone from saying Jesus is the king of the world who is going to make everything right to offering Jesus as fire insurance.

The things I like most about leaving traditional church setting is that I get the Bible back and I get the believing community back. I can read the Bible for what it says and not for what it supposed to say. I get the whole story, not a list of random verses to support whatever teaching is popular in the blog/book circuit. And I am in relationship with people, not because we happen to sit in the same room for an hour and a half once a week, but because we are family in Christ. The point is no longer to grow an organization, but to worship God together and grow into the fullness of Christ.

I’m so excited. I just got this in the mail today. It’s what Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, who is my all time favorite guitar player, uses to make reverse reverb. If you don’t know what that is you can hear it on YouTube. I found it on ebay used for less than $200. It’s so cool to have the same gear as the pros use.