I had a nice Zen moment last night... while I was making popcorn, believe it or not. 

Is creative and/or pastoral energy a zero-sum game? Or does that energy, expressed and put into play beget more of the same?

"KOKOMO, Ind. —  A pastor brought out a dirt bike during a church service to demonstrate the concept of unity. Now he's demonstrating the concept of healing.

Jeff Harlow, the senior pastor at Crossroads Community Church, broke his wrist when he lost control of the motorcycle at the start of Sunday's second service, driving off a 5-foot platform and into the vacant first row of seats. He underwent surgery on the wrist Monday.

"Jeff has already laughed a lot, so he's OK. I think his pride was bruised," said his wife, Becky.

Becky Harlow said her husband had recently attended a motorcycle race in Buchanan, Mich.

"He had this idea that he would bring this bike out onstage and show people how the rider would become one with the bike," she told the Kokomo Tribune. "He was going to just sit on it and drive it out. He was just walking the dirt bike out onstage and somehow it got away from him. It was not intended."

No one else was hurt.

Jeff Harlow had performed the demonstration at earlier services Saturday night and Sunday morning without incident."

-Fox News

I blame Ed Young Jr for this. Seriously! :)

HT: Scott Bridwell

Actual video here

UPDATE: They cut off the video before he does the jump!!! What's up with that?!? :) Doesn't this guy realize he could be a YouTube Superstar???

I posted this on PastorHacks, but those who don't read my other blog as well as this one... :) Too good not to share...

DropBox! I had seen it talked about elsewhere, but lacked a beta code for trying it out. 

But since I've lost a few sermons/files/other jive here and there over the past couple of months due to inconsistent backups, I knew I needed an always on, immediately syncing/backing up solution. 

Enter DropBox.   Dead simple backup with 2gigs of space. And free! I installed the program (Mac OR PC), clicked the taskbar icon, dragged my sermon folder to the window and... voila'. Backed up.

A simple test confirmed- I opened last week's sermon, made one change and saved and... instantly backed up. 

Files, folders, pictures, music- whatever. Drag and drop and FORGET. That's the best part. I have backups elsewhere, but nothing that automatically backs up the moment I make a change.  

Seriously- why can't .Mac Mobile Me make it this simple? I feel like this is the utility I have been waiting all my life for... 

Okay- a little hyperbole, but when I think of the masterpieces I have lost due to hard-drive crashes between backups...

I have 10 invites for those that want 'em- give a shout out in the comments and I'll pass them on later today. 

Trust me- I think you want to use DropBox. 

"Take control of what I say, O Lord, 

... is coming along nicely.

When Pirates of the Caribbean first came out, everyone who saw it thought Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow was both wonderful and familiar- he seemed to be channeling someone but we couldn't quite put a finger on it. Then the realization came... OH... he's doing Keith Richards. 

I believe in the sovereignty of God, the Five Points of Calvinism, the Solas of the Reformation, I believe that grace precedes faith in regeneration. Theologically, I am Reformed. Sociologically, I am simply a Christian – or at least I want to be. The tricky thing about our hearts is that they can turn even a good thing into an engine of oppression. It happens when our theological distinctives make us aloof from other Christians. That’s when, functionally, we relocate ourselves outside the gospel and inside Galatianism.

The Judaizers in Galatia did not see their distinctive – the rite of circumcision – as problematic. They could claim biblical authority for it in Genesis 17 and the Abrahamic covenant. But their distinctive functioned as an addition to the all-sufficiency of Jesus himself. Today the flash point is not circumcision. It can be Reformed theology. But no matter how well argued our position is biblically, if it functions in our hearts as an addition to Jesus, it ends up as a form of legalistic divisiveness.

My Reformed friend, can you move among other Christian groups and really enjoy them? Do you admire them? Even if you disagree with them in some ways, do you learn from them? What is the emotional tilt of your heart – toward them or away from them? If your Reformed theology has morphed functionally into Galatian sociology, the remedy is not to abandon your Reformed theology. The remedy is to take your Reformed theology to a deeper level. Let it reduce you to Jesus only. Let it humble you. Let this gracious doctrine make you a fun person to be around. The proof that we are Reformed will be all the wonderful Christians we discover around us who are not Reformed. Amazing people. Heroic people. Blood-bought people. People with whom we are eternally one – in Christ alone.

-Ray Ortlund:

Read the whole thing.