Fajita's Blog

I’ve Moved December 14, 2006

Please go to my new blog site. Please update links on your site to include my new blog.

www.homefront.blogspot.com

You Had Me At Label December 12, 2006

Folks, my time at WordPress has been wonderful, but with the insanely great and much longed for enhancements over at blogger, I am back to my old blog addrress.

My blog name remains “Fajita’s Blog”

The address is www.homefront.blogspot.com.

For the faithful, this is the address of my original blog born back in Jun of 2004.

Labels, easy links, and tons of other features are now easy with blogger (blogspot). I’m back to the one who got me loving blogging in the first place.

Good-bye WordPress.

Bambinos December 12, 2006

Latino baby boom latest twist in the redistribution of New Orleans demography.

Click here to read NY Time article.

Don’t Miss This! December 11, 2006

If you are mission minded, then do yourself a favor and read this post and then act on it. Below is a brief paragraph or two from my buddy, Mark, over at the Kibo Group.

I’m about to help you out here with an amazing idea for your
Christmas shopping.  You know that nagging problem of what to get for the person who has everything?  Well, this should solve that one.  I bet they don’t have their very own tree in Uganda.   Click on the link below and you can buy one, get a cool Christmas card you can plant (yes, a card you can plant when you are done) and it will grow flowers (no kidding) and you get an ornament that will have a number on it marking the GPS coordinates of your tree in Uganda.  (Better click on the link below if you want it to make sense.) The Kibo Group
is a non-profit that I run along with a friend named Clint Davis.

You can read about Kibo at our website http://www.kibogroup.org.  We make no money off this, (Kibo has no salaries for stateside employees)…the money goes to plant trees.  Check it out… its a pretty unique gift idea and it really can make the world better.
Merry Christmas!

http://www.kibogroup.org/mvuleproject.html

Trust Paradox December 11, 2006

Trust is quite a powerful relational dynamic. Having it exist mutually between two people is can be magic. When trust combines with a depth of self-disclosure, then there is even more power. Respect grows. In fact, when mutual trust rises, so do many relational quality indicators.

And yet, the stronger trust becomes, the more vulnerable the relationship becomes. How ironic. The trust paradox demands that the relationship become stronger by way of exposing weakness.

Now, don’t get me wrong, vulnerability is not weakness. I define it as the extent to which a person could be hurt by another. It is the extent to which a person reveals his or her softest spots. It is a willingness to be unprotected in the presence of another.

Jesus was no weakling, but he made himself vulnerable to humans. He entered into human life largely unprotected. He trusted humans beyond their capacity to be trusted and such trust might be considered foolish. However, what we find is that trusting people, even in betrayal, was a sign of strength, not wekaness. He paid the price, but overcame the price.

As Jesus entered this world unprotected, Christians who celebrate Christimas might think about Christmas as a willingness of God to enter into humanity largely unprotected. Jesus, knowing that entering into danger unarmed was worth it, Christiasn might take this Christmas story adn do the same.

Erwin McManus has been known to say that when Christians talk about entering into the center of God’s will being the safest place on earth, they are exactly wrong. Entering into the center of God’s will might be the most dangerous place in the world.

In order to be strong, we must become vulnerable.

New Blog December 7, 2006

If you take a gander to te left, you will see a new blog listed under the “Other blogs by fajita” section.

What is new there is a blog I just launched called, “Smart Single Parents.”

I want this blog to serve single parents in much the same way my Smart Stepfamilies Blog serves people in stepfamilies. So, if you are a single parent or you know a single parent who wants a place to go for advice, connection to resources, and conversation, sned them to the Smart Single Parents blog.

The Mission December 7, 2006

There is a church in the midwest falling apart. It is not a church I attend, but I have inside knowledge of it. As I am not part of the church, I may be speaking out of line, but I want to share this situation as an example of something.

Denominational allegiance is no reason for people to gather together and exist as a congregation. It is a very weak association. It is so weak, in fact, that only under the right conditions can it exist and be healthy – and even that is questionable.

When challenges arise, denominational correctness is not going to save a church that is going under. Although it is tempting to believe that our doctrinal agreement is enough to keep us unified, it is not. Doctrinal agreement, or the willing belief in its illusion, cannot withstand the encroachment of being busy, geographic distance, weak leadership,  or attrition.

What will hold a church together is not doctrinal agreement or doctrinal correntness, but rather it is the mission the church is on. When a church is doing someting that matters to God and people, then it has something of value.

A dead and dying church tends to infect its member with its affliction, not the other way around. Without mission the church dies. Period. It might appear to be living, but it appears to be full of life like a person with an unknown and deadly cancer that lies under the skin. Death is groing and it is only a metter of time before it reveals its devastating presence. 

This post is a call for people of faith to get on mission. Do something. Organize in small clusters around a cause. Meet together to pursue that cause.

African orphans, the environment, healthy living, immigration, homelessness etc. 

Meet together, write blogs, develop action steps for your group, develop action steps for people to join the mission of your group, devote resrources (time, money, voice) to the cause, promote the cause through media.

Invent ways of doing good. This is what Jesus did and he did it with other people. Some of the people he did good with didn’t even understand who he was or why he was doing the good, not at first anyway.

Smart Stepfamilies December 2, 2006

My bogger friends, if any of you are in stepfamilies, then take a gander over at my stepfamilies blog. I don’t mention it a whole let here, but I do have this other world in which I write and have guest writers (hint hint, got a story for me?).

Or, if you know anyone who is in a stepfamily and might want to add a blog visit to their stepparenting efforts, send them my way: http://smartstepfamilies.blogspot.com