Stan Taylor

Gordon Atkinson has a blog post today about a salesman who cold-called him, trying to sell him address lists to use to solicit new members for his congregation. Gordon makes a compelling argument that his small congregation is just the right size. I see his point, and generally, I agree with him that it’s wrong to equate a congregation’s growth with its success, as so many churches do these days.
But I don’t think that marketing should be a taboo topic for churches. Inviting people into the fold is, after all, one way of spreading the Good News. The point should be, however, that there are many ways to spread said Good News, and counting heads in worship is just one small method among many, and, in my view, a more trivial one.

Sucker, that is…
This morning, I walked the kids to school. Well, Hannah usually walks ahead with her friends and I accompany Samuel. A small crowd of moms and kids was gathered next to the school building as Samuel and I neared. We saw a young cat emerging from the downspout and a mom trying to help it without touching it.
I reached down and scooped up the cat. The woman looked at me and said, “Your daughter was just here. She said that you would pick it up.” I carried the kitten around the school while I dropped Samuel off, took it home and set it up in the spare dog cage. We’ll decide what to do with it this evening.

Sorry I haven’t blogged much lately. Two reasons, one short-term, one longer.
First, the short-term reason: I had knee surgery this past Wednesday.
The longer-term reason: upon my return from vacation a few weeks ago, I made a few resolutions, among them not to surf the web so much. Less time spent wandering the digital back alleys has resulted in fewer things to blog about.

In Japan, a company is marketing nonalcoholic beer to children. Awesome!

Making the rounds in the blog world today is an interesting Scientific American article about how and when young children learn to understand symbols.
Of course, the article got its own front-page post on MetaFilter, and the first commenter to that thread made a hilarious observation: “Even some older kids still miss the point”

Poor Samuel has lost all four of his upper and bottom front teeth, though the bnew bottom teeth are coming in pretty quickly (Aside: isn’t that the cutest face you’ve ever seen? I’m not biased or anything)

Katie and I have a long history of adapting songs to fit out pets. Two of my favorites: our former cocker spaniel had problems with his anal glands and would frequently drag his ass across the floor (gross, I know). This action became known as the ‘Butt Scootin’ Boogie’. And at one point, we lived in a two-story townhome; when our 20-pound cat would jump down from the furniture to the floor upstairs, we could hear his landing loudly downstairs, at which point we broke out in ‘I fell the earth move under my feet…’

Thankfully, Samuel’s new kindergarten teacher apparently doesn’t read my blog (like who does?); this morning, she let Samuel into her classroom and she didn’t send me to the principal to have my mouth washed out with soap.

Over at Defective Yeti, Matthew Baldwin has invited his readers to offer dating truisms. One commenter advised, probably wisely: If the guy can’t remember how many girls he’s slept with, that is a good sign that maybe he’s not the one for you.
As someone who has had a very limited number of sexual partners in my lifetime (sorry, no details), this got me wondering about people who’ve slept around a lot: at what point do you quit counting? And if you do remember, how to you decide to answer a new date’s query: to lie and say you don’t remember or to be truthful with a large number? Well, if you’re concerned about the size of the number and decide to lie about it, I imagine you might as well lie and say a much lower number rather than claiming not to remember.
Boy, life complications that I’ve never even considered.

Samuel starts kindergarten this week. In preparation, Katie bought him a new lunchbox and water bottle. The water bottle has a liquid-filled insert that you can put in the freezer, let freeze, and then insert into the bottle to keep your drink cold. Samuel thinks it’s really cool.
I kept referring to the insert as an ‘ice dildo’ due to its shape. Katie suggested I stop using this reference lest Samuel pick up the usage and get expelled from kindergarten before he even gets going.