The Point

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In honor of my trip to his hometown…

“He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.”
–Niccolo Machiavelli

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So far this month I’ve read a few good books including…
Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson
Tribes by Seth Godin
God wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell
To Own a Dragon by Donald Miller

I’m planning to read the following while on planes, trains, and in hotels in Europe the next few days…
I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt
Made to Stick
The Love Dare
Spiritual Leadership

Wish me luck!

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Today I’m headed to Europe. I will be leaving shortly for the airport and I’ll arrive in Munich, Germany, at around 8 a.m. tomorrow morning local time. What is a little unusual about this trip is that I’m leaving my increasingly pregnant wife and wild three year old son in Tennessee while I go. Oddly, I haven’t really gotten much questioning about it from people who know about the trip. That worries me a little, I wonder if they aren’t asking because they don’t think it’s weird to leave your family for ten days or if it’s just not weird for me to do it, either way…a little unsettling.

I won’t go into all the details about the how this unfolded as it has or why I find myself on a plane alone. But I do want to take a moment to cover my itinerary and then talk about the best wife in the world.

As I’ve already mentioned I will arrive in Munich and drive over to Augsburg, where I was born 30 years and 2 months ago. I’ll spend the day looking over the city I left when I was not quite as old as my own son is now. From there I’ll head to Garmisch for a few days, should be cold!

On Monday morning I’ll head through Austria and down to Florence, Italy, for a couple days. Florence might be my favorite city in the WORLD! My grandmother was from the Naples area, so I’m drawn to Italy, but I’m also a HUGE fan of Renaissance History and Nicolo Machiavelli…so Florence is pretty much the center of the universe for all things me.

After a couple days in Florence, and since it’s on the way back, I’ll head to Venice, which is way too romantic to visit without my wife, but I’ll bring here something nice! After that, it’s a drive back to Munich for the Hofbrauhaus and an early flight home the next morning…all in time to go Trick or Treating with the family on Halloween night…as long as my flights aren’t delayed!

So now that I’ve rubbed a little salt in the wound…

My wife is many things, smart, funny, tall, sexy, confident, talented, and an awesome wife and mom. Probably her greatest gift is her ability to blow up in fits of rage like none other I’ve witnessed and then be totally ok within ten minutes. Seriously, this is a one of a kind women with the ability to love a guy who goes on trips to Europe without her and I am a better man because she is a part of my life.

When I first met her almost nine years ago, I never could have imagined that I could love anyone as much as I do her now. With every test and trial, I come out loving her more. The night we met, I asked her a question “Why haven’t I met you yet?” I’m so glad she answered!

While I’m away, I will eat good food, see great sights, read, pray, journal, maybe even blog, but more than anything else, I will love and miss my wife!

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I haven’t done one of these in a few weeks…so I’m back with one of my favorites. Charlotte is known as the Queen City and it is a lovely lady! From NASCAR to High Finance this town does business well and there’s plenty of play as well. It is the 19th largest city in the country and largest in the state in both population and influence.

TO DO–If you’re a NASCAR fan, there is no better place than the Charlotte area with Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord and many surrounding race shops of the various teams, as well as the nearly complete NASCAR museum and Hall of Fame. Charlotte is a very metropolitan and diverse city with plenty of shopping from the trendy shops and high fashion of SouthPark to the enormous Concord Mills with Bass Pro Shop near the Speedway. Discovery Place downtown is fun with kids under 10. The Charotte Bobcats of the NBA and Carolina Panthers of the NFL offer good pro sports options beyond the race cars, and there are even a couple minor league baseball teams in the area. Carowinds amusement park is just south of charlotte and if you are interested in American Christian History (I may have just made that up!) this is home to the former PTL, Inspiration Network, and also the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assoc….interesting stuff. If you’re looking for nightlife, it’s all in the city center/uptown area and it’s pretty good, I’d start with BAR Charlotte and go from there.

TO EAT–For such a large and diverse city, the food is fairly un-inventive, but there are some good options. They do have all the major chains from Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s to McCormick and Schmick’s and the Oceanaire. As you know, I’m looking for things I can’t get anywhere else so I would go with Zink, Noble’s, Blue, and Fig Tree are all very good and worth a trip. My favorite dish in the city is the Tchoupitoulas Chicken at Manzetti’s Tavern in Southpark, I challenge anyone to offer me a better dish with chicken at the base, it is AMAZING. If you want to try some authentic Eastern NC BBQ, the best in town is at Bill Spoon’s.

TO STAY–There is no shortage of nice hotels in the Uptown/Downtown/Center City of Charlotte. There is a very nice new Westin, a large Hilton, and a great smaller hotel…The Dunhill. If you want to be south, I’d recommend the Ballantyne Resort with great golf on sight. If you want to be on the north side, the place I stay most often when in the area, my favorite choice is the Embassy Suites in Concord which is less than two years old and has views of Concord Mills, Lowe’s Motor Speedway, and a nice golf course! If you’re looking for a romantic getaway, try the Morehead Inn or the Duke Mansion.

So there is where to start as you discover a great southern city. Of course you’ll find places I have yet to discover…but isn’t that half the fun!

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“Smoke what you’re selling”– Jeff Kapusta, Pastor.

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I have been pushing this feeling to the back of my stomach for months, but it keeps coming back.

Why can I make a good living, have a nice house, two cars, two computers, three TVs, enough clothes to go a month without doing laundry, and anything I want to eat can be delivered within a few minutes??

At the same time, in my city, there are people who go hungry so their kids can eat, struggle to pay rent on their mobile home, and spend months looking for a job to pay their medical bills.

If I hop in one of the two cars we have we can drive to places where people spend their nights at the Rescue mission and their days collecting aluminum cans.
If I buy a plane ticket, within hours I can be in the middle of a village where shirts and shoes are a luxury and a hot meal is the stuff of legend. Why?

I have questioned this reality for too long. I realized today that things are this way because we have allowed it, even encouraged it with our greed and selfishness. It’s time to change EVERYTHING…

It starts with the decision to create rather than consume, and build relationships rather than walls…it starts TODAY…

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I started this post several weeks ago and I was prompted to finish it after hearing two oddly similar church sermons last week here and here. They were both on vision and mission, but the common theme is that to do anything well, you need to continually remind yourself of why you are pursuing that goal and begin moving towards it.

I have a friend who REALLY wants to be successful, but has never made it happen…he keeps waiting for his ship to come in and thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. What I’ve realized is that anything worth doing is hard and takes continual effort and will probably not happen as quickly or in exactly the way that we would have designed.

The most important part of the equation of excellence is starting. You will always have reasons, and probably good ones, to avoid beginning any worthwhile endeavor. The difference between those who get it done and those who talk about it isn’t capability or luck, it’s action.

So I’m gonna end this post now and get started…

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Well, since I opened the rap box with the first top 3, I decided to stay with it and do a related Top 3–

Top 3 rappers turned actors

The more I thought about this one the more I realized it was a LONG list, but upon closer examination, I was able to dump a BUNCH since playing yourself or a very similar person doesn’t really qualify as acting (that’s also why Vince Vaughn isn’t an actor just a guy getting paid to be himself in front of a camera), so this cut eliminated Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and DMX among others….on with the count down

3. Queen Latifah
She has ended up being a better actress than she was rapper, and she wasn’t a bad rapper!

2. Marky Mark–Mark Wahlberg
The Departed was great, and he stole the show…

1. Will Smith
When I first thought of this topic, he was the first person I thought of, he lost a few points for being a pretty awful rapper, but he is a world class actor and the biggest box office draw and goes easily from Ali to MIB to Pursuit of Happiness.

Honorable mention… goes to L.L. Cool J!

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