Watched a terrific documentary called Rock School. It is the story of Paul Green's School of Rock in Philadelphia. He runs it as an after-school program for kids who want to learn rock music. Although he welcomes kids of all music levels, he places very high expectations and demands on them. I was frankly astonished at the level of music done by his top level band. He decided his top kids should just work on Frank Zappa tunes. Not the easier Zappa songs, the harder ones. For those who don't know, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention had a reputation for performing some of the most difficult and complex songs of any rock bands.

At the end of the film the top level band made a trip to Germany to play at a Zappa festival. Mr Green spoke on the phone to Napoleon Brock-Murphy, one of the original Mothers of Invention, to ask him to talk with the kids. Mr Murphy first expressed his astonishment at which songs this band was going to play, then agreed to do a song with them on stage. He and another former Zappa band member both expressed their highest admiration for these kids after the show.

The school is now franchised in several cities. As you might suspect, there are a number of YouTube videos. Here's one I found with Jon Anderson of Yes as a guest of the band doing Long Distance Runaround. Mr Green is the man who comes up to direct towards the end. There's another video with Close to the Edge, but I thought that wouldn't be as familiar to some of you. If you want to see more, you can either poke around YouTube yourself (edit:search for SOR school of rock), or go to the School of Rock site here.

Against the idols of our age.

My favorite song of the moment. If you recognize it, then you'll know what movie we watched last night.

For my 1000th post, I'll just draw your attention to an interesting evangelistic strategy from our Ukrainian brothers: evangelism through celebrating the Christian holidays. (link will only be good until they update their news section)

We will be going to serve International Partnerships in two weeks, though in the city of L'viv rather than Dnepropetrovsk. IP is an indigenous Ukrainian ministry which evolved out of the efforts of Co-Mission back in the early 90's. Co-Mission was a cooperative effort to spread the gospel in Ukraine and Russia following the fall of the Soviet government. The post-Soviet governments asked westerners to come in and teach American values in the public schools, so a number of mission boards got together and divvied up territories to work on. Our good friend John Hamilton was involved in this work through the Navigators and helped identify a young couple who went on to found International Partnerships.

I am thrilled to be able to serve this organization again for a short English School project. I feel a little overwhelmed by the logistics and the various unknowns involved, but I'm sure God will help us where we are weak. Plus all we are really doing is drawing in people so that they can get into extended small groups and classes with the Ukrainian staff there. If we screw up a little it won't matter too much :)

Enjoy your labor day rest:

In case you haven't heard, our country is in dire need of maps.

What can you paint in 5 minutes?

A little window into life in Kiev for an American foreign service officer. I found it amusing. His whole blog is fun reading.

Just a reminder to pray for some of those whose faith is being sorely tested. I received word about more kidnappings than are being reported so far in the news, but I think it wiser to not say any more than that.

File this under Jobs I Won't Be Applying For.

This might be fun if you had, say, an hour or two left to live.

Someday I'd like to be as rich as my spam says I am.

Interesting article here on protectionism. Something to think about. I think it is worthwhile to consider how local economies might benefit from such policies. So many countries these days struggle with unemployment due to not having infrastructure and trained labor to compete globally. A trade of inefficient production for increased (and more varied) employment might very well be a good idea. In any event, probably the US and other big players probably should not be bullying against some of the milder tarrifs.

On the other hand, this strikes me as simply brilliant.

Nothing really sums up contemporary western liberalism quite as well as this little story.

Maybe one of you medieval philosophy junkies can tell me if Aquinas or someone already devised this chart.

Also, this is ancient by internet standards (three weeks old!), but I found this to be a very interesting take on evangelicalism.

Required reading for all journalists and anyone else who writes or speaks where I can hear them.

I thought this was a good post on Jesus and "family values".

I believe today marks the first day that I have seen the dead body of someone I have known who is my own age. Brad Friesen is someone I have known ever since I moved to North Carolina eleven years ago. He and his wife Tiffany have been very active and faithful members of Church of the Good Shepherd since before I arrived.

About five years ago Brad was diagnosed with brain cancer. We are a very well connected church, medically speaking, and Brad was able to meet with some top neurosurgeons who performed surgery pretty quickly and followed with whatever they felt was the appropriate treatment. Brad and I were not especially close, simply due to not being involved in the same activities, but we all were told that Brad's surgery and treatment had gone quite well. Unfortunately his cancer returned this year and in the past month spread very quickly through his brain. His wife and friends reported that he was quite lucid (and sarcastic) right up to the last few days.

We received the news of the return of Brad's cancer about a month ago, along with a prognosis that he probably had a few months to live. Brad died early on Thursday. One friend I spoke to commented that Brad really was fortunate to have had as much success as he did following the first surgery, since most with his form of cancer die pretty quickly. Brad's wife expressed her amazement to me that Brad had retained so much function and personality through his cancer growth.

Thank the Lord with me for Brad's life and witness. Pray for strength and grace for his surviving wife and three little girls. I know many will tell them about what a terrific man their father had been and that they will see him again at the resurrection of the dead.