Archives for January 2009

A popular thing happening on Facebook right now is something called 25 Things.  Basically if someone tags you, you have to write 25 random things about yourself and then tag 25 others to do the same thing.  Here’s a link to the first time I did it and I said that if I were tagged by enough other people I’d do it again so here we go…

1. Looking out my office window here at home I can see Whitetail Ski Resort.
2. When I was 17 (and travelling as a professional magician, when school wasn’t getting in the way), the famous magician Harry Blackstone Jr. and I had lunch together and he recommended that in a few years I marry his daughter.  The reason is one of the most respected magicians ever (and even bigger than Houdini in his day) was a man named Howard Thurston.  Blackstone thought that a Thurston-Blackstone wedding would create quite a buzz. 
3. The largest and best dessert I ever ate was with Lisa, Andy and Gayle when we were in Vegas at the Rainforest Cafe.  It’s called the Volcano and between the 4 of us we couldn’t finish it all.
4. My biggest pet peeve is when you’re getting on the interstate and there is only one other car and they refuse to move over to the left lane to allow you to get on.  Why?!  Why?!
5. A few years ago I switched over to basically only drinking water.  About once every other month or so I will have a soda or sweet tea or something else, but usually it’s just water…and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made!  Feel much healthier and hardly ever get headaches like I used to.
6. If I had been born a girl, my parents would have named me Denise.
7. Lisa and I went to the same high school but never met each other until afterwards even though we were only 2 years apart.
8. My favorite food to order off the menu is ribs.  If it’s my first time at a restaurant that is what I always try first.  The best ribs I’ve had is a tie between Dinosaurs (a biker bar in Syracuse, NY) and The Rib Crib (in Oklahoma City, OK).
9. The largest crowd I ever  spoke in front of was 17,000 at Liberty University when I worked for Purpose Driven.
10. One of the smallest crowds I ever spoke in front of was also the very first funeral I ever performed.  I didn’t know the guy which is always hard.  What made it harder was his sons and daughters hated him…had him cremated (because it was cheapest) and figured they needed someone there to “bless” his ashes before they buried them.  So it was me and a handful of people who hate him.  At the end, the one son took off his baseball hat and took up and offering…guess he figured that’s what you do in a church service.
11. Before becoming a Christian I was a huge gambler.  I once lost over $1000 in a single hand of poker…for the night I was down over $2000.
12. My grandfather Thurston owned both a do-nut and pretzel shop in Hagerstown, MD.  Even though the pretzel shop closed well before I was born, I still get asked to this day when people find out my last name if I know anything about pretzels…man they must have been good!
13. Lisa and I’s wedding ceremony lasted only 7 minutes because Lisa had stage fright and wanted the shortest ceremony possible.
14. My top 3 spiritual gifts are teaching, leadership and evangelism.  To find out yours, click here. 
15. My all-time favorite sports star was Cal Ripken.
16. One of my scariest yet most rewarding memories is of a group of us from the church where I was pastoring at the time, going up to New York City about a month after 9-11 to minister to people on the streets.  Sadly even though it has been a month, there was still smoke rising from the ashes and the smell was terrible.
17. One of the greatest things I miss about working for Purpose Driven is getting to spend so much time in Southern California where it is always sunny and the temperature is usually in the high 70’s to low 80’s.  I loved it there as well as Seattle, Washington; Autsin, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona…I could totally live in any of those places.
18. I believe that your car should be a “University on Wheels”.  All of us spend so much downtime in the car that if we used it to learn instead of just listen to music, we’d be so much better off.  Not that music is bad sometimes, but with the amount of free podcasts and other teaching tools out there, there is no reason not to spend at least part of your time learning.
19. My right shoulder after so many years of baseball and then softball is basically shot.  I really should have surgery on it, since it’s painful to throw or to lift any amount of significant weight, but I want surgery like I want another hole in my head.
20. Today I did one of my favorite things…shop for and buy books.  I picked up six altogether.  A Whack on the Side of the Head (creativity), The Big Idea (church leadership), Purple Cow (marketing), Free Prize Inside (marketing), Tribes (leadership) and Refuel (idea for potential future sermon series).
21. I have two brother-in-laws both named Brian.  My wife and my aunt are both named Lisa Thurston and our church secretary and the young woman at church who is going to help me with adminstrative tasks are both named Jenny….ahhh this is too confusing!
22. Between just Lisa and I we currently have 5 computers running right now in the house.  Mmmmm can you say geeks!
23. I usually start formulating ideas for a sermons at least 3 months in advance of when it will actually be delivered.  The message itself is ideally written 3-4 weeks before I actually give it (meaning I’m always working on multiple messages at a time) with revisions coming the week of.  Between gathering ideas, studying, writing, revising and rehearsing, the typical message has anywhere from 40-60 hours invested in what will typically last 25-30 minutes.
24. I would love to someday climb a mountain.  The highest I’ve ever climbed was to the summer snow line on Mt. Rainer in Washington state.
25. This blog post on our site www.unitedworshipexperience.org automatically generates itself on Facebook as well.  I’d love to know where you read this…here is the link back to the post on our site.  Click it and leave a comment about whether you read it originally directly on the site or on Facebook.  You can also leave any other comments about numbers 1-24 if you’d like.  Look forward to hearing from you.

Lisa and I would both like to someday write a book.  Since I think she’ll beat me to it, I asked her to review the Christian Writer’s Market Guide 2009 Edition.  Here’s what she wrote…