I recently had the opportunity to spend a year with Will Henderson from Brisbane, Australia.  Here is a post from his blog.  You can read it here or check out Will’s other post at www.willhenderson.blogspot.com.

At www.churchplanters.com we offer two types of coaching networks for lead pastors of new or young churches:  Coaching Network hosted at Mountain Lake Church with Shawn Lovejoy and David Putman and Tele-Coaching Network with David Putman.

You need a coach

Having a great coach really is the difference maker. It really is. Think about any premiership winning sporting team, they always have an exceptional coach. I don’t know any side that’s won the cup without a coach. I can also confidently say that this principle transfers into other areas of life having spent the last year being mentored and coached in church planting by Pastor David Putman at Mountain Lake Church. David’s personal coaching has reinforced my confidence in the truth of Jesus to change broken lives, increased my vision for His kingdom, clarified the systems that healthy churches employ small or large and ultimately humbled my posture regarding the things that are out of my control. I look forward to returning to plant a new church in Brisbane, Australia with greater clarity and passion primarily due to the investment that he and others like Pastors Shawn Lovejoy, Ray Ortlund, Michael Lukaszewski, Tyler Powell, Bob Robbins, Steve Addison, Dave Fandey and David Rogers (to name just a few) have made in my life.

I believe there are basically three types of coaches; personal, strategic and skill (there may be more). I’ll begin unpacking these over the next few days. BTW if you’re considering getting a coach for church planting check out www.churchplanters.com, David and Shawn do an excellent job of building healthy planters.

About a half-dozen of the Steampunk Lolitas (that would be us, lol) went to the Romance Writers of America national conference in Washington DC. I was amazed and honored to be in the company of some amazing, amazing ladies.   The best thing, besides meeting the steampunk ladies in attendance, was finding out that editors and agents are starting to look for steampunk and some major steampunk projects are on the horizon.

The Steampunk Lolitas were up to some great stuff at conference as well. I feel so privileged to be part of a group that has so many great ladies doing so many great things (and that’s just those who came, stay tuned for all sorts of great news).

Steampunk Lolita Deb was the 2009 Librarian of the Year!

We had several ladies at the Litteracy Book Signing, which raised over $60,000 for charity!!

Cindy Holby at the book signing

Liane Gentry Skye at the book signing

Several of the Steampunk Lolitas were nominated for Prism Awards sponsored by the Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal Chapter

Colby Hodge and Jana Oliver nominees for ther Time Travel category with their agent

Leanna Renee Hieber, nominee in the Novella category with Suzanne

Colby and Leanna WINNERS of the Prism Award!!

Friday: Neighbor Lady (not to be confused w/ Rat-dog Neighbor) lent me Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I promptly set aside Lady of Avalon and started on it. And fell asleep with it in front of my nose. I don’t remember much else of that night. I was @ Hogwarts.

Saturday: I finished the book in the early afternoon. And eagerly accepted the next & last. Spouseman & I headed off to the drive-in to see good ol’ Harry & his magical adventures. And sat in traffic for nearly an hour. It’s amazing how many vehicles that place could squeeze in there! We thought (after being on the same street for about 1/2 hour) that they were surely going to start turning people away before we even got there. Not so. Which is good, because I was in a very foul mood. I enjoyed it a great deal. Spouseman & I discussed the difference between the movie & the book & I answered some questions that had bothered him.

We had a bit of a surprise when we got home. Our garage door was open! Spouseman went across the street to see if Neighbor Lady or one of her boys had left it open (they’re helping him build the backyard pond). He came rushing back to inform me that someone had tried to break into our house while we were @ Hogwarts. Nothing taken or broken, the police alerted, Spouseman concerned, Autumn…unruffled. As long as all was well, I wasn’t that bothered. I knew better than to say that to Spouseman, however. I returned to England to hang out w/ Harry & Hermione. And stayed up until well after Inuyasha finished. Fell asleep on the couch, but this time had the presence of mind to put the book on the table.

Sunday: Got up from the couch because of a cramped hip. It was light out. Stumbled to bed, ignoring the pleas of the dogs to start the day. Got up a few hours later & went back to England. Sat in my rocker, sat on the porch, sat on the couch, sat on the porch. Spouseman got up. I acknowledged his presence & kept on reading. In the afternoon, I started crying a bit. A few chapters later I was all-out bawling. 5 tissues later & a few chapters later, I was done. And didn’t want to be. I wanted to read it again! But it was Spouseman’s turn. (He’s about halfway through now.) We went to the store & I started to feel the effects of having forgotten to eat. Low blood sugar, shakes, itchies, weakness & a very foul temper. Got home & decided to finish Lady of Avalon.  Spouseman headed off to bed to read & I then started the whole Harry Potter series over again. I’m sure Neighbor Lady will let me re-borrow the last 2 so I can do it all properly. At least until I get my own.

This Morning: Slow & reluctantly mobile. Thank goodness for coffee, my friends, or I’d still be on the couch having called in lazy.

**********************

And now, a new meme:

1.What is one thing that will put a great big ol’ smile on your face?

Dave Matthews Band

2.You’re walking down the street toward a very familiar face. As you get closer you realize you do not remember this person’s name at all. Do you speak with the chance that they’ll want to stop and chat or do you pretend that you don’t see the person?

I smile & see what happens.

3. Are you the rock or the sponge of your household?

Call me a petrified sponge.

4. You have gone over to a friend’s for dinner. You look down at your plate and notice a great big ol’ hair hanging out from inside your sandwich. What do you do?

Pull it out & keep eating. Seriously, it’s not as though it doesn’t happen in my house every single day. Even when I don’t cook!

5. If you HAD to name one….who would you say is your role model?

The version of my mother that lives on the planet Htrea. (That would be the planet where everything is opposite of what it is here on Earth.)

6. Have you raised children? If so, do you think your parenting skills were top notch or could have used a little help from Dr. Phil?

On to #7…

7. Would your (past or present) mate/spouse/significant other/whatever say that living with you has been like a gentle breeze or more like a hurricane?

Three words: Tropical Storm Autumn

8. When you shop at the grocery store, do you always shop exactly by a list or just go helter skelter & hope that you get home with most of what you need?

I’m a listie kind of gal. But I have been known to make way too many impulse buys. And I usually have to go back again in a day or so ’cause I’ve forgotten something anyway. (Tomorrow night it’s tomatoes & some meds.)

My science fiction twin, Kyle Smith, takes down Harry Potter in the pages of the New York Post. Smith says Potter is the perfect hero for Gen Y — dull, lazy, and entitled.

Harry, like many of his generation, is the Cosseted One from an early age. He’s told that he’s special, that he’s got awesome gifts, that those who don’t understand this are blind to the plain facts. Deploying his powers involves no more character or soul-searching than following a recipe.

Next week, he tells us what death threats written on Hogwarts stationery look like.

Woah, this does not fare to well for book publishers. Ellen DeGeneres just posted this on her Twitter account:

TheEllenShowBooks should all light up. No more reading by candlelight. Win a Kindle! http://bit.ly/ww8yU #kindle10 minutes ago from bit.ly

The Kindle concept of books lighting up is brills. But it’s good to have books in circulation too, no? Twilight on a kindle? Not the same. Especially the hardback versions of the books, with especially cut rough page edges.

Are you feeling me on this one?! To follow Horiwood on twitter go here.

How Radical Professors Indoctrinate Students – David Horowitz (1 of

How Radical Professors Indoctrinate Students – David Horowitz (2 of

How Radical Professors Indoctrinate Students – David Horowitz (3 of

How Radical Professors Indoctrinate Students – David Horowitz (4 of

How Radical Professors Indoctrinate Students – David Horowitz (5 of

How Radical Professors Indoctrinate Students – David Horowitz (6 of

How Radical Professors Indoctrinate Students – David Horowitz (7 of

How Radical Professors Indoctrinate Students – David Horowitz (8 of

Protesters at David Horowitz’s speech at UT Austin

David Horowitz at UT Austin – Part 2

David Horowitz at UT Austin – Part 3

David Horowitz at UT Austin – Part 4

David Horowitz at UT Austin – Part 5

David Horowitz at UT Austin – Part 6

David Horowitz at UT Austin – Q&A

Background Artilces and Videos

David Horowitz

“…David Joel Horowitz (born January 10, 1939) is an American conservative writer and activist. The son of two life-long members of the Communist Party, and a former supporter of Marxism as well as a former member of the New Left in the 1960s, Horowitz later renounced his “left-wing political radicalism” and became an advocate for conservatism.

He is a founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture), and has served as president of that organization for many years. He is the editor of the conservative website FrontPage Magazine, and his writings can be read on news sites and publications, including the conservative magazine NewsMax.^[1] He founded the activist group Students for Academic Freedom. …”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ersauKsE7EY&feature=related

David Horowitz Freedom Center

“…The David Horowitz Freedom Center is a conservative foundation founded in 1988 by political activist David Horowitz and his long-time collaborator, co-author, and friend, Peter Collier. It was established with funding from conservative philanthropies, such as the Olin Foundation the Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.^[1]

^…”

^“…The Center has the following ongoing programs.[5]

• FrontPage Magazine — an online “conservative” political magazine and website, edited by Horowitz, that is the successor to Heterodoxy (see below). Its main focus is on issues pertaining to foreign policy, war, and terrorism.
• Discover the Networks (previously, and still often referred to as, “Discover the Network”) – A database of what it describes as organizations and “activists for leftwing agendas and causes — egalitarians, socialists, and opponents of American ‘imperialism’”,[6] with a Java applet to display their interconnections in graphic form.[7]This description can include Jihadists, “anti-American” strains of anti-Iraq War activists, etc. After two years of development, went online in February, 2005, with a staff of two at a cost of about $500,000. [8]
• Students for Academic Freedom- claims chapters on 150 campuses. Opposes “indoctrination”.[9]
• Wednesday Morning Club – In 2006 the Center held twenty-one Wednesday Morning Club events with speakers ranging from former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson, Wafa Sultan, General Georges Sada,Judge Charles W. Pickering, Dennis Prager, Shelby Steele and Melanie Morgan with Catherine Moy. Speakers in 2007 include Dinesh D’Souza, Dore Gold, Bruce Herschensohn and John O’Sullivan. In previous years speakers have included then-Governor George W. Bush (1999), then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, Robert Bork, Representatives Tom DeLay and Henry Hyde, Senators Trent Lott, Bill Frist and Joseph Lieberman, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes and George Will.[10]
• Jihad Watch (or Jihadwatch; also Dhimmi Watch) – blogs and articles attacking Islam.[11]
• The Individual Rights Foundation – Organization of lawyers to fight speech codes and political correctness on campuses and elsewhere. Participated as Amicus Curiae in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the successful defense of the Boy Scouts of America against the ACLU in the Supreme Court. [12][13]
• Libertas – A forum for promoting conservative films in Hollywood. It presents the conservative Liberty Film Festival.[14]^[3]
• Restoration Weekend – Annual conservative fundraising and networking event. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz_Freedom_Center

PJTV interviews author David Horowitz Part One

PJTV interviews author David Horowitz Part Two

David Horowitz on Hannity & Colmes

David Horowitz – Liberal Arts

David Horowitz – Party of Defeat

David Horowitz on Al-Jazeera; Part 1 of 2

David Horowitz on Al-Jazeera; Part 2 of 2

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Frederic Bastiat–The Law–Videos

Yaron Brook–Videos

Friedrich Hayek–Videos

Milton Friedman–Videos

Milton Friedman on Education–Videos

Ludwig von Mises–Videos

The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and The Ideas of Ayn Rand

Peter Schiff–Videos

Schiff, Forbers and Bloomberg Nail The Financial Crisis and Recession–Mistakes Were Made–Greed, Arrogance, Stupidity–Three Chinese Curses!

L. William Seidman on The Economic Crisis: Causes and Cures–Videos

Amity Shlaes–Videos

Thomas Sowell and Conflict of Visions–Videos

Thomas E. Woods, Jr.–Videos

I’ve come out of pseudo-retirement to note a paradigm-shifting date — the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Much virtual ink has been spilled around the web in this regard, yet nothing seems more compelling, readable and incisive than this op-ed piece in the New York Times by the ever-dapper Tom Wolfe. Wolfe wrote The Right Stuff (1979) and has been following American space exploration since before the momentous (and according to some, possibly fictional) event in question.

Essentially, he says that a new quest to land men on Mars is key to both an American and global future, and that what was lacking in the old NASA zeitgeist wasn’t ingenuity (which they had in spades), but philosophical refection about the whole purpose of the endeavor…That and good “words”.

A sombre swan song about men in space. And a simultaneous ode to the power of language.

By way of the orbiting carnival that is Arts & Letters Daily.