Tuesday, May 20

The SEC Track & Field Championships were held this past weekend at Auburn University. As most of you know, the Razorback head coach - John McDonnell - is retiring after this season so this was his final SEC Championship meet. And along the way, he just added to his legacy.

In the 17 years that John has coached in the SEC, there have been 51 championships awarded (cross country, indoor track, outdoor track). John's teams have won 46 of them. This was his 84th conference championship (SEC and SWC) to go along with his 42 national championships. At is was the 21st time that his teams have won the conference "triple crown" - winning the cross country, indoor & outdoor track championships in the same season.

I know that this one was special to him, as it was his last. And, from being around the athletes on the team, I know it was special to them. They were determined to win it for John and came through with some big performances to make it happen.

Through most of this semester, I have helped to lead a Bible study with some of the Razorback track team. There were three or four who were in and out during the semester, but there were four guys who were there every week. And those four scored 38 points at the SEC Championships. They are good guys and I'm proud of what they accomplished:

James Strang - 18 points (first in the 5,000; second in the 10,000)
Luke Laird - 10 points (first in the javelin in his first official meet as a Razorback)
Spencer McCorkel - 8 points (second in the pole vault)
Tyler Hill - 2 points (seventh in the 5,000)

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Here is an article that starts off this way: "The stallions hang out in bars; the geldings hang out in church."

The point of the article is that the Church is not "man-friendly" - that real men aren't comfortable there. Mark Driscoll, a pastor in Seattle says the church has produced "a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chickified church boys. … Sixty percent of Christians are chicks," he explains, "and the forty percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks."

There have been several books written in recent years that address this issue, such as Wild At Heart and The Barbarian Way. I've not read all of the books written about this, so I can't speak to them all, but I'm not much of a fan of these two books. These two are more psychological theory or personal philosophy with some Scripture thrown in rather than books that look at the Bible first.

But I do think that there is a point here. It often seems that the church's goal has been to turn men into "nice guys" rather than letting them be who they are for God. As you look at some of the men in the Bible, I don't know that they would be very comfortable in the Church as it operates today - David, Peter, Paul, Samuel, or even Jesus.

Maybe I'll write more on this later, but I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

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If you are planning your summer vacation, here are a couple of articles to help you out on that. The first talks about America's Most Sinful Cities and the other will give you the Nine Unhealthiest Summer Vacation Destinations.

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