passion play

This is the end goal. Happily married….together for the Gospel.

In Jonah, God tells Jonah twice to go to the “great city” of Nineveh. We, too, are called to a great city: Greenville, NC. Just wanted to highlight some things about G-Vegas.

• Greenville is one of the top 100 places in America for children, according to America’s Promise Alliance.
• Greenville is the entertainment, cultural, health, and commercial hub for Eastern NC.
• Greenville has been named Sportstown USA for the state of NC.
• The Greenville metropolitan area is 200K+ people.
• The Brody School of Medicine is ranked sixth in the nation in terms of primary care, ninth in rural medicine, and eighth in family care.
• Pitt County Memorial Hospital is currently building two major additions, valued at over $210 million.
• ECU is adding a School of Dentistry, which will bring in even more people, jobs, and dollars to the surrounding area.
• East Carolina University has been the fastest growing university in the UNC system for 5 straight years.
• Forbes recently named Greenville one of the top 10 smaller metropolitan areas for doing business.
• Named one of the best places to live by Money magazine.
• Ranked #10 as a healthy city by Kiplinger’s.
• One of the fastest growing urban centers in the state of NC, and Greenville will only continue to expand.

We truly live in a great city.

So it’s Friday, when a lot of us men take our ladies out for a night on the town. So if you have/had a date night, post a comment here: What did you do on your last date night? Tonight, Miranda and I are headed to a local Italian place, and then to Uptown Greenville for the Uptown Artwalk. Should be a blast. What about you?

With the economy on the way down, businesses are having to make changes. From the small business on the corner of Arlington and 14th to the major corporations across the nation. In fact, CNN has a forecast for a US recession as their top story today (link). But there’s one company that I have close ties to that I think is doing an incredible job of preparing for the economic downturn. That company, of course is Starbucks. So what are they doing that makes their story unique?

They are cutting back. And we are loving it. They are painting their cutbacks in a good light. They have switched logos on their cups to a single color (saving money on ink). They are switching to a single coffee all day instead of different roasts (saving tons of money on shipping costs and the coffee bean process). These seem like small changes, and they are, but when you multiply these small changes across the gazillion stores they have, it has huge economic implications.

And on top of all this, they are making us, the customer, love every step of the way. They are framing it in a “get-back-to-basics” scheme, and swaying us to believe that they are getting to the roots of coffee, while at the same time eliminating choices and therefore, costs.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the idea. I’m a tremendous fan of coffee, and I’m thinking I’m going to love this new idea. I’m just saying that the whole scheme is genius on Starbucks’ behalf. And the Church has a lot to learn from them.

For those of you who haven’t seen what’s going on, check out their website here: link

You can buy my latest book, a commentary on the Gospel of Mark, on Amazon. Here’s a link: Derek on Amazon

It’s the first in a series of commentaries written for today’s generation.  I’m wrapping up a commentary on Jonah in the next couple of days.