"Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand." - Leo Durocher

Continuing with the grammar vs. headlines theme....
Is the word youth singular or plural?
That is, does this headline fly? (from Jalopnik, an online car mag):
"Please, Formula E, stop trying so hard to appeal to youths."
I find it as jarring as a racing series for electric cars.

Based on how I felt this morning I think burpees may be the best total body exercise ever developed by man. And I think that man was a sadist.

I read about the White House Correspondents' Dinner that was held last night and the oft-times raunchy bit done by Michelle Wolf, a comedian I'd not heard of before this. According to USAToday.com she "obliterated" Sarah Huckabee Sanders (no hint of bias there) and per Politico the speech several times left many in the audience from both parties in an awkward silence.

I don't know the history of the roast but I suspect it's a recent American invention. And it can be both entertaining and, in a backwards sort of way, complimentary to the object of the humor. Celebrities and athletes who get roasted feel honored by the attention and, assuming their egos can allow for it, enjoy the jokes at their expense.

The roast enters tricky territory when it skewers the person who holds the Office of the President of the United States or anyone else if it's done in an offensive manner.
Regarding the former, we may completely disagree with the President's positions on almost everything, but the office deserves a level of respect that then adheres to the person who holds it at an point in time. It's similar to the way we instinctively understand we should interact with a cop or a judge. It's the office, not the person.

I read some of the printable lines from Wolf's routine, including those about Sanders. If those words came out of the mouth of a H.S. student re. a classmate the speaker would be summarily labeled a bully and at least suspended from school. Why is it OK in this context? Why is this not hate speech? The comments from a variety of attenders - other journalists and (Democratic) politicians: this is the exercise of First Amendment rights and a free press. When the same rules don't apply to a special class we call that elitism.

I'm working almost every day on my presentations for Brazil, focusing now on the sessions on church leadership I'll do with the pastors and elders in Recife. I confess that as I prepare these sessions I keep thinking, "I want a do-over." I needed to think and hear this stuff when I was at Pathway. Would it have made a difference? I don't know. The dynamics of a church, especially a startup, are so complex that no strategy, no matter how well developed, guarantees success (whatever that term means in the context of the local church). Good outcomes are, in the end, the gracious and sovereign work of God. All we can do is all we can do, but we must do all we can do. And this prep has me thinking I could have done more, or at least done better. Mea culpa.