Super Bowl Facts

Tomorrow is the Super Bowl.

Over 100 million people will watch it, in 232 different countries.

Here are some other interesting facts.

Americans will consume 99 million Hass avocados – enough to cover a football field 19 feet deep with the fruit.

1 billion chicken wings will be eaten.

The number one thing that will be consume will be vegetables.

Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest “gambling day” of the year for sports bettors.

8 million pounds of Guacamole will be consumed.

14,500 pounds of chips are consumed.

Average of people at a super bowl party 17

People who watch the super bowl alone 5 %

People who call in sick on Monday 6%

Super Bowl fans spend more than $50 million on food during the 4 days prior to the super bowl.

Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest winter grilling day of the year.
Cost of the Vince Lombardi Trophy: $25,000

NBC will use more than 450 people on its production, technical, administrative and support crews.

There will be 93 microphones, including 12 on the field.

52 HD cameras will be used, including 22 hand held, five robotic, two Super Slo-Mos and three X-Mos.

45 vehicles will be employed, including control trucks, mobile units, offices and horse trailers.

50 miles of camera and microphone cable will be laid.

The NFC leads 21-20 all-time but the AFC has won eight of the last 10 games after losing 13 straight.

To date 3,205,733 people have attended Super Bowl games.

No Super Bowl has ever gone to overtime.

The team that has won the coin toss is 19-22 all-time in the Super Bowl and has lost the past four straight and nine of the last 11 games.

Self Awareness

Have you heard any of the interviews of the Governor Blagojevich of Illinois?

It appears he lacks what is called self awareness. You see, churches, companies, etc., benefit more from leaders who take responsibility for what they don’t know than from leaders who pretend to know it all.

I mentioned to a friend of mine the other day that I can’t believe how many leaders seem to lack this thing called self awareness.

Self awareness is being conscious of what you’re good at while acknowledging what you have yet to learn. This includes when you don’t have the answer and owning up to mistakes.

Here is what Paul has to say about it in Romans 12:3:

“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”

In our world we seem to take the opposite position. Many of us think and believe that we must appear as though we know everything all the time or else people will question our abilities, diminishing our effectiveness as leaders.

What happens though is that when a person tries to hide weaknesses, they actually draw attention to them, creating the perception of a lack of integrity and self awareness.

I asked some of the team at NewPointe this question: When was the last time you were wounded by someone you would call a friend? I said that if you can’t remember maybe it is because you truly don’t have a friend.

Proverbs tells us, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend and the kisses of an enemy is deceit.”

WOW! Maybe Governor Blagojevich needed a friend a few years ago. Maybe it would have saved him some troubles.

Fired !

The Tampa Buccaneers fired Jon Gruden on January 16, 2009, after seven seasons with the team. The Bucaaneers won Super Bowl XXXVII in the team's first year under Gruden's tenure, making him the youngest head coach ever to win a Super Bowl.

The reason coming out for being fired is not because the game had passed him by. It wasn't that his skills diminished. It was RELATIONSHIPS. His relationships with the players as well as some of the front office had deteriorated to the point where a change needed to be made.

There was a survey done by Stanford University some years ago where they learned that in business, it is 15% knowledge of the product and guess what? 85% relating well to people!

Christianity is summed up in one word-- relationships--with God and others.

When Jesus was asked to boil everything down to a simple phrase he said, "It is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and your neighbor as yourself." Relationships, right?

I believe that no one should be better at relationships than those you name Jesus Christ as the forgiver of their sins and the leader of their life.

So how's your relationship with your family?

How are your relationships with your co-worker?

This is a great way to find out how really strong your relationship is with God.

Remember people don't usually get fired for their skills. It is for their poor relationships.

Class Act

Rick Warren was chosen by President Barack Obama to offer the invocation for yesterday’s inauguration. He did not let me down, and in my opinion all of Christ followers can be proud of him. Check it out.




I have never been disappointed in Rick Warren up to this point in his public life. He has set an incredible example of what it means to be a Christ follower, though he has been attacked from both the right and the left.

Rick, thank you. You are truly a gift to the body of Christ.

Great Day

Today we kicked off a new series at NewPointe: “XCELR8: Experience a Breakthrough”. The series was introduced by a drama sketch called “Shop Talk”, hosted by “Mark ‘Motor Mouth’ Murphy” and his partner “Louie”.




The main point of the morning was that faith is not believing FOR something, but it is believing in SOMEONE (Jesus). Some steps to accelerate your faith in a practical way are

• Experience time alone with God. You can’t trust someone you don’t know. Faith is believing what God says about something.

• Explore the tithe. Malachi 3:9-10 tells us to test God in this and see if he won’t open the floodgates of heaven in your life. The reason why so many Christians worry is because we have never learned to trust God with our finances.

• Engage in serving. Moses was hesitant to serve, but when he obeyed he ended up speaking with God face to face as friends do.

The services finished up with 6 people getting baptized and sharing their journey of faith. It was a great time of celebrating the life-change of these people.



After the services, our family was invited to eat dinner with Dean Li and many of his friends. Dean’s wife Ying died two weeks ago, and it is a Chinese tradition to celebrate the life of the deceased each week for 7 weeks after their death. So we were honored to enjoy lunch with Dean who personally cooked wonderful Chinese food for all of us.

The last big event of the day was sled riding with the kids on the hill at Newpointe. It was a lot of fun, and I am very blessed to have such great kids.

Week in Review

This has been a busy week, and a lot of things have happened for me to write about.

First, Tony Dungy has been the head football coach of the Indianapolis Colts. His team has won a Super Bowl as well as winning at least 12 games in the last 6 seasons. He is a lock for the Hall of Fame. Yet when his two bosses spoke about him at the conference, Jim Irsay and Bill Pollan both fought back tears. The amazing thing is that it wasn’t so much that Tony was leaving the Indianapolis Colts, but that he had so personally impacted them as a man. Each searched for words and even rambled on and on trying to somehow convey how much they loved this man, not because of his wins, but because they will never be the same as a result of knowing him.

That got me to thinking. What are you going to be known for? It is one thing to be missed because of the success you brought to the company, church, team, etc…, but it is another thing to have people become emotional about your leaving because of what you have done for them as a human being.

On a personal note, I had the opportunity to go to Orlando, Florida this past week. I left Tuesday and got back Saturday afternoon. I was in meetings with pastors from some of the large churches from the Free Methodist Church. It was a good time. It was a time of sharing, praying and discussing the book The IT Factor by Greg Greoschel.

Finally, at Newpointe we are kicking off a new series this Sunday. We are calling it “XCELR8: Experiencing a Breakthrough”. You won’t want to miss a Sunday. Here is what we are talking about

Accelerating our

• Faith
• Fun
• Family
• Finances
• Freedom

All around the world

Saturday was a very bitter sweet day. I had the privilege of leading a celebration in memory of a wonderful woman whose life ended way too early from my perspective. This great lady, Ying, drowned while on vacation with her family.

Lilly who was a good friend of Ying’s attends NewPointe and was a part of the series “One Month to Live” that happened here in Sept. ‘08. It spoke to her so much she started praying for Ying and invited her to NewPointe.

The first two Sundays that Ying attended, the topics were on Sex and Money. Lilly thought, “Oh man, what is Ying going to think?” Over a cup of coffee Ying told her, “This is exactly what China needs to hear.” In the next few months Ying came to know God in a very personal way, not realizing that her time here on earth was short.

As we celebrated Ying’s life here at NewPointe, her friends and family also did in China. Because of the technology of today, we were able to send a link to her family and friends in China. They were able to learn about the hope that we have in Christ Jesus-- that though we grieve, we don’t grieve as those who have no hope.

From early reports, God used this service to speak to the hearts of many in China. Would you pray with me that somehow they would be able to pursue and learn more about this hope that we find in the person of Jesus Christ?

Happy New Year

I am back from my hiatus, the holidays and a trip to the Middle East. I am making a commitment to blog a minimum of 3 times a week in 2009. Here are a few items to bring you up to speed.

I spent 12 days in the Middle East in the beginning of December, specifically in Cairo, Egypt; Amman, Jordan; and Dohuk, Iraq. It was a great time, and I will bring you more details in the next week. It is incredible though to see what God is doing.

I believe that 2009 is going to be another incredible year. It is my prayer to build on these values for the new year.

• I want to be more generous. I want to give more than I receive.

• I want to be more thankful. I want to recognize the blessings in my life more consistently.

• I want to be more loving. I want to be patient and kind towards people.

Let me encourage you to think about what values you are going to build your life on in 2009. If you don’t pre-determine them, they will never come to fruition.