You’ve got to love the internet–one moment your quickly checking your google reader and the next your reading a post about David Foster Wallace’s thoughts on the destructive tendencies of TV sitcoms. While I don’t know much about Wallace, I can with confidence say that his ideas about irony and ridicule in our society, found here, are dead on:

“And to the extent that it [TV] can train viewers to laugh at characters’ unending put-downs of one another, to view ridicule as both the mode of social intercourse and the ultimate art-form, television can reinforce its own queer ontology of appearance: the most frightening prospect, for the well-conditioned viewer, becomes leaving oneself open to others’ ridicule by betraying passé expressions of value, emotion, or vulnerability. Other people become judges; the crime is naiveté. The well-trained viewer becomes even more allergic to people. Lonelier”

“The assumptions behind early postmodern irony…were still frankly idealistic: it was assumed that etiology and diagnosis pointed toward cure, that a revelation of imprisonment led to freedom. [Rortyan irony?] So then how have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today’s avant-garde tries to write about? One clue’s to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It’s not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, ‘Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.’ This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function”

As I interact with many people I notice how people under the age of 40 live on irony, and I often feel like everyone is constantly worried about that they will say something that will leave them open for ridicule.

Irony is what we use to to fill in every gap and pause in a conversation. We are looking for places to through a barb in, but what does this do to our relationship?

I must confess that I live out this kind of  TV humor the most with my wonderful and gracious wife who deserves none of it. Jo I’m sorry.

What do you think is Wallace right? Is irony a cage? Are we allergic to real interactions with people because we fear ridicule?

If Wallace is right how can we fi it?

(via)

We ended up calling a friend from our old church who was willing to come out and get us, and then a family from the church plant offered to lend us their second car for the week. Things worked out.

The frustration is that there is some part of me that assumes now that I’m a church planter we should be the one giving out help, but not the ones needing help. As if when your in leadership you should always be independently able to care for yourself, but that idea is total contrary to the Biblical idea of dependance. We all are totally dependent on God, even if we don’t acknowledge it, and lets be honest we are also very often dependent on other people as well. From little things like having your hands full of groceries and someone opening a door for you, to the big things like your car breaking down and you needing someone to drive two hours to pick you, your wife and your screaming kid up—we need people.

Its ok to be dependent, In fact I think that we can’t help but be dependent, and Im realizing that it’s a pretty good leadership style to embrace, but one that requires you to swallow a lot of pride.

Over the last few months, my frustration with Att and with Apple has been growing. Yes, I said both: Att for its awful coverage and horrible pricing and Apple for its draconian control over the iPhone, and their apparent disregard for what their customers ask for (Google Voice Achem..)

I’ve found myself looking at new T-Mobile plans or new Sprint plans, and finally I decided to do a side by side comparison: T-Mobile vs Sprint vs Att vs Verizon. With T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon I compared their 1500 minute family plans with unlimited texting and data, and calculated the cost over the next two years. I included the cost of new phones on each carrier. With Att I simply plugged in our current rates.

The really striking thing was that Sprint, T-Mobile offered family services with data in the range that I was paying for my iphone plan with only 200 text messages a month for Jo and I, and with her have no data.

Both T-Mobile and Sprint offer out of the box family plans with texting and data, Verizon on the other hand included data at an additional cost over the phone service. Sprint and T-Mobile destroyed the comprable Verizon plan (coming in $1,000 dollars cheaper).

Verizon was eliminated due to the cost.

Sprint and T-Mobile were comperable. The Real difference was in the phone choice, we wanted android phones and Sprint has the EVO, the Moment, the Intercept and the HTC Hero.  T-Mobile has the MyTouch, the Cliq, the Vibrant, the Behold II, and the Garmin.

In reading the reviews of the different android phones, the Evo was the clear winner, and the rest of the phones offered by both providers seemed similar, so we settled on Sprint.

The icing on the cake was that because we are AAA member’s Sprint offered us a 10% discount on our monthly service. So even with the early termination fee from Att we were getting more service the same money.

Some of the benefits of switching:

• Unlimited Data for both of us
• Unlimited Mobile to Mobile calling with ALL carriers.
• Google Nav and Sprint Nav
• Unlimited Texting
• Better Reception (So far no dropped calls!)
• Sprints 4G network (coming in October)

So far I’m very  happy with my decision.

But… here I am. I changed my mind for various reasons. One is a little conceited. Last June we had a baby, and I’m convinced that everyone wants to know what he is doing and looks like ALL the time. Yes, sadly, I’ve become that deranged mother (grandparents rejoice!). The other big reason is that my husband and I are trying to start a new church in our town. We aren’t doing it alone of course. We had our first core group meeting a few months ago, and there are about 20 people committed or seriously considering a commitment. But I think I, as Sam’s wife, am going to have a unique view on how this whole thing goes down. I hope that this can someday be an encouragement to other families as they start down similar roads, or for anyone who wants to keep tabs on this crazy family.

The first week of January Jo, Gus and I traveled to visit my family in upstate New York. This gave us a nice break from alot of the busyness.

As many people know we have been planning and praying for the opportunity to plant a new church for the Lawrenceville Bloomfield sections of Pittsburgh.

Last weekend I presented my plans to our denomination’s regional leadership and they decided to endorse it.

This means a number of things for the DeSocios and thedesocios.com

1. Joanna, and I will begin working toward starting a new church for Lawrenceville and Bloomfield.
2. We will be connecting with many people who might want to join us in this new church.
3. This means that we will be pretty busy preparing for our transition, including spending alot of time finding the needed resources to realize our hopes for this new church plant.
4. Starting in July 1st I will move from my position as Assistant Pastor at City Reformed, to being a fulltime church planter. The leaders at City Reformed hope to have a potential replacement in the works by June so that there might be some overlap.
5. I will not be posting as much as I had been on our site, as I will be spending alot more time networking and updating people about our progress. Im not sure that we will be using this site for those updates.
6. When I post they are going to be shorter.
7. We are gonna spend more time putting up pictures and videos of Gus (thats why most people come to this site anyway.)
8. We need help from lots of people to see our dreams of a new church community become a reality. Please consider how you might partner with us, in support prayer or participation. Contact hopeforpittsburgh@gmail.com

1. Spend more time getting things done
Grade:C+ I got alot better at keeping track of things, but I still wasted alot of time this year.

2. Get to know more of our neighbors
Grade:B- Volunteering and being a local helped with this.

3. Network with more church planters
Grade:B+ Between Philly, Assessment and Pittsburgh, I’m beginning to get to know alot of great church planters.

4. Write on our blog more often
Grade:C While I didn’t write as often as I wanted to, I upped my posting over 2008, from under 40 to 114.

5. Finish as many of my half read books as possible
Grade: C- While I did finish some books I wanted to read, I ended up adding a few more books to my need to read list.

6. Take more photos
Grade: A- With a new baby, and a better camera phone I definitely took alot more pictures this year than 2008.

7. Pray more
Grade: B+ While a had a better pattern of prayer in 2009 than I did in 2008. I’m still not praying as often as I wish.

So what are some goals for 2010

Read and pray more systematically with my family.
Go fishing or camping at least once.
Write in a more systematic way.
Get my bike fixed and actually ride it.
Network with more community leaders and pastors.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

(Philippians 4:6 ESV)

Sometimes God’s word hit you right between the eyes and you need it to.

Monday morning Jo, Gus and I flew to Atlanta, for our denominations Church Planter Assessment. The main goal of the Assessment was to interact with Jo and I to see how well we might do at starting a new church (often called church planting). Our denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America does this kind of thing several times a year. We were with 8 other couples and one guy.
The actual assessment was an intense process. It was broken up into projects, teaching, interviews, and personality testing. The men and women evaluating us had all participated in church planting or were in leadership in similar areas. All our assessors were great–they really cared about getting to know us, and while I assumed the whole thing would be just one big job interview, I’m glad I was wrong. I made some great connections with the other potential-planters as well as the assessors.

What Assessment wasn’t

• A cake walk — It wasn’t an easy process. We probably spent 15 hours just with the application alone, and that was before the intense 3 days spent in Atlanta.
• A vacation — I’ve never been on a vacation with that kind of breakneck pace.
• Final approval — The assessment offered us a recommendation. The final approval comes from our local network of churches(presbytery).
• That scene from Armageddon — The counseling wasn’t crazy and no one went near my cooli.

Why was it important?

• It was one of the best things that Jo and I have done for our marriage.
• The process also helped shape my thoughts on my limitations as a potential church planter.
• We went away from the week with a fresh perspective on our hopes for Lawrenceville, some of which changed over the week and other which were affirmed.
• It let me see that I hadn’t been relating to Christ the way I need to. I had been offering people the church, it was Jesus’s church, but I hadn’t been offering people Jesus. This blew me away, and I so glad that it did.

Does this change anything?

• Yup, it sure does, but I’m not exactly sure of everything yet, so I’m gonna keep my mouth shut.