Welcome to Wise Men Wednesday, your weekly dose of Christian wisdom for home and business.
I finally received my podcasting microphone the Audio-Technica ATR2100x and windscreen in the mail this week! It’s go time. After setting up the microphone and starting to record I realized I won’t be able to hold conversations as normal with this mic without purchasing some additional equipment. Typically when holding conversations on zoom I alternate between walking around the room, sitting on a stool, standing, leaning against a stool, and many other variations of movement. This microphone seated on my desktop picks up all that movement noise and also anything I type on my keyboard. Bummer!
In order to solve this dilemma I did a bit of research and purchased a Heil Sound PL-2T broadcast boom. This will allow me to move as much as I want and adjust the microphone as needed. With this new boom arriving next week I will record some test samples and see if I can record out here in my office with its vaunted ceilings or if I am going to need to setup a little podcasting room in the corner of the bedroom closet.
What guests do you want me to interview on the podcast first?
Posts I recently published:
Do You Have Kingdom Level Employee Benefits?
Words of wisdom:
When Christianity Was Muscular: This is quite a long one this week, so please set aside some time to dive into this. Very curious of your thoughts… So after you give it a read please reply in the comments below!
”Muscular Christianity had two aims: to increase men’s commitment to their health, and to increase men’s commitment to their faith.
The introduction of athletics went towards the first goal, helping “overcivilized” men of the 19th century rediscover their masculinity and build bodies that would aid them in their Christian discipleship.
But how to help men become dedicated disciples in the first place? How could Muscular Christians entice men into the pews at church, and inspire them to increase their participation in the faith?
The answer they proposed was to create a muscular ethos within Christian spirituality which would match the muscular physique of men’s bodies. This effort to introduce more virility into church services, as well as the religion’s culture as a whole, was advanced on several different fronts.”
My 5 Favorite Books I Read in 2020:
Finding My Virginity, by Richard Branson:
Every entrepreneur should pickup a copy of Richard Branson’s book, Finding My Virginity. This book is full of gold nuggets for business owners. And it is hilarious too! Because of this book I was actually able to make some decisions and take my business into a more clear direction. (Link has my full review)
Company of One, by Paul Jarvis:
Success doesn’t have to mean your face is plastered on the cover of Entrepreneur or Fortune magazines. You don’t have to have a private jet, a family trust, an investor profile on AngelList, and you don’t need to live in a mansion or send your kids to a private school. Don’t read me wrong, you can do all of this if you want, but your personal definition of success isn’t required to be defined by our modern cultures. (Link has my full review)
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson:
I never read this book as a boy, so while reading it for the first time as an adult I was shocked at how much of popular culture has spawned from this classic. I read this book in two days while on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean. Brought imagining the island and pirates to another level.
“I approached that island in my fancy from every possible direction; I explored every acre of its surface; I climbed a thousand times to that tall hill they call the Spy-glass, and from the top enjoyed the most wonderful and changing prospects. Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures.”
Be A Man! By Father Larry Richards:
“I have spent a holy hour with Jesus almost every single day since I was seventeen years old, and I can proclaim first hand that you receive great graces by being in His Presence.
It is like lying out in the sun. Just by lying there you get transformed; you might not notice it, but others will. The more naked you are the more of you that gets changed. The same thing happens when you come before the Son of God! Just by being in His Presence you will be transformed, and the more open you are before Him the more you will grow in holiness! You will not notice it but others sure will!”
Time Rich, by Steve Glaveski:
Tons of good stuff in here. Covers outsourcing and automation in detail, including evaluating good tasks for outsourcing or automation. Shares how to find contract workers, how to determine what is safe to outsource, how to test ideas, etc. Outlines all the $10/hour tasks we do each week and how we should set an aspirational per hour rate for ourselves and automate or outsource anything below that rate. So if our hourly rate is $100/hr, anything we can hire out for less should be on the table.
“Buyoed on by the digital minimalist movement, I decided that I would make my phone my slave, rather than submit to it as my master. I’d use it intentionally, simply to make plans with friends and occasionally share useful content with them, rather than converse ad infinitum. I call it digital essentialism, rather than minimalism. So what is essential?
As my daily screen time slowly decreased, I realized that I was short on genuine human connection, and I wasn’t living life as much as I should be. I wasn’t fully living up to a question I often like to ask myself: Will I remember this in five years?’”
Leave comments and any news or discoveries that you think I missed below!
James