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During Compline I’ve been picking out an Advent hymn to accompany the office. The last couple of times, I got a request for “Once He Came In Blessing,” LSB 333.

I like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” for a solo chant, but “Blessing” is a more singable melody in a soft voice, with scales that make a nice lullaby. I’d link a YouTube video or the tune from the Cyberhymnal, but neither do it justice. Perhaps after I get an equipment upgrade, I’ll play it.

Here are the first and last stanzas (the middle two are copyright by CPH):

Once He came in blessing,
All our sins redressing;
Came in likeness lowly,
Son of God most holy;
Bore the cross to save us;
Hope and freedom gave us.

Come, then, O Lord Jesus,
From our sins release us.
Keep our hearts believing,
That we, grace receiving,
Ever may confess You
Til in heav’n we bless You.

Rev. Cripe notes that some doctrinal clarity and specificity is creeping into contemporary music. One of the contemporary hymns we sang Sunday referenced John 6:41-54. I’m glad CCLI writers are starting to pay attention to content. There is still much room for improvement.

The whole article is good, but his question at the end is interesting:

So here’s my question – if much of today’s alternative worship services were begun with the intention of getting back to a simpler, no-frills, first-century style of worship, will the current movement reach the same conclusion of earlier ages – it wasn’t enough?

I’ve not seen contemporary worship sold to congregations as a method to get back to worshiping like we did in the first century. Contemporary worship proponents make their arguments in other ways.

Coming soon to our house...

Grandma baked cookies with the twins Saturday, and right now only one is left. The oatmeal-chocolate chips were the first to go.

I found out that I will be getting a Treasury of Daily Prayer. My parents ordered a copy for me through their congregation, so they’ll get the congregational discount.  Good for them, and good for our family. All those ribbons in the book scare me, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

The tree is up, but no decorations are on it yet. There has been some discussion in the blogosphere as to how much Christmas decoration should be done during Advent. For our family setting up our tree is penance rather than celebration. Definitely an Advent activity.

From the NY Daily News:

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

I was hoping starting the Christmas shopping season three weeks ago would have prevented some of this.

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Take it easy out there, people. Don’t give the Feds cause to regulate further your business.

Note to Wal-Mart and other businesses: if 200 people show up at your front door ready to rush, call the police, and don’t unchain the doors.

Wal-Mart probably has a couple of wrongful death suits coming. I’m not saying it would bring the child and the employee back, but I hope the damages are sufficient to make businesses think about hyping up Black Friday.

Doesn’t anyone shop online any more?

I’m also thankful that (in no particular order):

• we’re still not deciding a presidential election.
• our roof is getting fixed.
• my parents are coming for Thanksgiving.
• we got the treadmill out of the basement today, with a minimum amount of fuss.
• my wife who has handled the Christmas gift duties with aplomb.

Please, Mr. President, don't pardon the turkey. He'll just starve.

Irish goat, image via Wikipedia

For our congregation, which follows the three-year lectionary, the Gospel was Matthew 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and the goats.

The pastor’s sermon was full of sufficient Gospel to choke a horse: you are the blessed, you are the sheep, you are the ones who inherit the kingdom, you are the ones who in Christ perform the deeds God has laid out for you. But there was one splinter of Law that stuck.

Pastor Gau had noted that the goats try to get into heaven with their works. They count everything in order to justify themselves. They are ready with their lists, their cases to go before the Judge of the Universe.

We hope to be sheep. Yet I find myself counting like a goat, not to be justified or to gain entrance into heaven, but counting things in some self-serving sense of “fairness.” It kicks me whenever I have to scrub a bathtub I never use, clean up a mess I didn’t make, or trust that someone is going to help, and then they don’t. I may be a sheep and do all sorts of wonderful good deeds in Christ, but I bleat like a condemned¹ goat.

May the wife and kids forgive me.

¹Or use the appropriate single-syllable word.

The last class of the Continuing Professional Development put on by the Engineers Foundation of Ohio came in the form of two breakout sessions. I attended, “Marketing Your Professional Engineering Services.” Dr. Lynn Daily, professor of marketing at Capital University, gave the class. All in all, these are decent tips for any company.

The notes I took from this are as follows:

As competition moves from a single supplier to many suppliers of a service, companies follow a progression of concepts:

• Product Concept: Make what you want to make.
• Selling Concept: Convince people that they want what you make.
• Marketing Concept: Find customer, figure out what customer wants, and make what the customer wants.

Retail vs. Commercial: Retail is using a product for one’s own service, while commercial is using a product to sell one’s own services.

In order to sell services in a highly competitive atmosphere, a company may choose to participate in only certain market segments. Segments can (perhaps should) be measured even before a product is created. For example, outdoor magazine subscriptions may be an indicator of how popular your outdoor product may be. Segments should be measurable, substantial (sufficiently profitable), accessible, differentiable (responds differently to different product mixes), and actionable (able to be served effectively).

Understanding target segments is key. Find out how customers research and decide to handle their problems. People spend more time searching for a solution as their involvement and risk go up. If they already have an answer in mind (and your goal is to be in their mind), they won’t spend as much time searching. Determine what evaluative criteria the target uses.

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Don’t wait until the job is done to provide good customer service. Sometimes a mistake can be turned into a gain, if you recover from that mistake and compensate in more than just a satisfactory manner. Employees must be empowered to do those kind of recoveries.

Implement a client database if you haven’t already, including contact info, decision makers, previous issues, buy practices, and opportunities you could address.

Take all complaints seriously; if one bothers to complain, more than likely other people have been dissatisfied and just haven’t bothered to tell you.

When differentiating yourself from your competitors, note your points of parity, which are attributes you share, and points of difference, positive attributes about you that a client could not find in your competition.  Position your company with these attributes, showing the customer how he can benefit from your superior attribute.

Expertise is highly variable and can’t be stored. People should be selected, highly trained, and highly motivated. Consider performance-based compensation.

“Avoiding Hot Spots” was a lecture given by Luther L. Liggett, Jr., and Douglas L. Shevelow, of Bricker & Eckler, Attorneys at Law.

The State of Ohio Engineers and Surveyors Board confers and revokes Professional Engineering licenses, and they also have the power to prosecute people who practice engineering without a license. P.E.s typically represent the owner and, where there is a risk to others, the public. Although P.E. License law is less complex than most, people can still fall into one more pitfalls:

1. When working on a project, an engineer must be employed by the owner of the project or the company that is going to build the project (called a “design-build” service). These are the only ways an engineer can have access to the total body of knowledge required to do the job. They cannot be hired by a subcontractor. This generated a lot of discussion in class, as this situation comes up frequently but it is not enforced. The presenter said that the enforcement hotline is anonymous, and anyone can call, whether it is competition, an angry employee, or someone else.
2. Engineers can and should vote. They have a First Amendment right to donate to the candidate of their choice. Their firm can be hired by a public official, as long as the public official uses Qualifications Based Selection to choose the best (not necessarily cheapest) solution. Neither a P.E. nor the spouse of a P.E. can contribute in a situation where the P.E. gets unbid contracts. Gifts to public officials should be nominal, and nothing of “undue influence.” The current generally acceptable level is $75. Go over that, for example, with some golf outings, and the Ethics Commission can be called in.  A violation of ethics law is a criminal offense.
3. Materials testing is practicing engineering in Ohio. Materials are being tested to see if they will meet the needs of the situation, and the engineer must know what those needs are.
4. Liggett recommended that engineering firms not submit proposals for competitive bid, and that they should submit their proposals for Qualifications Based Selection. By allowing proposals to be bid, price becomes the overriding concern, and engineering becomes a commodity.
5. Firms that employ engineers should have a Certificate of Authorization from the State of Ohio Engineers and Surveyors Board. One or more full-time partners, officers, or other high-level personnel must be designated as being responsible for the professional engineering services of the firm.


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6. There is a 15 year general warranty for contracts that do not have special warranty clauses. Contracts are required by law to specify liquidated damages. When writing up a contract with a contractor, make sure the damage reflects the per diem you the owner is going to suffer, such as lost revenue, if what you want done is to be late. Contracts can’t penalize in order to teach a lesson — those types of penalties are unenforceable. Contracts can contain a bonus clause if the contractor finishes early, which is useful motivation. Indemnification clauses shift a lot of risk from owners to contractors, and this is particularly advisable if there is more than one contractor on a job.
7. The owner is responsible for telling the contractor where the utilities are for a location. It’s not hard to ask utility companies where the utilities are at.
8. Some charter corporations have a “home rule” that is different than a municipality or state law.
9. Engineer plans that have more than one stamp are usually difficult to determine which work each engineer did.  Multiple-stamp plan violations are aggressively pursued by the Board. If an engineer is using another engineer’s sealed work, he shouldn’t seal it with his own seal. If a seal is needed, the project should be redrawn and resealed.
10. If an anonymous call is investigated by the Board, the Board cannot tell you who complained or if the investigation is dropped. You do get notified if you’re indicted.

• Reaction to Pastor David Petersen’s interview (MP3) on Issues, Etc., regarding pastoral care for those with special needs. Worship practice may be a dovetail here…
• The rest of the Professional Engineering conference notes
• What do we listen to for Christmas (and the fact that the new shopping season is two weeks done already)
• Global warming?  Not in Ohio…
• Gathering contacts for “A Night with NR” #2…if not, you’ll get to hear my piano through a monaural voice mike.

Or if you don’t want to wait until actual posts on these topics, leave a comment.  Could be fun.

The last session of the first day, it didn’t help my interest level that there wasn’t as much new material in “The Fundamental Keys of Success for Every Engineering Firm” as in the other classes.  Brad Bennett, Esq., did his best. He talked about sole proprietorships, LLCs, S-Corporations and C-Corporations.

While he was talking about the application process, he threw out a stat: 20% of an application may be false.  People tend to puff up their resumes. Look for “power words.” Oh, you managed? What did you manage? Oh, you mean you scheduled employees? Did you decide the schedule?  Oh, you mean you wrote the names on the board. Thanks.

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Ohio has a reference check law that protects a person who is asked for a character reference as long as the reference isn’t discriminatory. People giving references still must be cautious: if you give a lot of detail during one reference, you need to be consistent in giving detail to other people who call for references.

It is permissible to check backgrounds for convictions but not for arrests. Arrests inadvertently bias the sample to certain races. In certain occupations, the nature of the conviction can be especially relevant: it is reasonable for a bodyguard company to mandate clean assault records, or for accounting services to require records free of theft or embezzlement.

Credit reports can be checked. If the credit report causes the employer not to hire the applicant, the employer needs to send the applicant a letter stating the situation.

In the Employee Handbook, don’t list all the behaviors that can get an employee fired.  If the list is long enough, a judge may determine that the list limits the number of behaviors that are firing offenses.

The class ended with a brief overview of how to deal with personality types at work.