I Feel Inspired!

So Idaho residents might want their elected representatives to have a couple of sit-downs with the administrators at one of their state's public universities.

Seems that the University of Idaho agreed to a nine-month contract with a company for the services of that company's "Chief Inspiration Officer." According to the contract, the Chief Inspirer spends between zero and ten days each month at the school's Moscow, Idaho campus. The school spends $112,500.

Up until this year, they've been content with being inspired on a seminar-by-seminar basis, but apparently administrators feared the 2008-09 school year might be kind of glum and they would need full-time inspiration. Or at least between zero and ten days a month of it.

This interests me, primarily because you could make a pretty good case that I, as a pastor, am something like a Chief Inspiration Officer. I don't rake in a hundred and twelve large for nine months of work, but I am willing to learn.

What I glean from the news story is that I need to tweak my operation a little. Instead of calling it "church," I need to give it some edgy and cool name like the company in the story. Maybe I could stop calling myself "pastor" and find a new title, too. That would probably help.

But I can see two big changes that would make a difference right away. First, I need to stop dealing with all these credible religious folks who talk about things like faith and belief. Obviously, the real market is with the clear-eyed, hard-headed, bottom-line rational folks like those who handle leadership and administration at a large public university. They're people who don't do stuff without some serious evidence to back it up -- no religious mumbo-jumbo for them; just tangible product like inspiration.

The second thing I need to do is to stop talking to folks who only have their own money to give to the operation. I need to find some people who've been entrusted with other people's money, like those who help run a taxpayer-financed public university.

Coming soon: The new Flatlands Friar, Director of Original Motivation of theFurtificusGroup (Inc.)!

(H/T University Diaries)