Contacting Craig

To contact Craig for speaking or interview opportunities, email at craigd2599@gmail.com
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Sunday, February 12, 2012

DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

Tonights show was wonderful!! You can catch the podcast here! DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

Sunday Morning in America...Thoughts on society, post-Dr. Falwell

I am so sad this morning. This past week has been hard on my soul. This issue with Obama and the Catholic Church has broken my heart. It's because to me, we've crossed some line in our country now. A line where good is still clearly defined and where good still MATTERS. Where the average citizen has a working knowledge of civics and of what the Constitution actually says and where that is still held dear. It's where we still stand at the National Anthem and maybe get a tear in our eye. It's where we see injustice...REAL injustice not something that is painted as injustice because we need a victim to get behind so we can milk the system.
Am I already that old? Could it be that in my short lifetime (I'm 48) we have moved from a land where patriotism and right living was the expected norm, to a society where patriotism is mocked, and ignorance of all that made us great is the status quo? I knew what a Bicameral legislative branch was by the time I was in SIXTH grade! Ask a sixth grader this now and you get a blank stare. Ask his parents...probably the same thing.
I grew up in church. Church was where your sense of right and wrong was molded. Preachers preached about sin. Sometimes they went too far and they made EVERYTHING a sin...like the church I grew up in. But they meant well and they did, at least, provide me with some very visible boundaries. You don't hear that anymore. You have Mark Driscoll bastardizing Song of Solomon into pornography but you don't have a Leonard Ravenhill. You have Ed Young Jr. preaching from a bed...the John Lennon of our time! But you don't have a Dr. Jerry Falwell...a personal hero of mine...who would be on national TV week after week pronouncing the sin in our land and the need for God's folk to start being salty about it. Salt and light.
This morning in NYC, there are dozens of churches with no place to meet because Mayor Bloomberg has stopped letting them use school buildings for services. In America! See this is what happens when preachers get famous for writing bastardizations of Song of Solomon and not for standing up for something that matters. This is what happens when we harvest-out our field and don't look for another field to go to. This is the end result of playing nice and letting the world dictate our behavior because we want to be loved and highly thought of and accepted. Dr. Falwell faced death threats DAILY in the 80's. Now we have pastors clamoring to be invited to someones inauguration or to throw out the first pitch at the ball game. We have nationally recognized preachers whose biggest goal is to be re-tweeted and invited to be a guest on Sean Hannity. We have pastors who preach from a bed because their topic is sex. But we don't have one clear, clarion call above the noise that says "Stand for what is RIGHT!" We are a nation of preachers with not a PROPHET amongst us.

I'm a young man...too young to be this curmudgeonly already. But we need something that we haven't seen in about 20 years. I don't think it's revival amongst our sheep...I think it's revival amongst our shepherds.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Friday, February 3, 2012

When your vision is right...you're seldom wrong. Lessons I learned from Dr. Falwell

I guess maybe it's because I'm graduating this spring and I've been pretty sentimental about my years at Liberty University. Or maybe it's because my path to my Bachelors Degree was pretty difficult and lead me through many minefields. Maybe it's the wisdom that comes with being 48 and taking 28 of those years to get this beloved degree. I don't know.
One thing it has given me is a very unique perspective on my alma mater and the man who founded it. My college career spans four decades. I started in 1984, resumed in 1994 and now it's 2012. I remember when Liberty was Liberty Baptist College. I remember when we had about 1200 students and the mountain was mostly vacant.
Everything that is now Liberty University existed solely in the heart of Dr. Jerry Falwell as recently as 40 years ago. In the life of a University, Liberty is a baby. To go from a "Bible school" meeting in church classrooms with 141 students to a world class university with a Law School, now a Medical school, an amazing campus and the eighth largest student body of ANY US college in that time...that can ONLY be attributed to this being God's plan.
That's my point this morning. How really right Doc was. And how that was confirmation that L.U. was something very special indeed.
I remember in 1984 sitting in Chapel and hearing Doc tell us about his dream of a "Liberty Channel" where we could see Liberty / TRBC programming 24/7. How would this happen? Because there was this new thing coming called "Satellite TV" and it would revolutionize everything. Not those monster 6 foot dishes you see in rural areas...no Doc told us the new technology was an 18 inch disc you could mount on the corner of your house. Riiiight Doc! Like THAT'S ever going to happen!
By 1994 Dish Network and Direct TV were commonplace and by 2012 they are an afterthought. Nobody even thinks about satellite TV it's just there...like Coke or Pepsi.
He told us about online education in 1984 too. He called it "Distance Learning" and started a program called LUSSL "Liberty University School of Lifelong Learning". He trumpeted it loudly and clearly and we all thought he was joking...or at least had oversold the concept. And now...Your's truly is getting his degree 28 years after hearing Doc talk about this. In fact if not for LU Online there is NO WAY I'd be graduating from Liberty this year or any year. And to be honest...if I had to go to any other school to finish what I began in 1984 it would have been such a hollow victory. LU Online is the 3rd largest online school in the US now. And may I say...it has been one of the most seamless and smooth experiences I have ever had in my entire college education.
Yesterday I was thinking...as I was reading Tweets from Shannon Bream of Fox News, whom I follow on Twitter...that I remember Doc saying that they were going to use The Liberty Channel to expand the School of Communications so that one day there would be a Liberty grad on a major network reporting the news as an alternative to the liberal twist normally reserved for reportage. I watch Shannon on Fox and I realize how Doc was spot-on...again.
Doc saw an amazing an beautiful campus where we saw bramble and rock. Doc saw a church and a seminary and a law school where we saw the old Ericsson building. Doc saw D-1 athletics and Young Champions on and off the field.
Doc saw things that had not happened yet because Doc's vision was truly from God. Thats how you know if you're following a real leader who is really moving with God's blessing. He can truly "Call those things which are not as if they are" as the Bible says.
I am beginning to use this as a measuring stick for my own visions. There had to have been a moment in each vision when Doc got some sort of confirmation and he moved from "What if" to "When this...". Doc was never wrong about things! It's amazing. I want to try to say that about my own life and ministry. God knows I haven't done it very well until now.
The only big dream of Doc's I can remember that hasn't happened yet is that so far, we haven't beaten Notre Dame in South Bend. Doc always said that and we always laughed. Nowadays...it wouldn't surprise me.
I'm wracking my brain to see if I recall Doc ever saying LU would one day produce a NYT best selling author. That'd be nice...especially if it was my book that he was talking about.
Doc was more than a visionary, he was right about it!
That's how I know God was the source of his vision. That's the benchmark for us all. Where are we going...where am I going? If God is behind it...we'll be right about it.