So, while Wednesday’s are normally spent working on stuff for Light Force… I’ve had to spend a lot of time trying to get our website back online. Last night we converted the site from a local web host to monster, big, godaddy.com. What I failed to realize is how much work "seamless transition" would mean for me.
It’s been all day and the church site still isn’t up. Hopefully by tommorow I will have it all sorted out. FTPing 800 mb of stuff is harder than it sounds.
Today will make 4-5 days of solid returns in the tech industry on Wall Street. With the 4th Quarter rolling along solidly, gas and oil prices headed south, and the holidays fast approaching… I think we’re only beginning to see a big rally in tech stocks. Intel is now at $24.80, up $2 in a week. If chip stocks are up… that means there are a lot of PC’s being manufactured.
You mean 50 years of racisim and having policies that restrict who can be a citizen really is bad? Huh… amazing that things in France are so bad.
I was just checking out a catalogue for Christian books when it hit me. Probably 99% of the books on the market in the Christian genre could be labeled either self help or reference. Sure, there is a small section for Christian fiction, and a few pages for kids books… but the vast majority of the stuff for sale is geared towards help and advice.
Let’s look at the top #10 hard covers in the Christian section. Purpose Driven Life, Captivating, Wild at Heart, Your Best Life Now… on and on. All but 1 are self-help!
Pragmatism: A practical, matter-of-fact way of approaching or assessing situations or of solving problems.
It leaves me wondering, "Is this how people look at Christianity?" Are we to demean what Christ did for us to Dr. Phil style of salvation?
Jesus didn’t come to counsel you. Or help you have purpose. Or to Captivate you. Or to help you explore your inner man… or even to have your best life now. He said, "I have come that you might have life and have it to the full." John says he came to "seek and save the lost." But fix all your problems and help you pursue the American dream?
I wrestle with that thought. Did Jesus die merely so that I could be comfortable? Or is that just what we’ve reduced him to?
Well, it’s a good thing I have a tangible amount of free time. Because in my free time I am going through the process of re-reading my old blog, versions 2.0 and 2.5 and deciding which of the 700+ posts to move to version 3.0. Originally, I wanted to move several hundred posts here… but now I am thinking if I do 100 it may be too many. Since it takes me 5-10 minutes per post to read through it and transfer it over… 100 is a big goal.
"If I acted crazy, I did it for God; if I acted overly serious, I did it for you. Christ’s love has moved me to such extremes. His love has the first and last word in everything we do. Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat." 2 Corinthians 5:13-14 (The Message)
Yesterday in Sunday school we were talking about sharing our faith. I went through the very basics, defined what we meant and didn’t mean by sharing our faith, why, etc. But the really profound part came after "my stuff" was done and we just talked about it practically.
I kept drilling down "why is this so hard?" I am certain everything thought I was just repeating myself over and over again. In a lot of ways, it was a question none of us could answer completely. I mean, we know that we are supposed to share our faith… most of us get it that much. But something holds us back.
For me, I worry too much about "what will my friends think of me?" Will they think that I am stupid.. or worse, crazy? This morning I was thinking about this passage. Paul is telling us to do whatever it takes to get the message across to people. If we need to be labeled as crazy, then so be it. Christ’s love for me is crazier. That got me thinking… yeah, Paul… that’s easy for your to say. Then I did a little more reading and realized it wasn’t easy for him to say that. I re-read Acts 26 for the first time in a long time. That shed new light and gave new depth for me when I think about "losing my mind" for Jesus.
Stupid faith… as the summer wound down this year I said something in a talk that I am still thinking about. I said something like "I want you all to recklessly, stupidly chase the dreams that God has for you. Pursue it like crazy." And I am still wondering to myself… do I have safe faith that could barely be called faith, or do I have blind and stupid faith that moves mountains?
I picked up this little darling at Home Depot yesterday while shopping for something else. Oh yeah, much cooler than an old rake. So if you see a fat guy in his yard with millions of leaves flying… that’s probably just me.
OK, so I am biased about what we are doing. But I felt pretty good about church today. The jr./sr. high split is going OK, the feel of Sunday school is about where I want it to be, on and on.
I thought the worship service today was pretty solid. It’s no secret that we’ve had plenty of technical problems lately… today everything worked for the most part. We had some problems with Media Shout 2.5, but I will be upgrading that to version 3 later this week. Hopefully that will stabilize all of that stuff and the transition to fully digital will work a lot better. Also, tech news… the new handhelds worked great. PHEW! I also enjoyed highlighting the ministry of the Esklund’s in Denmark. [see picture] Holy cow, I could live there, it is beautiful.
For the rest of today… I am planning on resting. Jon might come over later, but I will be resting mostly. With all the wind today I can’t really work outside anyway.
We had a good talent show tonight, sponsored by our college ministry 3:13.
It was espcially nice to see Light Force well represented with performances by Lisa and Raya. It was also nice to see a Light Force skit performed as well as a favorite youth group song from Lisa. All in all, it was a blast.