Perhaps it is because the iPod just turned 5, but I’m as happy as can be that my favorite radio in the world is now padcasted. Anyone on the planet can now listen to This American Life with Ira Glass for free.
Yes, I’m a geek. But at least I’m a happy geek. Why am I so excited about this?
I’m a dork, so this is a big deal to me. In the past 2 weeks I’ve downloaded both Internet Explorer 7.0 and Firefox 2.0. So far, Firefox 2.0 is fantastic and IE 7.0 is a joke. One little thing that I like about Firefox is that it’s got a built in spell checker. So it turns what I’m typing basically looks and acts like it was in MS Word. This is a big step forward.
I was starting to think of Youth Ministry Exchange as a big forum community. (And compared to a lot of others… it is) But then Derek sent me this link. Big-Boards Turns out there are currently 1865 known forum communities with more than 500,000 posts. We’re catching up to that category, but we’re only at 110,000. At today’s current rate of posting, we qualify for Big Board status in 1331 days. That’s June 2010.
Ray Pritchard, our pastor in the Chicago years, has a great post about churches, church leaders, and church members who decide to duke it out via their blogs.
I really like this point…
14) Having said all of this, I don’t think the Internet caused the
problems in any of these churches, but putting the fight online
definitely made things worse. The Internet only revealed what was
already there, bubbling under the surface.
One thing that I have often heard as a "negative" to churches is that people don’t like politics. While I agree that the politics of the local church is never fun the simple fact remains: Politics reveals the passion of the people. And politics reveals that you’ve got more than 1 person. In fact, since most politics have to do with answering the question, "How do we do ____ best?" it’s not abnormal to see two or three political opinions on an issue in a single person. So… there is no such thing as the apolitical church. It’s just not out there so stop looking.
The point is that Ray gives a great insight into what blogs are and aren’t. Here’s a quick summary of my "rules for blogging."
Rule #1 Don’t ever write something you wouldn’t want your mother to read.
Rule #2 Opinions are like…. bellybuttons… everyone has one.
Rule #3 Don’t throw gasoline on a fire.
Rule #4 Beware of Trolls, learn to love Lurkers.
It’s been known for several years that Jeffrey Dahmer made a confession of faith right before he was murdered in prison, including a baptism. There’s been a lot of chatter and weirdness about that because some people don’t think God has enough grace to save Mr. Dahmer.
If it’s true, and this story makes it seem that way, I just don’t understand why anyone would have a problem with that. After all, it’s God… He can do whatever He wants.
thanks to C4C for the link
In just a few minutes the McLane family is off to our first small group meeting. Our little cluster is at a weird time, Friday morning, but should be pretty cool. What’s in it for me? Being a part of the churches vision in a very practical way.
Friday morning in Dryden might not seem like the way to grow your church, but in a lot of very practical ways… it is.
Today I got together with some guys in my old youth network. I haven’t been a part of that gang for about a year and it was really nice to start the re-connecting process.
For the first time since I’ve been here I really felt like I got something out of going today. I have been a little discouraged in general and even though I didn’t really have time to go all the way down there, I made time to get encouraged. So I went a little discouraged and left feeling OK about myself and my ministry.
Quick sidenote: It’s one thing to teach students "when you feel the most discouraged it’s because you are really close to a major break through and Satan is attacking you with discouragement" but it’s another really hard thing to live. Pressing on towards the goal sometimes sucks.
Today we talked about outreach. It’s one of those words that means a lot of things to a lot of people. I’ve seen churches call their Christian schools "an outreach" since there are people who aren’t Christians in the school. I’ve seen churches call events "outreaches" that were really events where one ministry of the church was reaching out to another. I’ve been to evangelistic "outreaches" where there was an event and a gospel presentation. I’ve been to churches that call "outreach" serving th community or feeding the homeless. But what is "Outreach?"
I was fortunate enough to buy a single ticket to Game 2 of the 2006 World Series at Comerica Park. The story of that ticket will one day be finished enough to tell, but let’s just say that getting that ticket at 10:50am made no logical sense. It was a Ticketmaster fluke I suppose.
So, the dilemma begins. Do I go to the game and make a great memory or do I sell the ticket? Part of the problem is that I like the Tigers… but I really think that a die-hard fan should go instead of someone like me who just likes the team. Noble, eh? Of course, part of the problem is that I feel that if I go it would be some sort of gluttony.
So… the fact is that my ticket really is for sale on Stubhub.com. Simple as that, eh? Well… it was simple until I found a couple videos on YouTube. Don’t know if it will be enough to change my mind… but these make me want to go real bad.
I’m not anti-education or continuing education in theory. But when it comes down to it, school isn’t my favorite thing to do. OK, I like school because I like to talk and listen to new ideas, I just don’t like homework. Today is the official start to my fall class call Qualitative Research in Youth Ministry. My professor for this class is Terry Linhart, the youth ministry chair at Bethel College in Mishawaka but the class is part of the Master in Youth Ministry Leadership at Huntington University.
So, most of my first week’s reading is done and I have to finish that up right away so I can participate in discussion. Ultimately I’d get the weeks work done on Monday and not have to think about the class much until the next Monday.
p.s. 1 hour until Tigers tickets go on sale for the World Series.
On Saturday, I had a lot of fun over at Simpson Park Camp helping out with their fall high school retreat. Curt is leading the charge in bringing SPC into the present and looking towards the future. Katie, the young adult person at SPC who runs the retreat, did a great job creating a comfortable environment for students. Solid worship, great attitudes, it was very cool.
To see my talk notes from the afternoon breakout session and my Saturday night talk, click the read more link.