“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
I ran across a story last week about the new portable pocket projectors that Mitsubishi has come out with. These things will literally fit into the palm of your hand. Combine that with the video capabilities of the iPhone and some battery powered speakers and you may have a combination of the most powerful tools that we could put into the hands of missionaries in the fields of 3rd world countries. Many of the these countries are investing in better and faster wireless networks and have skipped investing too much in wired networks. For an up front cost of just over a $1,000 and a monthly cost of less than $100 we have put the world’s greatest communication tool into the hands of those who could do the most with it. Imagine sending a message or videos to a network of indigenous pastors across a country or continent. Think of the limitless amount of teachings and tools they would have access to through the Internet. So what all would we need to make this happen?
What are some other possibilities that you imagine with this combination? Maybe a pastor in Addis Ababa could teach and direct a network of churches and pastors throughout Ethiopia via this method. Networks of churches that cannot support a teaching pastor getting great teaching every week. Your turn.
Subway now refers to their subs as "Yum Rockets."
Some drug companies recommend you talk to your "prescriber" instead of your doctor. I am not even sure that is even a word.
Have you noticed any other strange new terms recently?
I am currently running sound for the 2008 Circle of Nations Christian Women’s Conference. The speaker is blowing it out of the water. She is currently contrasting the show What Not to Wear with the sin in our lives. We have all of this stuff in the closet that we just can’t bring ourselves to get rid of. We need someone to come alongside us and help us get these things out of our life. Amazing stuff. I forgot to start the recorder for this session. Dang it. Read Chapter 3 of the book of Colossians and set your minds on heavenly things. Ask yourself what you need to clean out of the closet and think about how you need to "clothe yourself." What do you need to put on? Great message people. I wonder if anyone has done a Girls Retreat around this theme before?
Just wanted to pass this along.
We had a great launch party for Skate Church this week with more than 35 people in attendance. We had a great time skating and the skaters love the new quarterpipe, though I had to yell at the for jumping off of the storage building where it was positioned against. The guy standing next to me is Josh and it was his first time at the park. Before I started the devotional I asked for a volunteer to hold the bucket of tickets that we were going draw from for the new skateboard. Josh volunteered right off. I told all the kids that I didn’t know him and that he looked a bit shady so they should keep their eyes on him to make sure he wasn’t putting extra tickets in the bucket. When it came time to draw guess whose name came out of the bucket? My man Josh’s. What are the odds? I met his mom after we finished and she really loved seeing her son skate and what we were doing with the park. We had for older teens from the local skatepark show up early and help set the park up. A couple of these guys dropped out of school, but would like help getting back on track. They would like to get their GED and go to college.
I am learning that effective ministry can really boil down to time. How much time do you have to give? Do you have time to just hang out and talk with students and really get to the core issues of their problems? Many times we try to apply a huge message to a large group of students and spend a lot of time not connecting with the issues they are really dealing with. Maybe it is time to start getting back to a biblical model of small group where one leader leads a small number of students and really invests in their lives instead of one guy preaching at 50, 100, 500 or more students, but never connecting with them individually with what they really need right now. Jesus was able to spend quality time with each of his disciples. Maybe it needs to be quality over quantity. Maybe that is teaching less for more. Teach less students for a greater impact. Teach less messages so that they can work on one thing at a time. Less talking and more listening. I am starting to rant so I will cut this one short.
Great launch party can’t wait for next Tuesday.
Later people.
This afternoon I sat down and watched Ordinary People with Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, and Timothy Hutton. As the movie begins you know that something tragic has happened in the life of young Conrad that is keeping him from sleeping. Robert Redford directed this movie that won four Academy Awards in 1981 including Best Director, Best Picture, Best Writing, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Timothy Hutton, which seemed strange to me because I would have put Timothy Hutton as the lead in this picture, but he never would have beat out Robert DeNiro that year who won for Raging Bull, but I also would have made him share the award with his fellow nominee Judd Hirsh who plays Hutton’s therapist.
First of all, this was an amazing movie. It has all of the drama that Noah Baumbach is going for is his recent pictures, without all of the raunchy interludes. There are several shots within this picture between Hutton and Hirsh that prove to be the precursors for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Good Will Hunting. Hutton’s character of Conrad is going through a difficult period in his life to say the least and has a lot of people speaking into his life on their own terms and for their own benefit. What I enjoyed about the progression of Conrad’s character was that he was able to find his own voice. He learned how to express his feelings and be heard.
What was interesting for me to see in this movie was the opening establishing shots which were underscored with the school choir singing Canon in D Major with its chorus of Hallelujahs. I finished reading Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus But Not The Church, which I will blog about in another post, and within the last chapters of the book he talked about the new gap that we have placed between people and God. Kimball states that we are telling people that in many ways they must conform to the Christian subculture before they can even get to the place where they must deal with their sin and the gap that separates them from God. You can get a better picture of this in John Burke’s No Perfect People Allowed. Conrad’s mother seemed unwilling and even embarrassed by what was happening within this family and would rather leave than work it out. This has made me think about how far are we willing to travel down the road with someone walking on their way to becoming a Christ-follower. The church wants people to change in an instance, but that rarely happens. Discipleship and sanctification is a process and we must allow imperfect people into our fellowship so that they can see how more mature followers of Christ handle life. Discipleship is not just what you know, but it is also about how you live your life and how you react to life as it happens. I think that this has a lot to do with the lack of intimacy that has overtaken the church. When we are afraid to share life together we unable to become a body.
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