Technology

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Craigslist.org. So…Here goes nothing!

I have become very fond of Craigslist in the past few months. Several times a day, I find myself rushing to the computer to see if there are any new finds. I have gotten rid of some things that I would have otherwise had to have paid to have hauled off and I have acquired many things that make my husband groan.

Some of the fun of Craigslist is the chase. You have to be the first to respond to the post, and sometimes, I think it helps to have a sob story of how much you wish you had or need their item. (I don’t do this, of course!) It is also interesting meeting all of the different people on Craigslist. I have picked something up for a lady in a shiny BMW and I have given something to someone in a van being held together with duct tape.

Craigslist provides great ministry opportunities. I have seen many people giving away bags of clothes, furniture, and even food. I have had the opportunity to give an old mattress to a lady whose current mattress had springs sticking out. I have also been ministered to on Craigslist. A lovely lady who was giving away some monkey grass went out of her way to help me with my garden. She taught me much about gardening. She also gave me much insight into how the garden relates to our daily lives as Christians.

I have truly enjoyed my experiences with Craigslist.org and encourage everyone to use this site!

Remember: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!

Do you go to Craigslist.org? What have your experiences been?

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www.YouTube.com. Katherine and her husband Lee were some of the first people we met when we moved to Broken Arrow and have become some of our favorite people to be around. We wish we could spend more time with them. I went over to Katherine’s FaceBook profile to find the most obscure or weird picture I could find to introduce her with and there were several great options, but this one looked great for what we have going on here.

      Hi, I’m Katherine Conner, and I get to be your guest blogger today.  My favorite Jeremy Davidson friend asked me to write to you about the impact that www.youtube.com has on my life, and the ways that I see we could use YouTube to reach others for Christ.

      I use the YouTube service on an almost daily basis.  I have Flock set as my current web browser, and one of the features I like most about it is the ability to log into my YouTube account.  The videos that I have previously favorited will then be displayed across the top of my screen.  I can play those while continuing to browse the Internet.  This is easier to me that Itunes most of the time, because all of my favorite songs are in one place.

      I mainly use YouTube to access music.  Lately, I have been on a big kick to discover new songs and artists, and YouTube makes it very easy to do this.  Tulsa used to have a pretty cool “Christian alternative” radio station that I enjoyed listening to- unfortunately it was changed to another “contemporary Christian” station, meaning there is too much Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith for me to handle.  Using YouTube, I can get online to hear new songs by the artists that I used to listen to on the Kross.  I use the “Related Videos” tab on to often find new music.  I recently unearthed a cover of one of my favorite Rush of Fools song that I am determined to learn to sing- which is a big deal since I can’t sing.  At all.

      I feel that YouTube is a valuable resource for those of use trying to further the Kingdom of Christ. Wikipedia states that “few statistics are publicly available regarding the number of videos on YouTube. However, in July 2006, the company revealed that more than 100 million videos were being watched every day, and 2.5 billion videos were watched in June 2006. 50,000 videos were being added per day in May 2006, and this increased to 65,000 by July. In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion video views.”  These facts are old, and I’m sure that they’ve only increased since then.  I feel that the dreams and desires of my generation to see the love of Christ could be shared through videos- how cool would it be to see tutorials such as “How to Love the Skaters” or “How to Witness to the Gay Guys Next Door”?  It would be totally neat to get on and see other Christians sharing their walks and relationships with us.  I would like to log on to YouTube and watch testimonies from around the globe of how God is moving.  Sermons and music are helpful and needed, but I would love to see real world application of how I can fulfill the commandment to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”  (Matthew 20:28 NIV). 

-Katherine Conner
You can help save lives- one mile at a time!!
Check out our NEW webpage for TNT-
http://pages.teamintraining.org/ok/rnrsa08/kconner

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is the 6th most trafficked site on the Internet and the no. 1 photo sharing application online with more than 80 million active and registered users. I first got involved with Facebook several years ago, but didn’t really start to keep up with it until I became a student minister last year. At the time Junior High, High School, and college students were the major user of the platform, but it is quickly becoming a place for professionals to network. I have talked to several professionals whose work has had them take Facebook workshops to learn how to connect with others and network. Because it is the leading photo sharing application it is a great place to see photos of your friends and family. They have also added video to the site and I expect to see more video added to the, drawing people away from YouTube to watch videos. It is a great way to connect with old friends and find out more about the people you do business with.

You can see my Facebook profile here.

I have noticed many of our students here at Arrow Heights spend most of day online in this application now that they have added an IM feature, making it a great way to connect with your friends and develop relationship with people that you haven’t had the chance to spend face to face time with.

Check out this great article, FaceBook for Pastors by marketing coach Chris Forbes.

Are you on Facebook?  Leave a link to your profile in the comments.

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www.twitter.com. Twitter is a mobile social networking tool that you update via text message. You may have noticed the Twitter feed on the right side of my blog. I update this area of my blog via cell phone or by logging into Twitter online.  You can even upload pictures to your Twitter feed through www.twitpic.com. Twitter is a relatively new site, is constantly going through growing pains (the site is growing faster than the administrators and servers can keep up with), and many believe that as others write for their APIs that Twitter will be seeing some amazing things happening. Mobile blogging is the next thing in social media and is growing fast. You can follow people’s twitter feed to see what they are up to and interact with them in real time. When Tim Russert recently passed the news broke on Twitter almost 30 minutes before it was announced on the television. Check out the New York Times article here. When you want the news and you want it fast, where are you going to turn.

Find my twitter feed here.

-Jeremy Davidson

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Happy channel surfing.