A Quote to Remember

“Every time you forgive someone who hurt you, encourage someone who feels defeated, extend compassion to someone who stands alone, confront someone in love, open your heart to a friend, reconcile with an enemy, devote time to a child, you align yourself with God’s central purpose in this world.” – John Ortberg

Testimony

Some of you may not be aware of The Dallas Observer’s blog called Unfair Park. Basically all the writers and editors at the Observer blog there. I follow it with my feedreader, and read maybe one post every couple of days.

A few weeks ago they started a new regular feature called Bible Girl: The Unfair Park Religion Column. Yesterday’s column was incredible. Typically when I read stuff on the web, especially long articles, I read a couple of paragraphs, do some work, go back and read a little, etc. But this one was different. Once I started reading it I couldn’t stop. By the time I got to the end, three comments had already been posted. I planned on blogging about it yesterday, but it didn’t work out. Now it’s gotten other publicity, like being mentioned in Frontburner (D Magazine’s blog) as well as an additional mention in Fair Park.

It’s about a personal experience in her life. I’d tell you about it, but anything I say about it will not do it justice, other than to say that the sheer guts it took to write and publish a column like that amazes me. Read it yourself. Now. Or as soon as you possibly can. It is definitely worth a few minutes of your time to stop whatever it is you are doing and read this column. Seriously. Do it now.

Just two short quotes from it (that won’t negate the need for you to read it):

The Apostle Paul said, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ.” This is how I’ve come to understand his words: You don’t know who you really are, who you were really meant to be until you have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Until you’ve surrendered your all to him[...]. That’s the death Paul is talking about. You must allow Jesus to remake your life as he sees fit.

and

I ended up in a church of misfits, of people who once led busted lives. Former drunks and crack addicts and people who once suffered from documented mental illnesses. All manner of bad boys and girls. We were people who desperately needed intervention from above—go-for-broke kind of folks. General admonitions to be good and to be kind and to study our Bibles daily just weren’t gonna cut it. We needed God’s supernatural power. In that kind of atmosphere, people who want it bad enough get healed.

As you would expect, she is getting hammered in the comments. But as things are when you try to take Christ’s message to the world, it will not be well received.

Review: The Life You’ve Always Wanted

This morning I finished The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg. It was loaned to me by a friend, so I gave it a chance and read it. I’m so glad I did. It was great. So good, in fact, that I am going to get my own copy. I’ve had this copy on loan for quite some time and need to return it, and there are parts I’d like to read over again. I’d also like to loan it out to some other people to read.

I must admit that if I saw this book in a bookstore or on a bookseller’s website, I’d probably pass it up without a second thought. The title alone makes it sound like one of those “prosperity Gospel” type of books. Considering the source that loaned it to me, I knew it couldn’t be like that. And it isn’t.

Update on MyChurch.org

Last Thursday, I wrote this post about a new website I’d read about – MyChurch.org. The time-stamp on the post says it was created at 1:39 P.M. I’m not sure if that is the time-stamp WordPress put on it when I started writing it, or when I actually “published” it. I had a comment posted by Joe from MyChurch.org offering to list my church if I sent him the information. That is an incredibly quick response. Since this blog gets almost no traffic (literally), I’m suprised they found it that fast. Kudos to Joe and the people at MyChurch for being on the ball like that. They must have listened to Rick Klau’s talk, too. Oh, and Joe – if you see this – I’ll be replying to you soon.

Also, MicroExplosion has a review up of MyChurch.org. They got a sneak peek at what will be released on Wednesday.

MyChurch.org – community site for churches (and people)

While looking for more stuff online about the Rick Klau talk I mentioned earlier, I came across this post that mentioned MyChurch.org and it’s beta launch next week.  Immediately I went to visit the site.  It let me sign up for an account, even though the site refers to it being in private beta and the beta period starting next week.  Give it a try.

It allows both individuals and churches to set up profiles there.  It also appears that churches will be able to blog, podcast, and maybe even do video podcasts there.  Individuals can identify the church they belong to and join that church community.  I looked for Bethel Lutheran and they are not listed yet.  It also allows individual members to submit the information for a church (if it’s not already found) so the church can have a profile set up.

A very interesting idea, and one that I might not have given a second thought to if I hadn’t just listened to Rick Klau’s talk about reaching out using the internet.

Review: Sufjan Stevens

Recently a friend of mine asked if I’d heard of Sufjan Stevens. His daughters were fans, and he was trying some of his music. He had a particular track off of a particular CD that he recommended. I replied I had heard of him somewhere (later recalling it was reading about him in an issue of Relevant Magazine), and that the youth director at my church had mentioned him several times as one of her favorite artists. I borrowed the CD from the church youth director and gave it a try.

Preaching to the Wired

Via this post at ChurchMarketingSucks.com:

Rick Klau is the Vice President of Business Development for Feedburner. He recently spoke at the ELCA Communicator’s Conference in Chicago on August 4, 2006. His topic was “Preaching to the Wired” – about how churches can and should use modern communication mechanisms to communicate and reach out. The total lengh is approximately 75 minutes, but it is well worth it. I’ve listened to it completely once, listened to parts of it several times, and I’ll probably listen to it several more times to make sure I absorb all he has to say. The link to the RealAudio streaming file can be found here. It is listed under August 4.

These are some of the quick notes I made during my first pass at listening to it while writing code at work:

Points to frame the discussion:

If you’re on the internet, and you’re not on MySpace, you’re not on the Internet.

If your evangelizing, and you’re not evangelizing through the use of blogs, podcasts, video blogs, or Second Life, then you aren’t fully evangelizing.

—

Not just about communicating to young people – The fastest growing demographic of people with internet access is retirees. They are often consuming the most amount of information online due to the amount of free time they have during the day. This is not just “how to reach the young people”.

For anyone under the age of 20, more than 2/3 of the messages they send or receive are via IM.

Weblogs are just websites that are arranged chronologically in reverse chronological order. Weblogs are Google’s “drug of choice”.

Typical church website:
Service hours
Map of location
Driving directions
List of staff

How likely are people to link to that? Not very likely. Must have original, relevant content to be linked to.

A kick in the behind

So during my morning quiet time I’ve been reading Hebrews. Today was chapter 6. Verses 1-3 were a real kick in the behind (quoted from The Message version):

So come on, let’s leave the preschool fingerpainting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. The basic foundational truths are in place: turning your back on “salvation by self-help” and turning in trust toward God; baptismal instructions; laying on of hands; resurrection of the dead; eternal judgment. God helping us, we’ll stay true to all that. But there’s so much more. Let’s get on with it!

I assist (and sometimes annoy) the youth director at my church with various high school youth group stuff. Tonight our weekly youth group (Word on Wednesday, a.k.a. WoW) starts back up after a summer break. What a Godincidence it is that I read that passage today. And I read it in the Message Bible that they gave me about a hear and a half ago for Christmas.