Archive for October, 2005

Caro and Sam are in our bed watching Sunday night football. Sam is into NFL this year since I’ve set him up a team in our fantasy football league. Joe Theisman is one of the commentators, and upon hearing this, Carolyn says, “Joe Theisman is still alive?!” incredulously.
Surprised, I say, “Well, yes…”
“But what about the Theisman Trophy? Isn’t that really old?” she says.
“You mean the Heisman Trophy?” I say with my best I’m-a-man-and-am-so-glad-you-asked-that-question voice.
“Oh,” she says.
“I’ve got to go write a quick blog article,” I laugh, and gleefully dash to the living room where my trusty Powerbook is waiting….

Came across this article by accident today and thought it was a great pictorial statement of who our heroes are… As the White Sox won the World Series last night and I saw the slobbering, hysterical celebrations going on in Chicago, this picture reminds me again that our nation has no clue what a hero is. It’s not someone who gets paid millions of dollars for playing baseball, basketball, and football. (many of whom have no moral commitment or integrity). True heroes are those who serve (and die for) others for the great causes of humanity: life, liberty, justice, and freedom.

Thank you to our soliders in Iraq, Afghanistan, New Orleans, and other parts of our world who serve for someone else.

There’s a powerful new ad by Apple on their website today commemorating the life and commitment of Rosa Parks to civil rights. I have to confess that I am an Apple fanatic. A Macintosh geek. A Mac Daddy.

Let me trace my Mac Roots. In 1988, at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, I was a sophomore journalism major. Dr. Bill Downs spent a wad of money on the latest,greatest desktop publishing computers, and challenged us to be the first yearbook in the nation to produce an entirely “camera-ready” yearbook. It was a daunting task for a bunch of 20 year olds.

Our yearbook and newspaper offices were soon decked out with the coolest looking “computers” (could you call them that?) I’d ever seen… Mac Pluses! Everywhere you looked, we had a box with an 8 inch black and white screen and a small box with a button on it attached to a cord. They called it a “mouse.” Crazy.

And so we went to work… and I felll in love. Using Adobe Pagemaker, Microsoft Word, and a few other programs, we missed our goal of being the first, but the OBU journalism department became Mac-dominated. And I was converted.

Since that time, there’s been a long parade of Macs in my life, including a
Mac LC, a Performa 6400, a Powerbook G3 333 Pismo, a Powerbook G4 17″ 1ghz, the first Powermac G5 1.8 single, an Emac, a Powerbook G4 867, and we’re now waiting the arrival of our first mini Mac.

Somewhere along the line, I began to realize how many unfortunate and lost people there are in the world who have to live with these things called computer viruses (what’s that?) and who even have to reformat their hard drives regularly or reinstall system software. You know them as PC users. I’ve taken it upon myself (since Steve Jobs seems totally clueless about how to produce a convert in non-urban areas) to escort these poor, imprisoned, and misled PC users into the marvelous light of the Mac.

In the last year, I’ve made more than 6 converts single-handedly in our town of 9000 (with several more in the making). Now that’s not much, but when you consider that there is little to no Mac presence here, that’s a major inroad. Because everyone of these new converts talks about their Mac experience…. How fun it is, how problem free it is, and computing has become enjoyable to them again. They have no fear of wanton viruses anymore, and no longer do they plan a week of their lives every quarter to reformat their hard drives. (When do PC users have time to enjoy life?)

What am I passionate about?
That brings me to this question. As much as I love the Mac, I love Jesus more… My faith in Christ has totally changed my life, and He has brought forgiveness, peace, and purpose to this struggler. I’ve personally witnessed the miraculous, and been a regular partaker of His grace. Yet, while I’ve made several converts to the Mac platform this year, I am unaware that I’ve led anyone to the throne of grace. To my knowledge, I’ve opened no “Windows” into the reality of Christ for anyone this year. That’s humbling.

You heard it here first… I am hoping and planning to start a “MACUG” (Mac Users Group) in Monticello thr first of next year. My express purpose for doing so is to tie two passions together. I hope to discover fellow Mac users and learn from them. We’re going to have a blast. As they learn about me, I am committed to opening my heart and sharing with them my first love… the creator of Apple… Jesus Christ.

The bitten Apple logo is my reminder that sin has entered the world, and the only solution is a love relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Next time you see a commercial about the iPod (how cool is the new video iPod?!), look at that logo and ponder the bitten apple. Could it be that your life and mine was profoundly and eternally directed by an ancient decision? Chew on that one.

From the land of the double-click…

By the mere mention of the title, now I’ve got that inane tune in my head again. “Do you wanna Fanta? Wanna Fanta?” Dangit! Our church has been manning (and womaning) the concession stand for the local high school football games. It’s the Billies’ band main way of raising money each year. They’ve struggled to find folks to man it, and since TJ is a core member of Journey, we decided we wanted to serve him and the school throughout the football season by selling Snickers… and Fantas.
It’s actually been enjoyable. One of our core convictions as a church is to serve our community. In order to serve your community, you must streamline your church activities (which we’ve done ruthlessly). You can’t simply tack on volunteer projects to an already full church calendar and be able to serve wholeheartedly. You’ll soon find your people exhausted and worn out. Many “pastors” then get frustrated with their people for not “sacrificing” or “carrying their cross.”

Yet, a full church calendar many times is symptomatic of a church that only exists for itself, to meet its members’ “needs.” It is not necessarily seeing its people maturing into the image of Christ, but it is sure keeping them busy. Busyness is not godliness. Nor does a full slate of religious programs, from kids to senior adults, equate to building the kingdom of God. Unfortunately in many churches, our activities and programs are simply religious alternatives to similar programs and activities already present in the community. Heaven forbid that we should dine with sinners… or that our senior adults should participate in that devel-ish local senior citizen’s center. I mean… they quilt there! (and occasionally… gasp… play bingo!)

We are earnestly trying to cultivate a mindset and lifestyle in our church that our community’s activities and interests should be those of our church. We seek to plug our church into the life and times of the community rather than creating a Christian subculture or Christian coountry club or Christian “Rotary Club” for ourselves. Our belief is that many churches are in full retreat from their society and community rather than engaging it lovingly, thoughtfully, and as salt and light. You cannot flavor that which you’re not in contact with. You cannot light darkness that you’re not in. So go join that senior center or Lion’s Club or volunteer to serve at the local library rather than filling another “slot” at your church. So many of those slots are only keeping the machine running and are doing little to advance the kingdom and bring people into the joy of knowing Christ for the first time – or more fully.

We do not believe in compromising the biblical message and call for repentance and simple faith in Jesus Christ. But we also do not believe that the best place to preach and communicate that message is in a religious building on certain designated (“holy”) times. The best gospelling occurs in the context of relationships, working alongside your “not-yet-Christian” (taken from Hirsch’s The Shaping of Things to Come) neighbor. As you faithfully live out the joy of your faith in Christ in FRONT of your community (rather than in your religious places and programmed events, you will see the Spirit begin the amazing and miraculous process of life transformation and faith giving.

We’ve got one more home game this season to work the concession stand. We’re indebted to servantevangelism.com for our shirts that we wear. On the back of our shirt, it says, “Journey Church has left the building…Gone to Serve.” May we all earnestly scale back our “religious activities” that seem only to meet our own needs rather than to serve the our neighbors’.

So, if you’re in Monticello next weekend and stop by the game…. “Wanna Fanta?”

Go Billies!

Just came across this article today while searching the web for some sermon background and thought I would post a link to it. It’s from John Mark Ministries. I know nothing about them, but the little I perused while on the site seemed good.

But this article on encouraging your pastor was particularly good, or at least it resonated with me….
check it out here.

Ok… every now and then you have a significant ego check. You just don’t expect it to happen in the check out line at Wal-Mart. For you metropolitan bloggers out there (whom I will refer to from this point out as metroggers… another perhaps original…), you may not understand the joy and simplicity of a trip to Wal-Mart. For us more rural bloggers (uh, can we say RNB’s… red neck bloggers), this trip to bargain mecca is so much more than a shopping trip. It’s our mall, our hangout, our social extravaganza. When there’s no home game, and it’s after dark, then hey, a trip to Wal-Mart is to us what sitting in those rocking chairs at Cracker Barrell is to you city folk who think you’ve gotten in touch with your roots.

I digress. I went to Wallyworld yesterday (first popularized by Chevy Chase in the original “Vacation” but now used by those in the know to refer to theme park/bargain store/town hall/front porch place formerly known as Wal-Mart. I was there with Phillip Slaughter and his new bride, Rosie – Phillip’s the co-pastor of Journey. We had gone to pick up some supplies for our new worship location.

In line, the older lady who was checking us out looked at our threesome with familial joy and exclaimed sweetly to me, “Oh, is this your son or your daughter?” …

Later that night, after bail had been posted and a date set for my trial for “aggravated” assault… I finally realized why it’s called “aggravated..” Heck, I’m 37 stinking years old, and she thinks that Rosie or Phillip are my kids? Aaargh.

P&R kept their mouths shut as we finished checking out. I didn’t even correct the lady. I just said, “He’s also the co-pastor of our church.” She couldn’t believe it. Said he looked too young. She was also just as shocked to discover they were married. Maybe it’s P&R that look SO young rather than me looking old enough to be their father…

On the way out of Wallyworld, Phillip asks, “Can I have some candy, Dad?”

Please send your checks for bail to…..

Matt Parker came by Journey today (that makes like 72 times this week! – awesome to hang out with you, bro!) Our church has been meeting in the local 6-screen movie theater for worship for the past 7 months. We’ve been praying and seeking for a more convenient place to meet for several weeks now. The realtor company that we are leasing our current offices/children’s space from in the Wal-Mart shopping center callled yesterday. After initially telling us “no,” they gave us the green light to do a month-to-month lease in the vacant space next to Stage, which is only one store over from our current spot. Wow!

Matt, JB, Phillip, Doug, and myself spent an hour today moving all our sound equipment from the movie theater to the new location. It was during this time that I took this picture on my Audiovox SMT 5600 phone… It’s Matt holding his belt up to JB… Matt, you won’t be needing that much longer, by the way. Keep up the good work! Visit him at widebody.typepad.com and watch him blog away the pounds. By the way, thanks to Justin Baeder at radicalcongruency for giving Matt’s blog the nod yesterday! If you’re a blogger and could take the time to point others to Matt’s site to give him added accountabillity and encouragement, please do so!

Yes, I’m a tech geek
Speaking of the Audiovox phone… I got in on the beta testing program of Missing Sync for Windows Mobile. As a Mac guy, I was excited about testing this new piece of software that touts its ability to sync your Windows Mobile device with your Mac. I’d used Pocketmac with some success before this, but I wanted to try something that didn’t install a bunch of stuff all over your system. Let me say at this point though, that Missing Sync just isn’t there yet. Yes, they’ve got a commercial release, but while some are able to sync relatively well with it, there are still another group of folks with no success whatsoever. Save your money and buy a phone that will sync through iSync is my recommendation.

Nuff said!

My wife’s Emac is dying, or at least the hard drive is… We’ve sold it on Ebay and bought a replacement, but today I came home to do some design work, and she had “discovered” my G5 Powermac. We have a detached studio from our house where I office and do my graphic design and she takes pictures… (Check out anoblephoto.com; she’s awesome!) Anyway, much to my chagrin, she was enjoying the G5 experience over her Emac experience.

“Get up,” I said sweetly. She kept working. I meekly returned to the house to check my fantasy football scores before preparing for a class that I teach on Monday nights at Journey… The class is called “Biblical Mathematics: Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth.” It’s basically a biblical hermeneutics class. We’re using Duvall & Hayes book, Grasping God’s Word, as well as Blomberg’s Biblical Interpretation. It’s been a great class. I’m convinced that humble, informed biblical interpretation is one of the great needs in the postmodern church. I encourage every student of God’s Word to pick up one of the above books (GGW is the more readable). I hope to have Scott Duvall as a guest author here in the near future.

Back to the point… over the last two weeks in this blog adventure of mine, I’ve felt rather “froggish” – leaping from one blog resource to another, not really knowing what I’m doing, but seeking to promote and link my site to as many as possible. I thought I would list a few sites I’ve found for those of you who are in the same boat- beginning blogging. It may help you as you blogfrog your way to syndication. (BTW, the term blogfrog has probably been used by others, but I am not aware of it.. I’m using it here in a ‘you-heard-it-here-first-maybe sense’ to mean the act of jumping between blogs, keeping up with your favorites… blogfrogging).

These are not listed in any particular order…
1. Make sure you set up your options in Typepad to offer a “Subscribe Link” and a “Syndicate” link. This will give sites and bloggers a way to connect to you better.
2. Feedburner.com Go here after copying the link that shows up on your site’s RSS or .xml feed. Paste the link in the box on Feedburner. (On Typepad, view your page, and where it says “Subscribe” or something like that, command click(Mac)/right click(PC) and copy that link… Feedburner will help you promote and connect others to your site.
3. Go to blogger.com, myblogsite.com, xanga.com and other major blog services and open up a free account. Name your blog, and post some basic info about yourself. Then as your first “Welcome” post, simply tell folks where your main blog is located. That way if someone is a member in that network and search for you, they can still find you.
4. Set up a free picture account at flickr.com and post your blog’s address there. Especially if you use iPhoto for the Mac, it becomes amazingly simple to simply send an email with some pics to your flickr email account, and it will automatically post your photos for you on your blog!
5. Go to technorati.com and set up your blog to be connected there.
6. More to come… but you have enough to keep you busy for a while.
7. I’d also encourage you to find a few well-done blogs whose subject matter/writers interest you and see who they recommend. After following them for a few days, subscribe to them. You’ll find that you’ll learn a lot from those who are ahead of you in the journey. Two blogs that have provided invaluable help and insight for me as technical resources as well as content inspiration and encouragement are:
a. radicalcongruency.com – Justin Baeder’s site
b. findingfaith.org – Kenny Tomlin’s site
c. widebody.typepad.com – Matt Parker’s site.

Nuff said…

You really need to check out Kenny Tomlin’s blog entry at findingfaith.org - “What Would an Atheist Do?” Pretty profound. Thanks, Kenny!

Nike Corporation announced today that it will be releasing a new shoe – Nike Retro Wagons. To commemorate the 1970-1980 model station wagons that had wood paneling on the side, the new shoes will feature a wood-grained Nike swoosh. See a picture of the swoosh prototype…
Ok… not really.

We came into Journey late last week to find this mysterious wood-grained swoosh lying on the floor in the main room. We have no idea where it came from or to what it belonged. It’s like the “Secret Sound” contest on the local radio station… you guess where it came from… and you win…. uh, the wood-grained swoosh! Happy guessing…

Aw shoot. Today was our last regular season game. I’ve been coaching my son’s 3rd-4th grade team. We played the Ryburn Mustangs today who were 5-0, and we lost 20-6. If we’d won we would have sealed up second place, but as it is, our 4-team league has a three-way tie for second, with each of us sitting at 2-4. To make it confusing, each team beat one another team twice. So there really is no way of settling this. I think the football board is going to resort to a coin toss to see which of us goes on to play in Star City next weekend.

I’m excited to have cursed/influenced a new blogger to join the scene at Typepad… Ya’ll check out Matt Parker’s new blog at widebody.typepad.com! Matt’s embarked on a duanting personal challenge. He plans to document – through his blog – his new commitment to lose a radical amount of weight.

I encourage you to take the time to listen to today’s Podcast. It’s sit-down with Matt at Dad’s Place in Monticello, where we discuss some things that prompted him to begin this journey.

Download Oct14-TrailTalk.mp3

This is a post from our church’s “Ancient Words, Authentic Lives” Bible reading group… If you’re looking for a way to read scripture with a group of others, check out the group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ancientwords.

I was struck this a.m. by Jesus’ words to the disciples in Luke 22.40 – “Pray that you will not be overcome by temptation.”

Perhaps that’s why I/we fall to temptation so much… we are not praying fervently and diligently. In our laziness, we’ve allowed our prayer lives to be dictated by convenience and need rather than compelled by our love for our Savior. After all, if you love someone deeply, don’t you enjoy communicating with them? Perhaps, we all remain a little unconvinced about Jesus’ real presence in our lives. What else could explain our prayerlessness? That we don’t have time? How absurd! Of course we have time! Every moment of the day is an opportunity for prayer.

Again in v46, He says, “Get up and pray. Otherwise temptation will overpower you.” So get up and pray! Let’s all re-discipline and re-devote ourselves to loving our Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind. Let’s not be content to talk about our Lord, but let’s be talk TO Him.

As we do so, we will find new power over temptation in our lives! I think we’re all a little frustrated with how easily we fall to temptation. We are prey to sin because we are not praying to the Father.

And look at what results from prayer, according to Paul in Philippians 4.6-7, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. IF YOU DO THIS, you will experience God’s PEACE…”

Pray for power over temptation. Pray deeply, daily, and devotedly. Experience peace.

Be blessed!

Jeff

This podcast is a recording of our first reading group. I’ve invited several church leaders in our area to this bi-weekly gathering to discuss “The Shaping of Things to Come.” It’s exciting to be challenged together by material like this. It’s a dynamic book, and I encourage church leaders to gather some key members and leaders of other churches together to discuss the implications (if any) of the book…

Enjoy!

Download Podcast.

Download Trailcast-10.07 – “Beginner’s Podcasting.”

This Podcast contains the Sunday a.m. teaching message at Journey Church. We’ve been in a study all year demonstating the continuity of scripture and the ongoing theme of God’s glory. This message was our first one in the New Testament. It’s called “Prepare the Way.”

Download “Prepare the Way” (8537.3K)