Picture Worth A Thousand Statistics Video

A couple of months ago, I blogged about Chris Jordan, a photographer who has taken some spectacular photographs that show consumerism, consumption and environmental problems in American society. You can see the original post here.

Below is a video of Chris Jordan showing his photographs and talking about the sustainability movement in America.

New Weezer

I'm a pretty big Weezer fan. This fandom has kind of dropped off in the past couple of years, but I still regularly listen to their previous albums, and El Scorcho and Say It Ain't So will probably always be in my top ten favorite songs of all time.

At some point in the near feature, the third album by Weezer that is called "Weezer" will be released. (Of course, the other two are also called The Blue Album and The Green Album.) This one is called The Red Album as well. This week, the first single was release, called Pork and Beans. Sounds like a deep song. I like it, so far from what I've heard. If you want to hear it too, you can go to Weezer's site and listen for free.

I'll be reviewing the CD right here when it comes out.

Two Other Places For Daily Scheduled Prayer

If you don't want to buy the book I talked about a couple of posts below, but are interested in daily scheduled prayer, go to these two websites:

Sacredspace

This is a site run by Irish Jesuits, and you can pray daily using their website and following the links.

The Breviary

This is run by Missio Dei and has three daily prayer readings for you to use.

Enjoy!

Sad But True.

Thanks to the interesting blog here.

The Divine Hours

I've been really busy lately - worship ministry, student ministry and multimedia can do that to you in a hurry - but I wanted to share something I'm really excited about.

To be honest, I have never been a good pray-er. I've prayed almost my whole life, but I haven't spent a lot of time in prayer. The last several years, I discovered journaling, which has been a good way for me to pray and to put my thoughts down. Since I have a bad short-term memory, praying without journaling can be tough because my mind becomes very quickly unfocused and distracted, and I find myself thinking of everything but God during prayer.

My journaling has been pretty non-existent over the last few years, except for when I need to vent or rant about something. But in the last month or so, I have been spending a big chunk of time before I go to bed journaling and praying. I think partly because as a pastor in a new church plant, you HAVE to depend on God. I find myself praying a lot for His provision in our church.

I'm excited about a book that came in the mail today - called The Divine Hours - Prayers For Springtime. It's actually one of three books that go through seasons and prayer. I'm excited because just as journaling has helped me keep my thoughts during prayer together, so this book, which calls itself a "manual for prayer", will help keep me daily scheduled with times of prayer. I've never used The Common Book of Prayer, or really any liturgical forms of prayer, so this should be interesting.

Another book I recommend (and just finished) is The Sacred Way by Tony Jones. He goes through a bunch of ancient practices and shows how we can do them in our contemporary culture today. This book is what led me to The Divine Hours.

Youtube Video Of The Week - 04.11.08

Haven't done one of these in awhile.

Introducing The Praise Brothers, they're Kicking It For Jesus!

If You Like Bizarre Music and Even More Bizarrer People...

Then you might like the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. Yes, I know that "bizarrer" is not a word.

Here is one of the more normal videos that they have.

The first time I saw them was on Noggin (a children's channel), and I was wondering if the lemonade I was drinking had gone bad, because it was so strange.

As their website says, they take vintage slide collections they've found at estate sales, garage sales and thrift stores, and "turn the lives of anonymous strangers into pop rock musical exposes based on their slides."

Word.

Bait And Switch Evangelism

"In 1998, I thought it was the church's responsibility to make church services accessible for everyone. Do the seeker-sensitive thing. Make it completely inoffensive. Make sure everyone was comfortable. By 2001, I had done an about -face. I began to think, maybe, in order to be true to what God called us to be committed to, we need to make it as difficult as we possibly can to follow Jesus, and go from there. Instead of trying to remove the difficult aspects of Christianity, what we did was to put these challenging parts front and center.

When someone makes a decision, they know what they are getting into. The American church participates in bait and switch. They get new people to come in the door and make a commitment, and after they make it, they show them what it is really about. It is offensive. It is not honest! When businesses bait and switch, they get shut down. But the church accepts this kind of thing. Successful churches tell us that if we care about outreach, we must bait and switch all day long, offer a soft-core gospel on the front end, hook them, and then give them the hard-core stuff. I don't think this is faithful to how Jesus modeled discipleship. We really try not to bait and switch people. When people want to know about following Jesus, we put the cards on the table. 'This is what the commitment is. It is hard. It is a narrow path. It leads to death and even to hating brothers and sisters.'

We lead with that stuff. That way, in five weeks or so, when they hear more of the real stuff, we don't need to worry that they will leave. Yes, in the short run, it is more difficult. But I don't think we are going to know the results for years to come. In ten years, I would rather see a deep level of discipleship for a few believers than a surface level for a huge number."

- Mark Palmer, quoted in the book Emerging Churches

The Avalanche Clinched A Playoff Spot...

which means the tickets that I bought a couple of days ago for the first home playoff game will actually be used!

Here's where I'll be - once the playoffs are determined.

Animoto

Animoto is awesome. I see all kinds of potential in my student ministry with putting together picture slideshows and the like.

Animoto.com - you can only do a 30 second video for free, but it's pretty darn cool.

You've Got To Love Reporters...

who can still get the job done after getting creamed by a snow tube. I don't know if he was really a reporter or not, but way to go.

The tubing hill looks a lot like the one my student ministry went to three weeks ago.