April 27

Chris Forbes has published an e-book called “Facebook for Pastors”, advocating that ministry leaders should be on Facebook. I agree with his premise.

 

I am in the thick of writing a seminar that combines the best parts of “Bringing my World to Christ”, which I taught for 15 years, with “Living a Life with a Mission

By Mike Breen with Bob and Mary Hopkins”. Mike, a mentor of our staff, developed “LifeShapes”, a set of ministry tools that are very useful. The key concept in the “Octagon”, his primary evangelistic teaching tool, is the concept of identifying the “Person of Peace”.

 

April 24

• A case can be made, and in fact has been made, that the Christian faith most Christians profess today — its creedal affirmations — comes from Africa. (read more on Scot's blog.)

• "America may not yet be ready to elect a black President...The fact that Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are both such impressive candidates, intelligent, sincere, articulate and in command of the issues, while John McCain does not qualify on any of these criteria only makes matters worse." (The Times)

• The new Insulin pump promotional brochure arrived yesterday from Accu-Check. It features a DVD with comments from Alicia and Miles, as well as a printed remark from Miles.

• My backyard landscaping project is moving forward.

I went with Vonage

• After fooling around with Magic Jack (which had some pretty cool features but in the end proved too much trouble) I went with Vonage. I had to re-locate a cable line so that it was right with a phone jack, which involved fishing a cable through a wall from up in the attic, but that wasn't hard. Now our phones are set up and it's pretty pleasing. It's fairly easy to set up so that if we ever experience interruption of internet service, calls are sent to one of our cell numbers; we can also set it up to relay calls to one of our phones after a given number of seconds. So it has some flexibility and it saves us 50% over what we were paying. Plus we got 2 free months - double their usual offer. And if you tell them I referred you, we'll both get 2 free months. So if you decide to make the jump, contact me and we'll both benefit.

• I spent most of the late morning and early afternoon doing landscaping in the backyard. I am tired but satisfied.

Stylin'...

We did a review of several numbers from "Annie Get Your Gun" for a group called the Madhatters - who also held a silent auction, the entire proceeds going to Centrestage. That probably brought in enough to pay for the union orchestra. Anyway, here's a snap someone took. There's no Business like Show Business!

in the order of worship this weekend

This text was written out of a desire to set the work of God in creation alongside the completed work of Christ. It is set to a very old song dating back to at least the early 1700s in Scotland, entitled "O Waly Waly". Sarah Brightman recorded a version; James Taylor (among others)recorded it under a more familiar Americanized version entitled "The Water is Wide". Many hymnals contain Hal Hopson's lyric "Though I may speak with bravest fire" set to the same melody.

I see your work, your mighty hand
as breaking waves crash on the sand,
but marvel more, thinking on when
you came, a child in Bethlehem.

I see your work as I arise
and sunrise paints the morning skies,
yet greater still, as from above,
you came to teach us how to love.

I see your work in sunsets fair.
then, lost in wonder, kneel in prayer
when thinking on your bitter loss:
you gave your life upon the cross.

I see your work as through the trees,
the eagle rises on the breeze,
then watch in awe, as from the grave,
you rose, my shattered soul to save.

Just as a sculptor's work of art,
your Spirit works yet in my heart.
I lift my hands for all my days,
and come to offer songs of praise.

© Rick Lindholtz, 2004

Incidentally...

You know, you do this blog thing where you try to write something that is of interest to you. Some are quite focused on topic, like Scot’s or Don’s; other are, as Brad says, “desultory” (“marked by lack of definite plan”). As I noted in the post on lyrics, I started out by posting the kinds of worship resources I was developing – at a time when, frankly, I thought I was entering the job market again.

So it’s just interesting to review the stats and discover that my more desultory posts (about Elephant Painting and Magic Jack) are responsible for the vast majority of traffic in the last 2-3 months. Hundreds of hits about each. Reminds me of when Brad offered an early link to a tsunami video and was getting a tsunami of hits within a few days. Bizarre thing, this…

on voting

I’m not one to wax on politics, but I began having some thoughts back in January and even before, when one heard a lot of the farthest right of evangelical leaders saying things about how they could not support or vote for John McCain for reasons of conscience. I did some thinking on that.

At one point I mentioned to my brother Tom my consideration of the strategy of simply not voting. He pointed out to me that (in my paraphrase) no one has laid down their life for my right to refrain from voting, but plenty have laid down their lives to protect my right to vote; and that further, I am not now, never have been and never will be presented with the option of voting for the perfect candidate; I am presented with selecting the person closest to my values.

As I thought about that I went back to the talk about "voting their conscience", especially this year among the conservative opponents of McCain. And I realized that elections are not and never were about, or designed for, "expressing one's conscience"; they are about selecting an imperfect candidate from a field of two or more imperfect candidates for the office.

The final reflection came as I considered (spurred by a op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle) that Reagan (whom all self-described conservatives seemed to be looking for this year) was the one who authored the so- called 11th commandment – “thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow republican”...words that many of McCain's critics seemed to have forgotten during the primary season - along with the fact that Reagan himself compromised with the other party on a number of issues both before and during his presidency.

McCain's not the guy I would have chosen from an ideal list of potential candidates, nor from the smaller number of actual candidates who were available on January 1 of this year, whose number were fewer still when the Texas primary occurred. I would not have voted for him in a primary under the best of circumstances, but he'll all but certainly have my vote in November, because for any disagreements I have with him, in my opinion he represents less danger to the long term character of the nation than the candidate of the other party - whomever that will be.

Just a thought. As we used to say on a list I was part of for many years, I got my flameproof jammies on in case I receive some blistering comments.

Jibstay: Bad Lyrics?

Don has a wonderful post about the struggle to address the great worship music that may have lyrical "issues". His test case is "In Christ Alone" (Getty/Townend) , and the line

Til on the cross as Jesus died,
the wrath of God was satisfied.

(He asks other good questions of the text as well.)

For years we've been using the words
"My sin with him was crucified".

I haven't got anything for the "scheme of man" part.

But once a song has entered a congregation's collective memory it's pretty hard to make a change, so we vet songs pretty thoroughly before introducing a new song, and I am usually the de facto text writer if we want a change. In fact my blog was originally started 3 years ago last month, initally just to post the texts, litanies and other worship resources I wrote.

It's a matter of emphasis and priority I think. Wrath language is not totally foreign to scripture, but the emphasis is on grace and love, not wrath.

However, I think the phrase "dumbing down" is unfortunate and offensive (though I did not and do not take offense) - I find it equivalent to and on the flipside of the charge of "intellectual/cultural snobbery".

Those advocating adjustments are not necessarily dumb or removing intellectual vigor from the content of the faith; nor are those preferring the original language necassarily snobs of the intellectual or cultural variety.

In my judgment each side is advocating something I value - on the one hand, making the faith easily understandable and accessible to the exploring mind, and on the other, inviting a deep and stimulating exploration of where the truths of faith can lead.

To those who object to "lyric tampering", I often recall Charles Wesley's Christmas classic, whose original line runs thus:

"Hark, how all the welkin rings: Glory to the newborn King!"

If you've never sung that;
if you prefer "Hark the herald angels sing";
if you don't know what "the welkin" refers to (and you can look it up at merriamwebster.com)
- have you been "dumbed down"?
And if you prefer "Hark the herald angels sing", why is that?

Intellectual snobbery?
"Dumbing down"?
Preference for the familiar (to yourself or to those who will be worshiping or listening)?
In the end, does it really matter?

Thanks Don - good topic.

Indy is coming back next month

Walking to Church

...yesterday morning about 6:40 am. This is what it sounded like.

April 4

• OK, I'm a late bloomer. But we rented "Bee Movie" tonight and I cannot remember the last time I laughed out loud at a cartoon - or any other movie for that matter. This is a brilliantly written and delightful movie. Alicia and I loved it and Miles did too. ElenaClaire wasn't home but she'll love it.



• I've been customizing my PC with MAC features. I realize Apple purists like Steve and Don would be unimpressed. But I've just added a program called RocketDock and I think it's fabulous.







It gives us PC users the groovy little icon dock that rolls like a deck of cards as you mouse over them. It, along with the suggestions found here, have given me a much more satisfying interface desktop. I selected this grassy background, which may or may not be a real Mac wallpaper, but I like it.

• Snopes has ruled that the elephant painting video is real, but that the elephant has been trained to make the drawings and is probably not self-aware as to the significance of the drawing. Which is still pretty amazing. I'll go along with their conclusion, though I won't be surprised if someday this is proven to be a fake.

• Last year the "Madhatters" held an event and all the proceeds went to Houston Grand Opera. This year their chosen beneficiary was CentreStage Theatre School and Company, the group with whom I am doing "Annie Get your Gun" in June. So the principals of Annie went to their luncheon today along with the kids who are performing "101 Dalmatians" and "AristoCats" in May. It was fun to try out a couple numbers before and audience.

• My comments box got spammed by a puff piece about Magic Jack (which spam has now been deleted). I guess someone's job is to look for less-than-glowing reviews and spam the comments with an obviously scripted comment. Whatever "Tim L." is getting paid for doing that, it's probably not enough. Chill, Tim. I think Magic Jack is a pretty good product. It just wasn't the perfect fit for me.

• Drop by and say hi to my friends Paul & Laura Dokken, who are in the final stages of preparation to go to Papua New Guinea as translators. P & L were attenders of the church I served when we lived for all too brief a period of time in Washington state.

• My niece Bekah and her husband Jon, for whom I was blessed to co-officiate at their wedding in November 2005, are on their first real vacation, in Hawaii. Unfortunately their reservations were on ATA airlines, which declared bankruptcy yesterday. So my sister called knowing I had friends in the industry. Well, of course, "buddy passes" are only good where there are vacant seats, and all the other ATA passengers are scrambling to get those vacant seats too. So there aren't going to be many vacant seats. I also learned that if you're flying over water or internationally, buddy passes are only good if there's a family member of the airline employee accompanying you. My firned, the wife of a pilot, said that if there was a good likelihood, she'd fly over and accompany them back. Which was sweet. But then her husband said that the other airlines would be honoring ATA tickets. My guess is they want to increase their slice of the creditor pie so that they'll be more likely to get a piece of the settlement.

Elephant Painting

So the day after April 1 this video hits the morning TV news, and initially I am thinking, come on, hoax. And the clip shown on the news is primarily (after a long shot) mainly the trunk. You never actually see a full shot of the whole elephant while he’s painting a picture of an elephant. And I’m thinking, surely snopes will answer this one. Obviously it’s a hoax. And for the first time in my life I see a snopes page that says “research in progress”. So what do you think?

If it is real, it must be a female elephant. She makes herself look slimmer than she really is.

The Untold Story

Joel Rosenberg wrote “The Last Jihad”, a great work of fiction, and several sequels. Here’s a worthwhile read about muslims converting to faith in Jesus.

What makes a great hymn

By way of Brad, here’s a good and succinct article by David Neff.

What sticks?

Don posted recently, asking "What do we do in the church that sticks? Maybe not like gum on a shoe, but then, maybe so." He went on to recount "a dinner-time discussion with Martha about what we remember "sticking" from our days in our childhood and youth? We both remembered clearly the behaviors and attitudes of the adults around us; parents, teachers and prominent church leaders (for both good and bad). We remembered teaching incidents; while on mission trips, camping, serving, and during times of crises. We remembered learning some skills about reverence, respect, silence, prayer, Bible reading."

Let me tell the story of the single most memorable experiecne I had in Sunday School.
Classes met in various homes because our comparatively new church had no classrooms. This was probably when I was a HS sophomore and the class was in my living room.

Perhaps 12-14 of us settled down when the leader, 10 years older than ourselves, began his prayer which ran roughly as follows. I am numbering the prayer because it was very articulate and I don’t want to take up the space to write it out, but here is where it went:

1. Thank you Lord that you love us.
2. Thank you that you love us so much.
3. Thank you that you love us more than others.
4. That’s because we know you and your word and believe.
5. That makes us so much better than others.
6. We pray for those whose belief is not like ours.
7. We know that you are not pleased with them.
8. We know that we are the only ones who please you.
9. We pray that judge them for their wrongs.
10. We pray that you would pour out your wrath on them.
11. He started listing denominations. I mean, it was really outrageous.

I don’t know how much more was prepared, because I had started getting uncomfortable by abaout point 3, seriously disturbed at about point 5, and by 9 and 10, I thought “This is my house, I can’t let this go on”. So I interrupted the prayer with “Hold, it, hold it, you can’t do this” … which is exactly the response the leader had intended.

While I was the one who’d spoken up, once the disussion started virtually every other kid said they’d had the same feelings of discomfort. The particulars of the ensuing hour are lost to my memory, but what I remember is that by pushing our envelope of comfort with something like that, we were really pressed to articulate what we believed about faith and prayer, etc.

(The leader told me later that writing that prayer was the most fun he’d had in a long time, but delivering it without laughing was next to impossible.)

Wednesday April 1, 2008

• I am recalling April 1, 1978 – thirty years ago today. I was young and stupid and in college. (I’m not young or in college any more). I had finally decided that the long distance relationship that I foolishly considered a viable romance was neither viable nor romantic. It’s a shame I didn’t figure that out before the previous summer, when I spent $1352 for an airplane ticket to South Africa where she lived. Like I said – it was a long distance relationship. She’d long since quit writing to me and my Mom said “You know, there are an awful lot of cute girls at Westmont”. So thirty years ago today I asked one out on a date.

Nobody ever tells you “Listen, this is the woman you will one day marry. You might want to reconsider on this idea of asking her out on April Fools’ Day. Or at least make it something better than going to a Marx Brothers Film Festival. After all, this is going to be the story she tells her children.”

As my beloved has said many times – it sort of set the tone for the whole relationship.

• Google has announced its partnership with Virgin on the Virgle project to establish a thriving colony on Mars. And the Abbeyrd page has revealed a secret clause in the McCartney/Mills divorce agreement which gives Heather a say in forthcoming Beatles reissues. Elsewhere, Pacific Islands Bible College has acquired the University of Southern California. In other news, our senior pastor told the staff this morning that he was preparing to accept a call to a Lutheran Church in Washington. Something about today’s date makes people get very silly.

• Brad (who also authors crazy4Citrus.com) asked me about Magic Jack, about which he and I blogged, and for which I took the plunge and bought one. So Brad and everyone else: here’s the update.

Magic Jack is a device that plugs into your USB port on your computer and gives you free phone service across the US. It costs $20 for the jack itself and $20 a year for the license. It came with a 30 day money back guarantee. I probably should have sent it back but I didn’t. It works as advertised. But the phone number it assigns you may not be local enough to suit you. The software it loads on your computer is pretty invisible, but does not come with an uninstall, and your registry will be difficult to clean up. And of course it connects one phone to that number. In order to get your whole house on that number you have to acquire some additional equipment which I am told can be purchased at your typical Best Buy type store. And of course, if you lose power or internet service or turn your phone off, your phone service is gone as well. Even though the financial savings seems considerable, I suspect if you want to go with VOIP, Vonage might be a better choice – at least until a few bugs get worked out.