8 Talents|Doing what I can with all that I’ve been given.

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.

Ecclesiastes 7:2

A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth is most like God.  This is man’s greatest tragedy and God’s heaviest grief.

A.W. Tozer

I have changed this blog to a new look, but haven’t got all the kinks worked out yet and bed is calling. Thanks for bearing with me.

I am not a big political person.  I read a lot and stay informed but I often feel tore.  I am finding myself becoming fairly apathetic towards politics as I see the charade they have become.  Please don’t take this as a political post, it is more a post on Christian character.

One thing I can say that I don’t like is when Christianity becomes a poster identity to advocate or advance a candidate.  Show me your faith, don’t print it on a flyer or a poster.  Yet, when I looked at the attached images I wondered what I would look like on those fliers.  How often am I a Christian in word but not deed?

The sad thing about this particular example is how they are using 1 Cor 13 as their tag line but they removed the greatest of the three, love, and replaced it with the campaign theme of change.  Sad because love is obviously not the focus, the person is.  We personally, as Christians, should never be the focus, our God and love should always be.

Sometimes I am amazed by the creations of man.  I was listening to the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack score this morning and there was a deep cello that was very soothing.  It as soon joined by multiple violins sending various harmonious sounds into the score.  After the violins had their time in the spotlight hammers striking finely tuned piano strings across many octaves completed a complex masterpiece of crescendos and decrescendos.  Everything together created music that made me feel a range of emotions all at once.  I was amazed by whoever had the genius to put that together.  Recently, I was in New York City and marveled at the architectural riches.  I was amazed by a train tunnel that went under a river, and had been there for a hundred years.  There were buildings that stood strong and high.  I visited the famous Fifth Ave. Apple Store, amazing!  

After dwelling on God’s creativeness today I realize, in relation to my reaction to the things above, just how easily I am amused, how easily I am distracted.

There are a lot of theories on how many galaxies there are in the universe.  One source states a conservative estimate to be around 350,000,000,000 (that would be billion with a b).  To put it into perspective if God wanted to name galaxies after every single human on the planet you would have 54 entire galaxies named after you.  Again 350 is said to be a conservative estimate.  

Let’s put this is perspective.  To do that I have to introduce you to a form of measurement I have never heard of until I looked it up today.  A galaxy’s size is measured by a parsec.

Light travels at 186,282 miles per second.

A light year is the distance light travels over the course of a year. Thus one light year equals about 5.8 trillion miles.

A parsec is 3.262 light years or 19 trillion miles.

Most galaxies are between 1,000 and 100,000 parsecs in diameter.  Galaxies are typically separated by millions of parsecs.

A small galaxy may have as few as 10 million stars, a big one might have around 1 trillion stars.  

Our galaxy the Milky way is 100,000 light years in diameter and has between 200 and 400 billion stars.  That is 200-400 billion suns in our galaxy alone!

And here I sit on planet earth spinning around often slipping into thinking about how important and “big” I am.  

Why did God do this?  I don’t know.  Most people in history didn’t even have the chance to ponder the enormity of the universe past what they could see (which is enough).  The only thing I could think of was that God delights in His creativity and it gives us one more opportunity to say, “WOW, No WAY!”

Why do I share this here?  I don’t know, you’ll have to find your own application.  I am just amazed.

Check out these pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.

I have been encouraged and challenged in great ways by Cornerstone in Simi Valley California.

Recently, in one of their podcasts, they played a video about how they felt it was time to lead their church down a more biblical path. Not that they weren’t biblical, they communicated that they want to see more of two things.

1. Community- People meeting each others needs.

2. Every member ministry- The idea that a few should not be paid to minister to all but to equip and train.

For some reason the video left me with a longing. I know there are lots of churches that value these two things. Yet, there seems to be a difference between valuing them and working them into the DNA of a church. We must ask the tough questions… If we aren’t like that why, and how can we become more like that? I am sure Cornerstone has some rough roads ahead of them as they lead their flock into a place of living out this vision. A place where one persons problems become a group of peoples problems. Below is the video from the elders and church leadership, minus Francis Chan, take a look and I would love to hear your thoughts.

If you want to hear Francis Chan unpack these thoughts a little more you can find the full podcast at their web site.

In a previous post I mentioned the next post on this book would be on the many purposes of blogging. I am going to take a quick detour though and I should get to that in the next post.

As I contemplate the book, The Blogging Church, I am torn about whether our church, Faith Evagelical Free Church, should start a blog. The author poses a question to consider, “Is it a tool or a toy?” The assertion is that a blog should be created to solve a problem if there is a problem to be solved. A blog should not be created because it is the latest rage.

“Like faith without works, a blog without passion and investment is dead.”

“If you introduce the right piece of technology in your church without the determination for change to go with it, you’re likely to be unhappy with the results.”

The book asserts that the problem that blogs do a great job of solving is one of communication. The authors talk about how the way church is done is starting to change. Younger generations are rebelling against the TV type presentation of content and are longing for conversations. Yet, in my experience, it is not only the younger generations but everyone is longing for ownership.

“The passive consumer has been replaced with an active, engaged, and empowered contributor.”

They end the chapter by saying that a blog is about honest transparent communication, noting that as quickly as you can send a quick email to your staff team you can communicate with your whole church and people around the world. Blogs allow big churches to become small and foster community in a way other tools cannot.

For me, as I think about a church blog, I am quick to sign on, “YES, I want that,” as I think about the benefits. That alone makes me question whether a blog is a tool or a toy to me. Do I really want the cause of Christ to go forth as a result of deeper communication or am I looking for another toy to play with?

With our church starting the conversation about blogging I thought I would post a few thoughts about blogging software essentials to get everyone started.

The blogosphere runs on a technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Imagine that as you blog you find 25 sites that you respect and want to follow. Going to 25 blogs everyday to see if there is something new isn’t my idea of great fun. Each sites RSS feed enables all new material posted to news sites and blogs to come to you! You can usually find a sites RSS feed looking for the orange symbol found in this post.

All you need to take advantage of this is an RSS Reader/Aggregator, most are free. Some are web based, thus you can access them from anywhere others are software based. Here is an article about the top free choices for Windows RSS Readers. Of the same thread here is an article about the top choices for Mac users.

Popular web-based solutions that would work on any computer are Google Reader and Bloglines.

I personally use the built in RSS capabilities of Safari, an internet browser that is free and great for both Windows and Macs (maybe even better than FireFox).

Whatever your choice, find their instructions on how to set the reader up and start collecting information. one of the great things about RSS is that you only get what you want, there is no RSS SPAM!!! (at least, not yet).