man hug

Want to know how to give a manly hug and do all sorts of other things manly?

better churches

Speaking of community and churches and stuff, I experienced something that made me a little embarrassed/ashamed. And I'm not even a part of this church. I was embarrassed because what I saw is something that I know I've done to some degree.

Every Tuesday and Thursday the seminary has chapel. Either a professor will give the sermon/lecture or they'll bring in someone. This past Tuesday the pastor from Sojourn Church spoke. Sojourn isn't an SBC church, but it's Southern Baptist affiliated (whatever that really means). It's kind of seen as the black sheep of the family, because it's located in the artsy part of town and actually reaches out to their community. If you want to see a church that has contextualized to fit their community, Sojourn is a good one to look at. They use more artistic (not charismatic) expressions in their services. So you can imagine what that does for a stuffy seminary student.

*I must note here that this stuff isn't based simply on my observations. Several of the people I hang out with go to Sojourn and are very upset with their church members for their actions.

Apparently some of the people decided they wanted to come hear their pastor speak and thought it would be great to wear really dingy clothes, because that's what everyone expects of them. But why not just wear the clothes you would normally wear? Wouldn't doing anything different be a lie, and even be prideful (if not borderline idolatry)?

They didn't do this, but some people did get their early and block off a section for their people to sit in. I don't have a problem with wanting to sit together. But I do have a problem with people who normally sit on the complete other side of chapel sitting in the Sojourn section because that's where you're supposed to sit. No, you should sit with your friends whom you normally sit with every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't abandon them because your church is there.

There were also a number of people who have not been to chapel all year and (as one person told me) won't be back. Is your pastor really that phenomenal of a speaker and that connected with God that he's the only one who can teach you anything?

What this all comes down to is how many times have you thought your church was better than another church.? And if you go to some other church (maybe there's a specific church you can identify) you're wasting your time, or you're less 'godly' (lowercase for a reason), or the church is just less cool than your church. Because a lot of people treat(ed) Status as their church, I gave Discovery Church as a whole a negative perception, and thought that Summit was better. I now know that Discovery is a great church with lots of Godly men and women.

Basically, no church is better than any other church. Now, if a church is teaching unsound doctrine, then that church is probably less than other churches. But no church is better than any other church. Graceland Baptist Church where Gentry and I go is no better than Summit, which is no better than New Life Church of God, which is no better than Willow Creek. We are all the body of believers redeemed, sanctified, and made holy for the glory of God. So let's act it. Let's stop cometing with each other to see who has the better church.

PS. Sojourn's new sermon series is based on Roman's 12. Watch the video on their website.

thoughts on community

i've been thinking about community lately, and although these thoughts are still incomplete, they're still probably too long to post here. I captured some of my initial musings on a pdf here...let me know what you think.

Tunes

Ever been to Pandora Radio? Type in the name of a band or song, it will find it, and then play music similar. It's a good way to hear music you actually like, as well as find out about unknown bands.

you know... (maybe you don't)

Unnecessary Knowledge

Gay Banana

Some of you know Anna from CDIG back in the day. Corey Callahan has a project called trash the dress and takes some sweet shots of people getting a little more use out of their wedding dresses...you can see the rest of Gabe and Anna's shots at his site.

The Renewed Mind Is The Key

To Bad Dancing

voter's guide 2008. Lowest score wins?

http://liecount.com/

Jesus is a friend of mine

(Jesus is my friend)

prayer

Exodus 33:7-11 (in parts):

"Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, call it the 'tent of meeting.' Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered. As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses...The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend."

John 15:15:

"I no longer call you servants...Instead, I have called you friends."

I have been challenged lately in my prayer life. I have never been a good, consistent praying person. I'm good at reading and studying my Bible, and I pray when I do this. But rarely do "I go into my closet to pray" and spend time with God.

I heard a sermon the other day that used the above verses to talk about praying. Moses had to go into a tent (temporary temple/inner sanctuary) to talk to God, who came down in a pillar of cloud. There they would speak face to face like friends do. Moses was God's friend. Jesus calls us his friends. Elsewhere we hear about the curtain being torn and we are now able to enter into the inner sanctuary to commune with God. We also hear about our bodies being the actual temple. The temple and inner sanctuary are no longer needed, because we are both. And the pillar of cloud (ie, presence of God) is always present to commune with us. There is a certain awe in all of this--God's presence coming down upon us, us being friends with Christ--that I still don't fully get. But it makes me stand in awe and gives me a desire to spend more time one-on-one, privately with the Lord.

nerd stuff you can actually use. (soon)

so google is about to launch their own web browser. In fact by the time you read this it will probably already be launched. They've got some great ideas. If you find that boring some of the high points are:

tabs within your browser are individual processes. that means when you close a web page out, there is no residual garbage from that page still tying up your computer. if you're like me and leave a browser open all day and visit tons of pages without restarting...every once in a while your browser will crash because of all the garbage. this will be more stable.

this also means if one web page crashes, it doesn't tank your browser, just that page.

you can look in their 'task manager' and see which pages are eating away at your memory.

it will be faster. awesome.

knowing google, it will probably look pretty awesome, too.

This first version, unfortunately, appears to be only for windows users, but hopefully the mac version follows shortly.