Called that one wrong . . .
It was snowing here in Glen Burnie this morning, actually it snowed through the night. In this area we don't quite know what to do with snow so there was some discussion about cancelling church. Many of the churches in our area cancelled their services but a few of our folks took a test drive and deemed the roads passable. So, we cancelled Sunday School to give our guys time to shovel some areas that needed shoveling and to give our snow plow man time to get part of the parking lot plowed.
It was still snowing while church was going on and at least three different weather forecasts predicted that we would have a good bit of ice this afternoon. So, we cancelled our annual congregational meeting which was scheduled for tonight because we didn't think we could get a very big crowd, what with all the ice and everything.
As I sit here at 4:55pm on Sunday afternoon the sun is out, there is no snow and the roads are clear. We could have had our annual meeting, but the cancel had already gone out. Once again we learn that, in the Baltimore area, you can't know what the weather is like until it happens. I'm taking out my frustration by making the kids shovel snow.
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OK, I actually helped the kids shovel snow - I'm not as mean as I may seem. In the meantime, here's a couple of things I have seen in the blogosphere lately.
Some new blogs, . . . er, new to me that is . . .
Dj Chuang of djchuang's metablog left a very helpful comment on one of my posts the other day, so I checked him out and enjoyed his site so much I have added him to my sidebar under "More Good Blogs." He's a Tim Keller fan like myself, and he also edits the eQuip blog for ForMinistry. He is also very technologically savvy, doing podcasts and other things like that - I'll be visiting him often I can tell. Oh yeah, I have a son named DJ, so that helps too.
DJ is speaking at the Internet Evangelism for the 21st Century Conference, to be held April 1-2 in Lynchburg, VA. It looks to be done in conjunction with Liberty University. While looking through the bios of their worshop leaders I came across Nick Ciske who has a blog called The Stuff in My Head. Nick is on the cutting edge of all things internet related. He has designed web sites for some major folks, and he is currently involved in a Vineyard church in Minneapolis called Bluer, which was one of the first to podcast their sermons online. Nick also podcasts at Thought Refinery.
Yep, as you can tell, podcast is the word for the day. Here's a Wikipedia article on it. At first blush, podcasting looks like no big deal - it allows you to download mp3 broadcasts to your computer then play them in ITunes. I downloaded a broadcast today and it played fine in my Winamp player. But, from what I can tell from my 15 minutes of exhaustive research into this phenomenon, it appears that podcasting allows you to subscribe to these broadcasts via rss and/or xml and it apparently integrates very easily with your Ipod, and apparently will also integrate with other portable devices. And, apparently there are aggregators for podcasting so you can extend your reach with this. As you can tell, I'm a dummy on this subject, but I'm an intrigued dummy as I am thinking of how I might be able to use this to broadcast my Sunday sermons.
And, while we're talking about internet evangelism and things like that, let me call attention to my friend Rob Williams who runs the OrangeJack Blog and Effective Web Ministry Notes. Rob works with Campus Crusade and is doing some pioneering work in the area of effective web ministry.
Also, I have had a few people write me recently asking about how to start a blog. There are lots of places to go, but why not start at Rob's OrangeJack Blogging University.
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More good reads . . .
Jared Bridges at True Pravda has a series of posts called "Books that Haunt," in which he reviews famous novels that "haunt" the reader. The title of the series alone is enough to make anyone want to read it. This week he is reviewing The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, of which he says:
The Power and The Glory reminds the reader that God can use the most sinful and profane for his purposes. It’s a novel that will haunt the reader’s thoughts with notions of redemption, sacrifice, and betrayal for many a sleepless night.
And finally . . .
Michael Spencer has posted an article on Joel Osteen and is quite alarmed at Joel's rise to fame in Christian circles. If you aren't familiar with Joel, he is the pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, which is now said to be the largest church in America.
Michael is rightly alarmed because Joel is on his way to becoming the most well known professing evangelical in America. Michael fears that he will become the face of evangelicalism. If he does, then we have a problem on our hands. Michael is asking as many people as possible to post something on Joel Osteen so that, as his name and face becomes more and more identified with Christianity, there will be lots of us out there speaking to the contrary.
I'm not going to do such a post yet, simply because I want to read up a bit more on Joel. However, if you'll follow the links that Michael gives it paints an ugly picture. Joel preaches a gospel of success and it's a gospel without mention of sin, and ultimately a gospel without Jesus.
My parents went to that church, while they were in town.
His description is pretty much dead-on.
I'll talk to them again about it, though, and get some more details.
Posted by: RazorsKiss | January 31, 2005 at 01:11 AM
Yes, I was correct. I'll try to get some details tomorrow. I should (I hope) have something up this weekend.
Posted by: RazorsKiss | February 03, 2005 at 12:31 AM