Flash

Check out this Flash animation by alan becker..absolutely brilliant!
Animation vs the Animator

The wonders of Facebook

So, i've resisted the myspace craze rather well...but I finally gave in and created a facebook profile and I must honestly say that I am completely amazed at how fast and easy it is to create huge networks of people.

This is brilliant! In a matter of days I have found friends that I have not heard from in many years. One such friend is Trace Bundy...a truly amazing guitarist from Boulder, CO.

Check out this video of him playing...and notice his technique and use of capos. You can get his music from his website tracebundy.com, or at itunes.

Christmas at Resurrection

Every year, our church has its annual christmas musical, which took place last week, amidst wintry mix, which is really a nice way of saying it's really cold and ice pellets are falling from the sky. Any way - the production went very well. I'll post some pics soon. Although large productions like that are fun and exhilarating, it's always nice to have that sigh of relief when it's over. Now I can resume my life as it was and catch up on things that got pushed aside....such as blogging.

ciao

Church growth in Russia

The methodist church has an agency called the General Board of Global Ministries, which part of their purpose is to assist with the expansion of the methodist church across the globe. Russia happens to be one of the places which is experiencing a great deal of growth and expansion which has been assisted by the GBGM's Russia Initiative Conferences held annually throughout the US which attempts to partner local churches in the US with churches in Eurasia in order to grow & learn from each other.

We've had the opportunity to host this years Russia Initiative, which is number 13, and has been an incredible experience. A delegation of 110 pastors and lay leaders from Eurasia along with 227 pastors and laity from the US have gathered to be in dialogue and communication on how to best continue supporting the church in Russia and Ukraine and I must say it has been great meeting folks from halfway across the world that share in the same mission and vision.

I'll try to post some pics soon.

When belief systems fail

Kem Meyer has a great post on belief systems and what happens when they fail. Makes me think about what my assumed belief systems are, how I define myself, and whether or not my actions show that I believe what I say I believe.

a ghost, a witch, and a pirate ship

that is what we made tonight. You know, there's nothing like cutting open a pumpkin, reaching in and pulling out all the slimy grossness one finds inside pumpkins. I actually find it interesting that pumpkins are hollow. Why is that? I suppose if I really wanted to know, I could find out, but i'm feeling quite lazy at the moment.

Anyway - I've always carved pumpkins with kitchen knives and have found it to be a rather good way to end up with several band-aids on my hands, thus have had a reluctance to carving pumpkins...especially around small children. For the past few years, we've drawn on them with markers, but by doing that you really miss out on the backlighting effect when you place the candle inside...which I must admit is really pretty cool.

So we bought a carving kit which contained 2 small saw-like utensils, a small drill (plastic & non-motorized), and for lack of a better term - a little pokey-wheel, which helped you transfer your design from paper to the pumpkin (I think I've seen one of these used for sewing once before).

This was amazing. No more trying to saw through the pumpkin thinking that at any moment the knife may slip and cut off a finger (i wonder if others have similar thoughts). The saws give you great control and allow for a great amount of detail. So, here's our creations from tonight.











Happy Halloween!

are you Innovative?

check out these videos of all the main sessions from Granger's Innovate '07 conference. They have some pretty sweet stuff going on.

Dream On

Here's a great remake of Aerosmith's Dream On by Kelly Sweet.

Everything is spiritual

Rob Bell, creator of the popular nooma series, went on a tour last year entitled 'Everything is Spiritual'. It was just him, a white board, and 2 hours of incredible teaching. After he finished, a man in his mid-forties who was sitting in front of me stood up and said to his wife, "that was the most amazing presentation I have ever seen". Anyway - if you know nooma, you know the quality, and they have just released the DVD of the everything is spiritual tour. I highly recommend it. There are some video clips available on their site.

5 Conferences in 5 days!

The church I serve has one week in October that is quite literally insane. This is that week. we have almost 2,000 people coming from all over the country (as well as several other countries) to gather, worship, learn, reconnect, network, and learn about communicating the message of Christ in today's world. We have compiled several different conferences together so the energy is contagious and they seem to feed off of each other. There is an IT roundtable, a Contemporary Worship Institute, some Pre-Institute intensive sessions, an all-day conference hosted by Group Publishing on the 'Me to We' phenomenon, and then finally the actual Leadership Institute.

Things are going great, on the line-up is Greg Scheer, Doug Flather, Len Wilson & Jason Moore (Midnight Oil guys), Sally Morgenthaler, Adam Hamilton, Emanuel Cleaver, and several other great presenters. I'm totally stoaked about the night of worship that our contemporary music ministry is hosting tomorrow night...should be pretty tight! Hope to see you there.