HE is risen indeed!
video church
i have to admit that i am not a very big fan of the multi site church concept. it may just be my own personal bias but watching a video for church simply doesn’t work for me. i would love to see some research on these things. i truly wonder how effective they are. are they bringing people to CHRIST? or are they just bringing people from other churches? i have my thoughts but they are just my thoughts. does anyone know of any research that may have been done on how effective they are?
for my friends who are not familiar with church culture and therefore probably not used to the term “multi site church” what it means is a church that does a video feed to several other locations that have their own worship team that may or may not have a different flavor of doing things. the sermon comes from one site and is piped to all the others. these other locations are part of the base church and somewhere in the church’s tag line is almost always something like “one church many congregations.”
back home
wednesday the family and i drove down to chicago for a few days. it was wonderful. we played tourists as much as we possibly could, going to a < href="http://blackhawks.nhl.com/">blackhawks game (which was awesome), hitting the art institute, watching the musical “suessical,” etc., etc. one of the most fun things for pam and i was getting visit with some of the people we know and love who live in and around chicago. it was great. a few years back when i stayed at the simple way some of the simple wayers talked about having homes everywhere (largely because they had no home of their own to limit them). i’m not sure i’m there yet but it does feel great when pretty much anywhere pam and i go we have people there whom we love. visiting new places is cool but connecting with friends is so much better.
of course, it feels wonderful to be back home.
SIDE NOTE – running along the lake michigan chicago lakefront during a snow storm was amazing. between the sights of downtown chicago and the docks the view was absolutely gorgeous. when you add the snow to this it was truly unforgettable.
running in the snow
i love running when it’s snowing. we got a small amount of snow today (less than an inch) and i’m guessing this was either our last or second to last snow for the season. of course, some of the locals i’ve spoken with say that my guess may be far off from what finally happens. anyhow, i love running in the snow because no matter how slowly i run i still feel pretty hard core for having run in the snow. i used to feel the same way about running in the rain in baton rouge.
SIDE NOTE – we started the curling club playdown tonight. my team won. woohoo!
SIDE SIDE NOTE – wow. i’ve been posting very boring stuff recently.
my run for the day
distance – 5.0 miles
time – 52:49
pace – 10:33/mile
weather – 30º/snow
tapestry needs
right now the launch team is praying over a date to begin the public services of tapestry. i can’t really say the date we think we are being led to until we’ve all reached that point. i can say that it is soon enough that i need to start buying some equipment over the next several months. since, many, if not most, of you are experts on some of the equipment i need to buy i thought i might look for some of your opinions. so here’s the list of what i will need to buy in the next several months and what i am thinking of spending.
- a windows based laptop – i have never bought a windows based laptop and therefore i know next to nothing concerning what i should look for. i’m hoping to spend less than a grand on this. it’s primary purpose will be for projection (a.k.a. powerpoint and mediashout) but i would like to be able to use it for portable video editing. it needs to be rugged and easy to use. any thoughts?
- a digital camcorder – i haven’t bought a digital camcorder in five years and many things have changed. i don’t need a professional level camera but video will be pretty important so a good quality camera would be nice.
- powered pa speakers – my research thus far has lead me to qsc hpr 122i’s. i’m open to other ideas if anyone knows something better for the price (around $1,500).
of course, i also have the boring stuff to buy (i.e. tables, chairs, coffee makers, etc.) so if anyone has any suggestions on a place to get good stuff at inexpensive prices that would be cool.
btw, thanks to the many wonderful people who have contributed to the point that we have money to buy these things for tapestry.
my run for the day
distance – 5.0 miles
time – 52:15
pace – 10:27/mile
weather – 28º/weather
who fartleked?
my favorite running term of all time is “fartlek.” i get to fartlek for 5 miles today. i wouldn’t want to be behind me. 😉
pam and i finished watching “into the wild” last night and i think it was a really good version of the book. thanks to my brother-n-law (hi jim) i absolutely love love krakauer’s writing. i was worried that penn would play around with the brilliant manner in which krakauer tells the story but thankfully he basically stuck with it in manner and tone.
SIDE NOTE – my mother, the stalker, is a wealth of great finds. of course, this is true because of the fact that she’s a stalker. 🙂 anyway, she found the website of a guy in the point area who takes pictures of the region with his camera suspended from a kite. his photos are cool. i’ve seen the camera attached to a kite thing done before but the most impressive thing on his site is the contraption he created to be able to take a stitched panoramic photo from his kite. that’s pretty impressive.
sptapestry.org
i know that this doesn’t matter to anyone who reads this blog but i just purchased sptapestry.org as an additional domain name for the tapestry website. why? well because i realized that stevenspointtapestry.org is a little long to put onto things. both domain names are good for the next two years and since their cheap i’ll probably keep both for a good long time.
the family and i went to see “horton hears a who” today and it was great. dr. seuss is wonderful and i think this movie is probably the best adaptations of his work thus far. it has such great themes running through it (messianic, the value of people, fighting for those weaker than you, standing on your beliefs, etc) but it is also quite funny. we watched it with a room full of kids, parents, and college students and the laughter was loud and strong. i also appreciated the fact that the animation was quite modern but still suessical.
SIDE NOTE – next week is wisconsin spring break. this means pam and the boys are off and i can’t really do much in getting tapestry going. therefore, we’re heading to chicago. pam and i have been to chicago separately but never with each other or the kids. we’re quite excited. right now the game plan involves a blackhawks game, eating a chicago style hotdog, spending time with some former youth, eating at ed debevic’s, hitting a bunch of museum’s, maybe seeing a play, and going to easter sunday church with some friends we made at our church planting assessment last year. i can’t wait. if anyone knows anything else that we absolutely “must” do please let me know because pam and i are always open to new ideas.
SIDE SIDE NOTE – while i run i am presently listening to david kinnaman’s book “unCHRISTian.” it’s amazing thus far. i’ll write more after i’ve finished it.
SIDE SIDE SIDE NOTE – yes we did survive having all the fourteen year olds over to our house. i’m not longer the youth minister of any of these kids. now i’m just a dad and therefore not real cool to have around. no one wanted to me to play halo. it was a sad night.
my run for the day
distance – 5.0 miles
time – 54:15
pace – 10:51/mile
weather – 34º/sunny
i'm an idiot or a sadist
to celebrate adam’s birthday (which was monday) we presently have 6 fourteen year old boys spending the night at our house. pam and i are gluttons for punishment.
my run for the day
distance – 13 miles
time – 2:20:35
pace – 10:49/mile
weather – 39º/sunny
double finish
i finished two things yesterday. first, the regular season of the curling league that i belong to. we did pretty well. in fact, we either finished first or second for our league night. we’ll find out after the score of the other team is known. if they lost then we tied them for first and will play off to see who goes to the club championships. if they won then there is no post season for us. still it was fun. i’ll definitely be doing this again next season (even if debbie says that curling has ruined my youngest child).
the second thing i finished was my application to the d.min program at new orleans seminary. its a butt load of work for a simple application. i ended up writing a 18 page essay for the thing. now i am just waiting for my recommendations to be sent in and the final interview.
otherwise everything is pretty boring.
bracket
since everyone who expressed interest in being a part of a ncaa bracket (either by comment or email) is already on facebook i just decided to do the bracket through cbs sportsline brackets. you can join by going to my profile or looking up the bracket application on facebook.
my run for the day
distance – 5.0 miles
time – 52:54
pace – 10:35/mile
weather – 34º/snow