Category: personal

after a little bit of effort and allot of time waiting for the youth ministry domain name to kick back into gear i have finally been able to set us up with podcasting ability. here’s what i had to do:

• obviously we had to convert the audio from our youth service to an mp3 format and store it on our website.
• next, i set up a blogger site for the mp3 files so that i can use it’s atom feed. i set the “link” feature of the post to the url of the mp3 file and just for extra insurance i setup the text of the post as a link to the url of the mp3 file.
• third, i went to feed burner and used their smartcast feature (it’s under the “additional services” section of the feed you set up with feed burner). this gave me a new site feed url. this is the address that i have posted for people to subscribe too. the site feed for receiving the podcast is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ViewPodcast.

now we can podcast our worship services to anyone who wishes to automatically download the mp3 files of our weekly services. sometimes i love technology.

i’ve decided that i’m going to try and start podcasting the music and messages from the view, our youth worship service. this whole thing is new to me so it will take a little while to figure out the specifics of the whole thing. since, i just ordered an ipod today i figured i should start podcasting the services.

of course, i also have to wait for our youth ministry site to be up and running again. for some reason our domain name expired. the reason i say “for some reason” is because i remember and jessica, the youth administrative assistant, remembers sending the check for renewal of our domain name. anyhow i called the company last night and charged the renewal. they said it would take 24 hours for the domain name to kick back into gear.

article – the observer | international | “how many more must die before kofi quits?”

the u.n. sucks! the article puts it pretty clearly too. ironically this article is all about consistency also (like my previous post). the point of this article is that the u.n under kofi’s leadership has betrayed the very ideals that “the left” has stood for both in the u.s. and the u.k. yet “the left” has supported the u.n. against “the conservatives” because they view being against the conservatives as their primary role. they abandon their ideals because of politics and needing to be different from “the right.”

it would be nice if we could consistently support freedom in the world (even if it is proposed by the u.n.) and consistently fight evil in the world (even if it is in the u.n.).

i ran across the following quote in the lastest (april 6, 2005) issue of sojourner’s sojo mail:

Personally, I cannot understand why parents willing to take care of their disabled daughter were not allowed to by a husband who had moved on to another life and family. Terri Schiavo was severely mentally disabled but was not dying, and we don’t decide to end the lives of many similarly disabled people, even children, whose mental capacities greatly diminish their quality of life. As my wife, Joy Carroll, put it, “the issue is not their quality of life, but the ethical quality of our society.” And in situations of medical, scientific, or legal complexity, the morally safer course is always to err on the side of life. However, it became painfully clear that for many political partisans the issue wasn’t so much the life of this young woman but other related political issues and agendas. And a leaked Republican memo about firing up the conservative base of the party and even defeating Democratic opponents in Florida were way out of line.

wallis’ point is not exactly about terri schavio, rather he is talking about being consistent across the board. we do not live in a very consistent society. thus our republicans love to protect fetuses and execute criminals while our democrats love to do the exact opposite. neither group can truly claim to be “pro-life.” instead they are “pro” their political party. we really are a screwed up group of people.

i was talking with j.t. about flickr and while i was talking i ran into this image from lomokev (one of my flickr contacts) which actually looks like j.t. so i decided to post the photo as an example. hey j.t.

awhile back i mentioned at the view and on the blog that the coalition of immokalee workers had been fighting with taco bell for a one penny per pound raise on the tomatoes they picked for taco bell. the immokalee workers had been had been picking tomatoes for 1970s wages and had been unable to convince taco bell to give them the slightest raise or improve the working conditions at all. churches across the country had joined with the coalition in boycotting taco bell in the hopes of convincing them to do the right thing. after years of protest taco bell and yum foods decided to give the workers the raise and improve conditions. you can read more here.

so if you have been boycotting taco bell in support of the immokalee workers you may now eat at the bell in peace. i don’t even like taco bell and yet i plan on taking my boys to eat there tomorrow.

this blog began as some ramblings concerning my entry into the world of using homemade videos within the student ministry. it is with that in mind that i am amazed that i forgot to post the videos we made for the discipleNOW we held earlier this month. so here they are, albeit a little belated.

• friday night’s video – what is freedom
• saturday night’s video – the austins
• sunday morning’s video – summary video

you’ll need realplayer to view the videos.

easter always feels me with awe and frustrated. i feel awe because of what happened on easter sunday and i feel frustrated because of how little i live out what actually happened on that day. this morning caused even more of that than usual. for our youth sunday school i took the teens over to the mausoleum in resthaven cemetery (it’s next door to the church). within our group of students who were wandering around the cemetery there were two kids who made me wonder about what easter meant to them. one of the student’s mother was killed by derrick todd lee (the serial killer terrorized baton rouge a few years ago) and another student’s mother killed herself about a year ago. only the miracle of our easter faith can bring hope in situations like these.

at the beginning of the month of march i started a series of messages on the minor prophets. as a part of this series members of the youth ministry volunteered to set-up worship stations on each of the minor prophets that i did not talk about (eight in all). each station was an interactive interpretation of the major theme of the minor prophet that it covered. last night was the end of the series and thus the end of minor prophet stations. i can’t post pictures of the stations from last night because my camera’s battery was dead but they were the same as the previous weeks … amazing. i love the fact that the teens and adults involved within the student ministry participate so much within our worship. they’ll be more stations in the future.