Category: personal

fall retreat challenge video #2

here’s the second of three challenge videos describing various challenges that will happen at the beginning of each worship gathering during our fall retreat.

as i have posted over the past couple of entries i have mentioned some of the animations i’ve made for our fall retreat that is coming up next weekend. to goof off a little before each gathering we’re going to starteach one with a random “up front” game. to add a little most ziest to these games i’ve set up sound effects for each one and i am working on videoes to introduce each one. i finished the rough draft on the first one today. this is just the rough cut of the video. i’ll be making more changes tomorrow.

yesterday i posted two of the three intros i had created for our fall retreat using swish. i just finished the third intro a few seconds ago and therefore thought i would post it here also.

here’s the intro:

• reFUEL

as i have said earlier – i love swish. it is more than powerful enough for the things i need to do and yet simple enough that it doesn’t take me forever to create something.

since i’m talking about programs that i enjoy using i figure i’ll post a few of my favorite programs that are probably running on my desktop or laptop at this very moment:

• swish – shockwave flash animation
• adobe photoshop elements – photoshop lite – does most everything i need from layers to nef conversion for a 1/4 of the price of the real thing.
• keynote – mac powerpoint – i use it on my laptop.
• a href=”http://wbloggar.com/”>w.bloggar – blogging client – it’s free and it’s great. i just wish it was available for my mac.
• mozilla firefox – the greatest browser around on windows or mac (though i do like safari on the mac also).
• audacity – free mutlitrack digital recorder.
• itunes – i was originally all about realplayer but buying an ipod swapped me over

i love swish. i like to use it for making intros for messages and variou other things within a worship service or experience. today i worked on a couple of intros for the three worship services that are a part of our fall retreat in a couple of weeks.

here they are:

• re:CEIVE
• re:COMMIT

in your browser they will loop but in mediashout they work just fine.

i haven’t said anything about the whole ted haggard thing because of a couple of reasons; 1) it just doesn’t seem right to “hit a brother when he down” (especially when haggard was doing a good enough job on his own, 2) i’m not the biggest fan of monster/mega church pastors anyway so i’m not very unbaised about one of them “falling” (i love this quote from dan kimball concerning the difference between small and large church pastors – i’d rather be the slave than the king), and 3) there are plenty of other people who have already blogged whatever opinion you want to read and have probably done a much better job than i could possibly do. so i was going to leave the whole thing be until i read the letter that he asked to be read to his former church for their services earlier today. i was very impressed because he actually “took the fall” (or at least most of it) within his letter. he blamed nobody but himself and admitted that he lied and decieved them all. obviously, i still not thrilled about the situation but i did think the letter was a pretty good start.

SIDE NOTE – c.s. lewis is the man. i started listening to mere CHRISTianity while i run. it’s been a few years since i have read it. recently i have reread more of his fiction than his non-fiction. i had forgotten how much i love his non-fiction writing style.

SIDE SIDE NOTE – american dreamz is pretty dang funny.

SIDE SIDE SIDE NOTE – i ran 12.8 miles today (twice around the 6.4 mile lakes loop. ouch my legs hurt. i was planning on running my first half-marathon december 2 at the baton rouge beach 1/2 marathon. unfortunately, that’s also the weekend my family and i were planning on going and seeing some of our friends in fort woth, texas at the beautiful feet church. the first weekend of december they set up hayrides and drive around their neighborhood passing out gifts to all the kids there. i’ve been wanting to take my kids to “the feet” for years and mike myers (the pastor of “the feet”) says this is the best weekend to do it. so we’re going. i’ll just run the first light half marathon as my first.

HAGGARD UPDATE – after watching JESUS camp i pretty much think again ted haggard is a jerk.

my run for the day
distance – 12.8 miles
total time – 1:10:00
pace – 10:09/mile

i’ve been avoiding the whoole haggard thing but i do want to say that i like the letter that haggard wrote taking all the blame for the situation & i like mark driscoll’s post on the whole situation.

until recently with his retirement my dad was a salesman. ironically the “hobby” that he has developed over the past few years to keep him busy during his retirement is selling used cars. like i said he is a salesman. though i never heard my dad say the title of the post i still learned it from him through being aroudn his business. by watching him i learned that the purpose of a sales person is to sale a product. you do it ethically. you do it because you believe in the product. you do it because you believe that your product really is better for your customer than someone else’s product. still though your purpose is to sale the product. if you can’t sale the product because you’re too worried about your image or too worried about what you might have to do to sale the product (i.e. go out and do a demonstration of the product at 10 p.m. or show the maintence personnel how to use the product, etc.) then you are not going to be a very good sales person.

the reason i say this is because i was dissappointed today. every 4 weeks or so i do the chapel for our preschool. today was one of those days. today i was supposed to talk about how GOD knows and loves us for who we really are. the problem as that i was speaking to 150 4-5 year olds. 4 & 5 year olds are not kown for their ability to understand and remember tough messages. still i figure the purpose of a preacher is to CONVEY truth, not just say true things. i’m supposed to help other people understand the good news of JESUS. if i simply speak the gospel and the people i am speaking with don’t understand what i am saying then i have failed. so if i don’t convey the truth in a manner that those listening can understand then then i have not preformed a very good job. so i decided to use the fact that most of these kids will be wearing costumes tonight to help them to understand that GOD knows who they really are on the inside. so i purchased an elvis halloween costume and did my message in it while slowing removing parts of it to show who i really am. the kids loved it. the teachers loved it. some of the leadership said it was the best chapel they had ever had.

now i will be the first to admit that having the costume was fun. it was fun to see people thrown off and confused when i walked down the hall. it was fun to see my fellow ministers laugh. when i was talking with one of my fellow ministers about the costume they said “i could never do that, i’m afraid no one would ever take me seriously anymore.” of course, this is also why the 4 & 5 year olds squirm and never remember anything when he does their chapel.

the purpose of a preacher is to convey the truth of the good news of JESUS CHRIST. nothing else matters compared to that.

last night at the view, our youth worship service, i was speaking about goodness as a fruit of the spirit. as a part of the message i decided to steal a play from rob bell’s gamebook and make salsa during my message. i didn’t steal bell’s message (that would be wrong and bad .. badong) but i definitely took the salsa idea. i figured it was okay because pam and i have been perfecting the world’s most perfect salsa recipe over the past two months. i did the message, i made the salsa and then i simply hoped that the illustration helped the kids understand. by the end of the evening i knew that the kids like the salsa. that was pretty easy to find out since many of the told me that it was the greatest salsa they had ever eaten (and it wasn’t even my best batch). still i wasn’t really making the salsa for the kids to like it … it was a sermon illustration.

this afternoon i got the feedback i was hoping for. a couple of my teens dropped by and told me how great the salsa was. when i asked if they remembered what the message was about they told me what the main idea of the message was and what the points were. then we were able to discuss what they thought about the ideas. BINGO!

i’m just testing to see if my w.bloggar setup is correct. please continue with your lives as they were before.

the next race i am involved in is this saturday. as part of my training for the first light half marathon in january i am trying to run at least one race each month in between now and then. for october that race is the octoberfest 3 miler. hopefully i will improve my time from my last race – baton rouge zoo run – 5k – 28:28.

the other races i am looking at are:

• 11/4 – alzheimer’s 5K run and walk
• 12/2 – baton rouge half marathon
• 12/16 – golden flyer 10 miler

after the first light half marathon on january 14 i’ll consider what i am going to do from there.