Category: personal

i love reading youthblog by ian. awhile back ian detailed the building of his shed and i was surprised at how much i enjoyed reading about and following the progress of his shed. my fascination with the building of a simple shed is probably a rather sad statement on my life (and my extreme jealousy over him having a shed and me not having one is probably a very sad statement on my CHRISTianity).

through the whole thing i was inspired to likewise mark the progress of my own non-youth ministry related home improvement. pam and i recently finished the remodeling of our master bathroom and have now decided to move on to landscaping our front yard. this will be our project for the next three weeks. i could actually finish it in one week except for the fact that i will be leaving in the middle of the whole project on a mission trip with our youth ministry and will therefore be interrupted for a little over a week. anyway, we are starting on the project this weekend and will finish it whenever i get back. hopefully it will throw all of you into shock and awe regarding my masive green thumb.

the first step of this whole process is to determine what landscaping software is best to use for designing the whole project. the image above came from better homes and gardens’ free website landscape designing tool. obviously you get what you pay for. i’m probably going to purchase better homes and gardens’ landscape and deck designer because it seems to have the best reviews of any of the landscape designing software. if any of you guys & girls have any other suggestions on software i would be more than open to your suggestions.

i would also gladly take any suggestions you have on sources of top soil in the baton rouge area. i priced it today and found out it will take between $210 and $300 to purchase the top soil we need for the project. what is wrong with this world when DIRT costs this much? there has to be a better way to raise my flower beds.

a while back i made this flash animation to begin one of our worship services. if it works for any of y’all please feel free to use it. click here to view it.

i’ve been podcasting our youth oriented worship services for 6 months (and simply making them streamable for years before that). the podcasting has been pretty cool with probably 10 to 20 people downloading the podcasts each day (and then the very rare days where it raises to 100). personally i’ve ben pretty lease with an average of 15 people per day downloading messages and music and i thought our little ole youth ministry was doing pretty well to be in the podcasting world.

tuesday, june 28th apple relased it’s new version of itunes which has the ability to subscribe to podacasts. i was interested in the whole thing and immediately downloaded the new version (though i’ll probably stick with ipodder just because it’s i’m not the hugest fan of “the man” in any industry). still i didn’t really think that itunes would have much of effect on a little bitty site like our’s. as usual i was wrong. the people subscribed to feed from the site has doubled in the past two days and the total downloads (clickthroughs & subscriptions) have doubled also.

to quote from applpe’s own press release concerning hitting one million pdocast subscriptions:

“iTunes has done what possibly no one else could have accomplished, propelled Podcasting into the mainstream,” said Will Lewis, management consultant for KCRW. “Our servers have been swamped with a stratospheric increase in traffic. In fact, downloads have increased tenfold as a result of the iTunes 4.9 launch.”

who knew apple had such power? aren’t they supposed to be the “little guys” in the computer world? i wander what micro$oft will have to say about all this.

bride in canceled wedding throws party for homeless – how cool is this? what a great thing to do with a party that would have just been wasted otherwise.

i went to the optometrist today to get my vision checked. for the past couple of months i’ve been having slight vision problems – basically having a more difficult time focusing on things in the distance. i finally became fed up with feeling my eyes focus on refocus on objects and thus i went to get my eyes examined.

well the doctor has looked at my eyes, i’ve read the eye chart backwards and forwards, and the verdict is in – i have a mild astigmatism. basically, i am becoming more nearsighted as i grow older and thus i need to get some glasses for occasional use. before my mom freaks out i need to say that it is merely a mild nearsightedness and i can still drive without glasses. the doctor said glasses would make my vision easier but i didn’t have to wear them all the time. so rest comfortable mom – i’m okay.

back in february i said that i would start placing my monthly youth ministry newsletter articles on the blog. every month i’m desperate for some idea to write about and len evans had mentioned posting these things for others to be able to get their desperation ideas form. it sounded like a good idea and i decided to start doing it. unfortunately i only did it once. so here goes my second attempt. here’s the my article i placed in this month’s youth ministry newsletter.

i love being with the church.

now i say “being with the church” rather than “going to church” because of the fact that CHRIST’s church is not made up of buildings. no, the church is made up of humans. JESUS CHRIST’s church is composed of all those who believe in and desperately try to follow the LORD. i love being with people like that.

sometimes i hear people say that they can’t stand the church because the people who make up the church are so messed up. they say that “church” people do the same stupid things that everyone else does. they say that “church” people are just as mean as everyone else in the world. the truth is that they’re right about the people who make up the church … we are some messed up people.

yet what i love about being with the people who make up CHRIST’s church is that as messed up as we still are CHRIST has already made a difference in our lives and is changing us. as i type this i can hear people right outside of my study talking and laughing. these are people that i know and love. i’ve heard how JESUS has made a difference in their lives. i know some of the story about who they used to be. they’ve been changed by a loving GOD and that’s why they are a part of CHRIST’s church. they may still be messed up (no more than i am) but JESUS is still working on them and changing them into HIS image. that’s why i love being with and hanging out with CHRIST’s church, because there is nothing more exciting than seeing people’s lives completely changed. that’s what happens when you hang out with CHRIST’s church.

that’s why i love being with the church.

you have to be pretty desperate to use it but if you are that desperate go ahead and steal away.

just in case you aren’t a part of flickr and haven’t heard form their blog i want to let you know that yahoo has started a limited beta run of their my web 2.0 social networking search engine. you can read the my web 2.0 blog to find out about it but basically it kind of like del.icio.us, only yahoo-style. if you want to be a part of the BETA test jump on it quick because it is a limited BETA.

i saw this cartoon on doug pagitt’s blog. too funny. of course, i’ve never done anything like that at all. 🙂 i mean really, who would ever steal one of rick warren’s messages and pretend like it was their own? if you’re going to do something like that you should at least choose a rob bell sermon. 🙂

this is just plain freaky. it’s a flash animation of a bikini clad woman falling through various bubble type things. it’s hard not to watch it (because of it being weird not because of the bikini). anyhow, you can watch it shere.

so now i’m trying to figure out how to earn, steal, or print enough currency to purchase a nikon d70 (which looks like it will probably be my choice camera instead of the canon d20). earning a spare $1,000 is not an easy thing for me. thus my plan has been to make a “deal with the devil” per se.

about four years ago i started publishing the discipleNOW/retreat curriculum and bible studies that i write and putting them on the net (under www.disciple-now.com which i have since shut down). my desire was that small churches could use this material for free and that larger churches that wish to use the material would pay a small fee that would cover the costs of the website. the site worked well. in fact, it worked too well. the whole enterprise started to take too much of my time. originally all i had wanted to do was help out some ministers in smaller churches who couldn’t afford to buy their material. i wasn’t wanting to be an entrepreneur. i was constantly having to fill orders and that was more than i had ever wanted. so about 8 months ago i became tired of the whole process and dropped it. since quitting the website i’ve still had people calling and emailing asking for any new material i had.

so i’ve kind of decided to set up another website to let people use the discipleNOW / retreat curriculum and bible studies i write for my own ministry. yet this time i’m going to use a little more modern technology to enable the whole thing. i’ve set up another blogger site in order to upload adobe acrobat versions of the material i have published. this way smaller churches can print copies of the material for free. all i have asked is that if someone from a larger church uses the material and they have it in their budget i would appreciate them “spreading a little love my way” via paypal. pam, my wife, says it will never work because youth ministers will never give money for something they can simply take for free. that might be true but i really hate the thought of going back to selling the stuff so that’s a chance i will simply choose to take.

of course, the “deal will the devil” is really placing google adsense ads on the blog. today i actually earned $0.94 through these things. now i only need 1,063 more days like that and i will have enough to buy the camera.