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the kingdom of GOD

i’m not a democrat. i’m also not really a republican though i have voted for republican candidates more often than i have other candidates. with that said i am fed up with evangelical CHRISTians agreeing no holds bar with anything that politically conservative politicians say or do. i believe part of the reason for this is that conservative CHRISTians have reduced the gospel to personal spirituality and morality, the mindset is that your faith should lead to you becoming a moral person and therefore the politically active CHRISTian should fight for what seem to be obvious moral concerns. this is why evangelical CHRISTians are so focused on homosexuality and abortion. these stand out as moral issues.

yet i believe taking care of the poor and afflicted are spiritual issues. i believe this why JESUS came preaching the “gospel of the kingdom” rather than just the good news of personal salvation. again and again JESUS preached of the kingdom – a place where life was determined by the rules of GOD. the kingdom of heaven is a place where the followers of CHRIST fight for justice. i’m not sure that we CHRISTians have been fighting for justice. maybe instead of just providing food for the hungry we should fight against the system that would leave them hungry when there is more than enough food for all.

so here’s what has brought up this brief rant. sojouners is a CHRISTian organization that focuses on political involvement. there are definitely of a more liberal CHRISTian mindset. while i would probably be described as a conservative i love sojourners because they remind me to fight for social justice. hey regularly set up actions to email against various social injustices. right now they have set up an open letter to alberto gonzalez, the proposed attorney general, asking him to denounce torture in any fashion. apparently he has a mixed history on this and may have supported torture of foreign p.o.w’s before.

so what i’m wondering is why we never hear conservative CHRISTians standing up and saying “NO” against injustices such as this.

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feminar

i am firmly convinced that youth ministry as a whole is far to masculine in it’s nature. so much of what youth ministries do (my own included) is naturally more appealing to males than to females. we play active games. we use gross and odd events. so many of the leaders within youth ministries are male. student ministry is definitely a male oriented ministry.

so a while back i decided to do something about it by doing and event where there was absolutely zero male involvement. we call this our “feminar.” we did this for the first time last year and our girls loved it. it is the absolute opposite of any event that i would ever put on if i were in charge. last year’s feminar included a craft time and a fashion show in addition to the bible studies that set the tone for the night. i would never think of doing a fashion show. i still think the concept is stupid. yet it worked incredibly well. our girls loved it and it helped make sure real connections for our girls who had been visiting until then.

we’re doing it again this year february 4th & 5th. once again i won’t have anything to do with it. i can’t wait.

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set up for the view – january 5, 2005

last night at the view we did another “chair worship service”. the “chair worship service” is based on the often quoted description of worship from soren kierkegaard, his description of worship is that it is like a theater and that the danes of his age misunderstood the places of everyone within the theater of worship. soren kierkegaard said the places within the theater of worship at that time were:

  • the congregation was in the seats watching the performance
  • the ministers were on the side of the stage directing the performance
  • GOD was on the stage giving the performance

kierkegaard said that worship was actually like a theater but that the above positions were wrong. the correct positions were:

  • the congregation is on the stage doing the performance
  • the ministers were on the side of the stage directing the performance
  • GOD is the AUDIENCE WHO the performance is for

so when we do our “chair worship” we clear the stage and make it the area of the AUDIENCE. we move our praise band to the side or the back and reverse everything else. we change the pa speakers and monitors. we then place a single chair on the stage as a physical reminder that we are signing to GOD.

i explain the whole process through a powerpoint presentation that describes what is going to happen. the service begins with this and then goes into worship through singing. we’ve done this three times over the past two years. it’s been a great way to remind the teens and adults why we do what we do.

here are pictures from our set up.

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an incredible story from the bbc

survivor_ap203

you’ve got to read this:

    Tsunami man survives week at sea

    An Indonesian man has been found floating on tree branches in the Indian Ocean, eight days after a devastating tsunami struck the region. Rizal Shahputra, 23, said he was initially swept out to sea with other survivors and family members, but that one by one they drowned.

    He was rescued on Monday by a passing container vessel. He was taken to Malaysia where officials said he was in good condition – he survived eating floating coconuts.

    Rizal said he was cleaning a mosque in Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra on 26 December when the tsunami struck. Children ran in to warn him, but he was swept out to sea, along with several other people.

    “At first, there were some friends with me,” Rizal told reporters. “After a few days, they were gone… I saw bodies left and right.”

    He drank rainwater, and ate coconuts, which he reportedly cracked open with a doorknob.

    Rizal said at least one ship sailed by without noticing him before the MV Durban Bridge spotted him, 160km (100 miles) from Banda Aceh.

    Huang Wen Feng, a crew member of the ship, said he was “very, very surprised” to see Rizal standing on his wood debris on Monday. “He was shouting at us. I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

    The Japanese-owned ship, which was returning to Malaysia from South Africa, took Rizal to the Malaysian port of Port Klang, where he arrived on Wednesday.

    He was taken to hospital, weak and in shock, and having sustained some cuts to his legs.

    His survival follows that of a woman, also from Aceh, who was found in the sea on Friday. She had fish bites to her legs, and had survived on fruit from the palm tree she was clinging to.

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trackback experiment

i’m trying to add “trackback” capability to the blog now. we’ll see how this works. i’m using Haloscan for commenting and trackback. the real question here is wether i can implement or even understand “trackback”. just because i have it doesn’t mean i actually know how to use it.

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when CHRISTians do dumb things

i hate church controversy!

i always find that it does nothing but hurts the church itself. i’m not talking about standing up for doctrine and theology. nope, i’m really okay with a fight over that. i’m talking about the type of controversy that’s about people not liking the way a certain thing is done within the church or not liking some of the personalities involved within the church. this is the controversy that i hate.

my church is going through some of this right now. the controversy is about the school board of our school. we are in the process of determining whether or not to have a school board or to move the superintendent of the school to a member of the church staff and have the school directly responsible to the church instead of a board of church members. two sides have formed – one in favor of keeping the school board and one in favor of getting rid of it. the school board itself is divided evenly on the idea. because the idea is so evenly divided things have begun to get pretty heated. things have been said that weren’t real nice on both sides.

i’m really okay with people disagreeing. in fact, i think disagreeing is probably a healthy thing when done right because it means you’re pushing the envelope. what i don’t like is people treating each other in unCHRIST like manners. the person who is disagreeing with you is hopefully a brother or sister in CHRIST. he/she is someone for whom CHRIST went to the cross. therefore, that person or group of people are of extreme value and should be treated with the utmost respect and kindness. when that is not done then i hate the responding controversy.

JESUS said that the world would know that we are HIS disciples by our “love for one another.” i figure the best example of this love is how we treat each other when we strongly disagree with each other.

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youth ministry forum

the youth ministry forum has kind of crashed – i say kind of crashed because something has happened to the “index.php” file which is what displays when you go to the site. everything else works fine – you can actually still post on the forum you just can’t see the main page. i’ve got to find an older copy of the index.php file and then update it a little. this will probably be done between now and thursday. so for the inconvenience. i’m not real sure why the one file would be injured and the others seem to be okay.

NEWSFLASH – it’s back up now. i’m not really sure why it was down in the first place. yet for now it is working again. i may have to talk with ipowerweb (the company that is hosting the parkview youth ministry website. i’ve been having problems with the stats for awhile (sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t) and now this. i don’t think we were hacked. instead it looks like a few files were messed up or deleted. i’m not sure but i’m going to play a little closer attention for awhile.

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nothing is for free

awhile back i feel in love with albert’s famous salsa. it’s a salsa that drives me absolutely wild. i can eat the entire quarter jar of salsa in one sitting with a bag of chips. since, i love the product and my mom always taught me that you should tell someone when they do something well, i decided to email jananna foods (the company that makes albert’s famous salsa) and tell them how fine they salsa is. i also figured that the executives at jananna foods would be so impressed by my effort that something good would happen. maybe they would pick me to be their next product salesman. you could see my face on advertisements talking about how albert’s famous salsa was the energy behind everything good that happens in my life. because of albert’s famous salsa my teeth are straighter, my kids get along with me better, and my wife now thinks i’m better looking.

i figured that even if they didn’t offer me a job as their male spokes model i would at least get a few free coupons or something for the effort of tracking down this small regional company and complimenting them on their salsa. that’s the way it’s supposed to happen. you compliment their product and they respond by giving you free stuff and asking you to recommend them to their friends. any free stuff would do – a free hat, a cool salsa t-shirt, or just a case of free salsa. so i’ve been checking my email regularly looking for their response to my email asking for my address so they can ship my free stuff to me.

i received the followinng email today:

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flickr group

chuck e cheese

i’ve set up a flickr group for pictures from those involved within the view. all you have to do is join flickr (which is free for small photo uploads) and then tell me what your username is. i’ll then invite you to be a part of the group – it’s a public group that anyone can view but you have to be invited to join. if you take pictures i would love to have a chance see your pictures and talk about them.

you can view the group by clicking HERE.

i would recommend that if you join flickr and add photos that you add lower resolution photos. you only get ten megs of transfer space a month for the free account and that gets eaten up quickly with print quality photos. we’ll be adding more pictures to the group every now and then.

A SIDE NOTE – i have nine gmail invitations for anyone who is interested. gmail is google’s webmail system that has several advantages over the other free email services. of course, since it is in beta right now in order to get gmail you have to have an invitation from someone who already has it. so if you would like an invitation email me at robert.terrell AT gmail.com.

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sickness, potatoes, and slapping

the terrell family weekend of sickness appears to be over – finally. pam feels better after hibernating for the weekend. the boys seem to be doing better and thus far none of the animals appear to be sick. i think we may have made it through our first winter family cold.

sunday after church i just so happened to have the potato cannon in my truck and after lunch i found out that the austins’ kids had never seen a potato cannon in operation. that was a good enough reason for me to pull it out so we took it out at the church and began firing. i swear that thing shoots further and further every time i use it. it was easily going 400 feet this time.

presently i am at cc’s coffee house waiting for our weekly youth ministry staff meeting. earlier while waiting a former youth minister walked up and started talking to me. this guy always talks TO me and never WITH me. this time he was busy talking about how “it’s all about relationships”. a statement i would agree with. yet, it’s hard to have a relationship or friendship with someone who is so busy talking AT you that they can never talk WITH you.

so i slapped him. that’s right i hauled off and popped him right across the face.

the problem is that this slap merely occurred in my mind. while he continued to rattle off i thought of slapping him and then watching how he would respond. he didn’t seem to mind that i wasn’t really paying attention to what he was saying. or maybe he didn’t notice because he was too busy talking to realize that i was lost in my own world of thought. all i know is that imagining to slap him sure did make his diatribe go by quickly.