Pass Me Not

Watch this video and tell me if you notice anything different between the choir and congregation of your church and this one.

Good stuff!

Quite Impressive!

Only way this would have been cooler is if Evelien Lohbeck had used a MAC

Check out more of her work here!

Are You Embarrassed?

** Give it a second to load, video in 3 parts, worth the wait! **

Take a few minutes and listen to Francis Chan as he discusses the theme of community with the members of Cornerstone Church.

The Purpose Of The Church – Part 1

*** y’all, or you all, is usually used in the southern U.S. to refer to more than one person. Although, as Francis points out, sometimes it’s also used in place of the second person singular pronoun ‘you’. ***

He references 1 Peter 2:9:

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” ESV

He claims that no one runs around and says, “Look, I’m a Nation!”

The Purpose Of The Church – Part 2

Some interesting quotes from Part 2:

“I wanted you on my team“
“You can’t display God by yourself”
“We have a goal, we have a purpose”

The Purpose Of The Church – Part 3

He references Deuteronomy 4: 6,7 in Part 3:

“Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?” ESV

As well as 1 Corinthians 12: 27:

“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” ESV

Read this quote slowly:

“He wants us to declare HIM, not just by talking; but the world is going to start seeing us by the way we interact as families, as families together in communities and then we get together here as a church on Sundays and we together declare HIS excellencies as a body. This is God’s desire.”

If you didn’t pay attention you might have missed the transition from Family first, then to Community and finally the larger Church. Is this significant? Do you agree? Let me hear your thoughts?

I Wish I Could Describe HIM To You

I wonder, do you know HIM?

Calvindrier 2009

This is for all you “Nouveau Calvinists” I was destined to find this calendar today which commemorates the 500e anniversaire de la naissance de Jean Calvin. For all you french readers, check out this link. As I run across some more information I will post it. What kind of memorabilia have you found?

An Explanation For All My Facebook Friends :)

So I thought I would provide a quick explanation to all my Facebook friends who might not be able to understand my constantly changing status What you may or may not know is that most of my status changes come from my Twitter account and I am not actually logged into Facebook when you receive my status update. In fact, I am usually updating Twitter from my iPhone as I wait for an appointment or am riding the metro.

Twitter is, or was, a lot different than Facebook. That was until recently. Most of us Twitter users attribute the latest Facebook changes to them trying to emulate Twitter. Anyway, for me, Facebook has been a way to find old friends and catch up. Twitter, on the other hand, has been about making new friends and having dialogs about common interests. It is easier to learn a little bit about someone on Twitter before you decide to follow their ‘Tweets’. A feature that I feel is missing on Facebook. There you often need a little more info in order to discern whether that is the ‘John Smith’ that you actually went to high school with.

Many are confused as to what Twitter actually is. To be honest, so was I three months ago. The best way I know how to describe it is a big open pool of thousands of constantly flowing text messages. Now you can sit and read all those Tweets (140 character messages) but I would personally go crazy. What most people do is pick the people that you want to ‘Follow’ and only read those messages. It is real easy to ‘follow’ and ‘unfollow’ as you weed through those you want to interact with.

The main issue I wanted to clarify is why the Facebook status updates look the way they do when they come from Twitter users. What you actually see is what is called a ‘Tweet’ by Twitter users. I know, I know, I didn’t make up these names. They have a bird on their logo. Because they are limited to 140 characters, Twitter users have come up with a code of their own. Some, to be honest, are hard to decipher. Here are a few clues to help you out:

RT stands for ‘retweet’. This is like forwarding a message that you find interesting, funny, etc. to your set of friends. Another way this is done is by using ‘via’ and that tells you who sent the message first.

# is used to denote a hashtag. This is a way to enable you to search for tweets related to a certain subject like #coffee. By putting #coffee in the twitter search engine you can see what a lot of people are sharing on the subject.

@ is another symbol that you will see often. It is placed behind someones user name, like @Crosscultural (which is me), to reply to some comment that they just made. It also makes it easier to see who is sharing your comments with others.

The last thing I wanted to mention is why certain links look funny or suspicious. This is because of the 140 character limit set for each tweet. There are now many ways to shorten the length to the link you want to share.

More than you wanted to know, I am sure Much longer post than I meant it to be. Hopefully this helps you understand why my status updates look so weird. Let me know if you have any questions.

The Value Of Family

Oh, it is so time for some men to be men and pick up that ball that was dropped!

As I look at my daughter, and think about her future, I fear there will be no young men who have been raised to be real men! I also feel the burden of equipping my son, who is 18 months behind her, to be a Godly man and husband for someone else’s daughter. Gentlemen, it is time to break this disastrous cycle and put “The Value Of Family” back in its proper place. Who is with me?

Are You A Manager Or A Leader?

In the past, I never really thought there needed to be a big distinction between a leader and a manager. I had always held to the idea that a manager could and/or should still lead. That was, until I started reading the book “Tribes” by Seth Godin. He lays out the difference between the two on page 14, where he says:

Managers manage by using the authority the factory gives them. You listen to your manager or you lose your job. A manager can’t make change because that’s not his job. His job is to complete tasks assigned to him by someone else in the factory.

Leaders, on the other hand, don’t care very much for organizational structure or the official blessing of whatever factory they work for. They use passion and ideas to lead people, as opposed to using threats and bureaucracy to manage them.

This tension may be hard for many to understand unless they are a leader stuck in a manager’s job or a manager stuck in a leader’s job. Both are equally important, which is why it is so critical to have the right person in the right role. If not, then they will only be frustrated and frustrating to those they work with.

So, here are my questions. Do you have a passion for something other than what you find yourself actually doing day in and day out? Do you find yourself fulfilled at work or wish you were doing something different? Do you see a pattern in the types of books you buy or in the subject matter of articles you read and do they line up with your current profession? What subject really makes you scoot to the edge of your seat with excitement when discussing it?

Au Coeur De La Rue

By Whose Authority?

Whether we are willing to admit it of not, we all submit to authority one way or another. It may be a parent, a spouse, a boss at work, the local police officer or some government official for example. My question is do we truly appreciate or even understand authority?

One definition of authority from the Compact Oxford English Dictionary is:

authority
• noun (pl. authorities) 1 the power or right to give orders and enforce obedience. 2 a person or organization having official power. 3 recognized knowledge or expertise. 4 an authoritative person or book.

— ORIGIN Old French autorite, from Latin auctor ‘originator’.

I am still moving slowly through the book of Matthew and seeing unanticipated examples of authority. Right now I am contemplating chapter 8 verses 28 through 34:

Jesus Heals Two Men with Demons
“28 And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. 29 And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” 30 Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them. 31 And the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.” 32 And he said to them, “Go.” So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. 33 The herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon-possessed men. 34 And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region.” ESV

One word really stands out to me and, if you reference a red letter edition there would only be one of that color in the passage above. All Jesus said was “GO” and part of me feels that the only reason He uttered that one word was for our benefit. Reflect on that and ask yourself if you truly understand the authority of Jesus. Be careful how you answer because there is another GO at the end of the same book