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?