Archive for July, 2009

Sermon: Living Beyond Yourself

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

I just finished up 9 straight days of class, 8+ hours a day. While it was very intense and time consuming it was a great experience, though one i don’t think I will need to repeat. I took my first Old Testament course (OT501) on Genesis – Ruth, and then immediately rolled into my Preaching Practicum.

There is still work to be done for each course: papers and exams for OT501 and a sermon to write and deliver for preaching. But I thought it was worth celebrating regardless. Below is the sermon I gave at Woodridge Church on Sunday evening to part of their exchange service (thanks to those of you that made it out!).

http://www.vimeo.com/5710979

There had been some very sizable changes from the way the sermon was delivered the day before in class. Even so, I don’t believe the audiance was any wiser for it, or that it really hurt my illustrations/approach. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Thoughts on Post-Modernism from Erwin McManus

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Erwin_McManusFound a talk given by Erwin McManus through iTunes. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Erwin leads Mosaic church out in LA.

‘The reason I can take you through this time is not because I’ve studied this theoretically, not because I’ve read a thousand books, or not because I’ve written one. But because I spend my life immersed with people I love. And that the journey we’ve taught people to go on doesn’t work for them.”

“I’ve been noticing that across universities that whenever you have God verses Atheism, or Creation verse Evolution debate people move further from God, not closer. Christians feel more affirmed and more confident they are right and they loose their effect and impact on their university. But we don’t care about that, we just want to win. I’ve also noticed that we fill the room with all the wrong people. We fill the room with everyone who wants to win too. And what’s funny is that the Christians in the room and the atheists in the room are the same. The both just want to win.”

“‘I heard the voice of God for the first time and the only way I can describe it is like falling in love for the first time.’ I was driving down the 210 to a meeting when I was reading this email and I began to weep, it was overwhelming to me. How many of you would describe hearing the voice of God like that? If you want to reach post-moderns you need to be a deeply spiritual person. It has to be a natural and organic part of your being.”

There was more but stopped feeling like transcribing it out. I am so encouraged by him.

Designs for nineteen05

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Some of you may or may not know that I started a software development company in January 2008. It has been a long 18 months so far of development, redevelopment, and working very closely with the amazing people over at Substance Church.

Well this summer is our official launch of our company by making ourselves known to the Church world. Our main presence for the time being is going to be at conferences around the Midwest and hopefully by early 2010 we will be branching out into other regions of the country.

To go to conferences we need a booth to have set up. So far we’ve gotten in some of the physical objects for the booth (2 x 24″ HD dell displays!) but we need to get stuff out to the printers if we’re going to have it back in time. Below are the two big print items for the space in their final forms.

The first is the backdrop for our booth space. It is 10′ wide by 8′ tall. You can imagine there being a two foot wide table running into it on each side. It’ll look really professional.  I can’t actually remember the time I designed something that got sent out to a printer (we’re using EPS-Doublet because I always had a good experience with them from my MidwestSkier days). With that said, I am very pleased how it turned out (logo design by ned wright @ space150).

The latter is a pop-up sign that will sit next to each of the displays inviting people to come and play with the software. I really enjoyed how clean and simple each of them turned out to be. Now to sit down and design our hand outs… (Images after the jump)

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