Thoughts on Post-Modernism from Erwin McManus

Found 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

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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I Don't Like Ladybugs

This has to be one of the most awesome notes that my wife has left for me yet.

For the record, I have been awake for nearly 6 hours and haven’t seen the lady bug yet. Must be an extra sneaky one.

Latitude and Longitude Decimal values

Kind of a geeky post, but I just spent some time trying to figure out what the max number of decimal values a Latitude or Longitude value can have for the sake of storing information in a database.

Here is what I found. Most places I found decimal values for Lat/Long only used up to 8 decimal places (depending on rounding), yet the most I found was 16 values to the right of the decimal place.

For those out there using mySQL and wanting to store these values I’m using the type: decimal(20,16) and while it will be overkill for some values, it should accommodate the extreme circumstances that arise.

Screaming on water slides

It has come to my attented after being at Wisconsin Dells the beginning of last week that not everyone shrills and screams on water slides. While I see this as tragic, I also don’t believe that my doing so affects my masculinity in the slightest bit.

Scream away my friends, scream away. If the life guards laugh it is only because they are jealous of your fun.

Blackberry Update!

Got a text message this morning from T-Mobile letting me know that there is an update for my Curve. Turns out that I can now record video on my phone, which is awesome since it has the camera which would allow for it anyway (and a media manager that has had a place for my recorded videos). To bad i need to purchase a micro SD card to utilize the video function.

It is also supposedly going to help improve UMA performance (which allows me to place calls over a wireless network). Hopefully this means when I switch from their network onto my wifi my calls won’t get dropped.

Well back to  programing.

What happened to two thirds of the Church?

Earlier this week Dr. Philip Jenkins came and spoke to a number of faculty and students at Bethel Seminary on the subject matter of several of his books (most recently ‘The Lost History of Christianity‘). It was very eye opening. His focus has primarily been the eastern and African church during the millennium of the church. Here is a brief except from an interview with him discussing the eastern church.

Also, this Eastern world has a solid claim to be the direct lineal heir of the earliest New Testament Christianity. Throughout their history, the Eastern churches used Syriac, which is close to Jesus’s own language of Aramaic, and they followed Yeshua, not Jesus. Everything about these churches runs so contrary to what we think we know. They are too ancient, in the sense of looking like the original Jerusalem church; and they are too modern, in being so globalized and multi-cultural.

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Checking my Podcast Playlist

There are thousands out there, so which ones have my ears (and some my eyes)? More importantly this will serve as a reminder to me if my G4 tower, holding all my subscriptions, crashes.

My top three podcasts are:

1. Internet Business Mastery
2. Ted Talks
3. Armada Skis

The full list of podcasts I listen to on a regular basis, alphabetically.

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Optimizing our App while moving

It has been a bit of a crazy last two weeks. Aside from moving into a new unit (now on the top floor with a great view, and almost no noise!), I’ve been working my butt off on stuff for nineteen05. It’s so excited to see how far everything has come in the past year. It is almost unbelievable.

I was trying to remember back when I was first integrating the podcast  features and it seems so long ago that I just assume that it was and has always been there. Finally to the last two major pieces of development, as it was laid out in January 2008. The thought of having all the initial development completed is astounding to me.

We can hardly wait to drop this who app on the church community as a whole. The first major introduction is coming in march with Substance Church. I’d say more but I figure making you wait is just as much fun.

Well I must be going. Have to finish putting everything away before my wife gets back from spending time with a friend. Will try to post a new photo of our view soon.

Sermon: The Unexpected Journey

This last Thursday I had the opportunity to speak at the first weekly meeting of UW – Stouts’ Campus Crusade. It was a lot of fun to get back to Stout and see a bunch of familiar faces, and even more new faces. With everything that has been going on there, I was overwhelmed to see 171 students pack out the lecture hall they were meeting in.

The message I gave was an adaptation of one that i prepared for a preaching competition over at Bethel Seminary. So it was the second time giving the message, and much improved over the first time. If you have a half hour check it out, and please leave me your thoughts and feedback!

Be blessed!