the church geek

1.) I enjoyed Scot McKnight’s review of a book called “Sin Boldly” and have added it to my read list.

2.) I’m still trying to figure out how to organize my electronic life, especially stuff I uncover on the Web. Jake Bouma explains how he uses Evernote to organize his ministry. I’m hoping to implement a few of his ideas…if I ever have time…

3.) If you’re Presbyterian you can play along with this meme. I’m planning on doing it soon, so look for some answers here.

4.) Speaking of Presbyterians, the Presbyterian Bloggers website is trying to reinvent itself. Check it out and see how you can contribute.

5.) Here is the photo of the week.

ShareThis

Tomorrow I will be driving up to Buffalo, MN for a COM/CPM conference sponsored by our Synod. I will be up there through Thursday morning, so I’ll be taking a break from my new schedule of postings. See you back here on Friday with a picture for Photo Friday!

ShareThis

I’ve been pondering establishing a weekly schedule of some regular features to create some regularity on this blog. Right now this is my thought:

1.) Meaty Monday - I can’t keep up with the quality and quantity of reflection of one of my favorite power bloggers, Tribal Church, but I want to provide some significant reflection at least once a week on a particular issue I’ve been thinking or reading about.

2.) Wednesday Weekly Roundup - I started this feature a few weeks ago. This is a chance for me to share with you some of the interesting things I’ve run across on the web. This is meant to be both a little serious and a little fun.

3.) Photo Friday - I’ve been going through a bit of withdrawal since I wrapped up Project 365. So to keep the camera clicking, I’m committing myself to posting something here once a week.

Of course I will continue with movie briefs, book reviews, sermons, and other reflections as things come across my mind, but for now this is the sort of regular schedule I hope to keep up with here at the church geek.

ShareThis

Interesting…I’ve been watching my stats this week and have noticed a strong correlation between Epiphany which is this coming Sunday and the number of hits this week for last year’s sermon on the Magi.

Welcome to all of you who are visiting here for the first time, hope you enjoy what you read and that you find some inspiration for your task of preaching the Word on Sunday.

ShareThis

Now that I’m eight days from completing Project 365, my effort to take and photograph a picture a day, I’m asking what is next?

First, I’m in the process of compiling a book that provides some highlights of my project. Right now it numbers 20 pages. There is no way I can reasonably put together a book that shows all 365 photos, and I’m sure no one would care to see it! Instead I’m trying to capture the essence of the project, provide some observations and highlights, and show off some of my favorite photos from the year. Right now I think it will be about a 30 page soft-cover book, about 8X10 in size, and will cost about $20 to print. If you want one, let me know.

Second, I’m not giving up photography! But I am giving up committing myself to a photo a day. I hope this means I will be able to concentrate more on quality than on just getting a picture; perhaps taking a larger block of time in a week to work on some sort of photo subject.

Third, in terms of this blog, I’m hoping to concentrate now on more content…a photo a day is a lot of time away from providing quality blog material. I’ll never be prolific like some of the blogs I read, but I can step it up a bit. In terms of photos I think I may add a feature to my blog like “Photo Friday” which is something I’ve seen on other blogs where I will post one of my pictures each Friday.

That’s my thinking for now. Any suggestions? Let me know.

ShareThis

Well, I’ve been tagged by Mark Smith to tell you the “5 Things I Dig About Jesus.” So here it goes:

1.) Jesus is “Immanuel” or “God with Us.” Therefore, I know that no matter what happens to me in this life, Jesus is right there with me because he too shared my lot.

2.) Jesus taught us that the essence of the spiritual life is to “love God and to love others.” That teaching roots my spiritual life in the realities of this world and not just in the heavenly realm.

3.) Jesus enjoyed a good time, a good party, and sharing with people. One of my favorite parables is the extravagance of the wedding at Cana. Jesus often refers to the Kingdom of God as a party.

4.) Jesus spoke in language that most common ordinary folks could understand, something I could stand to work at a little more in my own preaching!

5.) Jesus is not dead, but rose from the grave to bring us new life!

So I guess it’s my turn to tag five folks who I hope will play along:
Dave Winner
Makeesha Fisher
Kairos
Dave Pepper
Brother Tom

ShareThis

Well we finally got the Word Press software updated! As I predicted the famous 5 minute upgrade took me about 24 hours longer!

I have a few theories about why, so I’ll take those into account next time. Anyway, it’s always good to be back and now it’s time to get busy on a new template.

ShareThis

Early on Sunday morning I’ll be driving Lori to the Airport as she’ll be heading down to New Orleans with 20 folks from her church to do recovery work through FPC of NO. How will I spend my time? I have four goals for while she is away:

1.) Update my blog. This will include updating the Word Press software which I’m a little scared to tackle because I somehow managed to crash the site last time I tried to update. I’d also like to install Adam Walker Cleaveland’s cleaker template. One other thing? I’d like to work on updating my book recommendations on the side bar, since I’ve completely neglected that. But then I wonder how many people just get my RSS feed and seldom look at the site?

2.) Select photos for submission to the Iowa State Fair Photo Salon. Over the past month or so I’ve been testing out some of my photos on Flickr in various group forums to see which ones people like best and to get some general critiques of my work. It’s now time for me to get down to business and figure out which ones, if any, are worth submitting to the photo contest at the Iowa State Fair. I don’t imagine I’ll win any prizes, this being my first year of somewhat serious photography, but it sure would be nice to have a few honorable mentions and to see my photos posted during the Fair.

ShareThis

Unspun is the latest rage on the Web. Unspun is a list generator powered by Amazon that lets users generate lists for others to populate. Users can also add and vote on entries for already established lists. Some current lists include things like “Hottest Actresses,” “Best Books,” and “Best Theologians.”

Just for fun I started a list called “Best Blogs by Pastors.” I’ve populated with a seed list of 10 pastor blogs that are my favorite. These are sites I almost always look forward to seeing what these Pastors have to say. In the interest of self-promotion I did include my own blog, but now it’s up to you to expand and reorder the list as you see appropriate….Have fun!

It will be fun to see how my original list changes over time:

A Church for Starving Artists
Real Live Preacher
Nakedpastor
Thechurchgeek
The Bob.Blog
Smart Pastor
Beth Quick
Purple Pastor
Reyes-Chow :: Faith
Odyssey

ShareThis

Today more than usual there are some interesting discussions around the web:

1.) Neil asks, What’s in a missions budget? In our church’s annual report yesterday, I lumped together figures into a report called ‘mission support.’ I did this for a couple of specific reasons. Is it wrong thinking to ask how much of a church’s budget supports ‘missions’?

2.) Are you an introverted blogger? I started blogging primarily because I AM an introvert and it was an easy way for me to express my thoughts and get myself out there. Follow the link through to the primary article.

3.) As a pastor, what day do you take off? I currently take Friday off, but I have a few problems with that practice like sermons and other things that aren’t completed by Thursday evening.

4.) Mainline Emergent(s) Early tomorrow I’m off to Atlanta to the Mainline Emergents conference. Some folks will be live blogging the event. (I’ll try to post a few things too.) Find out who by clicking here.

ShareThis

In case you haven’t noticed, this blog has suffered a bit of life situation imposed silence over the past week or so. Being on the road visiting family and a shortened work week limited my blogging free time. The already short week was compressed even tighter by covering a funeral for another vacationing pastor who high-tailed it out of town. Next week looks no better as we’ll be doing the same thing, heading over to WI for a visit with my family.

Inspired by other posts on the net this week highlighting favorite books of the year, I thought I’d throw in my two cents worth. My reading list was rather short this year, so I’m limiting my list to my three favorite books:

1.) Free of Charge by Miroslav Volf

A former student of Jurgen Moltmann, Volf is one of the finest theological minds out there. Yet, he writes about the faith in a very practical and easily understood manner. In this book, Volf tackles the essence of the Christian faith with an in depth look at its two basic elements of giving and forgiving. While steeped in theological reflection on God’s life in Trinity, Volf brings somewhat abstract concepts to life with splendid illustrations and examples from movies, culture, as well as his personal life.

2.) How (not) to speak of God by Peter Rollins

ShareThis

For those of you who receive my feed via RSS and don’t regularly stop by the website, you may want to check in and see my updated blogroll.

My original intent was to simply drop those blogs I’ve stopped reading or who no longer seem to post regularly, but as I started poking around, I found other blogs that look to be of interest.

Especially note worthy are new blogs in the category Ministry & Technology as well as Presbyterian (most of the Presby ones aren’t new to me, I just hadn’t posted them on my website.)

ShareThis

Much has been written lately about the purpose of keeping a blog. For instance Fernando highlights a plan for his blog for the up-coming year. And Kairos highlights the questions raised by Not Prince Hamlet about his ability to keep pace with the blogging community.

While my blog could probably benefit from some reflection about the purposes behind it, the question I’ve been struggling with lately is a different one: Do I really need to have 91 faith related blogs in my feed reader?

Every morning, I find somewhere between 50 -75 new posts in my feed reader and over the course of a day probably another 20-25 posts come across the wire. Granted I skim through most of them looking for the posts from my favorite bloggers or that cover the subject matters I’m most interested in, but all of this does take up considerable time and effort.

Time I could probably be devoting to other worthwhile tasks. I’ve noticed in the last year, that the amount of time I’ve spent reading books has decreased - I’m willing to bet - somewhat proportionally to the amount of time I’ve spent keeping up with blogs.

And to be brutally honest, I’ve been feeling a little guilty lately about my prayer life; should I really spend an hour catching up on the latest in the blogosphere when I could be using that time to pray for myself, the congregation, and our ministry?

ShareThis

I’m still looking for the perfect Feed Reader. Since I’m cheap, I want it to be free though I might consider paying a nominal price for something that was really, really great.

I’m currently trying out Google Reader, though in the past I’ve used a few of the firefox feed reader plugins, newsgator, and bloglines. Each of them have their nice features, but so far, none of them has been perfect.

Of all the things I’ve tried, the Flock browser with its built-in feed reader worked the best, but I became annoyed with some of the other features of Flock as a whole and with the fact that it didn’t seem like they were making any progress to better their product.

ShareThis

So instead of working on my sermon this morning like I should be, I finally got around to setting up a Flickr account and uploading a few photos. Check out my new Flickr page. I hope to be adding more photos in the next couple of days.

The photos I have currently uploaded are from our Scotland trip to Iona in 2005 and from this summer’s vacation to the north shore of Lake Superior.  Hope you enjoy.

ShareThis