a pastor in Austin
From the monthly archives:
The world has a new blogger!
I met Gary Hansen last year when he was doing an internship at a church in Phoenix, and we were able to get together for lunch several times. He’s a good lad, and someone that I have thought for sometime should be blogging. Now he is.
Gary made his first [...]
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Been busy with a research paper and preparation for the looming church launch. It took a little while to get back in the flow of writing a research paper, but if nothing else, I think I at least got it formatted correctly. Here’s a copy of my paper in case my mommy visits and wants [...]
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A few weeks ago in our Bible study, I was talking about how those who follow Jesus should relate to those who don’t. A couple of times I used the phrase “those people”. What an awful way to describe fellow human beings, and thankfully I caught on to what I was saying that night and [...]
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I finished re-reading Mere Discipleship last night, but I had to share one more quote worth mulling over for a while:
When churches pervert the gospel so that it becomes moralistic rule-keeping, shame is often heaped upon those who fail to meet narrow, provincial expectations. Consequently, “church” takes the shape of yet one more perverted principality [...]
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My Father,
I abandon myself to you.
Make of me what you will.
Whatever you make of me,
I thank you.
I am ready for everything
I accept everything.
Provided that your will be done in me,
In all your creatures,
I desire nothing else, Lord.
I put my soul in your hands,
I give it to you, Lord,
With all the love in my heart,
Because I [...]
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Justin Baeder has rolled out a tool for reading scripture that I think is both useful and cool. It’s call RSVP, which stands for Rapid Serial Visual Presentation. It allows you to read a passage of Scripture one word at a time at whatever speed you select.
You can try it yourself here.
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Barnes & Noble is hosting an online book club for Velvet Elvis. The book club will ‘meet’ in October, and will be facilitated by Rob Bell himself, as well as another instructor. How much do I love the internet?
On a related note, Mike DeVries is is talking about the release of Noomas 12 and 13 [...]
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I spent the last few months working through a workbook called The Artist’s Way that was recommended to me months ago by a friend. While the book itself was interesting, the most beneficial thing for me was the challenge to do three pages of free writing every morning called the morning pages. They aren’t intended [...]
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Last February, Adam Cleaveland posted an entry about his visit to North Point Community Church last February. Lot of discussion followed on the evils or merits of megachurches…most of which I haven’t bothered to read. However, the discussion really picked up in the last few weeks as Andy Stanley (North Point’s pastor), and now Tim [...]
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The explosion of the blog world in the last year has led to countless quality blogs being started, but sometimes it is hard to find them amongst all the other blog muck. Because there are so many quality blogs out there, I though I would try to start a meme to send some eyeballs toward [...]
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Good work again from Apple. I’d still rather have the space my 30gb offers, but this seems like a great product.
The iTunes phone, on the other hand, just doesn’t seem that useful to me. The more complex portable gadgets get, the less functional they become. Give me the simple interface of an audio playing ipod [...]
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A good friend of mine sent me the following question in an email. Because it continues some of the thinking from an earlier post called now before next, I got his permission to post his question and my response here.
I’ve been reading and thinking over some things and have been wondering. When Jesus talks [...]
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If you are a Seinfeld fan, then surely you remember the episode with the cashier. She had the southern accent and would leave long messages on George and Jerry’s answering machines where she would just ramble about nothing. They hated the messages, yet felt strangely compelled to listen.
That pretty much sums up my feelings about [...]
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This is my daughter Macey. She is quite a character, and it makes me so proud.
Tonight, I was cuddling with our newborn daughter Ellie on the couch and explaining to her how much we love her. Macey was curled up next to us so I asked Macey to explain to Ellie how much she loves [...]
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Pathways Church took our first official offering last night and I’m pretty excited about it. Not a dime of it is going to Pathways. Instead, it is all going to hurricane relief. Seems to me to be a good way to remind us that we exist to serve the world, not ourselves.
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