theophile | bibliophile | technophile
Even though he is a brand new daddy, my good friend Justin is finding the time to coordinate a donation of $2 million worth of water purifiers to a mission in Africa. To help make it happen, he and some other friends are trying to raise $8000 in shipping costs. (I know Justin and others involved in this, so I have no doubt that their intentions are legit.)
If you’d like more information or you are interested in helping out, visit this information page.
(Hmm…there wasn’t supposed to be a week of silence between these two posts. Life happens I guess.)
As promised (or threatened), here are a list of utilities that, at this point, I couldn’t live without. I consider these utilities because either they are running in the background and I don’t interact with them directly, or they are handy little programs that I only need to run from time to time for Mac maintenance. Again, these are roughly in order of how useful they are to me.
For those who are anticipating the next Explosions in the Sky with me, give a listen to You Are the Conductor by Caspian. [iTunes | Amazon] Should tide you over nicely.
My friend, Steve Carter, sent out the following email this morning. Please read it and help spread the word. If you have any questions or comments for Steve, leave a comment here and I’ll be sure he sees it.
Friends,
About 2 years ago, I met a young man (now a 9th grader) named Zach Hunter who was pioneering an effort to abolish modern day slavery. Over these past couple of years, I have been deeply moved by how God is using him and the message of freedom and justice to inspire a new generation of leaders.
We have a great opportunity. This February is the 200 year anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the UK. In conjunction with the anniversary a new feature film called “Amazing Grace” is being launched. This tells the story of William Wilberforce, the young British Parliamentarian who fought the slave trade and won. “The Amazing Change” is a social justice movement spearheaded by the film company to try to do some good with this amazing story. Zach is the global spokesperson for the campaign.
Zach told me that his dream for his generation is that they would be written about in history books for being the ones who changed the world by serving the poor and oppressed and finally abolishing the sale of humans. He also believes that through this service, students will grow closer to God.
I want Zach’s dream to come true. Will you help?
Let’s take the next 23 days and start something. Zach launched a loose change drive called Loose Change to Loosen Chains. Let’s push to see what kind of insane amount of change our students can gather to free slaves through this campaign. Then, let’s go out in mass with our students on opening night of the film (Friday, February 23) or sometime in the coming weeks and see the film, hold a prayer vigil for victims of oppression and have the world ask “What’s going on with this generation?!
Thanks for hanging in there with this long message.
Steve Carter
Mars Hill Bible Church
Junior High Teaching Pastor
Check out www.TheAmazingChange.com
02.20.07
There have been a splattering of quotes on other blogs, but for those who haven’t read it, the Christianity Today has a worthwhile interview with NT Wright called Mere Mission.
In the his answer to the first question, he states why I’ve grown to appreciate his work so much:
Because I’ve done all that historical work, my view of the gospel and how it works out in the real world has been deepened and enriched in all kinds of ways that I would never have guessed 25 years ago when I was starting out writing about Jesus. So in Simply Christian there’s a lot about justice, what it means to be human in the mandate to work, the putting to rights of God’s world, generating beauty, alleviating poverty, working with ecology. Thirty years ago I would have said those were secondary issues.
Wright hasn’t just been sitting in the proverbial ivory tower for the last several decades, he’s been climbing higher and higher within it. Yet even as he has done so, he has labored to make the working out of his theology more meaningful and more accessible. He understands that theology isn’t important because of the knowledge that we gain from it, but because that knowledge really matters — we have to do something with it.
Read the rest of the article…it’s worth the time. And figure out what to do with it.
I’ve decided to close up shop on inbreaking.com. The site wasn’t getting used other than a few posts here and there, and it was starting to attract spammers. Rather than try to wage a battle that was sure to grow, I just shut it down.
For now, I have redirected the inbreaking.com domain to this blog.
If you are a Mac user, check out MacHeist. They are selling a bundle of Mac software worth over $200 for only $49, and $10 from every purchase goes to whatever charity you designate. As more money is raised, a few more apps will become available.
Personally, I was excited just because I was already considering Delicious Library and its part of this package. Props to the software developers for making their software available for a worthwhile cause.
The deal expires at the end of this week, so get while the getting is good.
I’m at the Revolution Conference this weekend. I’ll probably try to share a few notes here and there, but right now, I’m sitting next to Justin Baeder who is typing feverishly, so go visit his blog. 
Note: Bob Hyatt is also blogging more extensively than I am.
While meandering through iTunes tonight, I disovered that Rob Bell and Mars Hill actually have an official podcast up and running. There is even a link at the bottom of their sermon download page. Who knew? Is this some kind of grand conspiracy that has been hidden from me for all this time?
With some iTunes GiftCards in hand, I went on the hunt for some new music. I ran across Silversun Pickups and I’m hooked. I got Carnavas, and I’m giving it some time to settle in before I go get their EP as well. If you have good taste in music, give them a listen.
Twice a week, in our team meetings, we break open OneNote and have a shared session. We can all type on the same document and watch it update in realtime, so it is a great way to share and track our throughts.
A few months ago, I searched for an online service that would do something similar, but it just wasn’t there yet. The online word processors I looked into would alow collaboration, but not in realtime — until today. I just spent a few minutes playing with the new Google Docs. It doesn’t update the document instantly as OneNote does, but it can keep up well in a meeting where there is not continuous editing of the document by multiple parties. However, unlike OneNote, we can all continue to go online and add ideas to the document for others to see after the meeting is over. Not to mention it can work on both Windows and Mac (although not on Safari).
Again, Google rolls out a great tool and integrates it in all else they offer with a clean UI. I’m certain I’ll be pestering my mates to try this in a new meeting very soon.
Let me tell you about my good friends, Josh and Josh. They have time — too much apparently. They gladly fill my inbox with all of those links that waste time and kill braincells. Being that I am a giver — and that I don’t like crap in my inbox — I created a blog to help them take their crap to a larger audience. So, let me introduce you to CrapRUs.com.
Feel free to pay them a visit, but if you do, please wash your hands afterward. If regular visits occur over a 72 hour period, please discontinue use immediately and consult a physician.
Conrad Gempf emailed me to let me know that, with Zondervan’s permission, he is making Jesus Asked available for free in the form of a audio book/podcast. I’m subscribing.
I’ve said it before, but I appreciate Conrad’s writing, because he brings his scholarly study of Jesus to us in a package that is readable by all. I’ve also recommended this book many times to others in different trainings I’ve done for those who lead in small groups or other discussion settings because of the insights Conrad gives about Jesus’ conversational style.
My (somewhat ir)regular summary of links added at inbreaking.com:
If you like a link, please vote on it…that’s what makes social bookmarking happen. Note…this only includes links I post…there has been more activity by others posting links of late too. You can find more information about inbreaking.com here.
