Category: Resources & Reviews

I final­ly got my upgrade copy of Medi­aShout in the mail yes­ter­day.

Wow.

This release fix­es every­thing I’ve ever dis­liked about Medi­aShout and adds tons of new fea­tures I’d nev­er con­sid­ered.

The three best upgrades:
* You can play just a spe­cif­ic, cus­tom clip from a DVD. So you just want to play from 1.54.36 to 1.57.12? Done.
* All songs now have per­ma­nent for­mat­ting stored in the data­base. No need to refor­mat every stink­ing time you use the song!
* You can edit text cues direct­ly from with­in the program–no more ran­dom RTF files lying about.

Also, it looks like they’re try­ing to break into the VJ market–the new ver­sion includes bet­ter sup­port for mix­ing video feeds on the fly. Still, it just does­n’t com­pare to Arkaos in that depart­ment.

The one thing I real­ly wish they had done was include the Greek & Hebrew Bibles (they include the Latin Vulgate–why not the orig­i­nal text?).

Over­all, I’m thrilled.

I lis­ten to MP3s when I bike to cam­pus. Not music, as I real­ly don’t like music all that much; rather, I soak up lecture/seminar/sermonic stuff. I get a lot of them from Dis­ci­ple­ship Library and I’ve recent­ly start­ed down­load­ing some from IT Con­ver­sa­tions.

Any­way, I recent­ly lis­tened to Ben Saun­ders’ amaz­ing sto­ry. He made a solo expe­di­tion to the North Pole and real­ly knows how to spin the tale. I was agog. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

Peri­od­i­cal­ly I get a chance to sit in a live stu­dio audi­ence for a CCN broad­cast. I’ve seen Doug Fields, George Bar­na, Lar­ry Osborne, Hen­ry Cloud, etc. The best part is I can bring stu­dents and expose them to some of these lead­ers.

Any­way, I was par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed about the recent Wor­ship In The Emerg­ing Church sem­i­nar with Dan Kim­ball (he blogs!) and Sal­ly Mor­gen­thaler. If you’re going to hear two folks talk about this sub­ject it’s hard to pick a bet­ter team. You can get the notes in PDF (although there are blanks).

Some thoughts I had:

• As I sus­pect­ed, col­lege min­istry real­ly is a behind-the-scenes dri­ver for a lot of the “emerg­ing church” “post­mod­ern church” stuff. Dan launched the pre­cur­sor to his cur­rent church as a col­lege min­istry. All the staff at Cur­tis’ church (includ­ing Cur­tis) are for­mer col­lege min­is­ters.
• Dan men­tioned that he had done a sur­vey and 98% of UC San­ta Cruz stu­dents were not part of either a church or a cam­pus min­istry. Hur­ry up, Bri­an & Cecilee!
• Cur­tis Chang was also there as an audi­ence mem­ber. He wrote a book on method­ol­o­gy in apolo­get­ics (Engag­ing Unbe­lief) which I real­ly like. He also pas­tors an uber-cool church in near­by San Jose. I asked what he’s been read­ing late­ly and he said Moun­tains Beyond Moun­tains and that it had real­ly stretched his vision. I’d nev­er heard of the book, which just shows I real­ly do know less than oth­er peo­ple think I do.
• The weak­est point in the sem­i­nar was a for­ay into the realms of mul­ti­ple learn­ing styles. I find the con­cept as it is usu­al­ly expressed pret­ty bogus. I’m not sure the church should be tak­ing its lead from Amer­i­ca’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem and the the­o­ries that under­lie it. Let me rephrase that. I’m sure the church should not be tak­ing its lead from Amer­i­ca’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem. My apolo­gies to all the edu­ca­tion­al the­o­rists in Chi Alpha who will now regard me as an ene­my.
• Resources that were rec­om­mend­ed:
  • Ancient-Future Faith by Robert Weber
  • The essay Anti-Excel­lence. I will very delib­er­ate­ly NOT email this to all the peo­ple who gath­ered with me in Salt Lake City and mocked my stance against excel­lence as a core val­ue… (Sal­ly men­tioned that this and oth­er great resources were also on the Frac­tals DVD)
  • Wor­ship in the Ear­ly Church by Ralph Mar­tin.
  • TheAmericanChurch.org
  • The Mil­len­ni­um Matrix by Rex Miller
  • The Rise of the Cre­ative Class, by Richard Flori­da (I’ve heard this one rec­om­mend­ed by a lot of peo­ple).
  • When Church Became The­atre, by Jeanne Kilde (this one sound­ed excep­tion­al­ly inter­est­ing)
  • Calla­han Stu­dios (evi­dent­ly very cool church archi­tects)
  • Alter­na­tive Wor­ship by John­ny Bak­er (he blogs!)
  • Mul­ti-sen­so­ry Prayer by Sue Wal­lace
  • alternativeworship.org (Dan: “They do some crazy stuff in Europe that I would­n’t try in San­ta Cruz.”)
  • Spaces for Spir­it by Nan­cy Chinn
  • Angel House Media (videos for church­es)
• In clos­ing, I’d nev­er seen Dan before this but I’d heard peo­ple rip on his hair. I like his hair. It suits his nose. He also plays with his wed­ding ring a lot, which I do myself.

There’s an arti­cle on cam­pus min­istry up on Reli­gion Jour­nal right now: Cam­pus Min­istries Look for New Meth­ods to Reach Amer­i­ca’s Sec­u­lar Gen­er­a­tion.

Noth­ing real­ly new, but a pret­ty decent overview of today’s stu­dents.

• free evil bong

The Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty In High­er Edu­ca­tion project has released a new report for the 2004–2005 school year.

Some high­lights (and my thoughts):

80% of col­lege stu­dents attend­ed a reli­gious ser­vice with­in the last year.
MY THOUGHT: if they’re not com­ing back to the church it’s not out of ignorance–they don’t like what they see.

50% of stu­dents are “seek­ing” “con­flict­ed” or “doubt­ing” when it comes to their faith.
MY THOUGHT: that’s half my audience–is my min­istry struc­tured accord­ing­ly?

26% of fresh­men con­sid­er them­selves born again.
MY THOUGHT: they don’t know what that phrase means 😉

There’s a very read­able arti­cle, Reli­gios­i­ty Ris­ing On Cam­pus, that cov­ers the same data as in the offi­cial report.

I just read Upon This Rock, an absolute­ly phe­nom­e­nal arti­cle by an ex-Chris­t­ian who goes to a Chris­t­ian music fes­ti­val and writes about it for GQ.

If you are a col­lege or youth pas­tor you real­ly need to read the arti­cle in its entire­ty. I mean it–all the way to the end.

(thanks to GetRe­li­gion for draw­ing my atten­tion to this)

Earl Creps just sent me a link to the arti­cle Revi­tal­iz­ing Reli­gion In The Acad­e­my. Pret­ty bor­ing unless you’re think­ing about the role of reli­gion in uni­ver­si­ty set­tings (but inter­est­ing if you are).

Any­way, one stat leapt out at me: Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ report­ed a 73% increase in stu­dent atten­dance between the 95–96 school year and the 98–99 school year.

There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on the run­away hit CollegeHumor.com at the New York­er: Fun­ny Boys.

Two pas­sages that struck me:

A key to col­lege humor, the four have real­ized, is that stu­dents like to think they belong to a small in-crowd that under­stands the joke, while the pub­lic at large remains clue­less. Take the phrase “More Cow­bell,” which is a slo­gan appear­ing on one of the most pop­u­lar of the company’s Bust­ed Tees; it comes from an instruc­tion giv­en in a skit on “Sat­ur­day Night Live.” “Not every­one saw that episode, so the peo­ple who did see it think it is that much cool­er because nobody else knows,” Josh said.

and

Josh, of CollegeHumor.com, is hap­py to point out that his site has sur­passed The Onion in traf­fic, “though I can’t say we are bet­ter.” There is a cru­cial dif­fer­ence in con­tent between The Onion and CollegeHumor.com: while the suc­cess of the for­mer depends on the wit of its writ­ers, the appeal of the lat­ter is clos­er to that of “America’s Fun­ni­est Home Videos.” CollegeHumor.com offers found humor of the sort pio­neered by, among oth­ers, Steve Allen and David Let­ter­man. Yet CollegeHumor.com isn’t the expres­sion of a gov­ern­ing com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty deter­mined to enter­tain an audi­ence with, say, Stu­pid Pet Tricks; rather, the audi­ence decides what is fun­ny, and enter­tains itself. CollegeHumor.com doesn’t just cater to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor; it’s cooked and served by the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, too.

I just fin­ished read­ing The Best Ques­tion Ever by Andy Stan­ley in prepa­ra­tion for a mes­sage tomor­row night. The book is quite good.

In case you’re curi­ous, the ques­tion in ques­tion is sim­ply this: What is the wise thing to do?

I’ve receive yet anoth­er ship­ment from Rel­e­vant Net­work. I keep telling peo­ple it’s one of the best val­ues I’ve ever seen in min­istry.

Here’s what I got in this mon­th’s kit (slight­ly delayed due to Flori­da hur­ri­canes).

Books:

1. Blue Like Jazz, by Don­ald Miller ( Dick Staub inter­view)
2. Face­down, by Matt Red­man
3. The Rel­e­vant Church, edit­ed by Jen­nifer Ash­ley (came with study guide)
4. God’s Relent­less Pur­suit, by Phil Strout
5. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Com­mu­ni­ca­tor, by Jedd Medefind and Erik Lokkesmoe

DVDs

1. High­way Video Vol­ume 9
2. Ignit­er Video’s Togeth­er Team Hoyt

CDs

1. Plan­et­shak­ers: My King
2. Water­mark: The Purest Place
3. Shawn McDon­ald: Sim­ply Noth­ing
4. Derek Webb: The House Show
5. Jami Smith: Wash Over Me

Plus I got the usu­al five issues of Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine and the Rel­e­vant Leader mag­a­zinelet.

Not too shab­by.