Groovin’

I down­loaded Groove Work­space today to see if it would be use­ful in our minstry train­ing pro­gram.

Will it ever!

I per­suad­ed Antho­ny to down­load it and give it a whirl. This soft­ware is absolute­ly amaz­ing. We were able to talk over the net quite effec­tive­ly and could col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly edit doc­u­ments and do all sorts of oth­er cool stuff. We could eas­i­ly work as a team on ser­mon prepa­ra­tion or con­duct web sem­i­nars or do just about any­thing involv­ing ideas.

Free for per­son­al use (with restric­tions) and afford­able for pro­fes­sion­al use. What a com­bo!

Now I just can’t wait until Groove 3.0 comes out…

Building a Professional Ministry Library On The Cheap

Yes­ter­day I spent 10 hours in a meet­ing dis­cussing train­ing strate­gies for col­lege min­is­ters (most of whom come from sec­u­lar col­leges). While dri­ving back I began think­ing about the chal­lenge a new min­is­ter with­out for­mal train­ing faces in build­ing a pro­fes­sion­al library. Books are expensive–the New Inter­na­tion­al Com­men­tary series on the Old and New Tes­ta­ments retails for near­ly $1,500 (OT, NT)! For some new min­is­ters, build­ing a qual­i­ty library can seem so over­whelm­ing that it’s hard to know where to start.

Inspired by a sim­i­lar exam­ple, I decid­ed to com­pile a sol­id (although basic) min­istry library for under $200 (I failed by eleven cents). I priced the books (used) on Amazon.com on 6/18/2004. Books are list­ed in rough order of impor­tance with­in each cat­e­go­ry.

The Ref­er­ence Col­lec­tion — $102.85

  • NIV Exhaus­tive Con­cor­dance $19.35
  • Sys­tem­at­ic The­ol­o­gy, Mil­lard Erick­son $29.99
  • The IVP Bible Back­ground Com­men­tary — New Tes­ta­ment, Craig Keen­er $13.95
  • Hand­book of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics, Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacel­li $5.99
  • Chrono­log­i­cal and Back­ground Charts of the New Tes­ta­ment, H. Wayne House $10.15
  • Chrono­log­i­cal and Back­ground Charts of the Old Tes­ta­ment, John Wal­ton $9.99
  • Mul­ti­pur­pose Tools for Bible Study, Fred Danker $13.43

The Per­son­al & Pro­fes­sion­al Growth Col­lec­tion — $97.26

  • Devo­tion­al Clas­sics, Fos­ter & Smith $6.65
  • How to Read The Bible For All Its Worth, Fee & Stu­art $1.99
  • Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, C. S. Lewis $4.95
  • The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines, Dal­las Willard $9.60
  • The Chal­lenge of Jesus, N. T. Wright $10.97
  • Prayer, Richard Fos­ter $5.00
  • A Tale of Three Kings, Gene Edwards $3.85
  • The Pur­suit of Holi­ness, Jer­ry Bridges $2.49
  • Exeget­i­cal Fal­lac­i­es – D. A. Car­son $8.99
  • Between Two Worlds, John Stott $9.00
  • The Mas­ter Plan of Evan­ge­lism, Robert Cole­man $0.97
  • The Pur­pose-Dri­ven Church, Rick War­ren $8.00
  • Chris­t­ian Coun­sel­ing, Gary Collins $10.50
  • Solu­tion-Focused Pas­toral Coun­sel­ing, Charles Kol­lar $12.71
  • Take and Read, Eugene Peter­son $1.59

Total Cost: $200.11 (exclud­ing ship­ping & han­dling)

I tried to end each list with a book that would lead to more books, so that this would only be the gen­e­sis of a pro­fes­sion­al library…

I wel­come sug­ges­tions for replace­ment vol­umes. What do you think impor­tant for a novice min­is­ter with lit­tle the­o­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion to read?

He Wrote What?

Antho­ny Sco­ma just told me about a book/author col­li­sion so improb­a­ble that I had to check it out for myself: Pen­te­costal Gifts and Min­istries in a Post­mod­ern Era by James K. Bridges.

Antho­ny assures me that con­trib­u­tors include Mau­rice Led­nicky and Opal Red­din.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “He Wrote What?”

Stanford Rakes It In

I get blown away some­times when I think about how inno­v­a­tive Stan­ford is. I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out which dorm room Google was found­ed in (I bet it’s in Escon­di­do Vil­lage).

Any­way, I start­ed think­ing again about the incred­i­ble tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs at Stan­ford when I read that the Farm raked in $45.4 mil­lion last year from roy­al­ties.

That’s a lot of mon­ey.

Wow. Wow back­wards.

Email Bankruptcy

Stan­ford law prof Lawrence Lessig has declared email bank­rupt­cy.

In a script-dri­ven note sent out last week, Lessig wrote: “Dear per­son who sent me a yet-unan­swered e‑mail, I apol­o­gize, but I am declar­ing e‑mail bank­rupt­cy.”

He went on to note that he had spent 80 hours the pri­or week sort­ing through unan­swered e‑mail built up since Jan­u­ary 2002, and had deter­mined that “with­out extra­or­di­nary effort” he would sim­ply nev­er be able to respond to these mes­sages.

Evi­dent­ly he gets an aver­age of 200 non-spam emails a day. I have to say that makes me feel bet­ter about my own email inad­e­qua­cies. My next three days will be chiefly com­prised of a con­cert­ed effort to whit­tle down my inbox. I start­ed this morn­ing at 387 non-spam, non-newslet­ter emails. I end today at 347. It does­n’t look like much progress, but I had two hour long phone con­ver­sa­tions and a bunch itty-bit­ty ones that kept me from the com­put­er most of today.

My goal for tomor­row is to get my inbox down to 200…

Discipleship By Design fixed

I got the prob­lems with Dis­ci­ple­ship By Design fixed. Now you too can learn from cam­pus min­istry leg­end Har­vey Her­man!

Shrek 2

Pub­lic thanks to Eliz­a­beth Gar­cia (good friend and Stan­ford Chi Alpha alum­nus) for babysit­ting Dana last night so Paula and I could go enjoy an evening out.

We watched Shrek 2, and loved it. It was dou­bly cool, because Hec­tor Yee (a friend of ours) works at Dream­Works and wrote the code that ren­dered the shad­ows cast by the fur on the cat. He’s list­ed in the cred­its.

Any­way, we had a great night. Thanks, Eliz­a­beth!

Why Didn’t I Say That?

“There is noth­ing so piti­ful as a young cyn­ic because he has gone from know­ing noth­ing to believ­ing noth­ing.” ~ Maya Angelou.

Lust After William and Mary’s Commencement Speaker

William and Mary had an off-the charts com­mence­ment speak­er. Not to dump on a Supreme Court Jus­tice, but I have to say Stan­ford lost out by com­par­i­son.

Need Help Procrastinating?

Finals are near­ly upon us. On the oth­er hand, it’s a hol­i­day week­end. Go ahead, take the geek test and kill some time…