Another Long Weekend That Was Well Worth It

Another round of preaching in churches.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I preached at an inner-city youth group Friday night. I got back around midnight, went to bed, and woke up to drive to Yuba City.

We spent the night at Jeff and Lori Wright’s place (their son Andrew is involved in Chi Alpha @ Stanford), and then we shared at Sutter Community Church in the morning.

Side note: when I preach I generally put my cell phone on silent mode and set it on the pulpit as a way of keeping time. Unfortunately, when I receive a call the phone displays a new mail notification instead of the usual clock. That’s relevant only because Alicia Chole called me in-between points 2 and 3. I say this not to chastise Alicia, but merely because I found it funny. For the record, I did not answer the phone.

Anyway, we went out for lunch after and had a great time with the pastor and his family and the worship leader and his wife.

Then we headed to the Wright’s house to watch the first half of the Superbowl.

Then it was off to preach at Calvary Temple in Yuba City. There were a TON of people there, which surprised me given that the Superbowl was going on and that a California team was playing. Anyway, we had a great time sharing with the people. I even got to tell a pretty funny Raiders joke and not get lynched.

Paula and I would like to publicly commend Calvary Temple and Pastor Ciociola: they gave us the largest offering to aid our work that we’ve ever received, and they did it while the Superbowl was being played with a team from their state contending for the championship! May God richly bless them with every blessing at His disposal.

And then we left and we returned home around 11pm and crashed.

Free Internet Accountability Software

I found this very interesting: Attention all you free loaders and moochers, this is the thing you’ve been waiting for. Finally something you get for FREE that is actually going to help you. Imagine that!

Here is how X3watch works. Let’s say you’re browsing the Internet and you’re looking at porn. The software makes a log of the porno site and then every 2 or 4 weeks your two designated accountability partners will get an email listing all the skin sites you’ve been on. Oh no-busted! Now that’s what we call real accountability. No more secrets dude!

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Software brought to you by triple‑x church, some crazy Christian guys who are tackling the porn industry head-on.

Preaching At the San Francisco Worship Center

preaching to the inner-city youth

I got to share with the youth group at the San Francisco Worship Center tonight.

That was my first time preaching in an inner-city environment: it was fun! The youth seemed to be with me throughout my message (and I didn’t even have to bust into rap to keep their attention, although if I had I suppose I would have generated a certain amount of morbid fascination).

It was pretty cool, and we had some great Thai food afterwards.download skinwalkers divx

Rob-Dog McGuire

an old college friend gave me a call

This morning I heard from an old friend from college, Rob-Dog McGuire. It was very exciting–I haven’t talked to Rob in over five years!

He’s working with Teen Challenge in New Orleans and seems to be doing quite well.

Anyway, if you’re an old college friend and need to find Rob, drop me a line.

36 Hours

another long weekend of ministry

Saturday morning we were up early to go hear Doug Fields and Bo Bashers talk about youth ministry at an event sponsored by the Church Communication Network. It was great–CCN does these simulcasts from the Bay Area and they want a live studio audience. If you show up, you get in for free! There were probably twenty people in the audience.

It was interesting to see how well Doug worked the audience. He’s a real master at connecting with people. Before the satellite broadcast began he learned most everyone’s name, where the lead youth pastors were sitting, and made small talk with several people. He remembered names and called on people directly during his teaching. I was challenged to get better at that.

Side note: I don’t think Doug really liked me. He didn’t dislike me, either. It was just a weird vibe. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t dressed like a youth pastor; I mean, my shirt had buttons and everything! It might also have been related to the fact that when Paula and I showed up one of the directors asked us to sit in the center of the front row because everyone else was hanging back. His first impression of us walking out was probably that we were some sort of weird groupies: we were dressed up and sitting in the center of the front row. And then we gave him weird responses: he asked all the youth pastors to raise their hands (and we didn’t) and then he asked all the other church staff to raise their hands (we didn’t). I think we confused him.

Still, it was great material.

After that we drove up to Tehama, CA. It’s way north, and pretty remote. We were to speak at the local Assembly of God church Sunday morning, so the pastor put us up in a hotel overnight.

I have to say that Tehama AG has the nicest church building that we’ve been in so far. It’s the oldest AG church structure in America (built back in the 1800s) and it’s the oldest church in Northern California. Simply gorgeous.

After the morning service we drove down to Cupertino to speak at Abundant Life Assembly of God’s missions banquet. That was fun.

Then we came home. It was a long weekend (with over 500 miles on the car), but it was great!

When Good Christians Use Bad Logic

I just ran across an interesting parody of Christian legalism. If you’re not familiar with the phrase, it generally refers to fixating on an arbitrary action as a proof that you’ve forsaken the faith and are on a greased slide to hell.

Anyway, this essay takes the same logic that can be used to justify traditional legalisms and applies it to snowmobiles. That’s right: snowmobiles are the devil’s playthings!

If you were raised in a evangelical church you might find this funny. If you weren’t you’ll probably just find it weird…

Stanford Law Prof Loses Supreme Court Case

in which Congress gets the thumbs up to do whatever they want as regards copyright

Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor, just lost his case in Supreme Court.

He was arguing that the Congress has overstepped its Constitutional authority through its abuse of the copyright system.

As an editorial aside, I’d like to say that I’m pretty disappointed by the defeat. I’m no expert in the law, but ministers are considered to have some expertise when it comes to morality (which ought to undergird the law).

The laws governing copyright in our society are excessive. First and most importantly, we are losing a public domain. Lessig’s (non-legal) arguments about the hypocrisy of Disney are very compelling–Disney keeps its copyright on Mickey Mouse despite making most of its money off reinventing characters that have passed into the public domain (Beauty & the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White, etc).

But that just deals with the longevity of copyright in America. I also consider that my fair-use rights are being infringed upon by rigid copyright schemes. To my knowledge, every empirical study has shown that electronic redistribution of products increases sales. You can read more about it.

For the record, I urge everyone to obey the law as it is written and to agitate for change in the meantime.

Lessig will probably never read this, but I think he’s fighting a good fight.

Some Biblical Expressions of Corporate Worship

Last night Back in January 2003 we talked about worship, and I discussed different ways we worship God. This list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s helpful and so I thought I’d post it here for future reference.

Singing: the book of Psalms, Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16
Music: 1st Chronicles 13:8, Psalm 33:3, Psalm 150
Artistic Creation: Exodus 31:1–11, Exodus 28, Ezekiel 4:1
Clapping: Psalm 47:1, Isaiah 55:12
Words: Psalm 9:1, Psalm 73:28, Psalm 78:4–6
Laughing & Rejoicing: Psalm 9:2, Psalm 126:1–3, Psalm 149:5, Zephaniah 3:14–17
Shouting: Psalm 95:1, Psalm 98:4–6, Psalm 100:1
Silence: Psalm 46:10, Habakkuk 2:20
Standing: 1st Chronicles 23:30, Psalm 24:3–6
Raising Our Hands: Nehemiah 8:6, Psalm 63:3–5, Psalm 134:1–2; 1st Timothy 2:8
Bowing & Kneeling: 2 Chronicles 7:3, Psalm 95:6, Daniel 6:10–11
Lying Prostrate: Deuteronomy 9:18, Revelation 19:4
Leaping: 2nd Samuel 6:16, Luke 6:23, Acts 3:7–8
Dancing: Exodus 15:20–21, Psalm 149:3, Psalm 150:4
Speaking In Tongues: Acts 2:1–11; Acts 10:46; 1st Corinthians 14:26–33

Incidentally, when I saw the massive number of Biblical references in this posting, I decided to finally install Jonathan Fox’s Scripturizer plugin for Moveable Type. Worked like a charm! If you use MT and quote from the Bible, I highly recommend this wonderful tool.

UPDATE: on 12/21/04 I added the Artistic Creation entry (3rd one down) and struck through the comment at the end. Also, I’m not using the Scripturizer plugin right now so the passages probably aren’t hyperlinked.

Ancient Tablet Seems to Corroborate Biblical Narrative

According to the Associated Press, archaelogists have found a very special tablet.

Israeli geologists said Monday they have examined a stone tablet detailing repair plans for the Jewish Temple of King Solomon that, if authenticated, would be a rare piece of physical evidence confirming biblical narrative.

The find whose origin is murky is about the size of a legal pad, with a 15-line inscription in ancient Hebrew that strongly resembles descriptions in the Bible’s Book of Kings. It could also strengthen Jewish claims to a disputed holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City that is now home to two major mosques.

…

The sandstone tablet has a 15-line inscription in ancient Hebrew that resembles descriptions in Kings II, 12:1–6, 11–17, said Israel’s Geological Survey, which examined the artifact. The words refer to King Joash, who ruled the area 2,800 years ago.

In it, the king tells priests to take “holy money … to buy quarry stones and timber and copper and labor to carry out the duty with faith.” If the work is completed well, “the Lord will protect his people with blessing,” reads the last sentence of the inscription.

It’s interesting, but I should note that there seems to be much more confusion over this tablet’s authenticity than over the James ossuary.