Glen Davis

Jacob Goldman rocks

I recently updated the Recommended Reading Google Shared Items plugin for WordPress to the latest version and it stopped working.

I contacted Jacob Goldman, the plugin developer, who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me fix the problem. The issue was all on my end, and he helped me straighten it out quickly.

The man deserves a shout-out.

To Jacob: consider yourself shouted out. Or shout outed. Or something.

To the rest of the world: if you need a web developer check out the company he works for C. Murray Consulting. I can attest that they’ve got excellent customer-service skills and know what they’re doing.

Roku Rocks

For Paula’s birthday I bought her a little device called the Roku Digital Video Player. Basically, it takes Netflix streaming videos and displays them on your television.

This is very good for us since we don’t have any television service. When we moved into our new place a year ago we decided that our cable bill was 90% waste, so we cancelled it and we watch television series on DVD through Netflix or on the computer now.

So I bought this Roku device which takes the 12,000 or so streaming videos available on Netflix (and the 40,000 or so available on Amazon as pay-per-view) and lets you watch them on your normal television.

The Roku box is amazing. It only does one thing and it does it well. The images are crisp, the audio is clear, and the interface is very easy to use. In my opinion, the videos display much better than they ever did on my laptop or our desktop computer.

If you use Netflix and ever watch streaming videos, you should seriously consider the Roku. It rocks.

And it costs less than a few months of cable — even when you combine it with your monthly Netflix bill.

Tell Us How You Really Feel, Don…

I was just reading an essay by D. A. Carson, “Worship Under The Word”.

Carson is, in my estimation, one of the greatest biblical scholars in the world today. And I don’t just say that because he loves university ministry. 🙂 Approximately one gazillion (rounding up from three hundred and forty-four) of his writings are available for free online. They’re worth reading. Or at least saving to your hard drive so you can find them when you search your computer using Google Desktop…

Anyway, in footnote 39 on page 47 of this essay, he makes a rather pointed observation. I have bolded my favorite line.

Perhaps this is the place to reflect on the fact that many contemporary “worship leaders” have training in music but none in Bible, theology, history, or the like. When pressed as to the criteria by which they choose their music, many of these leaders finally admit that their criteria oscillate between personal preference and keeping the congregation reasonably happy—scarcely the most profound criteria in the world. They give little or no thought to covering the great themes of Scripture, or the great events of Scripture, or the range of personal response to God found in the Psalms (as opposed to covering the narrow themes of being upbeat and in the midst of “worship”), or the nature of biblical locutions (in one chorus the congregation manages to sing “holy” thirty-six times, while three are enough for Isaiah and John of the Apocalypse), or the central historical traditions of the church, or anything else of weight. If such leaders operate on their own with little guidance or training or input from senior pastors, the situation commonly degenerates from the painful to the pitiful.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

I would “heh” more, but apparently three times is enough. 🙂

Christianity, China, and College Students

I just read an interesting article

about Christianity in China. The emphasis of the piece is on the dominance of Reformed theology in Chinese Christianity, but I was struck by the comments on the role of universities in the revival.

And in China, the place where Calvinism is spreading fastest is the elite universities, fuelled by prodigies of learning and translation. Wang Xiaochao, a philosopher at one of the Beijing universities, has translated the two major works of St Augustine, the Confessions and the City of God, into Chinese directly from Latin. Gradually all the major works of the first centuries of the Christian tradition are being translated directly from the original languages into Chinese.

All of this is happening outside the control of the official body which is supposed to monitor and supervise the churches in China. Instead, it is the philosophy departments at the universities, or the language departments and the departments of literature and western civilisation that are the channel.

“The [officially recognised] churches are not happy with universities, because it is not within their control. And their seminaries are not at the intellectual level of the universities,” says Dr Tan. “Chinese Christianity using Chinese to do Christian thinking has become a very interesting movement.”

And

If [May Tan] goes to preach at an official church, she says, “There will be perhaps 1000 people and 95% of them are over 65. So it’s a sunset church. But if I went to house church – there would be 1000 people; perhaps 20 of them in their 50s, and all the rest are youngsters. The older ones will all be professors at the universities. So these are the future of the churches. They have registered pastors, and no access to seminaries: But they have youth, and future, and money.”

And later on

“Very soon”, said Dr Tan, “Christians will become the majority of university students… that could happen.”

May it come to pass.matrix the divx download

College Ministry and Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is unique among search engines. It doesn’t find websites — it finds facts.

And I just realized that it has unexpected utility for those of us who think about college ministry.

For example, you can compare UC Berkeley with UC Davis

(or Harvard with CBC).

Or you can get a surprising amount of information on UC Berkeley.

Interesting stuff.machinist the divx downloadhocus pocus dvdrip download

Read the Bible in a Year

I shared this with my students last night and thought others might be interested as well. There are a lot of tools available to make reading the whole Bible very simple.

BiblePlan.org – has the widest variety of plans and will email you the readings for the plan you choose every day. If you only go to one site, go to this one.
One Year Bible Online has a facebook app and also has a blog that will give you commentary on every day’s readings (this is a very handy feature).
Bible Gateway is the standard site for Bible stuff for most Christians I know. They have a variety of reading plans
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, but a unique feature of their site is that they will start the Bible in 90 days on June 1st. That’s almost the exact length of summer break for most college students — and we had about a dozen students in our ministry do it last summer. If you’re looking for a way to make your summer fruitful, this might be the challenge you need.
Bible.logos.com – is, in my estimation, the best site for reading lengthy passages. They also have Bible reading plans on their site (registration required).

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If you don’t like sorting through a ton of options, just go sign up to get daily emails from the M’Cheyne plan in either the NIV or the NLT.

Hope these help you! awaken hgh

A Special Mother&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#039;s Day Message From Mr. T

Mr. T pities the fool who does not know how to treat mama right.

Happy mother’s day, Mom and Mom-In-Law!

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Cool Video From Joel 2/Acts 2

I just saw a cool video of Joel’s prophecy (the one quoted by Peter in Acts 2) made by The Work of the People. It’s definitely worth taking a minute and thirty-nine seconds to watch.

I just saw a cool video of Joel’s prophecy (the one quoted by Peter in Acts 2) made by The Work of the People

. It’s definitely worth taking a minute and thirty-nine seconds to watch.

Texts: Joel 2:28–32, Acts 2:16–21 zelnorm recall don t look now divx

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Dorothy Sayers on Work

Around 15 years ago, I heard Eric Treuil quote Dorothy Sayers to the effect that the carpenter from Nazareth never built any shoddy tables. It was fabulous. I’ve been thinking about that observation off and on ever since.

I recently stumbled upon it again, this time in its original form. It’s found in the essay “Why Work?” by Dorothy Sayers which appeared in her book Creed or Chaos

and is also now available online download fistful of dollars a divx .

Here’s one of my favorite passages:

over her dead body divx The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.

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Church by all means, and decent forms of amusement, certainly – but what use is all that if in the very center of his life and occupation he is insulting God with bad carpentry? No crooked table legs or ill-fitting drawers ever, I dare swear, came out of the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth. Nor, if they did, could anyone believe that they were made by the same hand that made Heaven and earth. No piety in the worker will compensate for work that is not true to itself; for any work that is untrue to its own technique is a living lie.

…

[The Church] has lost all sense of the fact that the living and eternal truth is expressed in work only so far as that work is true in itself, to itself, to the standards of its own technique. She has forgotten that the secular vocation is sacred. Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work must be good work before it can call itself God’s work. purse brite

The whole essay is well worth reading and I commend it to you.

God&amp;amp;amp;#039;s Grandeur: One Of My Favorite Poems

While preparing for this week’s sermon I was reminded of one of my all-time favorite poems. I won’t be able to use it in the message, so I thought I’d share it here as a bonus.

It’s God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

. You can find more of his poems at Bartleby

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THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.  
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;  
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil  
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?  
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;  
  And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil  
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.  
  
And for all this, nature is never spent;  
  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went  
  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—  
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent  
  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Do you have a favorite poem?

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