(culled from The Resurgence)

A truly fascinating video (particularly the Q&A session at the end) of Tim Keller, a Christian author and apologist, speaking at the Google campus, as part of their Authors@Google series. He’s talking a bit about his book “The Reason for God”.

(or click here if it’s not embedding where you’re reading)

mrBen

Classic Yak Episode 1 (”Things to Sing in Lakeland When You’re Dead”) is now available!

You can download it direct from ClassicYak.org or listen from the streaming media player.

You can subscribe using your podcasting software from one of the links at the bottom of the main page.

You can find it on iTunes at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=286589056

You can sign up for the forums or email us.

If you’re in church on Sunday, you can get a free sticker!

For those who missed my original post, CY is a monthly podcast aimed at discussion real-world issues from a Christian perspective. Hope you like it.

mrBen

OK - I’m back from a week away at my parents, and I have 2 big things I want to talk about. The announcement of the end of LugRadio could, I guess, be rolled up in this post, but I think it deserves a post of it’s own, so I’ll get to that soon.

However, my last post hinted at the arrival of something new, and then I completely failed at setting up a post to be published on Monday.

So - what was it all about. Well, the answer is Classic Yak. Classic Yak is a brand new project, put together by myself and Al and a couple of other guys in our church. It’s a monthly, discussion based podcast (definite LugRadio influence there) aimed at tackling real-world issues from a Christian viewpoint (less of an LR influence ). We released the pilot show last Monday, and will be releasing on the last Monday of each month for at least the next 6 months.

We hope that it will be an entertaining listen, and will stimulate some useful discussion. There doesn’t appear to be anything quite like it in the Christian podcast market, so hopefully there is a niche there we can fill. Our first episode talked about Big Brother, but we’re aiming on having a full blooded discussion about the Lakeland Revival as the main segment in Episode One (due out 28th July).

Feel free to take a listen (apologies for the odd audio glitch in the pilot) and give us some feedback on show@classicyak.org.

mrBen

This is a Christian kids Manga-esque animated thing.

I managed the first ten minutes before it got switched off.

BigAl

Having had a chat today with someone (who shall remain nameless to save his embarrassment) about tithing. That is, the giving of a tithe at church.

Now, without getting too bogged down in theology (and to generalise), tithing is the giving back to God what is his. Specifically, in today’s society, 10% of what you earn.

Depending on how much, or how little, you earn that can be an inconvenient bite out of your monthly finances. And yes, I do tithe because I want to support my church and the valuable work in the community that it does.

But there are people who don’t tithe. They go to church and they don’t tithe. They see the work that is done and they don’t tithe. They see other people tithe and they don’t tithe.

They just don’t tithe.

And that’s fine. Really. No-one HAS to tithe. It’s not like the Church Gestapo will come a-knockin’ at your door if you haven’t tithed… (Hmm, Church Gestapo. Maybe I should suggest that…)

And there are always factors that eat away at your finances that you can’t control.

Fair enough.

But maybe people aren’t given the right encouragement to tithe. Perhaps we should be preaching that giving your life over to Jesus Christ just gets your name on the list of the saved. Keeping it there depends on your continued financial support.

Your salvation is dependent on your 10%.

How about it? How much does eternal life really cost?

Ten percent of what you earn in non-sequential ten pound notes every month, if you don’t mind. Just slip the envelope under the church door and that’ll be fine.

(No cheques please. Just cold, hard cash.)

I’ll take care of it from there, from my office on the beach…

BigAl

(Available on Amazon.

I discovered this book pretty much “by accident”. A conversation with a friend had led to looking on the internet at some of the different programs available in the UK and the US for men, and I came across an article by David Murrow on Pastors.com, and liked it so much that I bought the book.

Essentially the book divides into 3 broad sections - an identification of a problem, namely that there is a gender gap within the church, generally regardless of denomination, country or style. Then he attempts to explain why this problem has occurred, his main point being that the church (and it’s view of Christianity and Jesus) has become overly feminised. Finally he bring some suggestions as to how you can solve these issues practically.

I read a lot, but I’m not overly quick, but I managed to rifle through this book in a weekend. ‘Devoured’ is probably the best word. To say that this book has changed the way that I look at not only my current church, but also churches that I have been part of in the past, is a total understatement. IMHO this book is revolutionary. It’s not without it’s controversies, but I believe that most of those come from a misunderstanding of what Murrow is trying to say.

But more than a book about church, it’s also a book that helps to redefine what it is to be a Christian man. I think that many men struggle to reconcile their understanding of Christian and some of the character traits that define what it is to be “a man”. This book is extremely helpful in resolving that conflict.

I read the book back in January, then again in February, and then we had our church mens weekend away based on the book as a theme. It’s now March, and I am _still_ talking about this book, and _still_ mulling over the implications and practical realities. It’s that good.

If you’re a man, and you would describe yourself as Christian, and struggle with your church, or even to attend any church, then this will be a great book to read. But, even more importantly, if you’re a church member, man or woman, I would urge you to read this book.

David Murrow also has a website at ChurchForMen.com and there is a discussion forum at CFMBoards.com.

mrBen

I’m back from Mozambique, and there’s a whole lot of stuff to tell, but to start with I thought I would set up a flickr account for all the photos that Gary, Alan and I took while we were out there. You can see them in all their glory at http://flickr.com/photos/72732141@N00/ or search for the username moz_iris

More on all this later….

mrBen

Well - I fly out to Mozambique tomorrow - very excited, and a little bit scared too. I’m taking a digital camera and a video camera, so there’ll be lots of evidence. Plus I think I’m going to invest in a low-tech blog (aka a notebook) so that I have some stuff to post on my return, although if I get a moment I may post while I’m there, if at all possible.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to my sponsorship - only £184 to go at the moment, but it’s coming down nicely

Don’t break anything while I’m gone

mrBen

Just a bit of a progress report on this:

• Tickets are bought
• Visas are in progress, and should hopefully be back this week
• Travel insurance, including emergency medial cover, has been purchased
• All our injections are done, and anti-malaria tablets bought
• I’ve bought my (SPF 50) suncream….
• We’ve arranged some overnight accommodation in Johannesburg for the 14th

Still to do:

• I’ve raised just over half of my sponsorship, thanks to 1 extremely generous donation in particular, but am still about £400 short
• I need to buy insect repellant
• We need to sort out our grocery list
• One or two other minor things

Gary and Alan are also both trying to raise money - I think I’m the furthest forward so far….. Next update on this particular topic should hopefully be from Mozambique itself (limited internet access……)

mrBen

Apparently this here website is un-Christian behaviour.

Sometimes I’m amazed at the sheer stupidity of some of the statements put out by churches. Even more, I am consistently angered about the continual confusion within organised religious groups between medium and message. Apparently ‘People will now do and say things that should only be done in private, or, frankly, should not be said or done at all’ on blogs. And you know what - I agree with him. There are a load of blogs that, frankly, shouldn’t exist. But that doesn’t make blogging bad.

It makes me want to cry.

mrBen

[edit]On a related note, it also frustrates me that media organisations manage to find the most amazingly obscure sources to represent ‘Christianity’. What on earth is the ‘Restored Church of God’?[/edit]

I was quite surprised when I saw that the Alpha Course Website had been running a competition for viral ads. How very, well, ‘modern’ and intarweb of them.

Here’s the winning entry

mrBen

OK - I confess that I generally dislike the trend for posting whatever you happen to be listening to on your blog posts, mainly because the fact that you are listening to it doesn’t actually guarantee that even _you_ like it……

But at the moment I’m currently listening to, and mostly enjoying, content from ChristianRock.net - now I know that Christian rock bands have had a bad rap in the past - everyone talks about Petra and Stryper, but wishes they weren’t Not all the content on CR is good, but there is some really good stuff (if you like rock, that is). I’m particularly impressed with a piece called ‘Rebirthing’ from the band Skillet (you can listen to it on their MySpace page), but it is not by any means the only good piece of music.

Even if you’re not a Christian, then it might be worth a look (well, listen).

Enjoy

mrBen

Well - I’ve uploaded the 6 episodes of Mislaid on to the website - having watched some of it at camp, I’m ashamed of the audio quality, and some of the writing leaves a lot to be desired. But from a picture point of view, it’s something that I’m very proud of. It was a lot of editing work, and in many ways it doesn’t show because edits between views are not something you really think about. But I know that it’s there

I have some thoughts about producing a special edition, with properly normalised sounds (some of the music is over-loud), but I think that it will turn out to be vapourware. The DVD image should hopefully be online within the next couple of weeks.

While I’m on the subject, I really want to put in a note here about the quality of Wordpress - I’m really happy with the way the Mislaid site looks. Most of that is due to the quality of the theme - Vistered Little - done by the same guy who did the theme here (Scary Little). However, Wordpress does make it very easy to create a simple page that _isn’t_ a weblog. The documentation is top-notch, for a start, and I find that the code is very well designed and laid out.

For instance, rather than using pages and the like, all of the ‘pages’ on mislaid.jedimoose.org are actually posts in their own categories. The home page is set up to only display items from category 2 (the news category), and these are the only posts that show with comments and post times/details. The reason for this is it allows for quite a lot of flexibility when it comes to sub-categories/pages (even though I haven’t exploited this as much on this site), while still retaining the blog-type structure for the news page (which is exactly what you want). There was another reason I used this technique, but I can’t quite remember what it is

mrBen

According to my twisted brain upon hearing this verse (shortest verse in the Bible and all that) Jesus used Wireless Encryption Protocol.

I need to get out more.

mrBen

Well - I’m back from another exciting week at a Scripture Union Scotland camp at Lendrick Muir. I will probably write a few more reflections on both the personal/spiritual challenges from the week, and also the technical challenges, over the next few days, but I thought it would be good to post a few little updates here just to whet the appetite

HDD Failure

My harddrive showed signs of being about to fail on the Friday before camp. With all the editing I had been doing, and with >40GB of digital video footage on my drive, I made haste to encode to MPEG, but also bought a new 160GB drive from Priceless Computing. Everything transferred safely, much to my relief.

CampAdmin

Longterm readers of the ‘Moose may remember the administration system I wrote 2 years ago for camp, to handle the stresses and strains of running a cashless society. This year it was back in action, this time running on a dedicated machine running the lightweight Xubuntu distribution. I hadn’t, however, fixed any of the things that I knew were broken, which is something I should probably dedicate some time to in the next few months. Additionally, I think I may build a Gtk frontend to replace the wxPython frontend that is currently in existence. It was, however, good to see how much of the system was still working properly.

Mislaid

The camp drama that we filmed was called Mislaid. It was a lot of hard work, and, even though it’s not the most high-quality production (the audio, in particular, is dodgy), I want to release it on the internet. Plus, because of the use of creative commons music, I can legally do so! The website is over at mislaid.jedimoose.org - enjoy! (Videos not yet uploaded - should be up by the end of the week, with the DVD image available within a couple of weeks_.

Camp Itself!

While I mostly at camp to make all the techno-wizardry run smoothly (which it did all week, apart from setting off the fire alarm on Friday night with a smoke machine ), it was a significant time for me. I need to gather some thoughts, and work out the implications of the things that I have learnt, which I will write at another time.

Hope you’ve all been behaving while I’ve been away

mrBen

I don’t know about you, but, while I’m in some ways a massively habitual person, I also have a tendency to float between different things in life - ‘fads’ as it were. My parents vividly remember the period of time when I wanted a BMX, although I don’t remember it at all. I can, however, remember lots of things that did pass by - cub scouts, judo, skateboarding to name but a few. Which is why I think it’s interesting to think about the things that I have stuck to. Here are some:

• Playing the guitar - despite the fact that they spent huge amounts of money for piano lessons, my parents still let me borrow a guitar from a friend and teach myself. And, for some unknown reason, the guitar stuck, whereas the piano didn’t, although I still play every now and then.
• Linux - I’ve been into computers for years, and many things were on and off. To be honest, there is a part of me that is surprised that I kept coming back to Linux, but it’s certainly something that has stuck, and, beyond that, become a large part of my life, and hopefully my future.
• Christianity - although an underlying part of my life for 20 years now, I can’t say that it’s been all plain sailing, but it’s definitely something that has stuck.

mrBen

2 days to go….

Sunday’s is always a bit busy, but today has felt very varied. Church in the morning was busy as normal, plus we had to grab the PA from the church office, which always takes ages. This afternoon I’ve done a bit of painting in a friends kitchen, and now I’m checking out the latest updates to Jokosher, which is coming along really nicely. Tonight, of course, will be more ET and then 24.

On Friday the Serenity comic book arrived - it was a little shorter than I thought it was going to be, but it’s an excellent read. It plays out just like a normal episode of Firefly. The drawing is good, although every now and then the characters look a bit, well, ‘off’. But it’s not enough to take away from enjoyment of the story. I’m looking forward to when they do some more.

And so, another week begins….

mrBen

Well - we’re 5 days in and still going. Looks like BigAl is matching me post-for-post too. I’m not sure that the ‘Moose has ever seen this much content! Hopefully we’ll keep up the quality along with the quantity.

Given that it’s Sunday, and this is a Lenten blog, I thought I would pimp a quality piece of church software that we’ve been using in church for a while - OpenSong. OpenSong is one of the best pieces of “lyric projection” software that I know of - it keeps an index of song lyrics, and has a good 2-screen projection system, with easy access to add songs, and scripture. It also is able to print song lists, and keep chord charts, although we’ve not yet exploited that fully. Hopefully one day. And it’s Open Source, although it’s written in RealBasic, which means you need a piece of proprietary software in order to re-compile it, which is a pity, but at least it’s also cross-platform.

It’s written mainly by one guy, but there is now an active developer community working towards v1.0. Don’t let the numbers fool you - the current version is completely stable. In fact, the only real issue that prevents us from using it for 100% of the service is the inability (currently) to insert PowerPoint presentations into it.

Anyway - just thought I would give it a bit of a mention. Have a nice day, y’all

mrBen

Apologies in advance for all the geeks that frequent my blog - this is not my normal bundle of techieness, but I like to have a place where I can record other stuff that I write, and I’m about to submit this to Mitch to go on the church website.

Taking it too phar(isee)?

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about how much of our culture is like a pantomime. Most of us remember going to the theatre at Christmas to laugh at men dressed up as women, and sticky goo being thrown over baddies. And yet I reckon that pantomimes are actually the light side of human natures more shadowy aspects. Ugly women are quite often bad; stepmother almost always are too. Pretty girls are good, as are pretty boys. Awkward, “normal” boys are fondly remembered, but ultimately left for charming princes.

There is a small book about parables called ‘A String in the Tale’, which tries to bring back some of the cutting edge of Jesus’ parables, which is sadly lacking in our modern-day, non-Jewish familiarity with the stories. The author (whose name I forget at this point) likens the New Testament Pharisees to pantomime baddies - we know instinctively to Booo whenever they enter the stage. If we were watching a dramatisation of the Bible, we probably wouldn’t be surprised to see them wearing black, perhaps even a mask, with large, low eyebrows and a wicked moustache being twirled between the forefingers of one hand.

Unfortunately the reality is a long way from this. The Pharisees were one of the most respected of religious groups. They were looked up to, they were honoured. They were defenders of the faith, keepers of the law, scholars of the word. We would have almost definitely looked up to them, rather than booing. Even today, I believe, we still respect pharisaical aspects of peoples lives.

So what was Jesus’ problem with them? His problem was that they had placed the law above people, placed religious activity above love, placed their defense of the faith above the spreading of the word.

_Our_ problem is that we have made pantomime baddies out of the Pharisees, but have not banished their practices - less a case of “he’s behind you” and more a case of “he’s within you”….

We have created barriers of entry to our churches that were never meant to be there. We have created a complicated system of ‘law’ that is nothing to do with grace, and everything to do with a pharisaical nature. Instead of sticking to the 2 greatest commandments (”Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind”, and “Love your neighbour as yourself”) we have majored on other tenets of the law, and even laws that are in no Bible I have read. In fact, I believe that many of the “Christian” customs that we hold sacred have more roots in the middle-class than in the Bible.

Let’s take an example, hopefully without being overly controversial. The current attitude towards swearing probably bases itself on 2 main areas - the 10 commandments (”Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain”) and the book of James (all about taming your tongue). While I would never be so bold as to suggest that we should ignore either of these things, when I look around at the people I know, I do believe that this is a high barrier; we have created practically a whole dictionary of words that are ’swear’ words, and provoked a whole load of thoughtful theological discussion on whether a particular word should be added to that dictionary.

Have we suceeded in preventing people from “swearing”? Have we even prevented Christians from “swearing”? Or, in fact, have we created ways of ‘untaming’ our tongue that bypass the whole dictionary? And do we continue to make people feel awkward and tongue-tied (in the truest sense of the word) when they are in church?

I believe that this is just one example that could be given. Let us take time to look at ourselves, and our churches, and see if we can lower the barriers to entry so that all may come in. Because that’s what Jesus did, and we see to follow him, not the Pharisees.

Mitch asked me to put something together for a section in the new church website, which is due out soon. So I put together this:

Reimagining Community

Ever read those articles which start by stating a question, and then, in the process of attempting to answer that question ends up revealing more and more questions? This is one of those articles.

I am very much a 21st century man; a typical Gen-Xer, if you will. And I have been trying to imagine how the church will, and should, change in order to better meet the needs of this century.

My area of concern is that of communication. In many ways it would appear that we are trying to communicate in exactly the way that Jesus communicated; we have confused the medium with the message. Jesus was a thoroughly modern man - he communicated using the methods and style of teachers in his day; parables, groups of disciples, preaching on the hilltops were all things of his time. But what of ours?

People are just beginning to catch on to the televisual media that has been so embraced by our culture. Churches are beginning to use video and music to challenge and teach. This is brilliant; this is so last century.

Welcome to the 21st century; this century is one of interactive media, of websites, instant messaging, discussion forums and podcasting. And no, podcasting is not a reference to the parable of the sower!

Do you have an email address? A website? A weblog? Any online friends? An instant messaging account? An mp3 player? An RSS feed reader? If you don’t know what these things are, then maybe you should find out. The iPod generation is upon us (no matter how much the mindshare annoys me).

What would Jesus do? Well, I reckon he would embrace these media, because they are the media of the day, and he would use them to promote His message - the Good News, that is timeless - forever cultural and yet ultimately counter-culture.

mrBen