For a while now, I have wanted to blog about Sloodle, but I haven’t had the foggiest idea where to start. It’s a great tool for use in the educational world. But I think I have been waiting until the launch of my EdTech blog before I post too much on it.
But this one thing I found was pretty cool. You can blog to a Moodle account from inside of the Second Life virtual world. Just sounds cool. Here is a video that shows how to do it:
This has been around a while, but seems to fit in great with this blog (you have to click on the image to see the animation):
Technically, that would be awesome….
You might be noticing some changes to this blog. I’m never one to be satisfied with generic templates, for one. Unless they are really cool. Also, I’m transitioning this blog into more of Sci-fi, music, geek blog – in anticipation of a separate Ed Tech blog beginning soon. Or at least, I hope soon.
As I’m blogging through the 10 Ways to Refresh Your Church Atmosphere, I have come to the one that I think is the hardest one for me to write about: Make Church Fun. Does that make me a grimace?
Here’s the reason why this is hard for me: I have seen so many goofy attempts to make church fun. When I lived in Waco, there was a big tiff about a “gay-friendly” church that gained some attention. I checked out the website for this church to find out more about it. I went to the youth pastor’s page to see what I a “gay-friendly” church did for youth activities. I was then introduced to Bobo, the Youth Pastor of the church. I kid you not – the “Youth Pastor” was a puppet sitting on the head pastor’s lap.
Sometimes, it seems like efforts to make church “fun” are just goofy, silly gestures like this, and not a serious attempt at having fun. Umm…. yeah…. serious attempt at having fun. Anyway, I am all for having fun. Those that know me know that I tend to gravitate towards any kids in the room. I just like to goof around and have fun with children.
I think the article makes some interesting claims on this point. I’m not saying that they are wrong, I just feel that “for everything there is a season.” There is a season to be solemn. There is also a time to have some fun. Mercy Place has a softball team that is called Moose, after all 🙂 So this is probably not one that we are getting too wrong as a church. But for those that need to hear it: feel free to have fun at church!
The Amazing Race seems to have just appeared on CBS, with little or no advertising. Well, I guess there could have been some advertising, as the shows that I watch aren’t on CBS (Heroes, Lost, and Stargate). Yes, Stargate. SG-1 and Atlantis. Stop making fun of me. What is the name of this blog again? I make no apologies for being a geek…
This is really only an “All-Stars” edition for those that watched every season (except for season 4). So, some of the teams I have no idea who they are. And some (Romber) I wish were not there. No Chip and Kim? No Hippies? Come on….
Anyway, I found out that the racers are filmed after they are eliminated. Apparently, they are sent off to some tropical location to be sequestered from the world until the end of the race. And then complain about how they wish they were back on the race – cold, sweaty, dirty, and smelly. You can watch the videos here, as they are posted:
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race11/elimination.php
My early predications: Rob and Amber will stick around for a while, but then finally get pushed off when the other teams get sick of their tired, old tricks and gang up against them. Yes, I know they claimed they had all new tricks. But then they proceeded to pull out the same old ones. “Mark my words….”
I think Uchenna and Joyce will also suffer the same fate, even though I like them. People will see them as a threat due to the fact that they already won. I’m also pulling for the two all-women teams, because I think they are not as “bad” as some people claim they are. They are just competitive, and the world we live in today treats competitive women differently than they do competitive men. If they were all male teams, they would be seen as “shrewd.”
Last week I started blogging through an article called “10 Ways to Refresh Your Church Atmosphere” by Ben Wong. The first point in the list says “Have a Positive Faith In God.” So, that made me wonder: is there such a thing as “negative” faith?
I guess we can have faith that something negative is going to happen. But, I think by definition, faith is always positive. If faith is not positive, it ceases to be faith and becomes unbelief. Some people believe that unbelief is the opposite of faith. I tend to think it is the absence of faith. The difference may seem to be just splitting hairs, but I think that it is important.
Think of light, for example. Some people think that darkness is the opposite of light, like a yin-yang of equal and opposite forces. The truth is, darkness is just the absence of light. If you have equal and opposite forces, eventually you can decrease both to the point that there is an exact middle, and both forces are at zero. In other words, you can get to a place where there is neither light nor darkness. And that is just not scientifically possible. So, you have to look at darkness as the absence of light, not the opposite.
The same is true of faith and unbelief. If you lose faith, you are in unbelief. I have met many people that think that they are not acting in faith or unbelief. They are just being “neutral” until God comes through. In realty, by not walking in faith, they are walking in unbelief. We all do this from time to time, so the challenge is to stir ourselves back into faith once we lapse into unbelief.
So, we live in a negative world. How does one have a positive faith? To be honest, I don’t have an easy, pat, Sunday School answer. Not that we do Sunday School around here, but you know what I mean. I think the secret is in the Proverbs passage from last week: “For As A Man Thinks Within Himself, So He Is.” Think of yourself as a person with positive faith, and it can become so. Sounds a little New-Agey, but I can’t help it if the New Age movement stole from the Bible.
There are probably many ways to make this practically happen. So, if you get a chance, hit the comments below and share your practical ideas on how to make positive faith happen.
This weekend I was looking through some old CellChurch magazines I have. I was looking through an article about refreshing your church’s “atmosphere.” There was some great insight in that article. One quote really struck out to me:
Remember this important principle: You put people in touch with their faults when you assume a negative attitude toward them and reflect back to them only your perception of their weaknesses. Conversely, by assuming a positive attitude and concentrating on their strengths, you put them in contact with their good attributes. Their behavior inevitably improves. Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as a man thinks within himself, so he is.” – Ben Wong, 10 Ways to Refresh Your Church Atmosphere
Some pretty powerful thoughts there. We tend to refer to ourselves as “sinners saved by grace.” I remember a preacher a long time ago that preached an entire sermon on this subject. If we call ourselves sinners, then that’s what we are going to do. Isn’t it strange that scriptures call us saints, people that are clothed in righteousness, God’s chosen people, etc…. and yet we seem to focus on ourselves as sinners? Odd, huh?
So, now, if you see me at church and I start telling you that you are such a generous giver that has given me so much money, now you know why 🙂
I think, looking at my church experience in general, that the most common sermon topic has followed this line of thought: Here is what we do wrong. Everyone raise your hand if you have done it. Shouldn’t we all have our hands raised? (audience laughs in agreement) We’re all a mess. Then few or no practicals are given on how to do better. Well, at least as a former preacher and pastor myself, that’s how I remember most of my sermons. Yikes. What was I thinking? Well, according to Proverbs, I was focusing too much on what I did wrong, or on what others did wrong.
Now, I’m sure we can all think of people that think too highly of themselves, so I don’t think we need to turn this around and have a “flesh-appreciation party.” I think the important thing is to think of who you are in Christ, not just sit around with a Stuart Smalley self-encouragement session (“I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!”). I think the key verse here is Hebrews 12:1-3.
By the way, the Ben Wong article can be found here: http://www.touchusa.org/web/Articles/CC_archives/volume8/issue3.htm
Scroll down until you find it. It’s a great article, and I think I want to blog more on the ten points listed there to “refresh your church atmosphere”:
Video Blogs Are Just Around the Corner. Are you ready? I was searching and searching for a video version of Odeo the other week, and I just couldn’t find anything. With Odeo, you just hook up a microphone, and record audio straight into the website. Then you can embed the audio in any website. But it’s only audio, and the world seems to be moving to video pretty rapidly. Then, the other day, I just happened to stumble across what I was looking for: Flixn.
Flixn works a lot like Odeo. You hook up a web cam, press record, and then hit stop when you are done. Then you can get code to embed the video anywhere you want. Pretty neat. Or at least I think – I don’t have a webcam to test it out.
But Flixn seems to go one step farther – you can actually embed the recorder into your site. So, if you have an online class that you want to record video for, you can keep the entire recording process in your site. Hopefully, more Web2.0 sites will move to this thinking – allowing end users to embed their functionality into a site. Then you don’t have to constantly being switching back and forth between applications to get stuff done. Of course, Firefox’s tabbed browsing makes that easy – but it’s still nice to have it all in one place.
For those that know me, you know I am a big C.S. Lewis fan. In fact, I am re-reading The Space Trilogy now. Well, not now as I type this, but as in the general now. I can only hope and dream that someone wises up and turns these books into movies. But it seems that there are definite plans to make a movie based on The Screwtape Letters.
This could be good or bad. Film versions of Screwtape and The Great Divorce could benefit from the right director and special effects crew. But they are both stories that could be ruined if the spiritual message is forced too far up front, or scaled back too far. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie did a decent job with this, although leaning a little too much towards the “scaled back” side. And the fact that they needed James Earl Jones to do Aslan’s voice. I like Liam Neeson, but after Lion King….
Anyway, if you don’t know much about Screwtape, SciFi.com had a good summary:
“First published in 1942, The Screwtape Letters takes the form of a series of missives from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his wannabe diabolical nephew, Wormwood. As a mentor, Screwtape advises his protege on the finer points of undermining faith and promoting sin. His instructions are interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine.”