like a fire

I have been astounded during the last months of this election. I think it was clarified watching a comedy bit that was a lot more truthful than it was funny. The interviewer in the bit went to both camps during their campaign rallies and the predominant feeling was one of fear. Both sides issued claims that if the other candidate one, it was pretty close to the end of the world, or the country at least. It was ridiculous.

And unfaithful.

Since the election has been over, I have heard more and more from Christians and Christian leaders about how God’s judgment is going to come down on the United States. REALLY??!?! Like it came down on Rwanda? Like it came down on Darfur? Can one guy in the right spot really cause that much trouble?

I just don’t think one man can do that. As a Christian, I don’t put my faith in what men can do anyway. Even if I did, there’s not much I can really do about it, except spread the fear. But Christians are not supposed to be people of fear. We are called to be people of Hope (isn’t that what Obama has been using as his platform?).

I don’t think either candidate would have been anybodies first pick. But that doesn’t really matter now. What can do is believe in God and ramain hopeful.

I hope that Barack, as our next president, can move people away from fear and towards hope. But I don’t think he can really do that. Maybe God will.

People of faith, please let go of your fear and through faith in the God we call sovereign have a little hope.

Kent Shaffer over at churchrelevance.com has an interesting article about the differences in teaching each gender of teens. According to the article, boys are more apt to hear and listen to a more matter of fact and stressing tone, while girls are more put off by that and prefer something less confrontational. Also, girls prefer 75 degrees in their environment and boys respond better to 69 degrees.

David Letterman, I hope this comes to your attention. Please turn up the thermostat!

An interesting post over at Think Christian has me wondering about the question. Through my time in ministry, I probably would have chuckled at this question. Is the Bible sufficient for us? Is it enough to teach us all that we need to know about God and our faith in him? Sure, why would you ask.

Lately, I have been getting some questions from people hat makes me wonder. I don’t think I ever would have said that the Bible is all we need in life, apart from God. In fact, I’m not sure you can separate the two. But I am convinced that God didn’t create us to desiminate his Word apart from a relationship with him or each other. I think about Jesus leaving and not saying, pass out Bibles where ever you go and make sure people know how to read it and understand it correctly. Instead, he said, go and make disciples teaching them to obey all that I have comanded you.

I guess you could make a case that the Bible is the textbook we teach from, but it has very little to do with how we teach. I wish it were sometimes, because I have sat under some really awful teaching.

Somewhere in history, it seems like the church got the idea that if we could just teach the Bible prefectly, if everyone thought correctly and had good doctrine, then we would all act a lot better. The world wouldn’t have the problems it does now. To me, that is not only wrong, but borders on spiritual abuse.

Who, after reading the Bible and undertstanding what is says, could easily (or more easily) leave their idols behind? Does perfect knowledge (something we don’t have) lead to perfect obedience (something we won’t have in this life)? Tell that to a porn addict who is already full of shame and knows that what he does is wrong. Tell that to a teen girl who hates her body and only feels good when she is chronically underweight or who cuts herself to fell better.

I would say that, no, tha Bible apart form God is definitely not enough. Why would anyone want it to be?

Those crazy guys over at Simply Youth Ministry have broken the teen barrier. It seems they have come up with a new way to communicate to teens called “txt”ing. I did some research and it seems that the mobile phone companies have been holding out on us. Apparently, most cell phones can send and receive short messages in the form of text (for those uninformed, text is another word for words or letters). Not only that, but unbeknownst to most youth leaders, the teens have known this for quite some time and have been using this technology to communicate secretly all the time. In fact, there are several plans that they are undertaking using only this technology.

The good news, at least for us youth pastors, is that SYM is helping us be more relevant (for a small fee) by providing a service to “txt” teens we know and work with. For just 10-40 dollars a month, youth pastors can communicate the teen way. This is actually a bit of a tradeoff, though. On the pro side, you don’t have to get into the other techonology that most people don’t know about yet called the “cell” or “mobile” phone. On the con side, you have to deal with another very new techonology called the “internet” or “World Wide Web” (don’t worry, it has nothing to do with spiders).

So you will have to make up your mind for yourself. I will say that SYM has a great track record since making available the “web site” in a box. I also look forward to the new technologies that SYM may tackle in the future. There are so many possibilities with some hints at things to come like:

“peer to peer” file sharing - you could sent the notes from you sermon to your kids at home on there computers. This probably won’t be feasible until much later when most homes have computers and the “internet”.

“MMOG or Massive Multiplayer Online Game” - this one is really out there but I think it is possible. One day (probably in the distant future), people are going start playing games online. When they do, they will get more for their experience if they play with a lot of people online all at once. I could see people getting together in groups, maybe called clans, and playing together. What better place for your youth group?

“Social” or “User Generated” content - this would be really cool. What if your youth group could host a site where teens could make their own user pages and put information about themselves, maybe even pictures. Again, this won’t be feasible until probably 2112 because people will have to have computers in there homes, but I think it is a possibility.

Having said all this, if you are a youth worker in the US and have never heard of any of this stuff (and your not Amish) then you might want to check out some of this stuff. If you do know about this stuff, forget about this whole article and continue doing what you have been doing all along. And if you need to send a “txt” message to many people all at once (and can’t do it from your Facebook account) then head over the Tim Schmoyer’s blog and get the lowdown on how to do it for free with txtsignal.

UPDATE: txtsignal is a pay service. For a free ride use Broadtexter.

I am really lame. To start with, the first app I downloaded to my iPhone was the lightsaber. Not particularly useful, but impressive. Proof in the pudding is that when people see it, they don’t care about all the other really cool things it can do.

So here I am one afternoon entertaining my girls with the lightsaber app and Jane asks what it is. After a brief description followed by doe eyes from Jane, I can tell she doesn’t get it. So we watch some Star Wars. I edit some of it through fast forward, but she is enamored. Anytime I need a buddy to watch Star Wars, she is in.

So what’s better that Star Wars with your daughter? THIS!

Nothing says I love you like chocolate carbonite.