OneMind

Check out Dallas Seminary in this clip of "The Good Guys" on Fox!

Just one more reason DTS is the coolest seminary around:

Here's a pic from my window of the building they were on top of:

 

Dating

So I wanted to try something. An experiment if you will.  I wanted to see how many more people would read this if it were about something relevant to the masses.  So here you go:

Dating as a Christian.  Most christian guys and christian girls could write for days about this topic (contact me if you would like to do a guest post... here).  In fact here's a video made by some friends at my seminary... co-starring yours truly, haha... about exactly this topic.  This was made from a woman's perspective and is pretty applicable all around.

Now from a guys point of view, it almost just the opposite. At least that how most of the guys I know feel. 

What about you? Let us know you're thoughts below and it might be included in "Part two" of the dating post! 

Keep it civil but put it out there!

MEDIA: Are you being faithful with very small things?

 It is a personal goal, a challenge if you will, to push the limits of the cheap, efficient, minimal, basic, simple tools in my world to produce excellent results.  Notice I didn't say professional, that word has too many meanings these days.  As Christians we are called to do all things in excellence, not necessarily as a professional, and I find that to be the greater of the two anyways.  There are lots of "professionals" who get paid to make crap.  Somebody made and was paid for every commercial you see on TV.  Have you ever really thought about that? Every commercial, even those ambulance-chasing lawyer commercials.  Who couldn't do better than that, I mean really?  But that's neither here nor there, so back to the topic at hand.

We are all in agreement that we as the church need to do better on the media side of things.  But how much of that is because we don't have big media/communications budgets and how much of that is because we don't use what we have to it's full potential.  I was asked recently where to begin when creating a "Media Department" for a church, so I thought I'd share the list with you all.  Keep in mind that every church is an individual case with individual ministry needs and you shouldn't just be trying to keep up with the First Church of the Jones's, always assess your needs.  But for most churches this list is pretty close to the bare essentials.

Cameras: Let's talk both video and still for right now.  The key in this, as in most things, is to buy what you can use.  If you're not a professional videographer or photographer, don't waste money on professional equipment.  It's nobel to want to learn but even the experts were at one time beginners.  As we all learned in Little League Baseball, master the fundamentals before playing in the Big Leagues.  Too much camera is often times worse than not enough.  If you want to be brave, get something with only 1 or 2 advanced features that you can push yourself to learn, otherwise you will be overwhelmed and quit. I personally, because of my minimalist media challenge to myself, us a Flip MinoHD 720p camcorder with a Gorillapod.  This camera is surprisingly pretty good, especially with a tripod.  For a still camera, I'm going to say just go to your local department store and buy a decent 8-10 megapixel digital camera ($100) that holds an SD memory card. Why SD? Because you can get a lot of memory for very little money ($10 for 2 GB).

Software: On to the serious stuff.  I'm an Adobe user, and I'm going to be an Adobe recommender.  There are other great softwares out there but for me, it's the way to go.  Much of the layout, controls, and tools are consistent throughout the product family, or product suite.  At least more so than using a photo editor from one company, a vector design program from another, and still yet a layout program from another.  Why learn three ways when you can learn to adapt one.  Plus Adobe offers "suites" that can cover your basic needs for a cheaper group price (still pricey though).  There are a lot of decent free programs out there but you can't beat the real deal, again just assess your needs and learn to adapt if you need to.  While we're on software I'll quickly mention Final Cut video editing software.  I wouldn't buy it just yet if you're a smaller church with a common budget of "cheap", maybe the "Express" version but still probably not yet.  It is a must in the near long term but save the money for now because...

Hardware: Mac or PC?  I'm a Mac guy, so I'll take on the role of fanboy and evangelist for a second and try to persuade you.  While Mac's can get pretty expensive, they are great for media.  Programs like ProPresenter currently only run on Mac and that's something you're going to want to use eventually.  They are extremely user friendly and give the user a lot more control over how you can use it.  They offer great security and great support as well.  In my experience the over all life of my Mac has gone much further than that of my PC's.  With all hardware decisions you're going to want to think about the long term.  As good stewards we have to try to extend the use of what we have for as long as we can do it with excellence.  Mac computers are going to come with some great applications, wait for it, including great basic video editing software.  This is a big advantage for anyone on a tight budget that wants to put together a new media ministry.  PC's are ok, too. There I said it.  Really a lot of the newer ones are pretty great actually.  Windows finally has a more reliable OS (operating system) and PC's are often times way cheaper with a lot more "brains" for the money.  Also, ProPresenter is finally releasing a windows version in the very near future.  Either way you go, try to streamline as much as you can.  With some of the new Microsoft file extensions, .docx for example, there are a lot of problems sharing files to different platforms and this can cause a lot of grief if someone forgets to save the file the right way.

Creation:  Who's gonna create the media and what area will it fit under?  Communication is the reason for media.  Figure out where you want the message coming from and make sure to always use that channel of communication.  Instead of everyone submitting announcements and projects directly to the media personnel, have it all filter through one minister so that there is always consistency in what is being communicated.  Make sure that minister will filter the messages through the church's mission statement to make sure it is in line with who the church is, instead of giving an appearance of who the original sender wants the church to be.  One huge lesson I have learned is that often times we try to manage the perception of our church by showing people how we want the church to be instead of showing people what the church is really about.  Don't build a façade, reveal the truth.

Creating excellent media isn't about being professional, it's about taking the time to give your all in what you create for the glory of our Lord to convey His truth to the people He wants to reconcile with.  Never forget why we do what we do.  We have the greatest message anyone could ever receive and it's time we start faithfully delivering it.  I hope this helps and feel free to leave your own ideas below on how we all can begin to do excellent things with what God has given us.

-Ministry is a Mindset :: Think About It

Define "sin" [updated]

What is your definition of sin? Respond below.  

Well since no one chimed in, I thought I'd elaborate a little and give you my definition for sin.

The more I encounter people and ask this question, children especially, the more I get the response that sin is "the bad things we do", or "the things we do that make God angry".  I fully believe we, as the Church, have failed at teaching sin.

Let me start by asking this question: How do we come to salvation?

In Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul teaches us that it is "by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of work, so that no one may boast."  Salvation is not based on works.  There is no karma-like version of true salvation.  Now most who are believers don't have a problem believing that salvation is not based on works and that it took grace through the sacrifice of Christ, fully paying the penalty of sin, which is death, to bring about that salvation.  So if we know that salvation is not based on works, why would it stand to reason that sin would be based in works?  It doesn't.

When creation fell, because of Adam's selfish choice, sin entered into the human condition.  It became who we are.  We are now defined by sin as humans.

Now if the perfect, holy, and righteous Will of God is to be glorified, and the mission of Christ is to reconcile a now fallen humanity, so that we can once again stand before God, holy and righteous, to glorify Him, then sin is anything that is not in the perfect will of God; or anything that does not glorify the Creator. Sin is putting our own selfish will, just as Adam did when sin entered the world, before the Will of God.  This is the true enormity of sin.

Think about your normal day. It's not that hard to not lie, and even easier to not murder someone, usually ;).  But how often are we selfish? I know that for me, most of what I do in a day is because I chose, or will, to do it.  I do what makes me happy.  Following our own selfish will is now human nature. It's who we are.

Now I say all this to emphasize the enormity of sin.  We so often try to make sin small by making it about works. Sin is not small.  To say that it is makes the sacrifice of Christ small.

The good news:  When we finally realize the enormity of sin, we can begin to realize the true enormity of grace.  Grace, through Christ, doesn't free us to sin, it frees us from sin.  It literally takes us out of sin and places us before the throne of God, holy and justified and perfect, able to glorify Him.  Chuck Swindoll says that grace is the ability to always choose the Will of God instead of always choosing our own selfish will. We can only find freedom from sin by surrendering ourselves to the Will of God, and that is only found by grace, through faith. Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Solo Christo.

Feel free to respond below.

If you would like to know more about sin, grace, salvation, or Christ, feel free to shoot me an email here.

Ministry is a Mindset :: Think About It

iPhone OS 4: the 7 tentpoles

In case you didn't spend your day watching the engadget.com blog auto-update the iPhone OS 4 event here's a recap of what Cupertino is giving us (iPhone users) this summer with the release of the new OS 4.

The 7 Tentpoles of iPhone OS 4:

1.    Multitasking between Apps... without killing battery life. (yes that means pandora can play in the background and skype can receive calls while running in the background)

2.    Folder... iPhone apps can now be arranged into folders which means instead of 180 apps, you can have 2100+

3.    Mail... enchanced mail, that is.  That means a unified inbox and more than one exchange account, plus a few other great features.

4.    iBooks... straight from the iPad, the iPhone now has iBooks.  Comes with a free "Whinnie the Pooh" book, FTW!

5.    Enterprise... lots of really cool, rad, and hip features for business. I'll save you the time.

6.    Game Center... gaming is about to be revolutionized on the iPhone.  There's even the Cupertino equivalent of XBOX Live with the Apple social gaming network.  This will be sweet, for sure.

7.    iAd... yeah I know, pretty big build up to something we hate.  But they're doing what they can to make us hate ads less on the iPhone and they might have succeeded.  We'll just have to wait and see.  Also this is going to skyrocket their ad revenue and add considerably to the stock value... (invest now!)

So that's the list of the big new changes come soon to your pocket.  Keep in mind that all of the changes will only be available on the iPhone 3GS and 2nd gen iTouch.  Only some of these, no multitasking, will be available on the 3G or iTouch. [fail]  There are many other little changes, like being able to change the background on your home screen instead of just your lock screen, but we'll hear more about those in the next few months.  All great things take time to build, and it looks as if Apple is on that tipping point between making the iPhone OS newer and finally making it better.

-Ministry is a Mindset :: Think About It

(yes i realize this post has nothing to do with ministry, but it's my tagline so get over it)

A "Healthcare Reform" Wake Up Call

 Well, as we all have already heard, healthcare reform has passed.  Probably not the reform you or I had hoped for, but tomorrow it will be in law.  As I think about the tragic implications of this "historic" reform I have to think about exactly why it is tragic.  It's not because it's going to financially break us all, and it will.  It's not because of too much government control, and there is too much.  It's not even because some it could possibly lead to the overturning of many anti-abortion laws that will stop protecting the lives of the innocent to protect the lives of those living with consequences of the life they made or didn't.  It's because we, as the Church, dropped the ball.

Healthcare is our responsibility Church.  There's no way around it.  We were called to it by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  "For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." Matthew 25:35-36.  Social responsibility is our gig.  Did you know we only tithe (which literally means 10%) 2-3% of our incomes.  When are we going to get out of our seats and get dirty; when are we going to give, not out of our surplus, but out of our love?  We could have avoided this. Now we get to live with the consequences.  Maybe, just maybe when we begin to take our faith seriously, we won't live in a world dependent on the governments of this world.

Ministry Is A Mindset :: Think About It

Happy St. Patrick's Day! *Real Leprechaun Video*

For your St. Patrick's Day viewing pleasure... I present: The Leprechaun in Mobile, AL (aka, 'Could be a Crackhead').  Enjoy!

Thirsty Thursday - Do whatever you want with no consequences!

Today we're going to talk about why we, as Christians, do good things, strive to live Holy lives, and how that affects our relationship with God.

Now obviously the title was just to get you here, but I do want to start by saying that neither salvation, nor sanctification (what most would say is the process of becoming Christ-like), is based on works.  Never in Christianity is your relationship with your Savior, Jesus, put in jeopardy because of the things you chose to do or not do.  Doing certain things and not doing others does not determine your salvation or prove your sanctification.  We are made Holy and Justified before God by the blood of Christ only. Ephesians 2:8-9 says: "8  For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;9  not as a result of works, so that no one may boast."  Did you see that! It was a gift of God, with Him expecting nothing in return! How awesome is that!  

Now, saying that works don't prove you are becoming more like Christ probably threw a few people, so let me explain.  It's not about what we do, it's about whether what we do is to glorify God.  "1  Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.  2  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."  In Roman 12:1-2 we see that living holy is a way to worship God, to glorify Him.  We do this by the "renewing of [our] mind" which means that we have to change the way we think.

We, as humans, are inherently selfish.  We think about what we want.  Living as Christ means to live with the mind of Christ; to let our thoughts match His thoughts.  Jesus was focussed on the will of the Father and the ministry of Jesus was an overflow of that focus.  We, as Christians, who are continuing the ministry of Christ, should also be focused on the will of the Father so that ministry will be an overflow as well.

So let's recap:  

It's not about what we do, because what we can do is never enough.

We should live holy as a way to worship, or thank, God for His mercy and grace.

We become more like Christ by learning to think more like Christ.

This week, as we think about why we do what we do, let's remember to first think "am I doing the will of the Father in what I am doing?"  The world is our mission field, don't sit inside where it's comfortable and nice and expect the world to come to you.  Learn to think with the mindset of Christ, focused on the Will of the Father, intentionally go, and allow ministry to happen as an overflow.

**and just so you know, every decision we make has consequences**

Ministry is a Mindset :: Think About It

Weekend Interview with Mosab Hassan Yousef: 'They Need to Be Liberated From Their God' - WSJ.com

via online.wsj.com

Great article about how the love and grace of the one, true God changed the life of Mosab Hassan Yousef (the son of the man who created the Hamas terrorist regime)

Click here to read

What's a "Twitter"?

 Today is Twitter Tuesday.  So today I will try to answer the question I've been asked a hundred times, "What's a Twitter?"  Now obviously the question should be stated "What IS Twitter" but you know how old people are, always making proper nouns common, always making department stores possessive (like Walmart's or Belk's).  But back to the topic... What is Twitter?

Well according to the Twitter website, "Twitter is without a doubt the best way to share and discover what is happening right now."  No one uses twitter the same way.  So use it as an RSS feed to follow different blog updates they are interested in.  Others use it as a way to keep up with news or current events.  The main thing to know about using Twitter is that your Twitter is about what you are interested in.  It may seem strange at first but Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is your Twitter feed.  Over time you will be introduced by other Twitter users to many different users that you may want to follow as well.  A good place to start is by following you friends in real life, they are probably interested in some of the same stuff as you and you can see who they follow and follow along with them.

So today's post is pretty short but I hope you can now see a little more clearly what a Twitter is.  It really just depends on you and your interests.  If you're not a Twitter user, check it out for yourself at twitter.com.

Ministry is a Mindset::Think About

Image from Action Datsun - Flickr