Author: Jonathan Blundell

I'm a husband, father of three, blogger, podcaster, author and media geek who is hoping to live a simple life and follow The Way.

McLaren talks Homebrewed Christianity

My buddy Chad and his friend Tripp interviewed Brian McLaren this past week for their Homebrewed Christianity podcast.

I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet but Chad promises it’s great. It’s already 9:19 tonight and I’m debating on downloading it and listening to it before heading to bed or waiting and listening to it on the bus tomorrow.

Here’s the quote Chad pulled out for his blog:

“You know, if people want to say that the gospel of sin management is easy and hopeful, I have to ask myself how deeply they’ve thought about it, because what it really ends up doing is making most of life for most people pretty much meaningless, and yet, to me, the gospel of the kingdom then brings meaning and value into every dimension of life, and it brings value to all people’s lives as well. So, I would say, the good news is 10,000 times better than I used to believe.”

You can listen here or subscribe via iTunes.

UPDATE: I’m listening to the podcast now – this quote grabbed my attention (around 11:30 in the podcast):

I would never want to say this in a harsh way, but in a true way the gospel for an awful lot of people has become the ultimate spiritual commodity and it’s a consumer product. And an awful lot of what we call Christian activity is the marketing of that product and the winning of new customers so that they can remain satisfied customers for life. When you contrast that with the idea of being invited to join God in the healing and on going development and growth and fertility and goodness of the world — the difference is staggering.

City Ministries in Nigeria



Mike Blyth shared an info-video from some of the missionaries serving with City Ministries in Nigeria.
City Ministries is the same group we worked with when we went to Jos, Nigeria in 2006 and also when CWF went in 2007.
Also friend and UMHB alumni, Erin Rigsby, works with City Ministries as well as a nurse for many of the children in the homes.

Pearl Harbor (a.k.a. the start of the Vietnam War)

i heard a funny story on NPR yesterday afternoon
an author was talking about 9/11
she said she had to walk home that day because all the subways and such were shutdown
and she stopped in a bar
two business men were talking and one said, “man this is just like pearl harbor”
the other asked what pearl harbor was
he responded, “It’s when vietnam bombed the pearl harbor and started the vietnam war”

These folks vote. Beware. 🙂

Label your Thumb Drives

If you’re prone to losing your Thumb Drives – or just afraid it might happen some day, Lifehacker has a great tip/hack to label your drive with your name, phone number or other information.

Here are the basics:

I created a next text file in Notepad, typed the word:

[autorun]

And saved it to the root directory—the “main” area of your drive, not in a folder—as autorun.inf.

I chose a big yellow smiley face for my icon but any brightly colored, unusual icon will be easily noticed. I copied the icon to the root directory of my thumb drive and renamed it myicon.ico.

Then I opened my autorun.inf file and added this text:

icon = .\myicon.ico
label=My Name (mobile xxx-xxx-xxxx)

(Of course, you will substitute your name and your mobile number for the above text.) I saved the file and marked it “read only” and hid it (just as an added sense of security—a lot of people have not learned how to tweak their “Show hidden folders” settings and, thus, will not be tempted to delete or
edit the file.)

I gave this a try and it works like a charm. If you recall, I wrote about some great software ihoundsoftware.com back in Dec. and this works right alongside the software. I simply edited the autorun file that was already saved on my drive and added my name and phone number.

Here are a couple screen shots showing the final results:

40 years ago today

Loraine Hotel

Early morning (evening), April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride

In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
In the name of love
What more in the name of love…

Pride (In the Name of Love)
U2

Have we changed any since April 4, 1968? Or are we just the same people, worrying about our eight dollar hotdog and ignoring our brothers and sisters around the world who are starving, thirsty and dying of treatable diseases?

(if you can’t see the video, click here)