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.

How does your church see you?

Woot! has a very fun and interesting post about how the Consumer Electronics industry sees it’s customers. They took a look at the marketing and mannequins that were used at the recent CES show to highlight what the industry “obviously” thinks about the consumer.

They may not mean to. They probably don’t even realize they’re doing it. But the vendors at CES reveal a lot about how they see their target audience with their choices of booth graphics and display mannequins. Here’s our cod-Freudian interpretation of what the industry really thinks about you, the sucke- uh, the consumer…

It got me thinking – if people are doing this with industry – what about our churches. How do we as a church see the “consumer” or the world around us? What perceptions does it give off to the world around us? Do we need to change that perception?

“A message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this.” – Brian McLaren

“The greatest message deserves the greatest marketing” – Mark Batterson

The church doesn’t exist for itself; it exists to serve the world

Huckabee: Marriage not 50/50

Love this answer from Huckabee last night – he was asked about an add that ran in the NY Times talking about women submitting to their husband.

“Marriage is not a 50/50 deal where each partner gets 50%. Biblically marriage is a 100/100 deal where each partner gives 100% of their devotion to each other. That’s why marriage is an important institution because it teaches us how to love.”

Visual worship

We’re looking for new background videos for encounter. And I’m always interested and on the look out for new ways of doing technology/video in worship… I’ve had this picture in my head for a while but thought it would only be limited to intellibeams and such. I would have loved to have done something cool at Christmas but it didn’t pan out – this may be the answer though to what I’m looking at and looking for.

That’s not paint or wallpaper on the wall of Irving Bible Church – that’s video/graphic projection.
Check out the entire gallery.

I can just imagine some of the things that could be done with a setup like this.

Want more information, check out visualworshiper.com

Everything Must Change: Chp 1 :: Hope Happens

As I mentioned earlier, I finished the first section of Everything Must Change by Brian D. McLaren last night. It’s part of our book club reading for the month.
At the end of every chapter are several questions to consider, mull over. I posted my answers to all of them within the book club forum but thought I’d share some of them here as well:

Q: As you begin this book, what are you most excited about? Confused or curious about? Eager to learn more about? What feelings has this chapter elicited in you?

A: I’m excited about the idea of changing the world. Often times I feel like Evan Almighty though and I want to change the world, but I’m not totally sure how. Then God comes along and tells me to build an ark – or whatever it might be and I buck at his idea and think well that’s not how I want to do it.

I’ve been a big fan of the idea I’ve been reading/seeing more and more lately of bringing God’s Kingdom to earth. Isn’t that what’s going to happen in the end anyways (Revelations)? But what if we could bring about such change that our world/life really is “on earth as it is in heaven.” Wow!

Some of the thoughts that stood out to me:

…”a new kind of Christian” – not an angry and reactionary fundamentalist, not a stuffy tradistionalist, not a blase’ nominalist, not a wishy-washy liberal, not a New Agey religious hipster, not a crusading religious imperialist, and not an overly enthused Bible-waving fanatic – but something fresh and authentic and challenging and adventurous.

(one of my favorite Mike Huckabee quotes was when he was on the Daily Show – something to the effect of: “I’m a conservative but I’m not angry about it.” he also said, ““I think life begins at conception but I don’t think it ends at birth. We have to be concerned about a child’s education, and health care, safe neighborhoods, clean water and the access to a college education. That is pro-life. To care about a child’s entire life.” I think that’s right up with what McLaren is getting at.)

… the versions of Christianity we inherited are largely flattened, watered down, tamed… offering us a ticket to heaven after death, but not challenging us to address the issues that threaten life on earth.

Jesus’ message is not actually about escaping this troubled world for heaven’s blissful shores, as is popularly assumed, but instead is about God’s will being done on this troubled earth as it is in heaven.

Q: How do you react to the summary of global crises in this chapter – environmental breakdown, the growing gap between rich and poor, the danger of cataclysmic war, and failure of the world’s religions to address the first three crises? think of the issues you’ve seen in the headlines lately. How do they fit under these four categories?

A: I think I’ve seen all of those rampant in our world and I think it’s a good tight summary of what we’re seeing.

Q: This chapter introduces the subject of hope. How would you describe your level of hope about global crises as you begin this book?

A: As an American in the middle of a presidential election I can see glimpses of hope in people and politicians. There are candidates that offer me hope and an ideal that things could actually change for once. I pray that happens.

Woah! New look

Welcome to SSL 3.0.
I’ve been playing around with Websites and WordPress themes for several weeks now and thought I’d go ahead and give my own site an Extreme Web Makeover. Still getting used to it. Not sure if I’m a huge fan yet – but we’ll see how it goes.
Let me know what you think.
There’s still a couple other things I’d like to try and implement this year but it probably won’t be right away.