My thoughts on church buildings

church trespassing

I shared this on Twitter/Facebook Monday night:

RT @emergentvillage @jeannemstevens: Churches hold $28B in mortgage debt. That amt could provide clean H20 to 1.4 billion ppl for 20 yrs.

I received a couple questions and comments so I thought I’d share my response and comments here as well. I hope you keep in mind that these are my thoughts and I don’t expect you to relate to God in the same way I do. For some, church buildings hold deep value and worth and are literal sanctuaries where they can come and meet with God – however for me… well you can read my thoughts below :-).
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Carnival Ecstasy review

As promised, here is my first report card on the two cruises we’ve taken this year (so far :-)). I’ll rank both cruises (and hopefully future cruises) on the same scale: 20 categories, scored 1-5 (5 being the highest); then total the points for the overall cruise score (out of 100 possible points).

In February 2009 we took the Carnival Ecstasy (see the Wikipedia entry) from Galveston, Texas to Progresso, Mexico and Cozumel, Mexico. The cruise was priced around $300 per person and Laurie and I traveled with two friends.
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The gospel and the poor according to Tim Keller

I’ve shared this on Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook but it’s worth sharing here again as well.

It’s not the bite size 11 minutes like Rob Bell’s video from last week, but its a great extended discussion on what the gospel is — and the effect it should have on our lives.

Tim’s message goes till 44 min in and then its Q&A for the remainder.


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Taxes and giving

I need some help understanding something. Hopefully there are some folks out there that read this blog that can help me out.

I keep hearing folks who are mad and upset about the way Obama is spending their tax dollars. I heard similar things from the other side of the aisle when Bush was president. And I can understand that (from both sides).

But if you don’t like the way your tax dollars are being spent – why don’t you simply find a non-profit organization that you approve of and give your tax dollars to them instead?
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Five things I did during the Great Crash of 2009

So when I suggested earlier this week that perhaps we should all have a dark day from time to time I didn’t mean for Twitter to take it personally – especially not during the work week.

Could have done without their servers (and Facebook and Friendfeed) crashing yesterday — but looks like we survived.

  • Found out about new blog posts via old fashioned RSS — instead of everyone’s Twitter updates
  • Forwarded emails with “RT @username” in the subject line
  • Posted a status update directly on Facebook for a change
  • Pasted a picture of the Fail Whale on my computer monitor hoping to cover up the dreaded 404 error messages
  • Sent txt messages to all my friends telling them “I’m eating quesadillas for #lunch”

What did you do during the social media crash of 2009?

Here’s what the folks over at Woot.com did… (and there list is far better than mine)

A new humanity in Christ

body of christ - http://www.flickr.com/photos/bemky/3220424667/

A while back I edited down a few minutes from one of Rob Bell’s message at Mars Hill. I refer back to it from time to time and have also added it in a semi-regular rotation on OrangeNoiseRadio.

The message comes from his series on Philippians and its always a great encouragement to me to just go back and listen to the 10 minutes or so that I edited down from the end of his message.
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