What’s In a (Church) Name?

What happens when a church decides to change it’s name? Gordon MacDonald shares the path his church went down to change their church’s name from First Baptist to CenterPoint Church.

It was a big day when our leaders unanimously affirmed their desire to go for a change. It was an even bigger day when we identified a name that every one liked. It just popped up in conversation. I’m not sure that any of us remember who had the idea. Jesus, perhaps! When we first heard it, we raised holy hands and said in concert, “That’s it!” And we stopped looking. The name we picked was CenterPoint Church. It grabbed us, and it offered a meaning that we quickly embraced.
Not so the entire congregation. Admittedly, there were some strugglers out there. And we waited, month after month, for the last 20 percent of our people to jump aboard. Convincing the first 80 percent was easy. The last 20 percent, however, were harder to persuade.

The key to the White Elephant

I wrote an article a couple years back for Relevant Magazine and thought it’s relevant again with the holiday season…

Christmas is definitely here. Lights are a-twinkle around town. The advent candles are burning, and children everywhere are a part of numerous Christmas musicals.
Christmas also brings the proverbial White Elephant gift exchange. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this now common Christmas tradition, let me give you an explanation and some tips for walking away with the best gift.
The White Elephant gift exchange is a game likely dreamed up by genius guys, somewhere, who wanted an excuse for not knowing how to shop for their friends, girlfriends, wives and coworkers. Each person brings an unmarked gift, and then numbers are drawn to allow each person a turn to pick a present from the pile. The ingenious creators of the game also made a unique “out” to ensure they didn’t walk away with a disappointing gift. After a gift has been unwrapped, the partygoers who have not chosen their gift have the opportunity to steal one of the unwrapped gifts, rather than selecting from the pile of the unknown.

Click to read more. (expired link)

HP and Cingular bring you the Internet

Years from now, your children will laugh about how you had to “stay in range” of a Wi-Fi signal in order to stay connected to the Internet when you were young.
HP is bringing a new laptop in cordination with Cingular to bring you the Internet anywhere there’s a cellular tower.
The laptop has built-in WWAN (wireless wide-area network) connectivity that enables users to connect to the Internet via cell phone tower instead of only WLAN (wireless local-area network, or “regular Wi-Fi”). It connects via WLAN also, but you no longer need to get upset when the independent cafe you are trying to support has spotty Wi-Fi.
Via CNET

Free Studio 60 download

The New Orleans arrangement of “O Holy Night” that was featured on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is available for free download.
A group of New Orleans musicians led by Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews played the new version of the Christmas classic as part of “The Christmas Show” episode’s story line.
The musicians are really Hurricane Katrina survivors as they played on the show. The vignette was coordinated by the Tipitina’s Foundation, an nonprofit organization dedicated to helping New Orleans musicians affected by Katrina.
An MP3 of the song can be streamed or downloaded from NBC’s Studio 60 music site.

Via CNET