Misspellings Я Us

Should churches or church members be politically active?

Some would say that they must in order to ensure our religious freedoms remain. Some would say that we need to support morally strong leaders that will reinforce family values and strengthen the moral fiber of our country.

On the other hand, people of all political persuasions should feel welcome in church. A church that is openly and strongly political – supporting a particular party – is likely to turn off people from the other party.

Does politics create relational strife? My friend Ben Mitchell (center) is a staunch Democrat. I (right) am a staunch Republican. But what is my friend Chris Iott (left)? (Click the photo to read the shirts).

Ben and I are constantly debating the merits of one side or the other and for the most part it's all in fun. We're both on the same page when it comes to Christ and our mission as members of the body, but we disagree on most political issues. Is a healthy debate good? Or should we focus on the fundamentals we agree on and minimize the disputable issues?

Should we be like Ben and Brian? Or should we be like Chris?

(P.S. All the shirts have "consience" misspelled)

Technology Ends…

… Then what?

I’ve seen a number of items in recent news indicating the possibility of impending nuclear weapons use. There’s the possibility that Al-Qaida has already smuggled nukes into the US. They also might be looking for nukes hidden in the US by the Soviets during the Cold War. Theories have arisen that Iran or North Korea is planning to detonate a nuke over the US at high altitude to cause an EMP which would destroy much of our technological infrastructure. And now China is claiming they would use nukes in a US/China dispute over Taiwan.

Suppose something like this actually happens. I’ve centered much of my life, knowledge, and skills around technology. Supposing I survive such a catastrophic event, what would I do in a world whose technology was 50-100 years behind where we are now?

I would still be a Christian and I would still be called to ministry. Technology is just a means to that end. But It’s oh so hard to remember that when you’re
playing with the latest gadget.

How would your ministry change?

Welcome Kyle

I’d like to welcome Pastor Kyle to the blogosphere. Pastor Kyle is Crossroads’ Pastor of Students.

Fellowship One Implementation

For those who are wondering, Crossroads is not using Fellowship One (F1) yet. We have recently been assigned a project manager by Fellowship Tech and are beginning the process. We’ll be starting the five step process of implementation some time in the next week.

I will be gone camping for the next couple weeks so I won’t be in on the initial meetings. The initial meetings are mostly high-level stuff that my executive pastor and tech director can handle. Following my two week vacation I’ll be going to the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon.

You may not see many blog posts for the next 3 weeks (unless we hit some hot-spots with the PocketPC), but after I get back I will be sure to blog about our F1 transition as it happens. Stay tuned.

phpicalendar

I was looking for a way to bring all our ical calendars together without having to install a program on the client machine and came across phpicalendar. It’s a very simple PHP script that simply displays iCal calendars. It even layers them. It is for display only.

Phpicalendar depends on having a local iCal file. I used wget. Wget comes standard on every Linux distro I’ve ever used and was already installed on our host. I created a  one line Cron entry to run wget on an hourly basis and pointed wget at a file containing a list of iCal urls. Wget downloads the iCal files into a local directory if they have been updated.

I was able to use my Evolution calendar, Pete’s iCal calendar, and Shari’s ScheduleWorld calendar. It took me about 15 minutes to get this all going. The only thing I’m slightly disappointed with is that Shari’s ScheduleWorld calendar shows the wrong times. I need to check and see if timezones are screwed up or something.

Live8

You are walking down the street and a pan-handler asks for money. You can smell the alcohol on his breath and know that the first thing he’ll do with the money is go buy more liquor. Do you give him some money?

The best solution I’ve heard for this scenario is to offer to buy the fellow a meal. I know people who have done this and whose offers have been turned down. The pan-handler doesn’t really want the food, he wants to get drunk again. By giving your money to him you’re contributing to his downfall.

There has been a lot of press lately about the Live8 and One campaigns. What these campaigns are attempting to achieve is debt relief for Africa. The theory is that relieving these countries’ debt will reduce poverty. The intentions are above reproach. The method is broken.

The reason these countries are so poverty stricken is because of their governments. Relieving their debt will only line the pockets of the government officials in a way similar to the Iraq/UN oil-for-food scandal. The people who need the food and relief will not get it.

Oppressive governments create poverty. Freedom creates prosperity. Compare the poverty levels of free countries like America with those of countries like China, the former Soviet Union, and Iraq. The only real solution to the poverty problem in these countries is government reform, not debt relief.

The money we have spent on the war in Iraq will be far more effective in reducing poverty than debt relief for Africa will ever be. Ironically, many of the celebrities of Live8 and One are anti-war to the core.

Audio Books

Because I spend 2 hours of my day commuting, I’ve been a member of simplyaudiobooks.com for the past few months. It’s like the Netflix of audio. It’s been great to be able to use my drive time wisely. I recently discovered audio-to-go.com and am going to switch for a while to see how they compare.

I’ve been somewhat disappointed with Simplyaudiobooks simply because they break the books up into 3-4 disk sections. Audio-to-go sends the entire book.

The worst example occurred when I was listening to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. The book is on 7 disks so it came in two parts. When I returned the 1^st half they did not have the 2^nd half available so they sent me the next thing on my list which was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. This was a set of 4 MP3 disks encompassing 56 hours of audio. Needless to say, Atlas Shrugged significantly interrupted the flow of the other book.

If anyone has any book suggestions let me know. I’m always looking for a book to add to my queue.