From Sampler to Sower

I stumbled across this little video yesterday and was mesmerized.  The sparks coming off these two tesla coils are creating the music you hear.

I wanna go play some SNES now …

A screen capture of my old homepage.

And to think we laughed when a teen at our youth center declared one afternoon “I’m going to delete the Internet.”

He meant he was going to uninstall Internet Explorer on his laptop.  But that’s not what he said.  Ever since “I’m going to delete the Internet!” has become a running joke for us.

But it’s not so funny any more.

Last night, Yahoo! deleted Geocities.

Now, before you get too mad at Yahoo!, I should probably point out they had every right to do so.  They bought Geocities all the way back in January of 1999.  And they gave the world fair warning – the then-impending deletion was announced in April of this year.  We had six full months to get ready.

But still…

They deleted Geocities!

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I really don’t intend for this to become a series, but there’s lots of cool stuff happening in Middletown, and I just can’t help but celebrate some of the great people involved in these huge successes.

Yesterday, my family attended the Luray  Harvest Festival, affectionately known as “Luray Day.”  But to fully appreciate what that means, we need to give you some back story.

First, there’s the town.  Luray is officially a “unincorporated community” in north central Henry County, in Indiana.  In other words, it’s a road, along which you can find about ten houses and one small church.  And just outside town there’s a 600 acre gravel pit.  That’s about it.  You can take a virtual tour of the town using Google’s Streetview.  (That’s right, streetview has even been to Luray.)

Back in it’s heyday it was a little bit more.  I hear on good authority that there used to be a blacksmith shop, a general store, a hotel, and a public livestock pen so people driving their herds down highway three could stop, corral their livestock, and rest comfortably in the hotel.  But that was a long time ago.  Luray hasn’t seen that much business since . . . well, since you went to town to look for a blacksmith’s shop.

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Ever wonder why I love my church?

Probably not, but I’m going to show you anyway.  Here’s the video:

This last Sunday our church had what we call “Imagine Ministries Sunday” when we hand off our Sunday services to our Children’s ministries. Our children’s pastor, Rev. Jill Waltz, plans the sermon and presents the message. Our Imagine Praise Team who minister each week in children’s church take a turn leading us in worship. The kids fill the choir loft and take part in other aspects of the service.

The video is a compilation of the pictures I took during worship Sunday morning. It shows, at least in part, why I love my church so much.

It has nothing to do with my youth ministry – though I have some of the best teens on the planet.

It has nothing to do with how well the church takes care of me and supports my ministry – though they do an outstanding job.

It has everything to do with how my church ministers to my family. I know my children are growing up under the care of a great pastor and team.

After the jump I’ve picked out my five favorite pictures from yesterday which show exactly what I love about our church’s children’s ministry. You can see all the pictures I took on my flickr account here.

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Info visualization site Information is Beautiful recently released this visual comparison on how the world spends money called “The Billion Dollar Gram.”

The visual comparisons between what we spend a year on things like, say, Facebook and Erectile Dysfunction medication compared to things like what it would take to feed all the world’s children for a year, or preserving the Amazon Rain forest is rather telling.

Likewise, it’s fascinating to compare things like Walmart’s gross revenues and their annual profits, or the total amount spent on advertising worldwide, compared with the amount spent on online advertising.  It’s both interesting and thought provoking.  Click on the image on the right to see the full picture, or check it out after the jump to see what is, in my opinion, the most disturbing comparison. Oh, and while you’re at Information is beautiful, check out some of their other fascinating visualizations like surface area required to power the world on solar power alone, twitter stats, or music sales by medium.

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Weekend Teaching Series: Heroes 

Message Title: A Vicious Cycle

Sermon in a Sentence: Don’t let complacency keep you from becoming the Hero God wants you to be.

Text(s): Joshua 23 – Judges 2

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 1 out of 10, Really, this was an extremely easy night: nothing difficult, a lesson that came together very well, and a great group of students to work with.  I don’t think I’ve ever ranked a Tuesday at 1 out of 10, but I can’t imagine an easier week.

Message Summary:

We’re starting a new series in the Shore, our weekly service for Junior Highers.  It’s been a while since I taught two different series to the two different groups, but different series means I can do a better job at targeting the different age groups.  The new series, Heroes, will be a series of character studies from the book of Judges.  And this week’s lesson was essentially an introduction to the book.

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On May 14-16, we took a group of teens to Regional Celebrate Life at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, IL. We were representing the Northeastern Indiana District Church of the Nazarene in an athletic and talent competition against students from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan.

You can see my photos from the event on my flickr page.

Here is a video compilation of photos from the event:

My top ten favorite photos from the event are after the jump.

NEI-NYI President Dane Matthews and Celebrate Life Director Dan Garde contemplate the possibility of taking a bite out of a wad of pre-chewed gum.

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(Recently, one of my students texted me a question that I couldn’t answer.  Not so much that I didn’t know what to say, but rather that every time I got ready to say something, I said to myself, “Yeah, but what about…”  After spending some time wrestling with it, here’s where I landed.  Below you’ll find my response, posted with the student’s permission.)

*****

You asked me “Is it possible to ‘do everything right’ according to the Bible, as far as living a Christlike life and be unhappy?”

I don’t know if you realize just how hard a question that is to answer, though if you manage to read all of this you might get a sense of it.

It’s difficult on two levels.  First it’s difficult because one has to wonder if it’s even possible to do everything right. Phrases like “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” “No one’s perfect,” and “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” come immediately to mind. Fortunately our acceptance in the eyes of God does not rest on perfect performance.

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You’ve probably not noticed, but I’ve not been posting much lately.  I kinda wish I had a good excuse.  Maybe I could claim I gave it up for Lent.  Or that I’ve been swamped by really important ministry stuff, or that I’ve been working on a total makeover of the blog.  Or that I was hard at work as the secret architect behind President Obama’s toxic assets plan that’s singlehandedly revived Wall Street over the last 18 hours.

But no.  No good excuses. Just a season of busy-ness coupled with a relapse of laziness.  That and the intersection of a surfeit of work writing daily devotionals over at mybrandnewlife.org and a dearth of things I felt I needed to say.

Like I said, not good excuses.

But I’m climbing back in the saddle again.  I’m spending a few days at my alma mater attending what they call a “Holiness Summit.”  Wasn’t really sure what to expect when I signed up to attend.  Turns out it’s a couple days of a lot of preaching.  An opening service on Sunday followed by two days with four services a day.  That’s a lot of time in a pew.  But it’s been good, at least in moments.

You can follow in nearly-real-time on my Twitter feed @pastorbuhro.  I’m also planning on summarizing the services here on this blog as well as sharing my reactions.

That means there’ll probably be a flurry of posts here in the next couple of days.

I’m just making up for lost time.

Please feel free to chime in with comments below.  I’d love your help processing some of the things I’m hearing this week.

Mythbusters: Water's Edge

Weekend Teaching Series: Mythbusters: Water’s Edge

Message Title: Myth #5: If you give up on hope, then you’ll be happy.

Sermon in a Sentence: Biblical hope does not disappoint because it is grounded in a God who does not fail.

Text(s): Ecclesiastes 9:3-5, Isaiah 38:18, Romans 5:1-5

Weekend Scale of Difficulty:8 of 10; This week’s lesson incorporated several videos which all had to be cued at the right time, plus shooting the best (and most complicated) of our Mythbusters videos.

Message Summary:

This week we wrap up our Mythbusters series with a sermon on hope. Originally we were going to complete the trilogy of faith, hope and love, but a couple of snow days and the fact that our next series is set to coincide with Lent means we have to cut it short and wrap up this week.

We began by showing a video from eleven72 called Change IS Possible.  It features a guy singing about hope.  Only he realizes as he sings that some people never change, and hoping they will really is meaningless.  The song ends with the line: “There is no hope.  Give up on hope.  If you give up on hope then you’ll be happy. Or whatever.” The video closes with text on the screen encouraging viewers not to give up on hope, but we made sure to stop the video before that.  Our fifth myth was the closing line of the song – “If you give up on hope, then you’ll be happy.”

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