Going 'Dark'.....

Hey gang, I'll probably not be saying much for a while. I'm still 'blogging' to a certain extent, but what I am doing now can't be shared here.

I want to thank those of you who have read regularly, don't take me out of your subscriptions, I'll still post something here when I can, its just not going to be a focus for me for a while.

We wish you a happy new year...may 2008 be your best year yet...

The Halls

Listening Recommendations...

I told you about the Zune that I got for Christmas...

My first reaction was to load a bunch of music on it, but then I started subscribing to podcasts. For the last few days I've been listening to Andy Stanley. When I was living at home I watched his dad on TV -- "if you miss church, its ok if you watch Charles Stanley on TV ;-)"

Andy is amazing though, I highly recommend the series called "The Sinai Code". It is about the 10 commands and the purpose for each one. The thing that really struck me was the 4th commandment. Do you know what the 4th commandment is? The first three are about God. 1) You will have no other gods before me 2) Don't try to make anything that represents me 3) Don't misuse my name. What was the most important thing on God's mind after those 3? You will take a day off every week. hmmmm....

Listening to it will change your perspective on the Old Testament and New Testament law. Go here to subscribe via an iPod or go here to listen with your computer.

Catching up....

One of the big events this Christmas....Kathy broke a bone in her foot. It happened before the holiday and she's been hobbling around ever since. It was my fault because she was trying to call me while walking down the stairs. I'm afraid to mention it because next thing you know we'll have laws restricting cell phone use on the stairs. She can be a little stubborn determined at times and was convinced that she still needed to do all of the cooking that she normally does at this time of year (she is an awesome cook). Anyway, she's now concerned that she is going to have to continue wearing the brace after the next doctor visit. We'll see.

Yesterday, I accepted a position with Oakwood Systems Group. Oakwood is a consulting company based out of St. Louis. They have an office in Brentwood. I believe that this is a good step for me at this point. I am excited about starting after the first of the year.

The youth group at Church is encouraging the kids to read the New Testament out of 'The Message' between the first of the year and the end of school. I am going to try to do the same, I desperately need to get back into regular Bible reading.

For Christmas this year, I asked for and received a Zune (Microsoft's version of the iPod). Pretty cool device. To be honest, I've not listened to whole lot of music on it yet. My idea was to get it to listen to when I travel. I quickly realized that it is a tremendous training tool for both professional and spiritual training. I've heard of podcasts for a while, but I didn't have a device that could do it, so I didn't pay much attention. Real quick, a podcast can be thought of as an audio blog. You subscribe to a podcast with your device's software, and when new posts are made, the software automatically downloads them to your device. You can then listen to them any time. I started using it yesterday and I've subscribed to two professional feeds (.NET Rocks and The polymorphic podcast) and four spiritual feeds, two from Ravi Zacharius and two from the Northpoint Church (Andy Stanley). Any of you podcasters out there, let me know if you have suggestions about what to listen to.

Well, 2007 is about done with. To be honest, I'm not really sad to see it go. I don't really have resolutions, I used to set goals for the year, I've pretty much stopped that as well. At this point, I live from day to day. I think that's scriptural. I'm amazed at how God taught the Israelites to trust him, day to day. The manna came every day, you can't collect enough for tomorrow, just today. You must trust...you must believe.

Have a good day.

A Christmas Story...

I heard this story a year or so ago. I fell in love with it. There is a version that is set to a musical background. I searched for it but could not find it. If anyone can find it, please let me know where it is....

Now the man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind, decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man. "I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.

Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.

And then, he realized, that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me. That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safety ... to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand."

At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells - Adeste Fidelis - listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow.

Griping Works.....

About a month ago, I was supposed to go to the Titans game, we were trying to get a demo done at Digital Dog, so I passed up the opportunity to go. I was angry about it and I wrote this post at the time. My good friend Tara knew of some tickets available for the game today and gave me the opportunity to buy them. Kathy and I talked about it, I bought them as part of my Christmas present. I offered Sarah(doesn't understand football) and Kathy(hates to be cold) the opportunity to go with me, both declined, Chris was jumping at the chance so we went. I took some pictures with my camera phone. It was fun, it wasn't a very exciting game, but the Titans won. Cleveland lost like we needed them to so now as Chris said "All we have to do is beat Indy in Indy and we go to the playoffs"...Oh boy...

We had to go to Goodlettsville to get the tickets, its about a 25 or 30 mile drive, some highway miles...I thought it would be a good drive for Chris to make. He did very well, we went to Rivergate afterwards, he drove there too, a few rough spots, but he's doing well. I can't get over the weird feeling of putting my life in the hands of someone whose diaper I used to change. See Tara's post about Ethan's first drive

I'm not sure which is tougher, Chris driving with me in the car, or me driving with him in the car. He loves to point out the cases where I just might be a skosh over the speed limit....or if I forget to use my blinker...or whatever infraction (minor I assure you) I commit while driving. He seems to think he caught me going 15 miles per hour over the speed limit, I introduced him to the concept of parallax which affects the perceived reading of a needle based instrument (such as a speedometer) based on the position of the observer (I didn't mention that a speedometer would read slower when viewed from the passenger seat). I assured him that his dad was a good driver and that the policeman that pulled us over on the way to soccer practice (when he was 5) was just having a bad day....

Has anyone seen my Ebenezer?

I am not a cook, I enjoy fixing food for my family, but cooking is not something I do regularly. The one thing that I do cook is breakfast. Last weekend, I decided to make pancakes. I got everything together, when they were finally ready, I called out "Pancakes Are Ready" and this little voice in the back of my head finished the old hymn by singing "...Come to the feast...".

That got me to thinking about the old hymns that I grew up with. A few years ago, I went on a men's retreat to see a baseball game in Atlanta. We stopped at a small local Church on Sunday Morning. One of the first songs they sang "Bringing In The Sheaves". It was a little bit jarring, I had not sung that particular song in a very long time. I can remember thinking as a kid, "What's A Sheave?", if we are bringing them in? where are they?

Even today one of my favorite hymns is "Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing", here is verse 2:

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

So what's an Ebenezer anyway? (answer here) Do I have one? Why am I raising it? I loved the song, but did it really speak to me? not really.

My point here is....Jesus spoke to his time, I am amazed that whatever setting he was in, he was able to teach. On an open hillside he uses birds and flowers to speak of God's love and care. When speaking to farmers, he uses the concepts of planting and harvesting. When talking to fishermen, he talks about sorting a catch.

Christians now must speak to our time. Singing songs that use King James english will not speak to this generation. Many of the normal tools that Churches use to teach and communicate, will not speak to this generation. We must keep up with the times, we must adapt.

Here are some examples:

In my day, the big thing was to have a phone in your room. Today it must be a cell phone. However, phones are not to be talked on, they are used to text. How many youth groups are using this technology to communicate? How many Churches still have a phone tree?

Churches spend thousands of dollars in postage to mail bulletins to members. There is a certain segment of the population that will always expect a weekly bulletin. However, a growing group doesn't want information once/week, they want it as soon as it becomes available. Sending an email everytime an event occurs is complicated, however, RSS (the format used by Bloglines and Google Reader to 'subscribe' to a blog) would allow members to view the Church's information very inexpensively and quickly.

Churches are still struggling with putting together websites. Don't get me wrong, web sites are good, (I build them for a living) but the traditional Church web site is difficult to manage and goes out of date quickly. Using pre-built technologies like blogs or Facebook is much easier to maintain and keep current.

It's not just about Churches, individual Christians can do a lot using technology.

Blogs are cool, even though I've only been blogging for a short period of time, I've been able to see the readership grow. The thing I get most excited about is when I see that someone has reached my blog through some random internet search. This post that I did last August has gotten several hits from people searching for information about Euler's Identity. It is exciting to me that they found my post that said that it was proof that God exists. Did it have an effect? I won't know until the last day, but in my mind, the seed was planted somewhere.

Social networks are becoming very popular with young people. I have an account on Facebook and MySpace, I'm looking for people that I grew up with, there are not many, but, there are thousands and thousands of young people, college age or younger are Churches using this technology to speak to this generation?

Yeah, I'm a technology guy, I'm probably a bit myopic as far as this topic goes, but gracious, are Christians struggling to communicate the message in this day and age? Twelve guys were able to communicate the message with the whole world on foot. With what we have today, we should be able to tell the whole world instantly.

The most condemning item on this topic is...Satan knows how to use technology. (Click Here for some statistics).

This post has not turned out the way that I had planned. I really meant to just talk about the songs that we sing....how do we speak to the younger generation. It's got me thinking now though....hmmmm....

I need a job....

This is what happens when programmers have too much time on their hands...