Am I really a fundamentalist?

I don’t do a word for word literal interpretation of the Bible.

I do believe in Jesus dying for my sins and rising on the third day to give me a new life.

I do believe, that life begins at conception, not because its in the bible (because it’s not), but because as a scientist that is the conclusion I have come to.

I believe that a Christian should be generous and that our hope is not found in the government.

I’m not sure that I agree with the redistribution of wealth that Obama proposes. I think that like the Hebrews began to enslave Hebrew during Jeremiah’s time that American corporations are enslaving Americans through debt.

I don’t agree with McCain in the campaign finance, doesn’t that limit the freedom of speech?

I’m beginning to see that I am more libertarian and I am conservative or liberal. Although, I’m not 100% sold on the libertarian ideas either.

I get tired of the name calling, the half truths and things taken out of context. Like Obama being  a Muslim and Palin being as right wing as they say.

I get tired of the conspiracy theories, on the left and the right. But I can see how some things appear to be like they do.

I guess this last month of the election has tired me out that I don’t want to approve either side. I want my voice heard.

I’m tired of the making fun of the other side. It is leading to anger in this country. An anger that we cannot afford to have.

I love all. I try to help all. I try…

Christianity is totally hijacked

Now that the Republican party has hijacked what being a Christian is, and with stories like this, I predict that despite the Christians in the Democratic party, that there will be larger backlashes that what we have seen for people of faith.

My news consumption

I admit it. I’m a news junkie. I sometimes drive Mary crazy with the news things that I listen to. I have never lost the thought on how, I would sit with Dad and watch the news. In a way, it is part of who I am because some of my early conversations with my dad was sitting down to watch the news. However, as my life as changed over the years, my news consumption hasn’t, but it has changed forms.

My main news was through the TV when I was younger, but as podcasting and blogs caught on (i.e. RSS). I began to gravitate to news sources that had good feeds of information. Well, I realize now that with the advent of Twitter, another piece of the puzzle has filled in. So here is my daily news consumption:

I get up and load my iPod Nano with the podcasts that have come in overnight. Two of the podcasts are the ABC News webcast and the NBC Nightly news. I listen to these on my way into work as well as the first part of my day in the office. Then there are various niche news and media critic podcasts that I listent to as well. Next, I go back over my Twitter timeline to scan for the news and people that I follow back to about when I last saw them day before (I have a few news sources, MLive.com, CNN breaking, NPR top stories, NBC news, and Breaking News On).Then comes the RSS feeds, with local news papers and various blogs and an alt news website (Pajamas Media).

I filter through all of these sites and more through the day. Being an analyst, it is then fun to poke through and distill this information into usable things. Most of which goes into my youth ministry.

I don’t read everything, but I read what I think I can. Otherwise, I would get overloaded. Eventually some these stories bubbles up into a though that ends up on my blog. You are reading some of the end results of this process.

More stuff from Mary’s Trip to Nigeria

Embedded Video

This just popped into my browser today. Luke Chaffee, who was on the mission trip to Africa with Mary, just released some new video on his YouTube site.

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Hearing God…an explanation

Here is a remark I made yesterday on Twitter: 
Second time today that God has said don’t look at your feet while listening to a sermon.
Where upon my brother-in-law responded:
Without context, may I gently point out just how crazy this makes you sound? – Brendon

I agree it sounds quite weird. However, after working my 9 hour shift, I don’t always communicate what I’m thinking in a clear way. Not to mention that I’ve always had a bit of a crazy streak, just ask my sister, my wife, my kids, and former roommates.

Okay, the explanation.

Toward the end of the shift, I was listening to Rob Bell on the Mars Hill Bible Church (Michigan) and he mentioned that there is a rabbinical tradition that says and I’m paraphrasing, you need to keep your head up and see that God has parted the sea for you, or else if you constantly look at your feet you’ll begin to complain that the mud is getting all over your feet.

Then while I was in early service at Gaylord Community Church, Pastor Steve made a remark that you need to keep your head up and not stare at your feet.

I took that as a gentle reminder from God that I need to remember to keep my head up and look to where God is taking me, rather than looking down at my feet, i.e. my current situation and grumble about it.

Actually, now that I thnk about it, I’m supposed to tell that to somebody else, but that’s another story.

So no, I’m not hearing voices in my head.

Lip Balm

I had these two college roommates when I was a sophomore at Grand Valley State. When the three of us were running around together, we called ourselves the “Three Amigos.”  This was a classic clip that was hilarious to us. I found this on Hulu.com:

Showing mercy…with Rock Band?

I was listening to Brian Zahnd at the Word of Life church podcast from a couple of weeks ago and he was doing a series about showing mercy. Pastor Brian had pointed out any interesting thing, that the Pharisees said to get your act cleaned up and then come to the table to eat.
However, Jesus says come to the table to eat and I will help you get
cleaned up.

I guess I am wondering aloud, how do you reach out to show mercy? If you have read Mary’s Rock Band Post then you know that there has been a little thing about Rock Band and using it as an evangelistic tool. The thing I see is that most kids that walk into our church come from families that don’t know love and aren’t clean in one way or another. So if we can show them that we aren’t that different, that a lot of us like to play Rock Band or on the Wii or any other video games, won’t that let them open up so that maybe they will see that they can sit at the table and we will help them get clean?

One other point that I need to say as well. One of the objections was that there is a screen that shows skulls with wings coming out of them. I thought about it a bit, and this is what I realized…Didn’t God create the skull? wings? How did these things get associated with evil? I think that while God creates, we as humans use them to worship them for other purposes. Well, I remember that God had Ezekiel prophesy over the bones and they came to life. Didn’t the apostle Paul use the altar to the “unknown god” and quote poems from Greek poets while preaching at Mars Hill?

So if we can invite some kids to come into our midst, to show them mercy, compassion, and love, then do you think that maybe we can use Rock Band for a good purpose?

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A cool song for the Youth worker

I saw this as a video that a church is using to set up their mission trip to the Dominican Republic, but it has some great thoughts on outreach and youth ministry.


Brandon Heath – Give Me Your Eyes from Brandon Heath on Vimeo.

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A youth worker conference

I like youth worker conferences and conventions. I have been following the NYWC that YS puts on each year. I would love to go back to one. Well, Group publishing and SYM have teamed to put together a conference in Columbus, OH. It sounds like NYWC but on a somewhat smaller scale. It would be cool to go, but funding will be the problem.

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Help Thousand Foot Krutch Win- Taco Bell’s Best of the Beat!

Taco Bell is doing a battle of the indy bands on their site. I was quite surprised to see so many Christian bands on the list. However, I’m not surprised to see One of my favorite bands in the mix.

From TFK’s MySpace blog:

Thousand Foot Krutch needs you help to show their stuff.  Head over to www.feedthebeat.com, click on lineup, find Thousand Foot Krutch and nominate the band to win the Best of the Beat!  Tac…

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