Nathan Campbell – Page 171

Facebook for ministry…

Tim Challies has this wise advice on how to take a balanced approach to using social media to enhance, rather than replace, your church community.

“So as you use Facebook, be careful to use it in a supplementary way, a way that supplements your real flesh and blood contact with the people you are seeking to serve. Use it to share event information, to get people remembering last week’s sermons and thinking toward next week’s, to get people singing the songs you sing and praying for what needs to be prayed for. Use it to share photographs of great events and to encourage people to make contact with one another. The ways it can supplement ministry are nearly endless. But all the while use it to push yourself toward, not away from, face to face contact.”

Mikey has some practical tips for building a custom landing page for your Facebook presence.

This site, mediaforministry.org, has some good tips for using Facebook, and WordPress. And you should, of course, all be reading Communicate Jesus already if this kind of post excites you.

September 1, 2010

Is metal music? A look at the singers

Some metal musos are amongst the most talented exponents of instrumental craft (though sometimes they are not – and are on the far end of the spectrum). But is this true for the singers? Is there a method to their madness? A classically trained singer, and expert, has analysed five popular metal singers.

Here’s what she had to say about Ozzy Osborne.

“This is a singer with decent diction and good musical instincts but no command of vocal technique. He is massively over-adducting his vocal folds while driving enough air through them to get them to speak, but his throat is so tight that there is no flow or resonance… The entire range of his singing is contained within a single octave – with the exception of the moment when he yells “Oh Lord!” a little higher, in my opinion the only quasi-free vocal sound on the entire track.”

But it’s not all bad news. Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson gets a good wrap (as do others).

“I have nothing but admiration for this singer. Listen how he starts off with a soft growl, then moves seamlessly into a well-supported, sustained high full-voice sound that then evolves into an effortless long scream! His diction is easily intelligible, regardless of the range he’s singing in or the effect he’s going for. He achieves an intensely rhythmic delivery of the lyrics without losing legato and musical momentum, something a lot of classical singers struggle with, especially when interpreting the many staccato and accent markings that crowd scores by Bellini, Donizetti, etc… Notice the rasp that occasionally colors his sound. This is an effect that is totally distinct from strain – his entire larynx and throat needs to be completely loose and free to respond this way.”

September 1, 2010

Cereal offender: A frankenstein like mashup of cereal mascots

Scary. I wouldn’t take anything endorsed by this guy.

Via BoingBoing.

September 1, 2010

Would you watch a ninja cooking show?

Over morning tea some of my college compatriots and I were talking. And I pitched this concept for what will doubtless become a YouTube sensation. NinjaChef (there are a couple of people over the interwebs adopting this moniker – but none, in my opinion, doing it properly).

I would be thinking five minute vignettes with a ninja, in full costume, cooking ordinary dishes ninja style. And by ninja style I mean with ninja weaponry and incredibly stealthy efficiency. Dicing veggies with a katana, tenderising meat with nun-chucks, moving around the kitchen with deadly grace.

Would you watch? Improve my idea. Go nuts.

September 1, 2010

Wookie of the year

Winnie the Pooh stories would have been cooler if Winnie was a wookie. Right?

Here’s proof.

From artist James Hance, there are more.

September 1, 2010

NinjaBread Men

Awesome. Ginger Bread men would be cooler if there was a possibility that just by eating them you’d be getting your stomach a good ninja-ing.

Buy them at Perpetual Kid (that’s an imperative for my wife, and a suggestion for the rest of you).

September 1, 2010

Underscores for emphasis?

Have I missed a memo?

When did underscores before and after _emphasised words_ become something that was acceptable?

It’s dumb. It’s like underlining but, if possible, less visually appealing and more likely to make me write you off as a writer.

What happened to using vocabulary to express emphasis. Some people are so stupid.

Here’s my order of what’s acceptable when you’re trying to emphasise stuff:

1. An emphatic word.
2. An adverb or adjective.
3. Bolding.
4. All caps.
5. An exclamation mark (just because I hate them).
6. Underlining.
7. Underlining and bolding.
8. Underscores.

Anything after 3 is pushing the envelope.

September 1, 2010

Grrr…

I (stupidly, and against the wise and regular counsel of my wife) left the car unlocked last night. In our driveway. I won’t be doing that again. We’re clearly not in Townsville anymore… (though I did the same thing there last year with similar results – a stolen pocket knife (luckily not my “I inherited it from my pa so it’s a family heirloom pocket knife”).

Items stolen from the centre console include the case of the new Basement Birds CD I bought on Monday, sadly holding my (favourite of all time) Gomez “How We Operate” CD, and my iPod. They also pinched Robyn’s car survival kit from our glovebox. So they’re the proud owners of a box of mints, some strapping tape, and other miscellaneous items.

If I catch them I’ll bash’em.

September 1, 2010

Paul House on preaching Isaiah: Part two

Some random points here from the second lecture. I’m fading fast.

There’s nothing worse than a combination of pride and ignorance. “I’m stupid, and proud of it” is dangerous. Isaiah addresses that.

Isaiah is great at digging the needle in. He uses satire and irony and has an unfailing ability to hit the target.

Materialism leads us to think we don’t need God, which leads to bad stuff.

Some of the greatest issues we have with God are to do with timing – we either want him to move slower or faster than he currently is.

It’s easy to see the problems in society. To isolate and identify them. But it’s very hard to remember to pray for those problems.

Many missionary messages stop at about verse eight of chapter six. Here am I. Send me… but when you keep reading – “you will preach, and their hearts will be hardened. Jeremiah seems to have preached for forty years. And only produced two converts. We can’t buy into the theory that numerical success is linked to ministry. Growth is not a sign of your faithfulness or God blessing you. But nor is the antithesis true – it’s not a case of the smaller you are the more holy you are. We need to be Great Commission churches. Church growth fans sound a lot like prosperity preachers – suggesting that the size of your church is somehow linked to your approach. How do we explain Jonah? He didn’t want any converts and converted a city.

Know your congregation. Know their concerns. That will drive how you apply their lives to the text (not the text to their lives).

How do we do ministry without quitting. We’re required to love people even if we don’t see fruit tangibly. We’re to love our enemies, that’s the mark of a Christian, and it’s hard.

Israel are being called (by Isaiah, in chapter 7) to have faith (in God – where all faith in the OT is directed) in the face of tough times. When the superpower nations around them are agitating for conflict. Israel are scared. For good reason. Evil is real, and it may be out to get you. It was for Israel. Paul used chapters 5-12 to address his small group in the midst of the GFC and a bunch of individual examples of turmoil. Isaiah is a reminder that God is faithfully redeeming his people and bringing them into the new creation.

“If you are not firm in faith you will not stand at all…” (Isaiah 7:9a) is like a theme statement of this section of the book.

Isaiah doesn’t let disappointment with earlier results keep him from ministry. Firm faith requires steadfastness and Isaiah has that quality.

On the renewal of Creation (Isaiah 11:6-9)

Sin mars creation – but nothing will mar the new creation. The future is secure, the future is bright. We should always be a forward looking people. Believers appropriate this theology in the New Testament and we must reclaim it today. We have a home, a king, and a society that is flawless. All the temporal things are going to change so our focus needs to be on serving the servant and going to Zion (this future creation). We’ll have a resurrected body. We need to be focused on that future – not our present brokenness.

If we ask “what is your hope as a Christian” and it’s not marching into Zion and bringing people to the service of the faithful servant then you’ve missed the thrust of Isaiah.

Where is your confidence? it needs to be in the suffering servant whom God has sent. In this season we have every reason to say things and sing songs that we will say and sing forever in the new creation.

August 31, 2010

Paul House on preaching Isaiah

1. Know the context/background. Biblically, historically, literarily.
2. Look for important doctrines.
3. Look for how the New Testament makes use of the book. They are identifying patterns linking books in the Old Testament to Jesus.

These three steps require that we know the whole Bible, and have a framework of Biblical theology.

It’s very difficult to preach Isaiah verse by verse. It’s massive.

Big Picture: Four kings mentioned in Isaiah 1 as being part of the landscape of the book.

Assyria was a pretty nasty empire who used to extort countries through the threat of invasion. Their artwork and historiography shows that they ruled by terror. Impaling heads. Burning people. All that sort of stuff. They ruled Judah, one way or another, for over 100 years.

Then there’s Babylon. Babylon eventually conquered Assyria, but before that happened Babylon was a thorn in Assyria’s side. And Assyria conquered them a bunch of times. So when we see that Assyria conquered Babylon in the text – we have to ask “which time”… the Ancient Near East was a volatile political mix constantly one step away from (or in the midst of) conflict. The kings of these nations jostle for status and make bold proclamations about their greatness.

And Isaiah is focused on promoting Yahweh as the real king of kings and lord of lords. He preaches and predicts Assyria’s arrival for thirty years, and then becomes the comforter and conscience of Israel and Judah.

The message of Isaiah starts with sin and degradation and ends at Zion. It’s creation and new creation – God acting through a redeemer to bring his people to the new creation and he punishes the wicked.

Isaiah 2:1-22 describes the nations are coming to the Lord and invites Israel to do the same. Isaiah, like Jesus and Paul, was to go first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles.

The gospel has always been “accept my king, and you will be at home in Zion (the new creation).” It comes with a downside. The gospel is very good news to those who put their trust in it, and very bad news for those who don’t. That’s one of the most pressing challenges of our time – preaching judgment. But everybody, deep down, wants justice. So we need to figure out how to preach that truth with love.

Chapter 25 describes the gift from the true king (as opposed to the gifts from kings of surrounding nations) as life. Delivery from death. Chapters 21-33 are the hardest to preach in the book of Isaiah. There are some beautiful passages in chapter 19 that promise the Egyptians, the Assyrians and the nations will be part of God’s people.

The prophets never give up on getting Israel back into the fold.

The book speaks to the late eighth century and early seventh, primarily, but it also says something about the future. And about a future that still has not happened today.

Structure – Seven Cycles.

1. The Bloody City and Glorious Zion. 1:1-4-6.
2. The Spoiled Vineyard and the Rejoicing Citizens of Zion. 5:1-12:6.
3. The Wicked Nations and Yahweh’s Resurrected People . 13:1-27:13.
4. Proud Ephraim and the Rejoicing Remnant. 28:1-35:10.
5. Blaspheming Gentiles, the Covenant with David, and Righteous Gentiles. 36:1-56:8.
6. Blind Watchmen and Citizens with a New Name. 56:9-62:12.
7. A Blessed People, New Heavens and Earth, and Burning Sinners. 63:1-66:24

The book ends with the call for missionaries from many nations (Isaiah 66:18-21).

The big issue is “are you a servant of the servant?”

Jesus quotes Isaiah when he starts his ministry. John the Baptist cites Isaiah. Several times in the New Testament the writers use Isaiah to show that they are preaching “THE GOSPEL” the same one that Isaiah had been preaching. Isaiah is a great model for ministering to all sorts of people in all sorts of settings.

August 31, 2010

Mario Kart on real life streets

An enterprising soul has painted Mario Kart symbols on a bike path in Portland. Hilarity, and Mario power-ups, ensued.

Via here.

In other Mario related news, it appears that Bowser, the franchise’s dragon/turtle villain – may have actually (though accidentally) been based on a real (but thankfully now extinct) animal.

Here’s Bowser. Note the similarities.

Via here.

August 31, 2010

More on the place of “gimmicks” in ministry

Some have suggested that “positive interactions” is a better way to frame this than “gimmicks” (which I used previously) but thinking in a PR/branding framework is a blessing, and a curse, that I am unfortunate enough to carry.

Mikey has posted a great post pondering about how such gimmicks, or “goodwill exercises” can be used on campus to promote his AFES group at a university market day (when everybody is giving out stuff).

He shared in the comments that he’s started reading blogs about how to stand out at trade-shows to think through the issue. Here are a couple of the tips he picked up.

“1. “Market outside of what you paid for: A big mistake that many exhibitors make at tradeshows is sticking to what they believe they have paid for. This means only marketing from a booth, following all the rules of the event and not venturing out. This is the easy path, and one that is often taken because the staff at a booth is not incentivized to do more. If you think about the tradeshows that you have been to, the brands that stand out most are the ones that are wandering the halls, attending and asking questions at sessions, and generally taking a more proactive and guerilla approach to marketing.”

2 “Spend on the giveaways, not the booth. Everyone knows that nothing spreads faster at the tradeshow than a brand with a really big or valuable giveaway. ”

Both are good advice in my experience helping brainstorm trade show presence (and presents). But it’s not just about picking a big or valuable giveaway – the big or valuable giveaway needs to tie in to your key message, or your brand, in some way. The tradeshow idea is brilliant. We used to try to come up with really memorable tradeshow gifts that tied into our messages – you don’t just want it to be good. You want it to be good and relevant.

A few years ago, when we were marketing North Queensland in Brisbane I wanted to give people compasses and tell them to follow their way to paradise (but getting them to stop in Townsville would have involved purchasing a massive magnet (which, incidentally, is how Magnetic Island got its name)). Then, when water restrictions were biting I wanted to give people empty shower egg timers and water pistols (which would have been fun at trade shows). We ended up going with water bottles with North Queensland’s average annual rainfall printed on the label.

I think there’s something to thinking about how we can use a good gimmick as a hook for our message, not just in the university context but in the work of promoting our churches.

August 31, 2010

Paul House on Lamentations

Old Testament scholar Paul House is at QTC today. He’s speaking tonight on Isaiah.

He’s wearing a jacket and tie to be a non-conformist.

Lamentations is a post-exilic (587 BC) book reflecting post-exilic theology as Israel try to come to terms with the pain of exile. Exile is comparable to Gallipoli for Australians and Pearl Harbour/September 11 for Americans. It is a point by which to mark time culturally, it causes reflection, and for believers it causes reflection about God.

Israel have experienced “the day of the Lord” as a day of judgment. And they are realigning their thinking.

We don’t apply the Bible to our lives, we apply our lives to the Bible.

People who have experienced extreme trauma are presenting their thoughts about God in this book. Even people who are heinous, who have brought the trouble on themselves, this book has something to say.

The theme of this book is “prayers for outrageous grace.”

If you could deny God’s mercy and grace to anybody who would it be? There is grace for those people with God.

Structure: Chapter 1:1-9a are the words of a sympathetic narrator. The direct quotes are Jerusalem speaking. It happens again in verse 11. This is the heart rending poetry of the person receiving the punishment of the exile (documented elsewhere in 2 Kings in plain “history”).

In verses 18-22, Jerusalem, the city, speaks and confesses that God was in the right when it came to judgment. This is not Jerusalem at her best, but at her worst, and yet there is an element of hope that the judgment will be finite and there will be another side.

This idea of hope comes from Exodus 34:6-7, Leviticus 26:14-45, Deuteronomy 27-28; 30, 2 Kings 17.

God is slow to anger. There are more than 400 years between Solomon and exile. God is slow to anger, but he has a quick trigger finger when it comes to idolatry because idolatry is the most dangerous sin there is, because (by example) you’re taking people away from the only God who can save them.

Exodus 34 becomes the proof text for seeking intercession. It’s cited in Numbers 14, and in Joel 2, and in Jonah 3-4 it’s used for calling for God not to intercede in line with his merciful nature. Nahum 1:2-8 is a judgment statement on Assyria, the nation Jonah went out to, which says that God won’t clear the guilty.

There are good and bad promises from God (promises of blessing for obedience v promises of punishment for disobedience (consequences)).

Deuteronomy 30 is important because it shows the Lord will take both group, and individual, back on the point of faithful repentance. Which is how God has always dealt with people. It has never been works.

More than half the Psalms are lament. How do we use lament and prayer in song in our churches? How often do we do it?

Lamentations is a carefully and creatively written piece in acrostic form, and alliterative form later on. It’s art.

The book answers a “why” question, and a “how to respond” question, and a growing number of scholars in university schools of theology that argue that “this book is how to survive the abusive God in an unjust situation…” That’s certainly not the right view point, but it’s a viewpoint that people who are seeking pastoral assistance, will often adopt.

A better view is that the book is about outrageous grace. A character who has no right to go to God for forgiveness (given their history), knowing that God will supply it. Lamentations helps us to see how to pray, how to preach, how to wait, and how to hope.

August 31, 2010

On redeeming creation

Izaac, in reflecting on the Engage conference he was at recently, mentioned what he sees as a push towards redemption in our doctrine of creation. I think it’s probably a helpful corrective, I have been accused of having an “anaemic doctrine of creation“¹ in the past. Pretty much any time I said anything about why I think caring for the environment is a secondary issue (compared to preaching the gospel).² I’m not suggesting it has no value, just that it only has value when it aids our primary purpose.

The danger of correctives is that they push to far. As Zack points out, and Mikey reiterates. Here’s the quote from Izaac:

“But I’m concerned when redeeming creation is starting to get equal billing with the gospel. The balance hasn’t tipped yet, but it ain’t too far away. At the moment its simply good critiquing of the church.”

This issue nicely fits in with my post about work, rest and play, and my post about my ethical framework – and the “redemption angle” is probably the best articulation of the difference between my approach on the issue of gay marriage, and Mark Baddeley and Tim Adeney’s corrections (and I think, by extension, Oliver O’Donovans – who I really need to read).

Here’s my doctrine of creation in analogy form (from a comment on Mikey’s post). As you’d expect, it takes a pretty utilitarian approach to “redeeming creation” where the end is not the work in itself, but the work of the gospel.

I like to think of culture/the world as a sinking ship, Robinson Crusoe style, where any redemption is pulling stuff off the ship and waiting for a new one to come. I think sitting around on the ship polishing floors (or rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic) is a little pointless in the bigger scheme of things… Even though the ship will eventually be refloated.

I think the concept of “redemption” is more helpful, and more often related, to getting people off the sinking ship as opposed to cleaning up the sinking ship. And I think, to stretch the analogy, that cleaning the ship is only useful so long as it clears a pathway to make it easy for other people to get off.

So I think we ought to work hard too, but I think we ought to work hard primarily because it’s part of the process of having a consistent witness and part of our gospel mission.

I think the restoration, Romans 8 style, is a complete renewal of Creation not just a renovation where God fixes the bits we’ve missed. It seems to me that the planet gets a refresh regardless of our efforts – while people don’t get that same second chance, so that’s where we should be focusing our energy (unless you’re a universalist, in which case being a tree hugging hippy is equally morally valid).

I guess my sinking ship analogy almost perfectly personifies a retrieval ethic. And I’m ok with that.

Also, this PDF study guide to Christian ethics from AFES is pretty good.

¹Also, it’s very interesting how closely my conversation with one “David Walker” paralleled my conversation with one “Mark Baddeley” – perhaps they are the same person. Separated by oceans.
²And nothing proves the point about the danger of being a corrective like the way I put forward those views in that pretty ugly series of posts. While I agree mostly with what I said still – there was a bit of nuance missing. I don’t think either/or dichotomies are a helpful way of approaching these issues – I think primary/secondary concerns is probably better – and acting for a secondary concern can often aid in a primary concern, but should never supplant, or contradict, it. That’s my theory.

August 31, 2010

My Happiness

Ben tagged me in a meme. I have to list ten things that make me happy. Presuppose that there are ten or more things about my relationship with God, and my relationship with my wife that make me happier than the things on this list. Neither of those are “things” though. I’m going to try to limit my list to nouns, without too many abstractions.

Conversation.
Coffee.
Bacon.
Venn Diagrams.
Arguments about fun stuff.
Pictures of Mexicans.
Ninjas.
Politics.
Words, used well.
Home-cooked meals that rival their restaurant counterparts.

I tag anybody who stands close enough. I’m too slow to catch you.

August 30, 2010