Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.

Pay it forward: caffe sospeso

There’s a bit of a movement in the coffee scene to truly distinguish cafes as a “third place” – a safe haven from home or the office. It’s a nice idea. It’s in keeping with the traditional Italian cafe culture – which you can read a bit about here – in this article.

Here’s a nice little “pay it forward” aspect of coffee culture:

It is not uncommon for a contented patron to pay for two cups of espresso when he gets to the cashier—one for himself and one as an offering to humanity, or to the guy lucky enough to be next in line. This extra coffee is commonly referred to as a caffè sospeso, or a dangling espresso.

And here’s what Italians apparently think of my predilection for cappuccinos…

“There is, however, one rule that holds true throughout the peninsula: a cappuccino is only a breakfast drink. No self-respecting Italian would be caught dead sipping on a cup of hot milk with a splash of coffee anytime after the mid-day meal.”

April 15, 2009

Dirty deed – done dirt cheap

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Label generated here. Make your own. Go on. Do it.

Ahh… some “Christians” give the rest of us a bad name. Choosing to make one verse of the bible a point of distinction for your ministry is almost always a bad idea. The badness increases based on the obscurity of the verse – the prayer of Jabez is a case in point. As is the building of a massive cross shaped conference centre in Nazareth.

If your verse is this:

And he said, so is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how

You’re likely to be in a bit of trouble. Especially if you use that verse to justify a ministry of literally “seeding” the ground in the Holy Land. Because the ground is nicer there. More sanctified.

Seed of prayer is a service that enables believers all over the world to cast a seed of prayer in the Holy Land.
Casting a seed is a spiritual ceremony in which your prayer or heartfelt personal memory (which might be represented by anything that symbolizes your hopes and dreams, such as a photograph, a token, a greeting card, or a piece of jewelry) is cast as a seed of prayer upon the soil of the Holy land.

And what’s in it for you – if you choose to partake in their service. For a $12 fee (plus extras).

Apart of course from the feeling of spiritual wellbeing. This. Holy soil.

If you use it for your tomatoes they’ll no doubt be blessed. And taste better.

You can also get a DVD of your casting ceremony. To relive the moment no doubt. Over and over again.

April 15, 2009

YouTube Tuesday (a day behind)

One of my favourite EA sports games was the Rugby League 96 game featuring commentary from Channel 9’s commentary team – with no Phil Gould. I hate Phil Gould (except when he’s coaching NSW). One of Paul Vautin’s frequent pieces of commentary advice was for people who did something stupid to “give themselves an uppercut”. This guy took that advice literally…

April 15, 2009

Shirt of the Day: Time Travel Instructions

Say you invent a time machine. And accidentally send yourself back in time – and it breaks. And Doc isn’t there to fix it for you. And you need to get modern science happening quicksmart so that you can send yourself back home. You better be wearing this shirt when it happens…

April 15, 2009

8 bit dinner set

Make your next dinner party a perfect tessellating Tetris dinner party with servings customised to fit the bill. Here’s a link to the designer. You can’t buy these yet.

April 14, 2009

Tickle rage

I have a confession. I have a dangerously low tickle threshold – lower than indicated by this graph. My wife likes to tickle. This is a shameless attempt to prevent any future tickling.

April 14, 2009

Meat your maker

This gun looks pretty threatening – especially to a plate full of chopped beef. From here. Unfortunately it was probably an April Fools Day joke. They were offered to NRA members who could “prove themselves in the kitchen”…

April 14, 2009

A street car lamed, bridge higher?

Ok. So that title was purely a reference to a Tenessee Williams play. But this is pretty funny. This Google Streetview car misjudged the height of a bridge. And submitted the photos anyway.

April 14, 2009

Sickening toys

Is there a hypochondriac in your life? Do you think they’d enjoy visualising the germs on their children’s toys? Perhaps this new line of bacterial toys is just the ticket.

Here’s Chlamydia, Mad Cow and Black Death – but there are plenty more where they came from.
Chlamydia

April 14, 2009

A bunch of links – April 14, 2009

April 14, 2009

Unleavened cake?

Apparently this is how people who celebrate passover do it – with an Old Testament inspired cakefest.

April 14, 2009

Tree story – it happened to a friend of a friend of mine…

Well not really – perhaps subscribing to the six degrees of separation theory they’re a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine. This children is why you shouldn’t eat (or breathe) seeds. This is a 5cm plant growing inside somebody’s lung. True story.

April 14, 2009

I hate the bands that you like

Generally speaking I’m not a big fan of Christian music. Usually because it’s a cheap and nasty rip off of perfectly acceptable (if not sanctified) secular music tailored to a gullible Christian audience who will fork out money for poor quality material thus perpetuating the existence of bad Christian music by creating a market for it. Wake up people. Stop buying bad Christian music just because it’s Christian.

Here’s some of the baddest Christian music ever released (at least judged by the album art) – while these are all thankfully stuck in the past there are modern equivalents who were no doubt performing at Easter Fest over the weekend. And will be turning up at a Youth Alive event near you.

I wanted to follow up my post on humility with a reference to possibly the most arrogant Christian brochure I’ve ever read – where a guest speaker – a youth worker from Townsville – was hailed as a “voice of a generation” and a “once in a lifetime evangelist” – and I’d never heard of him. And I live in Townsville. But instead you get these.

And – if you like the heading of this post you can get it as a shirt from the Red Vs Blue store.

April 14, 2009

Brick Testament

The Brick Testament has been pretty useful for churches all over the world. Probably more useful than the author intended. Our minister even used the scene depicting Israel’s mass circumcision in Joshua…

It would no doubt have been useful in Easter celebrations over the weekend… And quite possibly an inspiration for John Safran.

But while the Brick Testament’s depictions of biblical scenes are often works of art this effort from Sweden takes the cake…

Parishioners at a church in Sweden celebrated Easter on Sunday by unveiling a 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) statue of Jesus that they had built out of 30,000 Lego blocks.

It took the 40 volunteers about 18 months to put all the tiny plastic blocks together, and their creation shows a standing Jesus facing forward with his arms outstretched.

April 14, 2009

Philosophical flatulence

If a man passes wind in his office chair and Twitter is there to hear it – would you listen?

One of the things I was taught at uni was that a lot of technological innovation is driven by the adult entertainment industry. Video cassettes, the Internet, and glossy magazine printing technology have all benefited from hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of dollars of investment from the industry. I thought that was interesting.

I also think it’s interesting that in the “open source” era so many applications of new technology are being driven by toilet humour. Particularly a fascination with flatulence. One of the most downloaded iPhone applications (and I don’t have it) is iFart – it’s basically a portable whoopie cushion with the full natural gas sound spectrum available at the push of a button. Enlightening. Really. It says so much about the human condition.

I’m delighted today to have discovered an all new low in the use of technology for the purposes of toilet humour… Here’s a description:

The Twittering office chair “tweets” (posts a Twitter update) upon the detection of natural gas such as that produced by human flatulence. This is part of my commitment to accurately document and share my life as it happens.

Here’s the detailed instructions for how to build your own… and here’s the OfficeChair’s Twitter account so you can follow the farts in real time. Hooray.

April 14, 2009