For some reason this song was in my head last night.
And watching that clip, I found this one. That’s some impressive banjo.
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.
Mr T Raps
Over at Vanishing Point Ben has been pondering the point of Twitter. Well, here it is. Ben shared this link on Twitter, and now I’m posting it… Mr T raps…
Be Somebody – I Am Somebody Rap – watch more funny videos
How to beat a room full of chess grand masters without knowing what you’re doing
This is clever. One man, not a chess player by any stretch of the imagination, pits himself against 7 chess whizzes, and comes out witha winning record. It’s a clever little trick, but YouTube embedding is disabled. So you’ll have to click the link.
The other way to do this is Chess Boxing, but some of those grand masters look tough.
Tumblrweed: Fastest possible drawings of things
If there’s one thing I like about this particular tumblr, fastest possible, it’s that it shows its possible to build an audience for one’s art without actually being good at it. I’m horrible at drawing. Pictionary only works for me if I figure out subtle ways of cheating. One time I was playing pictionary online with some friends. We were all sitting in the same room, on different computers, playing against people from the other side of the world. And we’d just draw a bunch of random stuff and guess right, that memory still makes me laugh. Anyway. Fastest possible… the aim is to recognisably represent a thing in the fastest way possible. Perfectly fusing minimalism and pictionary. Some samples…
Bay and switch: Transformers scenes taken from older Michael Bay movies
Michael Bay could probably make a blockbuster just out of the off-cuts of his previous works, so it shocks me that he resorts to using bits that aren’t off-cuts at all. Well. Shocks is the wrong word. It’s just clever.
But you can’t get away with it in the YouTube age.
Wok and Roll: The Hang Drum
If I had welding equipment probably the fifth or sixth project (after the requisite coffee tinkering and transformer building) would be welding some woks together to make hang drums like this. I had no idea what a hang was until tonight. Now I know that it is a drum that sounds cool and looks like two woks.
YouTube Parties: Social gatherings 2.0
YouTube Parties. Have you been to one? Some dinners at our place in recent times have turned into such occasions. Especially because of the awesome power of the Apple TV… Anyway. At a YouTube party each guest shares one of their favourite YouTube clips hoping that it’s new and mind blowing. It’s pretty much the reason I blog. And it’s the reason you should send me any terrific clips you come across. Because I wouldn’t want to lose any of my 2.0 street cred.
Anyway. XKCD demonstrates the tension beautifully.
So. Got anything good to share? Lets have a Social Gathering 2.0 2.0. A virtual meeting of the minds. A sharing of treasures.
Sports Night: Like Studio 60, only older and about sport
Seen Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip? Loved it? Sad it got the axe after a season? If you’re in that boat then you should get a copy of Sports Night. Which ran for more than one season. And is pretty much what the West Wing would look like if it were about American sport, with slightly less compelling characters.
What a week…
I feel like I owe you all an apology. But there’s a blog out there that collects lame apologies from people for not posting on their blogs… and I want no part of that. I’ll find the link soon. I promise.
Here’s a snapshot of my last eight days. Well. A series of snapshots. We spent the week in Townsville where I was consulting for the company consulting for the V8 race that was held up there over the weekend.
Here’s the media centre I sat in for four days.
Fun week. Townsville still feels a bit like home. And I do love working in PR. But it was back to college today. Five subjects this semester. Hopefully there’ll still be time for this little ol’ blog.
Friday Tunes: New Third Eagle Song possibly related to Independence Day
I think the music just keeps getting better and better from this guy…
My new work car… for this week
I’m having a fun week this week. Being a PR person again. Here’s my work car.
Tomorrow I’m going to play with some army jets and famous car drivers.
(This post was meant to go live on Monday and explain my lack of activity this week)
Mad Skillz: How to run a debate at a theological college
Weird. Apologies to Arthur and Tamie. Just found this post in my “pending pile” thinking I’d posted it on the 24th of May. So, here you go. An extension to Mad Skillz for 2011.
Arthur and Tamie are pretty cool. I can tell that just by looking at their blog. And when you read it you’ll see that sometimes you can judge a blog by its cover. Or design. Anyway. I met Arthur once. At NTE. He was starting a Christian forum that I enjoyed participating in for a while back in ’05. Fast forward a few years and Arthur and Tamie are in Melbourne, studying at Ridley, ready to head to Africa to teach people about Jesus.
So anyway, Arthur and Tamie have a mad skill. They can run debates. At college. That are interesting. Here’s how.
Here’s how Arthur and Tamie ran debates at Ridley Melbourne.
Rationale (what and why?)
1. Make it engaging. The debate is for exploring issues together, not for being settled and definitive.
2. Make it fun. The debate is serious but it must not be dour. Be sure to create levity: compering that is warm and amusing, and speakers who love to laugh.
3. Make it irenic. The debate must be winsome and bridge-building, tactful and wise from top to bottom. Kill off potential antagonism and division.
4. Make it polemical. The debate must actively challenge people’s thinking. To that end, it’s useful to phrase the topic in terms of an artificial dichotomy: “Will the real Mars Hill please stand up?” “Mission: stay or go?”
5. Make it practical. The debate topic must relate directly to ministry and mission. A poor topic: “NT Wright’s understanding of justification is more accurate than that of John Piper.” A more useful topic: “New justification = better mission.”
6. Make it public. Although the debate is an in-house event, make sure it’s good enough to be published. Conduct it as if you will put it online—and then do so!
Procedure (when and how?)
1. Run one debate each semester. It’s quite easy to organise and is fantastic for building community.
2. Hand-pick the speakers. They need to be people with a good level of charisma and people-skills: people who can truly engage with the audience, acquit themselves well, and bring a positive light to both the issue and the college community. The speakers should also represent the whole college community, including both students and faculty, women and men.
3. Use an appropriate format. A traditional debating format may be fine, but be ready to vary this in service of the topic.
4. Prepare the teams. Gear up the speakers to interact directly with the topic, giving them guidelines and appropriate scaffolding, then leave them to prepare on their own.
5. Promote it effectively. Advertise with posters two weeks before the debate, and promote it creatively and casually.
6. Keep it short. 45 minutes is plenty of time for the entire debate.
7. Present it creatively. Pay close attention to the craft of the whole event. For example, introduce the debate using video clips, music, or infographics.
8. Announce a winner. This is not to pronounce a judgement on the issue at hand, but to promote reflection. Presenting a winner helps move the audience from being passive observers towards being proactive thinkers. Get an adjudicator who can do this aptly and wisely.
9. Provide a way forward. The topic isn’t abstract, so conclude the debate with recommendations for the audience, such as books to read or conversations to have.
“By the book” evangelism: no longer means what you think it means
The World Council of Churches has taken upon its good self to release a guideline for converting the dirty heathen. Here is the document – Christian Witness in a Multi-religious world. But for now. This seems:
a) Dumb.
b) Possibly well motivated.
c) Unlikely to be effective.
d) All of the above.
Here’s a Reuters story that will no doubt filter through the interwebs and the media this week.
“It reaffirms their right to seek converts but also urges them to abandon “inappropriate methods of exercising mission by resorting to deception and coercive means”, saying that such behaviour “betrays the Gospel and may cause suffering to others”.
That seems ok. Right? Coercion is bad. But what could they possibly mean by that? Bait and switch “we’ll give you food if you convert” doesn’t really appeal to anybody but the most hardened numbers driven pragmatists.
Here’s what the story suggests…
“Christian missionaries have long been accused of offering money, food, or other goods to win converts in poor countries, either from other faiths or from rival churches.”
The problem, I’m noticing, is that this seems to suggest some sort of dichotomy where we are to seek converts using words and logical arguments, rather than actions. Deeds follow doctrine. Love is an important part of Christian testimony. It should be precisely that we offer the above, without strings attached, that serves as evangelism in multi-religious impoverished countries.
The WCC document actually recognises this tension (and having had a read through it, doesn’t do a bad job)…
Acts of service, such as providing education, health care, relief services and acts of justice and advocacy are an integral part of witnessing to the gospel. The
exploitation of situations of poverty and need has no place in Christian outreach. Christians should denounce and refrain from offering all forms of allurements, including financial incentives and rewards, in their acts of service.
Here’s the media release from the World Council of Churches spruiking its document.
I set out really wanting to dislike this document. Who is a post-modern ecumenical council to try to tell us how to do a job the Bible already spells out pretty clearly? And I’ve decided it’s actually not bad. And it’s sad that there’s a perceived need for a document like this. Have a read and tell me what you think.