When I first looked in on the Mechanical Turk it had about 500 hits available (all Amazon sponsored. I spent some time looking over it, but I couldn’t see anything worth bothering with even as it grew. I guess some people have considered it more worthwhile because it is still running and active.
In fact, the English Standard Version has started using it for building up their database. This is something I could probably get involved with.
I love how the people at the ESV are using modern technologies to not only promote their version but to develop it.
This is great.
This brought a big smile to my face (found via Tony Dye).
Ministry-willy-nilly-ophobia – n. The fear of communication and/or connection between Church members which occurs outside the bounds established by the Church’s vision, mission, and goals.
Even in a small church there are people who think that events discussed inside the church and organised even loosely with the preacher or an elder involved are official church functions. There really is a feeling that anything done by a group of church people must be an “Our Church Inc.” event.
What is the difference?
“Church sanctioned” events and ministries have liability issues, both legal and spiritual. Pedophile wants to start a camping ministry (no reference to Stephen, but that was the first worry to jump in my mind when reading the post) then the shepherds of the flock should research the new ministry leader to protect the sheep under their care.
We have small groups which sometimes develop into affinity groups. We are not nearly as selective in small group leaders as we are in ministry leaders, but the ones listed in the small group directory are checked out. These are the people who do some of the best targeted outreach.
One of my hopes here at Christ’s Church is to create an online community which would allow people to interact in such a way that new ministry ideas grow out of that community and become a part of the corporeal church. The online community then becomes a petri dish where ministry ideas grow. Talk about an online culture . . .
“I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.”
1 Corinthians 3:2 (NIV)
I was listening to a podcast from Wisconsin Public Radio’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge” and kept thinking about what Paul wrote to the the church in Corinth.
You can listen to the pertinent portion here: Segment 1 on June 4, 2006, and read about it here: T.V. OR NOT T.V.
The basic assertion is that television has become more “intelligent” over the years. People have to think, remember, and pay attention to television programming more than they did in the past. Because people have been trained to be more intelligent in their viewing, the popular television programs have been able to take advantage of the heightened sensibilities of the audience.
Continue reading ‘Does TV make you Smarter? How about preaching?’
I have often heard that God answers prayer with either Yes, No, or Not Yet.
So, what do you do when the answer appears to be Zap!
Although, I cannot think of God using lightning to zap people recorded in the Bible. When people think of being zapped by lighting from a deity it is going to be Zeus they are thinking of.
UPDATE: The project has completed and the domain names were lost to spammers.
There is a new virtual online community, but you are not invited!
In fact, when I say “virtual” community I really mean it. This is a community that resides within about 50 computers at various institutes and is made up of artificial intelligences.
The New Ties (New and Emergent World models Through Individual, Evolutionary and Social Learning) project is building artificial personalities to populate a virtual world. The “agents” (yesss, Missster Annnnderrrrson) will be built with potentials for pain and satisfaction and they will live in a world with challenges. They will need to gather resources to survive, but they will exist in competing tribes. The programs will be able to reproduce with other agents of the opposite gender and create offspring with mixed “genetic” traits of their parents.
The program is still having the bugs worked out (I have not seen reports on insects staying in the system, but they may be), but it is almost ready to go live. It is interesting to watch how this has all been going together. It is built as a P2P system by people communicating using chat and other internet system just like so many open source systems are done. In fact, they even have the software available (Update: link removed, the software is no longer available) for others to test and work with. I have not seen the licensing on the code, but since it uses the Counter Strike rendering engine I doubt the full thing could be open source.
Here is some more useful information from a while back.
Here is the thought.
What if the experiment works out fantastically?
What if the “agents” become something almost sentient and begin to build beliefs that go beyond the physical structure around them.
What if they begin to question their existence and origins?
What if they develop religion and the ideas of Creationism within their own world? What about Intelligent Design?
What if they become in need of a savior? Would someone be sent to them?
I registered a Skypecast for 7:30pm EST (GMT -5) on Saturday, May 6.
If you are interested in trying it out, then come join in: Christian Ministry Technology
I have no idea how this all works so this seemed to be the perfect way to try it. Perhaps we could even schedule a regular gathering online.
Just download Skype and register then stop in at the scheduled time to try it out.
I dug out my headphone/microphone set to make it useable and I will have Trillian loaded up with my instant messenger accounts active.
Look for the following
Skype: mrherald
ICQ: 170940108
AIM: bobedbrown
MSN: bobedbrown @ hot mail .com (take out the spaces)
Yahoo: osministry
I’m looking forward to trying this out.
I mentioned Streambox in the comments on this previous post: High quality video between venues over the Internet. While doing some searching I found an article from Multi-Site Church Revolution mentioning Streambox.
There were some churches doing the same thing for me to follow up on listed there, but does anyone reading this know of churches doing this who would be interested in passing along some advise?
Could you point them this way?
Thanks.
When we finish our satellite campus we hope to set up a direct video link between it and our main campus.
Does anyone know of any good systems for handling this?
In the past we shot the video with a high definition video and burned it to CD then projected it in high definition so that it was almost as though the preacher was really standing there on stage. They are using different facilities now and due to service time differences the preacher is able to speak there live right now.
We are willing to pay for a full and proper system, but we want good quality at a good price (Duh, as though we want a Logitech web cam for $80,000, right?).
We will have a pretty good connection. The central campus will have 3 T1 connections and the satellite campus will have 1 T1. According to the service provider there will only be one hop to the local junction and then one hop to the other campus.
It will be done in off peak hours while there should be nobody else using bandwidth on at least the satellite campus (perhaps a little on the main campus, but there is more room for that here)
What do we need to do this properly?
Tim Challies has posted his thoughts on blogging from the perspective of the book of Proverbs. Blogging and the Wisdom of Solomon (Not to be confused with the book known as the Wisdom of Solomon)
He elaborates on them in his post, but I will list them here.
Think before posting.
Avoid the foolish.
Help the foolish.
Know when to walk away.
Watch what you read.
Be humble.
Avoid the arrogant.
Mind your own business.
Don’t be a troublemaker.
Examine why you write.
Be careful what you teach.
Be a friend.
Meditate upon what you write.
Walk with the Lord.
Do these look as dangerous to you as they do to me?
Image how much quieter the blogosphere would become if everyone became this radical?
It was Edward R. Murrow who said “Just because the microphone in front of you amplifies your voice around the world is no reason to think we have any more wisdom than we had when our voices could reach only from one end of the bar to the other.”
The same idea stands in the blogging world, only now we have a cheap and easy platform for dispersing our ignorance. This is a reminder of how a godly attitude should be evident in our words online.
Thanks Tim.
Published on
March 20, 2006 in
Religion.
Our missions theme for the past two weeks sported a globe on stage, but there was a slight issue that did bug a few people. The world spun backwards. I have a short, poorly lit video of it here: The Backwards World (200KB), but you can see the globe itself on the site of the company we rented it from: Mugwump Productions.
Something I did want to share is a video shown during the service concerning one of the Missions supported through Christ’s Church.
Ashram means “Refuge” in Hindi, and while there is a connection with Hinduism as the term “Sanctuary” has in Christianity, I see a productive connection with this ministry.
A few years ago our minister traveled out to India to meet with Mid India Christian Mission, a group that we have been supporting for a very long time, and a plan was set into motion to create a self sustaining community to help and reach the lowest people in the area. Hinduism has not been known for charity. The belief that people deserve their current state whether due to something they have done in this life or in a previous life keeps people from helping those who need it the most.
The project is pretty well laid out in this video. It has received blessing after blessing as our project even became a link between the University of Florida and the University of Bangalore.
As a note, the three albino children shown in the video had dyed their hair red. So, before you wondered how that happened I thought I would explain.
Video (Size: 15MB): Christ’s Church Ashram Project near Damoh, India