Jesus Looks Like a Blue Tarp

Some folks from Catalyst were down in the Baton Rouge area shortly after Hurricane Gustav ripped right through. They stopped by Healing Place Church and had a conversation with Pastor Dino Rizzo. You can see a part of that conversation in the video below.


Hurricane Torn Baton Rouge Needs Our Help!!! from Catalyst on Vimeo.

So, when asked what they needed, his answer was tarps.

So, what does Jesus look like to the people in Louisiana that have holes in their roofs? He looks like a blue tarp.

To help, you can go HERE and order a tarp.

You can have it sent to:
ONE (1) BLUE TARP
Healing Place Church
19202 Highland Road
Baton Rouge, LA 70809
225.753.2273

When you have purchased the tarp, please come back here leave a comment (anonymously if you wish).

The tarps aren't cheap. So, if you want to chip in on some tarps, you can go to flowerdust.net and see Anne Jackson's post about this where she explains how you can go in with other readers of her blog via PayPal. She is collecting money and will buy as many tarps as possible on 9/11.

Thanks. Much Love.

HT: Anne Jackson

Don and Barry

You all probably know that Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, To Catch a Dragon, etc., gave the benediction at the Democratic National Convention. Well, he recently posted on his blog the email correspondence between him and Sen. Obama and Mrs. Obama.

That guy is amazingly clever. I laughed out loud when I he wrote to Michelle Obama and of his pre-prayer activity said "I am just going to listen to my headphones beforehand, like Michael Phelps."

Is that guy funny, or what?

New Blogger

Joye Mullis just started up a blog called Signs of Life. Go check her out and show her some love.

Who else has recently joined the blog world that we should all know about?

New Palmer Video on His Blog

I posted another video of Palmer playing on his blog.

Go check him out.

Palmer's New Tricks

Palmer has been developing a lot of new skills recently. Head over to his blog and see a video of him in action.

What's in a name?

I am interested in acquiring a domain for my blog. kimandshanon.com is not bad, but I have other ideas for that site. I'd like to give my blog a new home.

Any thoughts on what domain I could use?

I tried to get leadfollow.com and lead-follow.com, but they were both taken.

Do you think having a .net is lame?

Please weigh in.

Listen and Act

Do you have a blog? Do you want two free books? Well, Tom Davis and Seth Barnes are giving away copies of their books for free. All you have to do is read them and blog about them.

Find out more about it here.

Ragamuffin Top Challenge - Week 2

It's check-in time. Last week I started the Ragamuffin Top Challenge. It is a weight loss challenge started by Carlos, over at Ragamuffin Soul. Every week I will be checking in letting you all know how I am doing on accomplishing my goal of getting down to 210 lbs. Below is my update after one week. You can find my update from last week here.



So, there you have it. I am down a couple pounds. Hopefully, I will continue to go down a few pounds each week.

One thing I forgot to mention in the video is that I am also trying to eat breakfast each day. Bob and Gillian of the Biggest Loser say that it gets your metabolism going in the morning when you eat breakfast. So, I am giving that a try, too.

You can see how everyone else in the challenge is doing here.

Come back next week and see if exercising helps me lose more weight. Thanks for the support.

Ragamuffin Top Challenge

The other day I got on the scale and for the first time since January 1, I weighed more than I did at the beginning of the year. One of my New Year's resolutions was "to not weigh any more on December 31 than I did on January 1".

For the most part, I've maintained that. However, recently, I came across a "challenge" where people are putting their weight loss goals and progress out there for everyone to see. I decided that this is the kind of accountability that may push me to actually lose weight and not just maintain.

So, I have joined in on the Ragamuffin Top Challenge. The guidelines are simple. You can find them below.

1. You must have a measurable goal.

I'd like to get down to 210 lbs. I used to have a goal of being 200, but as the years go by, I keep moving in the opposite direction. So, we'll start out shooting for 210.

2. You must place a photo or video on your blog each weekend and give us the scoop on how you did.

Here's my initial entry into the challenge.



3. You must link back here so that the readers of your blog get to see how the rest of us are failing or succeeding.

If you want to see how everyone else is doing, go here to check it out.

4. You fill out the linky thing below and then people can get to your blog from my front page and we can cheer each other on.

Done.


I hope this does not become another one of those things that I start and do not follow through on. Check back and give me some love to help encourage me. If I know other people are keeping up with it, I'll be less likely to quit.

Loving Your Enemies

You may not know where it says it, but more than likely, you know that the bible says to love your enemies. My first thought when I think of that is, "I don't really have any enemies." Enemy sounds like such a harsh term. I don't think I view any one person as an enemy. That kind of makes loving my enemies easy.

I say that, but it's kind of a cop out. Sure, I don't have an arch-nemesis that I consider my enemy, but I don't think that is what the bible means when it says love your enemies.

It doesn't take much effort to find commentaries on loving your enemies. A quick Google search turns up a lot of them. My understanding of the passage in Luke 6, and the similar passage in Matthew 5, is that we are to not only love those that are easy to love, or the people that we get something out of loving, but we are to love everyone.

I don't think loving someone means accepting and/or condoning all their behaviors. This can be hard to reconcile. Love is not always easy. I think loving someone is caring enough about them as a person, as a someone made in God's own image, that you want what's best for them.

Now, what you think is best for someone and what they think is best for them is often going to differ. And, just because you love that person and you think you know what's best, does not give you the right to impose your will on them. No, I think a truer testament to love is standing by someone despite the fact that they are living outside of what you think is best for them.

This all comes from a blog I saw this morning. The guys over at The Plow created a poster. Then, they converted it into a t-shirt. Now, they are giving the t-shirt away to anyone that donates to Bite Back.

I'd like to know...
What do you think about when you hear "love your enemies"?

What do you think about the t-shirts?
Do you think you would wear one? Why, or why not?

Twitter

You may have noticed that recently, I have hit a lull in my blogging.

There are a few contributing factors to this. One, I have a ten month old son1. Two, I have a wife, who, coincidentally, also has a ten month old son. Three, I have a job, which has recently become very time and energy consuming.

So, here's how the math goes, for good or bad. I have been spending more time and energy on work stuff, which means I have less energy when I get home, but I have a family, which I love more than I love to blog. Therefore, my energy has been directed towards my wife and my son, and thus not toward my blog.

I have, however, found another way to keep the world up to date with the goings on of my life. A week, or so, ago I signed up for a Twitter account. For me, Twitter is in the realm of away messages on AIM, or text messages. Twitter allows users to provide updates of 140 characters or less. So, in a time when I am low on time and energy, Twitter's character limit provides a way for me to share without having to put together a thought through post.

Twitter has some great features that make it even more appealing to me. My Facebook status is now updated every time I "tweet". That's what the cool kids call it when you post an update. Also, I can link my gchat account to my Twiiter account, and I can post to Twitter by sending an IM.

All of that is to say that I am miss blogging, but I have found an outlet in Twitter. So, you should follow me on Twitter. Better yet, you should sign-up, and I'll follow you.

1. backFor those who are unaware, children becoming increasing more difficult to contain and entertain. Our Son can now crawl to , pull-up on, and shimmy across anything that is three feet and below.

Blog Marketing

I've mentioned the American Consumer News blog a few times before on here. In a recent post, they highlighted an interesting new service that allows you to get paid to blog. Here's the amazing part, you get to choose what you blog about.

The site that is offering this service is Snapbomb.com. The goal of Snapbomb is to connect advertisers who want to create buzz about their product with bloggers. The overall concept is called blog marketing. You can read more about what Snapbomb is doing on their blog.

Here's the gist of how Snapbomb works. They, Snapbomb, have a group of advertisers who sponsor campaigns to create buzz about a new release, an event, or just to generate brand awareness. Then, they have a group of bloggers who have signed up to blog about the aforementioned campaigns. As a blogger, you get to choose which of the campaigns you want to blog about and what you say about them.

The goal is not to turn your blog into a bunch of posts about products or services you, or your readers, don't care about. Optimally, you would be able to select buzz building opportunities that fit in with your normal blog content. That way you wouldn't chase off all the readers you have worked so hard to gain. In my case that's you.

So, what do you think about the idea of blog marketing? Have you ever thought that you could use your blog to generate extra income? I mean, you're going to write about something. Why not get paid to do it, right? I'd love to know what you think of the idea.

Farve hangs 'em up

Today, Brett Farve announced that he is retiring. If this doesn't bring Jeff out of his blogging retirement, nothing will.

Follow-up: Sorted Blog Roll

A few weeks ago, I posted that I wanted to redesign my blog and add a sorted blog roll. Well, Daniel took on the challenge and hooked me up with what I was looking for.

If you ever go to my blog site, which I know a lot of you do not visit the actual site because you subscribe in a feed reader, you will see that I have redesigned the layout. It is not a finished product, but it's on its way. I wouldn't try clicking on any links because they probably will not work, but you can at least get a feel for what it looks like.

In the knew design, I have a blog roll on the right hand side. Currently, I am only listing Visio Dei bloggers. Soon, I plan to add list with the other blogs I read.

The dynamic blog roll that Daniel created has a few features:

1. It is sorted chronologically. The person that has posted most recently will be listed at the top followed by the next most recent, and so on.


2. It has a posting date threshold. If you have not posted in the last month, you will not be listed on my blog roll. A month seemed a little harsh, but that's how Daniel designed it. So, that's what I am going with. So, don't fade into blogger oblivian <cough>Jeff</cough> or I'll lose you.

At it's core, the blog roll is an AJAX call to a PHP script that takes the feed from a Google Reader shared tag and runs it through a Yahoo! Pipe and then displays the results, I think. You'll have to ask Daniel if you want the nitty-gritty.

Anyways, thanks a lot Daniel.

Are we reaching the lost?

Chris Marlow pointed to a great post on Gary Lamb's blog today. The post is Gary Lamb, pastor of Revolution Church in Canton, Georgia, ranting about church planters that claim they want to reach the unchurched, that really just want to "do church" differently. That hardly captures the essence of his post. So, you'd be better off reading it for yourself.

The post struck a chord with me because I can see myself as one of the people that he's talking about. My hope is that I am "reaching the unchurched", but do my actions back that up? My answer... No, at least not all the time. So, this post was challenging. You should read it. Maybe it will force you to look at and examine why and how you "do church".

On a side note, Revolution Church is a church community with multiple locations. This is interesting because this is the vision for Visio Dei.

Dear Blog, I've missed you.

I feel like my life has been very busy recently. I've had a lot of things come up that have been getting in the way of my blogging. I have, however, been keeping a list of things that I want to blog about. The list is up to 13 things now, and I'm sure I will add a few more before I get them all out of my head. I'm not about to do a brain dump and post them all tonight, but I am going to try and write a lot them tonight and post them throughout the next week.

Here's a brief overview of what I have to write about...

• conversations with a former convict


• sleeping babies


• death in a small town


• step-parents and grandparents


• eating alone


• baseball players


• traffic etiquette


• local music


• movies about music


• starving artists


• scrimshaw


• potential energy


• maintaining relationships

Sorted Blog Roll

I've been thinking about redesigning my blog. I like what it looks like now, but I think I could use a fresh coat of paint. I also want to add/update some of my links and sections. One thing I want to do is add a blog roll. I could simply make a section and put in a list of blogs, but I want it to be more functional than that. For example, I want to have a blog roll for all the visio dei bloggers, but I don't want the order to be static. I want to have the list sorted based on the most recent post. So, the person that has posted most recently will be listed first and so on.

Has anyone ever heard of anything like that? If not, would any of my my friends, fluent in Javascript, like to take that on as a project. I have an idea of how that might work, but I just don't have the time to play with it right now. Any takers?

From the Horses Mouth: "We want to be partners."

I saw an interesting article on the ONE blog yesterday. It's from this week's edition of Business Week. It discusses how Africans "want skills and a leg up, not handouts." It's definitely worth the read and would only take about ten minutes of your time.

Africa Wants Opportunities, Not Handouts
IBM's Nicholas Donofrio has heard it from Africans themselves: They don't want aid, they want a chance to develop their own businesses

Who's part of the Visio Dei (blogging) community?

Visio Dei is a church community of about two hundred people, plus or minus fifty. It's hard to put an exact number on it because that would mean that you would need some sort of metric to use to measure the number people in your community. You could use Sunday morning attendance, but if you are saying that it's not all about Sunday mornings, that seems a bit flawed. You could count the number of people that show up at the various home group "meetings" through out the week, but that doesn't seem to be perfect either. So, I can't tell you how many are a part of the Visio Dei church community, but one thing I can tell you is that the people that are a part of the Visio Dei community are not afraid to start a blog.

I sit in front of a computer all day long, as do many other people. So, I often read blogs. Over time it got too cumbersome to go to each and every blog I wanted to keep up with. So, I started using an feed aggregator. I started out with bloglines, but I've been using Google Reader for about a year now. Both are good.

Every time I would come across a new blog, I would "subscribe" to it. Subscribing to a blog in a feed reader, or aggregator, means that I can go to one page and see what all blogs have been updated. In most you can subscribe to both post feeds and comment feeds. So, in all actuality, you never have to go to the actual blog to keep up with it.

Over time, my visio-dei folder in Google Reader has grown to contain over thirty blogs. So, in the vein of creating more community, I'm sharing my list of Visio Dei bloggers. It's worth noting that only about a quarter of these blogs are updated regularly, but even if they're not being updated, you can see what the bloggers were thinking and feeling back when they did update their blogs. So, here's my list. Is there anyone you can add to it?

aaron chappell, alan wilser, amy hathaway, bernie newton, brad wynne, brandon guy, corey paxton, jason gore, jeff ramsey, jenny profet, jeramie mullis, joel scheilman, john enzor, john henderson, josh pease, kate sheppard, kathryn guy, kendal quinn, matt besser, meg boyle, megan remmers, rebecca neubert, ryan fox, sam edwards, shannon smith, the fishes, the mitchells, the paxtons, *the smiths, the wengers, traci rowe, vegged out, will gadd

Home Groups
edenton street, tryon

Those that have moved away
jonathan ellis, the meyers

If I "outted" you and you're pissed about it, I apologize. If you let me know, I'll remove you from my list. However, you should know that if you put it on them there internets, somebody's gonna find it eventually.

* - new addition

Life Lessons

This post is definitely worth the read. It will take you all of a minute to read it, but it may stick with you for a life time.

In other music news...

Do you have a Facebook account? Do you like free music? If yes, and yes, then I have a deal for you.

If you join the Ticketmaster Facebook group (See this blog post.), you get five free songs from the iTunes music store. Better yet, you get to pick your five free songs. Previous Facebook promotions have given you songs that they choose, but not this one. Now, you get to choose.

For all the latest free stuff from the iTunes music store, subscribe to the Free iTunes Songs blog.

Enjoy.

Traci: Is this normal?

Traci: Is this normal?

This was at one point a comment on Traci's blog, but it passed the length threshold for comments and it started getting deeper. So, I decided to post it here instead.

The other day the good Reverend Ramsey referred to me as a computer guy. I tried to explain to him that I do the computer thing for a living, but it's not my life. I tend to think of myself as an unemployed professional athlete.

Patrick commented that men, specifically young professionals, get caught up in our careers and our vocation becomes our identity, who we are. My struggle isn't in seeking my identity in what I currently do, I struggle with the security of my current place in the work force. I know I can do what I am doing, and I can do it relatively well. I am blessed to have a job at a place some people refer to as Disneyland. I get paid well, I have very little risk of being laid-off, and I have incredible benefits.

The problem is I don't think I was made to test software. However, I have a wife, a kid, and a pile of bills, including a mortgage. I ask myself often, "Is my faith big enough to leave the cozy life for uncertainty?"

If you take away my wife and my son, the answer is absolutely. However, I am a lot more willing to put myself at risk than I am willing to put Kim and Palmer in a situation where they are at risk.

Am I doing myself and, more importantly, my family a disservice by not relinquishing control to God? In my heart I feel that the the answer is yes, but in my mind I think differently. It is a struggle that eats at me. One that tests the core of who I am. And honestly sometimes I feel like I am failing that test.

Email Etiquette (cont.)

I was going to write about today's Dilbert comic, but I never really got around to it. Basically, I found it extremely funny because I find myself thinking/saying some of those same things pretty regularly.

I know I posted about my dislike for lengthy posts before. It is safe to assume that I feel the same way about emails. Yes, I realize that I am a hypocrite because I have been known to send out lengthy emails. However, I have also been known to put an abstract at the top of the email for those who only want the facts

Signing off before anyone gets to the point of "email schmemail blah...blah...blah".

Email Etiquette

Yesterday's Dilbert comic made me chuckle to myself, and today's comic made me laugh out loud. They both addressed things I loathe in email communication.

The first is when the original message is removed from the response email. This bugs me because I like to save emails, but I don't want to have to save every email in the thread. I would rather be able to save the final email in the thread and have it contain all the communication. However, the bigger problem is when you get an email that has answers to questions, but you don't remember exactly what you asked in the original email.

Let's say you get this email:

Subject: RE: Tonight...
Let's meet at Benny's before we go get Tony. I'll bring the knife.

Is this about the plans to meet your friend Gino at Benny's place before you go pick up your friend Tony on your way to a birthday party where you are bringing the knife to cut the cake? Or, is this in response that other thing you are planning?

Now, I realize that there are email systems out there that remove the initial message from the response1. Those email systems should be destroyed and not given a reason why. Maybe somehow we could send them a message like this with no original message attached.

RE: System Update
That's why we are decommissioning you.

I think that would be appropriate.

I'll discuss today's comic later.

1. ↩Wake County, could you please take some of my tax dollars and get a new flippin' email system. And, while you are at it, can you get someone to update your web server so you can serve wcpss.net with out me having to tack on www. to the front. Thanks.

I never knew ninjas could be so funny.

Check out the video posted on this guy's blog.

Thanks for the laugh RevRock.

"Kettle, you sure do look black today," says the Pot.

I am not a huge fan of long posts on blogs. Often, I see a long post and immediately decide that I do not have enough time to read it. I tell myself that I will come back, but I rarely do.

I am even less of a fan of long comments. When I see a long comment to a post, I treat it the same as the long post, again rarely coming back to read them. My length threshold for comments is smaller than my length threshold for posts.

I see long comments and I think, "they should just post about this on their blog", or if the person doesn't have a blog, I think, "they need a blog."

So, let it be known that I am a proponent of blogs being dialogical, and not just soapboxes. I am a firm believer in readers making their presence known by leaving comments. I have a dream that one day the blog series will replace the time consuming thesis-like super post. I believe in the unifying power of trace backs1. I look forward to the day when blog high-jackers will be no more, and everyone will have their on blog to use as a pedestal to respond to the meanderings of others.

1. Yes, I know that my trace back link does not work. It is in my plans to correct this problem. Thank you for mentioning it.

Who's the better representative?

I saw this video on another blog. It makes me wonder what God thinks about the matter.

It is hard for me to respect what the guy on the left has to say due to his attitude and demeanor. It makes me cringe that he claims to represent Christians.

God help us all to represent you in such a way that You will be glorified.

hax0r

I saw this on another blog. It may only be interesting to computer geeks, but it's somewhat humorous.

Where have all the n00bs gone?

A few weeks ago I had a few friends join the blogosphere. They both started off with some really good posts, but then they disappeared. Did Al Gore take away Jeramie's blog because he was driving a rental SUV? Did Jonathan run out of videos from YouTube to post? Are you guys still you there?

A Silly Poor Gospel

There's a blog that I follow written by a lady that lives in Africa. She writes a weekly column for the UPI about her experiences. That's how I found her.

You may have heard the Bono recently won the Chairman's Award at the 38th NAACP Image Awards1. Well, she linked to a video of his acceptance speech on YouTube. You can see it here.

1. The NCAAP and the ONE Campaign also announced that they will be partnering in the global fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. See more about that here.
   

"Dear Colleague" Follow-up Follow-up Follow-up

Just to keep you posted, this was on the one blog on Wednesday...

The Senate just passed the 2007 continuing resolution - 81 to 15!

You can send your Senators a thank you email by going here.

And, today someone posted this...

The 2007 continuing resolution was signed into law by President Bush last night.

If you are wondering what this is all about, you should read the article in the first link.

Thanks to everyone who participated.

Community

I found this guy's blog randomly. Well, actually, Jeramie found this guy's blog. He mentioned beard core in a post. Beard core was something mentioned at Isn't She Beautiful?, the conference I attended last week. For more on the conference, check out Jasen Ashdown's blog.

So, I added this blog to my feeds, and recently he posted a video that he had made. I'm no movie critic. So, I can't comment on the footage, but the message was pretty good. I just thought I would share it.

Peace.

Poverty doesn't equal Stupidity

Today, I ran across the blog of a lady who is serving in Burundi, Central Africa.

This statement made me realize a misconception I hold...

The squandered resource of central Africa is human intelligence and initiative. There is not enough work to go around, and due to poverty and lack of development, much of the work that is done is difficult, menial, and does not use the obvious prevalent intelligence of these people.

I realized that when I think of people in impoverished countries, I put them in this box labeled uneducated, or probably something worse, like stupid.

I don't have any evidence or experience that would point me to that assumption, but for some reason I had made it. I would guess that it stems from my life here in the US, where opportunity is abundant. Here in the US, everyone goes to elementary, middle and high school, some by force. Beyond that, nearly anyone who desires to can go on to college. Yeah, it is expensive, but the option is there, and so is the funding. In some of these countries, there are people that want to learn, want to go to school, and want to work. The unfortunate thing is that they do not have that opportunity.

I find it hard to believe that God placed all the intelligent people in the developed countries. Maybe the cure for cancer or AIDS is in the mind of some child in an under-developed, under-educated, under-privileged country.

Thanks Peggy for the wake up call.

"Dear Colleague" Follow-up

I saw this on the ONE.org blog...

By the "Dear Colleague" letters sign-on deadlines last week, nearly half the Senate and over a fifth of the House had signed.

Thanks to all who called their representatives.

You may have noticed recent addition of the ONE banner to my blog. To be honest I ripped it from the Mars Hill site. Then, I found today that you can get it, or one of a few other banners from here.

In case you are wondering, I did watch American Idol tonight.

Peace.