i'm just sayin'...

Gary Carpenter
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March 2010

 

Pastors, what are you doing to prepare for this new reality?

This is a great little "heads up" for Pastors I found at ChurchCrunch. It is to short to excerpt, so I am reposting it in it's entirety. 

The Open Source Pastor 

Hey pastor, I have a confession: I’ve been pastoring people from your church.

I have had really deep and meaningful spiritual conversations with your sheep. They still show up at your church every Sunday. They say really good things about you. In fact, I have been watching your sermons on the web and talking with your people about it. They asked me to.

Read the rest of this post »

 

Social Media Boot Camp for Pastors

I believe all Pastors and ministry leaders need to read this, and then attend an event like this.

For the last year or so,  I've been trying to get my Pastor to engage in social media and he has resisted, for all of the reasons that one would suspect.

Read the rest of this post »

 

Simpleton Faith.

Media_httpourdailyfre_gphfd
I love ourdailfred. His often irreverent and usually funny posts always make me think. 

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. (Acts 2:42)

Back then the blueprint was clear. You believed the Bible and actually did what it said. You didn’t sit on your private butt in front of your flat-screen plasma TV but spent as much time as you could eating and laughing with your fellow saints. And you prayed. That was it. Bing bang bong. Christianity for dummies.

Do yourself a favor. Get narrow

via ourdailyfred.wordpress.com

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King James Only Fundamentalist Baptists Pass Website Reform In Attempt to Modernize

This a funny satire piece by tominthebox.

Independent KJV-Only Fundamentalists Baptists Pass Website Reform

Tempe, AZ - In an unprecedented move, a national gathering of Independent KJV-Only Fundamentalist Baptists met in Tempe, Arizona to discuss the issue of website reform. While for the past 15 years churches and leaders within the IKJVOFB movement have resisted change, the fast growth of the web and new browsers now available have led the group to decided that something had to be done. Among those decisions passed were:

  • Churches would upgrade their computer systems to at least Windows 98.
  • Animated GIFs should be limited to no more than 50% of a page's image content.
  • Underlined, bold and italicized text at the same time on a website should be discontinued. Churches or independent "evangelists" may continue to use any combination of the two, but not all three at the same time.
  • All-caps may be used but only in reference to the KVJ-only position, "liberals," Calvinism, or when referencing James White. When referencing "common" points of doctrine (i.e. the Trinity, virgin birth, resurrection, etc.") all-caps may no longer be used.
  • Sites must contain no more than two frames.
  • Font sizes should be no larger than 78, with the exception of referring to the KJV-only position, "liberals," Calvinism, or when referencing James White.
  • Spelling on websites must be at least 85% correct.
  • Sites should take no longer than 4 minutes to load.
  • Pictures should be kept to under 4 MB in size.
  • Background music on sites should be completely eliminated.
  • Sites should be updated at least every 3 years.
  • Color schemes should be used that allow the text of the site to be at least barely readable.
  • Plans should be made to discontinue writing sites in basic HTML on a plain-text editors by the year 2019.
"We feel these measures will bring our churches up to at least a 1999 level," said pastor Steven Sanderson of Faithful Word of the Bible Church in Tempe. "We want to see more of our IKJVOFB people better utilize 20th-century methods of communication.

The comments were pretty good also.

 

You know you're big when you can effect military plans. Israeli raid called off after Facebook slip.

Israeli raid called off after Facebook slip.

The Associated Press: Israeli raid called off after Facebook slip
www.google.com
JERUSALEM — Israel's military has "unfriended" one of its own — after a combat soldier potentially updated Israel's enemies on Facebook.

 

 

Why I Am Considering The New Living Translation of The Bible

Let me start by saying that, in general, I don't like paraphrases or dynamic equivalent translations of The Bible. I prefer the more literal translations like the New King James (NKJV), New American Standard (NASB) and recently the English Standard Version (ESV). I do use the New International Version (NIV) as a general reading bible, and it's the one I carry around, as that seems to be the default version for most pastors to preach and teach out of.

My biggest problem with the NIV and the New Living Translation (NLT) is that they tend to present one (usually the most common) interpretation of a passage, as apposed to presenting a literal translation of the text, and leave it to me to figure out what the author intended to say.

That being said, I also believe that the best version of The Bible for a person to have is the one that they will read, and enjoy reading. I think that explains the success of the NLT, and the NIV before it.

I am considering purchasing a NLT for a couple of reasons.

First, I have recently had an experience with someone who was very intelligent,  but suffers from ADD and a reading disability. This person wanted to study the word of God, but found it to be very tedious to put the effort into reading, let alone decipher what the text was saying. The solution it seems is a NLT audio Bible in an mp3 player, paired with a NLT large print Bible.

The Second reason is that people in general are less literate today than in years past, and when trying to witness to a non Christian  today, I am starting to think that rather than getting high-centered on the 100% word for word accuracy, it would be better to share with them a translation that is immediately understood. There are so many thoughts and concepts in The Bible that require thought, meditation and teaching that I think that allowing the text to interfere in the process does the nonbeliever a disservice.

Let me be clear, for study, I have no plans to give up my more favored literal translations.

What do you think?