This is a blog post I came across earlier. I think it should spark interesting discussion. Chime in with your two cents.

What do we do in our churches that would anger Jesus if He visited this Sunday? Do we ever turn parts of His Father’s house into something other than a place of worship?

-Travis

Media and even chain-letter email are cluttered with opinions about “The Golden Compass.” Some tell us to see it, many tell us not to. I guess that is normal for any movie but this one gets special attention because of its potential atheistic bent. For a while there it seemed like I was getting one message a day about this flick. I am a skeptic by nature, even if it is skepticism that I am being skeptical of. (If that is possible.) For some reason I have been bothered by all of this negative attention that TGC has been getting. Mainly, SO MANY people who have not read the book and obviously hadn’t seen the movie (since it wasn’t out yet) were telling me and the rest of the world how wrong it was. That kind of stuff drives me nuts. I mean, we have to listen to what other people tell us and take advice, but if you are going to get passionate about something, get educated on it first. Also, there are a myriad of anti-Christian/anti-religious things in our culture already. Why did this one get so much attention? The irony of the whole thing is that all this kicking and screaming has given the movie more publicity than it probably could have bought in the first place.

All that being said, I want to know what others think about seeing the movie. I read an article on MSNBC today where the author of the book answers some directed questions. I encourage you to check out his responses there. The short version is that he says he is not promoting atheism. Pullman said, “as for the atheism, it doesn’t matter to me whether people believe in God or not, so I’m not promoting anything of that sort. What I do care about is whether people are cruel or whether they’re kind, whether they act for democracy or for tyranny, whether they believe in open-minded enquiry or in shutting the freedom of thought and expression.” When asked specifically about the church represented in the work and how it is painted negatively, he equates it to something like the Taliban. He said his issue is with religious organizations gaining great political power and then using it “for bad.” Granted, “for bad” is a grey statement and we may all disagree on what is good or bad for the government to do.

So far, I do not see all the potential harm in this film that I have been warned about. As a family fantasy movie, it seems like it will be incredible. Children won’t pick up on or be looking for all of the “messages” that the rest of us think we see anyway. I do not see how it would do more harm than “Lord of the Rings” or “Narnia.” I think we just don’t get riled up at their fantastic content because we know the heart of those authors. I also recognize that after I see the movie I may have to take back what I said about it not being a big deal. Maybe it is a big deal and the author is playing it down. Know that at this point I am not promoting or protesting this movie. I am inquiring about it.

Have you seen it? Will you see it? What do you think about it if you have seen it?

-Travis

I just wanted to share another one of our videos. We are beginning a three week Christmas series this Sunday entitled “Be Still.” It is about, well, being still. You know, “Be still and know that I am God.” We saw a video at Drive Conference two years ago that made an impact on a lot of our staff and so we “adopted” their concept and made our own. The video was edited in After Effects and the graphics were created by my co-worker Chris in Photoshop.

The video will play following a prayer in the service. We will have all the lights out and wait about 8-10 seconds before we play it. That way there will be an awkward silence to get people’s attention and make the first word on the screen more noticeable. There is no audio on this video and there won’t be in the service either. If you get distracted, cut on iTunes and restart it. However, if you can’t make it through in silence, maybe you need to check on the podcasts of this series. HaHa.

Let me know what you think, and enjoy this special sneak preview if you are watching this before Sunday.

Travis

If you can’t get the video to play here, follow me over to YouTube.

Check this out over on drivl. I think I will skip phase 5 but I am between phase 4 and 6.

Here is the whole story.

Enjoy, Travis

I was reading through Gizmodo and came across this entry. Had to share it. If you don’t think its funny then you aren’t a geek. Deal with it.

Gizmodo Windows Error

About to years ago we did this video for a sermon opener. We were in a series studying David. This video is making a point about being overly concerned with the outward appearance. Our youth pastor, Jon Blankenship, is in this video as “JBlank.” Unfortunately for Jon, JBlank is a recurring character he plays that seems to always manage to make a fool of himself in each video. Somehow this video came up in the office today and I showed it to Fred, our worship director, who hadn’t seen it before. He insisted that I get it online so we could share it with the world. Make sure you hang on til the end to see Jon on the treadmill. Yes, he really fell. We were planning a fall and I had Bo running the camera while Jon was figuring out what he was going to do to fall. In the process, well, he fell. We staged a fall a couple more times but once he fell for real he couldn’t commit to a fake one and they weren’t nearly as good. I guess getting flung into the wall head first makes you gunshy. Oh, and sorry about the low image quality, I ripped it from a DVD and then had to re-encode it to upload it and that degraded it pretty noticeably.

Enjoy!

-Travis

I know some folks have had trouble playing embedded videos here, so if thats the case, here is the link to the file.

I don’t know a ton about this guy, but watch his commercial and tell me you don’t want to vote for him.

What do ya think?-Travis

This is a soap box that I hop on every so often. I am not sure what sparks the passion when it happens, but regardless, I get frustrated and vent.

I am not even sure what first made me start thinking about this today, I guess it was “Christian Musician” magazine at Barnes & Noble, or something like that. I just remember it had Casting Crowns on the cover and was crowded in with the rest of the music magazines I had intended on thumbing through. Anyway, what is it with ‘Christian Alternatives’ anyway? I regularly find myself incredibly bothered by them. Godtube and Shoutlife are big names in the Christian rip off category. Yeah, I called it a rip off, it is what it is. HaHa. It seems like every time there is a vehicle for easily spreading light in the darkness, someone does something to pull the light OUT of the darkness. And, in my not-so-expert opinion, it is usually a poor variation of the original.

YouTube and MySpace are really amazing technological developments. These two things draw astonishing amounts of people to their respective pages and allow them to spend way to many hours there. There is unlimited potential for viewership and influence on the personal pages and posts of these two communities. Obviously, they got huge, they got a lot of press and they got a lot of content (of all moral standards) uploaded to them. So what is the Church’s response? “Let’s make our own!” I understand the reason, I think. ShoutLife, for instance, allows a MySpace type community without the questionable ads on the pages. Godtube provides the same searchable video library as YouTube with the addition of content screening and control.

The way I see it, they are saying, “hey, all you good intentioned users out there, lets do this somewhere else.” Consequentially, removing light from the midst of apparent darkness. I tend to LIKE the idea of a funny Christian video getting bounced around YouTubers. I think it is great when someone who faithfully follows Christ talks about it in the middle of MySpace or Facebook and I HOPE they are connected to hundreds of friends that will see it too. Shoutlife can provide a ’safer’ environment for teens to roam on the internet but I am not sure what would prevent sickos from going there too. Godtube’s mission is to ultimately advance the Gospel, but I don’t see how well it will work. I don’t think entitling something “God…” will attract the average unbeliever to its pages. Yes, I recognize that seekers will go there and all that, but I’m considering the norm, not the exceptions.

I just wonder if all these Christian alternatives aren’t counter productive to the advance of the Gospel? A Google search of “Christian Web Alternatives” will reveal a myriad of these things. I just learned that there is even a Christian alternative to the Girl Scouts, wow.

Are we piling up our salt and putting our lit candles under a bowl? What do you think?

I am the first to knock “What Would Jesus…” about anything. But I was perusing The Onion this morning and I found this movie trailer which I thought was a joke. But its apparently not. The same guy that did Super Size Me has done this documentary on American consumerism, Christmas spending and debt. I cannot vouch for its theology, for its ’safeness to watch.’ or for its content. All I have seen is this trailer and a few reviews on it that I just found elsewhere in my search to determine if it was real or not. It seems to be in line with Dave Ramsey & Crown Financial as well, but who knows at this point. It does apparently take a shot at the ‘televangelist character’ (and who hasn’t) but I do not think it is anti-Christian in any way.

What do you think?

-Travis

WWJB

If this doesn’t bring technology and theology together, then I don’t know what does. I found this story on CNN. Apparantly, started by a hunch, an Itallian musician has studied the Last Supper long enough to determine there is music written into the art. Of course, you have to read it backwards and connect some “methodically chosen” dots for the notes, but hey, could it be?

Sounds a bit Da Vinci Code-ish, I know, but there is no catch at least. The musician claims it is a piece that would respectfully accompany the emotion of the picture. Read the article and let us know what you think. I’m skeptical myself, but, I’m always septical, so, who cares right?

It seems a bit random that the guy doing this decided where to draw the staff for the notes to rest on and then he decided which pieces of the painting represented notes. Bread, hands and who knows what else were deemed worthy of a note. What about the interesting pieces that didn’t get notes? Sometimes a painting is just a painting. Does everything really contain some sort of subliminal message?

Anyway, what do you think?

-Travis