stackexchange.com/leagues/139/week/christianity/2012-04-01/…

woot! :D

I find that ad rather amusing, being on the Christianity site

@ThomasShields Very nice! :D

@ThomasShields You fully deserve it too!

@AffableGeek thank you!

best thing about this site and what i'm continually looking forward to as i hear things in sermons and extract interesting bits to ask here:

@AffableGeek oh, I was stalking you yesterday (because I stalk smart people. really. it's a good thing. Plus, why else do we put our site links on our profiles?) and was wondering, do you have audio recordings of any of your sermons? I was looking over some of the outlines and they look pretty neat.

Well thanks! I have very few recordings, mostly bc I can't stand listening to myself.

Sadly, I havent been posting my sermons very well either.

haha, i know exactly what you mean. Listening to the recordings of my classes afterwards - sheesh, I sound ridiculous.

well, i'll just content myself with reading through your outlines :)

:) aw, thanks. Might I ask a small favor?

@ThomasShields wow speaking of stalker, you still in ATL?

@waxeagle well, slightly west of it, but yes

@AffableGeek sure

@ThomasShields lol what like Marietta? :) I'm in N. GA...

@waxeagle checks profile, whoa, Lookout Mountain? cool!

Douglasville

Heading into prison later this month with Kairos. Would love the prayer.

@ThomasShields yep. Ah, my folks used to live in Carrollton...I know the area a bit

My goal is to listen and not preach.

That can be hard for me sometimes.

@AffableGeek wow. that's great! I will most definitely add you to my non-existent prayer list! (non-existent meaning I keep telling myself to actually write it down, and now I am)

@waxeagle ah, neat. what church are you at?

@ThomasShields I go to a church called North Shore Fellowship in Chattanooga, but my folks stayed in the mission house at King's Chapel in Carrollton.

@waxeagle ah, cool. Both of those are ringing bells; I'll have to ask my pastor if he's got any connections there.

@ThomasShields which church are you at?

Grace Presbyterian Church

@ThomasShields cool, I don't think I've been there..but I've been to so many churches in the South East you'd forgive me if I'd forgotten :)

I'll ask my folks if they've been through there though, chances are they have

@waxeagle haha, yeah. lemme know if you're in the area and planning to stop by!

@ThomasShields will do, no plans at the moment, but if I develop some :)...

swell :) (I like that word. Nobody uses it enough nowadays.)

@ThomasShields totally stalking your church website....I have to say that church website are odd beasts...

@waxeagle well, let me know if you find it lacking. I'm pseudo-technically in charge of it, even though we're paying for the CMS and it's mostly run/maintained by mSites/church secretaries.

@ThomasShields there's a 404 on grace-pca.net/our-ministries under peru ministries :)

wow definitely out of the loop, I don't know any of your missionaries...my parent's probably know the peru people...

@waxeagle ah, thanks. fixed

@ThomasShields np.....

Just to jump on the bandwagon...my church here: Elim Gospel Church

@waxeagle i'm actually going on a short term trip to Peru this summer. Doing VBS in two the Lima slums

@ThomasShields cool. My parents were very close to going to Peru starting in September, but are going to Nicaragua instead

@ElendiaStarman nsfellowship.org is mine

And also, shameless self-plugging: a blog post I wrote a few days ago.

@waxeagle ah, cool

@ThomasShields do you guys do your trips through MTW or someone else?

@waxeagle through ourselves, actually. we stay at a seminary in Lima.

@ThomasShields cool. You save a ton on Admin costs that way (I think MTW takes like 15%)...

we actively support both Santos Buendia (a church planter) and his brother Moises (who is in charge of a church in the slums of Lima) and just helped Abel out of seminary, so we've got lots of connections even without the trips

@waxeagle man, that'd be a killer considering how hard it is to get the support I need

@ElendiaStarman do you have a more contemporary worship service?

@ThomasShields yep. It can be worth it though, and it helps keep MTW's admin staff doing their job instead of fund raising...

@waxeagle yeah, we started with MTW for our german missionary, but eventually finished by ordaining him as an assistant pastor in our church (since there's virtually no reformed church in Germany to ordain him)

@ThomasShields Yes, mine is pretty contemporary, as is my home church: Wendover Hills Wesleyan Church

Also, I just noticed that both websites have the exact same layout. I literally laughed out loud at that. :P

@ThomasShields cool.

@ElendiaStarman almost like they used the same design firm :)

(both have "made by clover" in the bottom corner)

@waxeagle Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did.

@ElendiaStarman ah, okay. I'll try not to burn you. (I tend to get passionate about contemporary worship services. Not that they're all bad, but often degenerate into superficiality. Just like traditional services degenerated into stodginess. I just opened a can of worms, didn't I?)

@ThomasShields [chuckle] I think you'll like an anecdote I have from today...

awaits funny picture or link

@ThomasShields Nope, no funny picture or link... :/

@ThomasShields not exactly, I personally prefer a strong mix of both elements, part of the reason I drive 45 minutes to church is because I like our church's service. We use modern music, but retain a lot of the traditional liturgy...its a strange amalgam, but its actually what i prefer

@ElendiaStarman oh. so what's the "anecdote"?

@ThomasShields [Ctrl A] [Ctrl X] What I'm typing now! :P

haha :D

@waxeagle Like 'Come Thou Font of Every Blessing'?

@waxeagle ah, interesting! My church is pretty traditional, but we're certainly not stuffy old puritans (I use that in the purely stereotypical sense of the word. Puritans were quite awesome.) I'd personally like to see us add some instruments (but maintain the older music style)

@ElendiaStarman yeah, we sing a lot of hymns, some with traditional melodies some with newer ones. We also sing a lot of more recent praise songs, its a mix

@ThomasShields Have you been to King's Chapel? its just down the road :)

(they have nearly a goram orchestra and their music director does a lot of the choral and instrument arrangements himself, they are quite good)

Earlier, I visited my campus' interfaith chapel and walked around. At one point, I pulled a book of hymns off a shelf cart and was looking around in it. Near the beginning, there was a little explanation on the morning prayer tradition, which apparently derives from a parallel tradition in Judaism. I found it pretty cool. At one point, I mused to myself that people nowadays focus on the style, not the content.

@waxeagle no, I haven't (not being in control of the family bus). Maybe I'll visit sometime!

Similarly, I don't really like rap, which meant that when two rappers were singing a song at a Christian conference two weekends ago, I didn't like it at first. Then I reminded myself that worship is not about us, but about God, so I started rapping along. :P :D

@ElendiaStarman lol have you ever opened/read a unitarian hymnal?

@waxeagle What's the difference between that and other hymnals? :P

@ElendiaStarman AND I was enjoying it! :P :D

@ThomasShields worth visiting...I've only been there a dozen times or so, whenever I was down there on the weekends visiting during college.

@ElendiaStarman its ummmm sanitized?

@ElendiaStarman ah, but the medium is the message

(not really the message, more the "massage" as McLuhan later writes)

@waxeagle coolness. I will definitely try to get there some time.

@ThomasShields There is some truth to that, but also consider the vast changes in how Christianity has been spread throughout the past two millennia.

@ElendiaStarman touche.

@waxeagle Uh...would a Methodist hymnal count? :P

Or Lutheran? :P

@ElendiaStarman not likely. Unless they make major theological changes to hymns in the name of political correctness and non-offensiveness...let me find one...

By the way, that "worship is not about us, but about God" idea is one I got from a video I saw many years ago at WHWC.

gah, not having any luck. Last time I was at UU church was a christmas day "celebration of light" which covered the winter solstice celebrations of several major religions.

We sang christmas carols that were carefully crafted not to offensive to Jews or anyone else...

@waxeagle uggh. Did you tell them that as the church they're supposed to be heralding the gospel, which is, cough, a "stumbling block to the Jews"?

The fact is, the gospel is quite offensive. We're not discriminating or anything. We're just preaching an offensive gospel.

@ThomasShields lol not my church thank goodness. Unitarian Universalists pretty much espouse whatever they feel like, provided its non-offensive... (it's my grandmother's church...didn't really want to go, but it was lunch sigh)

@ThomasShields yep.

@waxeagle ah, okay.

@ThomasShields [snaps fingers in thinking] I know there's a verse or quotation that says that...

Romans, somewhere.

@ThomasShields btw, any chance you're coming this way for college? There's a good one up here :)

8 or 11 i think

@waxeagle looked at it a bit, but it's too expensive. I'm headed for Georgia Tech, but I've got a cousin who might go there, so i'd definitely visit her if that was the case

@ThomasShields no denying that...its what like 30k+/year now?

@waxeagle don't even know, just remember it was still expensive for my cousin who's got an alumni parent

@ThomasShields yeah I was headed to tech til I switched to CS before my senior year...

@waxeagle you left Tech when you switched to Computer Science?

@ThomasShields oh yeah, that doesn't get you anywhere, you've gotta get one of the good scholarhsips to get it into a reasonable ballpark. I was lucky my parents were poor and my grades were good...

@ThomasShields no, I was at Covenant in the Engineering dept, but it's a combo program with tech. I already had CS credits and could finish that up quicker than engineering so I did that instead...

@waxeagle ahh, okay. neat.

yeah, i thought there was a Cov/Tech overlap... i'll have to see what that entails, might be interesting

@ThomasShields 3 years of Covenant + 2+ years at tech. you end up with 2 degrees (BA natural sciences, BS engineering). the Calc/Physics at covenant are very rigorous, can't comment on the couple of engineering courses they offer as the professor who was doing them when I was there has passed away, but I'm sure the quality is still high...

@ElendiaStarman "the offense of the cross", Galatians 5:11

@waxeagle ahh, sounds like fun! Plus, that would solve my "what do i major in?!" dilemma

@ThomasShields Yeah, that's probably the one.

the big advantage is that you get the "covenant core curriculum" which is good, but can be quite boring

@ThomasShields yep...course you could end up like me, married after your sophomore year, changing your major before the senior year you didn't think you needed to CS which is where you should have been all along :)

@waxeagle since you used the phrase "passed away", funny story... our assistant pastor had just passed his ordination exams, so our "senior" pastor sent out an email titled "Clif Daniell passed!" , and some of us completely misinterpreted it before reading the actual email...

@ThomasShields that's amazing.

@waxeagle haha, I don't plan on it. Funny, I actually want to get a Math/CS degree and upon graduating promptly go to seminary. Nice mix of my interests, I suppose, and I could have a fun tent-making profession.

@ThomasShields yep.

@ThomasShields Sounds cool! I myself am going for a Computational Math/Computer Science double major.

@ElendiaStarman very cool! Where at?

@ThomasShields Rochester Institute of Technology.

@ElendiaStarman ah, nice

@ElendiaStarman dude Brian (top rep user on RPG.SE) teaches there!

@waxeagle WHAT.

[quickly hops over to RPG.SE]

@ElendiaStarman yeah, Brian Ballsun Stanton, he teaches Info tech, just started...

@waxeagle Apparently so recently he doesn't yet have an RIT profile page I can Google-fu...

@ElendiaStarman he started like last week, or two weeks ago

Oh hey, course information for what he teaches...

I also have a connection to a mod on SO through two of my friends here. :P :D

All four of us being deaf. ^_^

@ElendiaStarman cool, its fun to make connections

@waxeagle Yeah, it is.

@ElendiaStarman the dutch folks up north call it "dutch bingo"

[slinks off to bed] :P

Plopping another blog post here...

@ElendiaStarman ref: our convo last night about RIT, Brian says he "is in 70-1535". says it might mean something to you :)

@waxeagle [laughs] It most certainly does. 70 refers to a building on campus and 1535 is the room number.

@ElendiaStarman I assumed :)

@waxeagle [chuckle] :)

good, bad, or ugly?

I'm messing around with design ideas, for fun

i'm severely handicapped by the fact that I can't draw to save my life, but I really like graphic design

@ThomasShields Horrible.

We definitely don't want the .SE bit, anyway. And I personally don't like the cross (especially since it's sans-serif, and the letters are serif). (I also don't like big letters in the middles of words generally.) And, is it just me, or is the kerning a bit off?

@ThomasShields Well, you did ask .... ;)

@TRiG haha i appreciate the honesty

so, is it the idea of the cross as a "t", or just my implementation, that's horrible?

i think the kerning is fine, tho

and yeah, the serif font with sans-serif cross is weird

@ThomasShields Well, the problem is that the T is, conceptually, an odd letter to highlight. It's the end of a morpheme, not the beginning of one. Of course it does look vaguely cross-shaped (the cross symbol possibly derives from the worship of Tammuz), but that's not a good reason for assaulting grammar!

@TRiG yeah, good point.

back to the drawing board, I guess. pun intended

@ThomasShields That all said, I don't really consider myself part of this community. I just hang out here sometimes when I'm bored. So take all my opinions lightly.

@TRiG well, you make a good point from a purely graphic-design perspective.

There's also the fact that, as an ex-Witness, I am closely aware of Christian traditions which don't incorporate the cross into their symbology.

yeah, good point. Obviously we can't cover all the bases; no matter what we come up with there's going to be somebody who doesn't like it. But that's probably a higher-priority one.

@ThomasShields Meh. The Witnesses know they're unusual. I suspect the finished design will have a cross in it. Probably a fish too, despite my objections.

@TRiG yeah, true