This kid is seriously named Jed I. Knight
And this is seriously the greatest Star Wars action figure of all time
While I’m on this science fiction theme, here’s some answered questions from the Battlestar Galactica finale.
I have no idea what tilt-shift is, but it makes really neat pictures
This graph pretty much describes my kitchen perfectly
I didn’t see a lot of good web videos this week. But this was the best.
Last weekend I tried out a new type of scavenger hunt. Because of the technology we used, it would not have been possible a few years ago. I thought I would share the details of it here on my blog for others to copy and improve upon. Why would I simply give away my hard work? Because many others have been generous to me in this way. All I ask is that if you try this and successfully improve upon it in some way, leave a comment and tell us how you made it work better.
I will call it the reverse bingo scavenger hunt. Here is how it works.
First I went around town and took pictures of both public places and homes of church members. If those things were obscure enough, then I left them as they were. In other cases I cropped the context out of the pics. For example, in one case I took a picture of a lake behind an apartment complex, that is completely beautiful and completely public, but there’s no reason to assume that anyone in my youth group had ever seen it. That photo I left intact. But then I took a picture of just one panel of a window in a nearby school, or the back side of a sign, leaving very little contextual clues surrounding it. Then I assembled the photos into a bingo board. Here it is:
The reason I am calling it reverse bingo is because in normal bingo each player has a different board and everyone has the same numbers to cover it. In this case there is only one board and the teams get their pieces separately.
I gave the teams a 10 second look at the board. Then I provided them a handout with all the pictures printed on it, but not in any order. I also gave them a sealed copy of the bingo board with instructions not to open it. The sealed board was only to be opened when the teams were notified. (My plan was to allow them to open it after 1.5 hours, or if it was obvious that no team was going to get a bingo.)
Now you see the challenge. The teams knew how to get the pieces, but not where they fit on the board, only I knew that.
Here is a pic from one of our teams
Here’s where the technology comes in. Each team had a camera phone, and the email address of a flickr account and a twitpic account. Their instructions were to take the same picture with one of the team members in it, then they send the pictures to the 2 addresses. I would place a chip on their board as soon as I received it, and the first team to get a bingo was the winner.
The weak link was definitely with the phones and photo services. Flickr worked perfectly. However, twitpic was not up to the task; it only received the updates from one team. (My hope was that twitpic would get the photos and twhirl would alert me when they arrived. That plan was an epic fail) Another team had to switch to a new phone, because I was not receiving any updates from them. After a couple of adjustments however, I was receiving photos from all teams. Then it was jut a matter of covering the right square. As soon as a team got a bingo I texted out bingo and they returned to the church.
Our church is in an urban environment and no picture was more than 6 miles from the starting point. It took only abuot an hour to complete.
I recently read reThink by Steve Wright and Chris Graves. It is a book that has been recommended to me more than once by friends. In fact, I even attended the reThink conference in Raleigh last year and was very familiar with the concept of the book even though I had never read it. After having read it, I would say that it is one of the best books I have ever read on the topic of youth ministry.
The author, Steve Wright is the founder of InQuest Ministries and the pastor of student ministries at Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh NC.
The thesis of reThink is that student ministry, as it is currently done, is broken. This is not an attack on youth ministry, but an honest evaluation. And, by the way, the statistics on 20somethings in church alone are enough to convince me this is the case. The book then examines the biblical model for youth ministry and suggests ways to implement this model in your church
The authors argue, quite successfully, that the biblical model of ministry puts the job of discipleship on the family. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 probably illustrates this model best. The family is to make the law of God so central to the life of the family that the children cannot help but absorb it.
The balance of the book is about how student ministries can partner with parents and transition into a biblical model and away from a “separate and entertain” model of ministry.
The only weak point of the book is that it only addresses methods of ministry to students whose parents are either non-believers, or who are unwilling to step up and take their role as primary disciplers in a fleeting way. This is a substantial problem in modern youth ministry. Even though it is largely the fault of a couple of generations of broken ministry, it should have been dealt with more fully.
I am fully in agreement with reThink, I would recommend it to anyone interested in youth ministry. I hope it becomes part of the curriculum in youth ministry classes in Bible colleges everywhere. I look forward to reading the follow up book, ApParent Privilege
Wow, it’s so simple, that Dr. Spaceman (pronounced spu⋅chi⋅man) has solved it.
He really should write a corporate edition of this book. It would be a bit more complex. Don’t loan money to people who cannot pay it back, don’t say you have money that you don’t have.
You’ve all seen daft hands and daft bodies. Now you can have your own daft keyboard
I knew there was a reason I sometimes stare at my keys and wonder which one I need. Apparently my brain is declining
I have March madness, but I’m not ever doing this
This is an impressive win
Today is my favorite TV watching day of the year. I love the NCAA tournament, especially the first two rounds. I will be working some today but with digital cable and 4 games at a time most of the day, I’ll be pretty distracted.
Also I have read somewhere that the NCAA office pool is the most popular workplace game of all. With the advent of the internet it’s easy to join many groups and play at multiple places. I assume that everyone is in at least 2 bracket pools.
Now the age old question.
Do you enter the same bracket (a sheet of integrity) into all your groups or do you play multiple brackets for multiple groups.
If you are the sheet of integrity type, let us know your final 4 in the comments.
In 1992 I was 17 years old and a member of Concord Baptist Church in Hopkinsville KY. One evening our pastor invited in a guest speaker named Fred Overton. During the PM service he gave a lecture called “Is the Bible Reliable?“ This was my first ever exposure to something called apologetics, and I was fascinated.
The lecture was 2 days long, so I invited my mom to come along with me to the Monday night session. Normally, Mom went to another church, that’s why I remember this story.
After the session we bought the workbook and I recall on the ride home saying that the seminar was completely fascinating and that I would like to do apologetics for a living, but, “Nobody could make a living doing that.” Smart, I know.
Mom’s reply was predictable. “He does.”
This was long before I really had any idea what I wanted to do with my life and long before God called me into ministry. At that point I was just concerned with where I would go to college. (Even though I never seriously considered any school other than UK.) In fact, at that time I was fascinated with chemistry, and began college as a chemistry major.
Then in 1997, God called me into the ministry, and I answered. (Just an aside here – I hate the term “surrendered” to the ministry. That sounds like I lost some fight. I just agreed. There was no battle needed.) My calling was clear, I was called to youth ministry, but that doesn’t mean I have no other interests. I was convicted further that in order to be the best youth minister I could be, to the glory of God, I needed to attend seminary. I went to Southeastern Seminary and began in the youth ministry program. During my second year, President Akin came on board and his administration began some curriculum changes. When the M.Div. in Christian apologetics was added, I didn’t even need to pray about it. I changed my major within the week.
So what’s the point of all this?
Yesterday I began teaching a course in Christian Apologetics at Carolina Bible College. Though it is a very small class at a very small college, it felt like a dream realized. It is amazing how God can work the circumstances of our lives to bring things about. The ramblings of a very silly 17 year-old become reality 16 years later. I for one, am excited about the future and to see where God will lead me next.
p.s. I have shared with this blog before my dream of becoming a NAMB Certified Apologetics Instructor. Fee free to click here to see how close I am financially. (You’ll probably need to use my gmail address)
It's not good
This is mid-March. Normally this feels like a holiday to me. And even this year I feel like next Thursday should be a holiday. But It’s a very different feeling March than I can ever remember. UK does not deserve to be in the NCAA tourney and I am simply a lot less excited than usual.
I’m going to reserve comment about the program except for this LOL[wild]cat I made earlier. Enjoy
Urban Camouflage – Realtree is replaced by realbox
I often say that love is not a feeling. Here’s an example of why I say that
This is probably the awesomest toilet ever
Here’s some inspiration for your Friday.
And the best video of the week…Ricky Gervais and Elmo
Every so often I enjoy writing a rant. It is a good way to take out some anger against some person, thing, or circumstance. Back in the fall I wrote a rant about fire ants but I never posted it. When I’m feeling angry about them later, I will. The fire ants will never read it, so it doesn’t help anyone but me. Today the object of my ire is my wireless phone. The LG CU720. This rant may be slightly tongue in cheek, but the complaints are all very real.
Dear LG Shine,
I cannot wait until my contract with you is finished.
I chose you as my current phone because my previous phone, a Sony Erickson, quit working after 3 years of use. I was drawn in by the allure of your shininess. And you are very shiny. That shine is diminished significantly by a phenomenon that is not your fault, smudges I should have known that any polished silver phone with a flat glass front would be easy to smudge with fingerprints and face grease, but I guess I was too impressed by the look and your slick sliding format.
I know what you are thinking, CU720, I could greatly reduce the amount of smudges if I would just use your built in bluetooth and pair it with a headset. Good thinking, I wish I had thought of that myself. Oh, I did. Your bluetooth doesn’t work at all. Maybe once every 75 tries you will pair with a device, but you are too finicky to be useful and I just gave away my headset so that someone would get some use out of it. Thanks for helping me throw away that $50.
Your lack of bluetooth is made into an even more awesome feature because your speakerphone functionality is so excruciating. So loud and warped is the sound, that I can hardly understand anybody, and you have such a weak microphone that everyone asks me to repeat everything when you get more than a foot from my mouth.
At least once a day, you turn off when I slide you open. Do you know how frustrating it is to race to the phone and open it up just in time to find out nobody is there because the phone shut down? It doesn’t matter if I open you gently or with force, it’s the same thing. Regularly you just decide that I apparently don’t need to talk to the caller at this time. Maybe you just need a rest.
Another feature I particularly enjoy is the way your battery goes from fully charged to empty with no warning whatsoever. I’m sure something like this is going on in your little phone mind. “What? I know you just charged me last night, but I’m jonesing for some more of that sweet, sweet electricity. Come on, if you don’t plug me up right now, I will bleep at you every 15 seconds until the battery is fully discharged even quicker. I know I said I had a full battery just 10 minutes ago, but I NEED that electricity.” Unfortunately I have no choice but to indulge your addiction.
Any time I’m in a different part of the country the internet is hit and miss. I suspect this is actually AT&Ts fault, but when you say you are on 3G, I should at least be able to check my gmail.
Finally, your camera is an utter piece of garbage. Just thought your should know.
Sincerely,
An unhappy customer
|
My blog is worth $1,693.62.
How much is your blog worth?
Recent Comments