Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Blog Notes and Reader Reflections

Here are some things I’ve noted from what I’ve seen around the web today.

In the season of leadership it’s refreshing to see
this particular approach in the classic I don’t want to tell you something that I am going to tell you so I am going to tell you.

This is a good message for those who
take bible reading lightly. I am obviously in complete agreement to the findings.

Tim Chester finds the time to lead a church, lead a family, blog regularly and
write another book. So you see what I’m aiming for, eh? Well at least in terms of writing a book … and blogging regularly.

So we’re looking to be a church in the city, but what about the church of the city. Of course I’m talking more than a single denomination or expression dominating things. I’m talking about engaging with the conversation that Alan talks about here with the
trans-congregational church. Along with the multi-cultural community of grace this is a pursuit worth going on in as much as it can be explored.

The Simple Pastor has an interesting web-site because he’s managed to get it to do quite a lot of things for a blogger account. He also asks
the intriguing question of the blogs followed with something like Google Reader. So it’s worth making a record of what I read:

6 News feeds – five are from BBC News
29 Missional Feeds – some overlap between them (i.e. Driscoll, Mars Hill and Resurgence)
13 Media Feeds
54 Gospel Feeds
42 Football Feeds – including some overlap like Sky Sports and BBC Football
24 Church Feeds

Giving a total of 168 feeds. Reminds me of the episodes of how many hours of television we watch in a week. I obviously skim over most of the blog entries, but tend to make a note and link to outstanding entries.

Being still relatively new to it I’m not on top of the blog sorting yet. When I was younger so much younger than today and didn’t need anybody’s help in anyway it turned out that I could do with quite a bit of help actually. Our English class did an exercise where we all calculated how many hours of television was viewed in a week. Various answers came from the friends around me – 12, 7, 6, 5, one person obviously didn’t have a television and then there was the spectacular 20 hours. Mug that I was and a sad one at that (in hindsight) I had noting better to do with my time and so having calculated it on a number of occasions it came up the same answer. I watched 36 hours of television a week. Unsurprisingly I’m not so much of a big fan of television these days and have got it under control to a large degree. Obviously this is because of the advent of the Internet, laptop and Google Reader which now takes up a considerable part of my time. I’m currently subscribed to 168 feeds ranging from topics like media, gospel, football, church, news and mission.

For all that, what prevents me from being glued to the laptop catching up on the latest from Mark Driscoll, Marvel Comics, John Piper, Liverpool Football Club, Dave Bish, Dr. Who, Adrian Warnock, BBC News, Prodigal Jon and The Simple Pastor, et. al. is that I have a wife who needs a husband, children who need a father, a church that needs a brother, an employer who needs an employee and a Saviour that calls me to follow Him. So there are good checks and balances in place to let me know when I get over the top and is always willing to bring me back to some of the other valuable investments in my life. Living life to the full for me includes catching up on why Liverpool won’t win the league and how amazing the love and grace of the Father is to me online. It also includes sharing this life to the full with others in the flesh and sharing some of the findings online with human touch relationships. It’s by no means a perfect balance as yet, but I sometimes reflect on how pointless it would be to have godly men positively influencing me to follow Christ only to idolise a gift given to benefit the process of following Christ. So I try to keep a good measure on things – but that’s the whole reason why I endeavour to seek God’s wisdom to give me a good balance in life.

For His Name's Sake
Shalom
dmcd

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