Tag Archives: helpful
Tiger Woods and David Platt
I often find myself in awe of great pastors that we find in the main stream media Christian media; Steven Furtick, David Platt, and Francis Chan to name a few. As a communicator I often stop and wonder, aside from just God wants them to be his messengers, what it is that makes them them and me well me. I’ve even asked the question to my pastor and several others and their replies, while varying slightly, were simply opportunity. These men were in the right place at the right time and God used them. It sounded good to me, made complete sense, and as I found out is true, well partly true. I watched David Platt’s message “Outside the Camp” to the SBC in 2009
and like fifteen seconds into it I realized why he’s the man. Sure he was blessed with an opportunity, but if he wasn’t who he is the opportunity would have meant nothing. The truth is David Platt & the lot of “great” pastors/speakers are who they are for the same reason that Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world.
Tiger Woods is awesome at golf for several reasons. First he has a passion for the game. I read in a magazine today that he just purchased a huge new “pad” complete with a four hole putting green in it. He genuinely still enjoys golf, even to the point where its fun enough to do even in his down time. He hasn’t let the fact that golf is his profession strip the joy and love for his sport away. In the same way David Platt (and these other men) have a passion for God and His word. Their role as pastor has not diminished the hunger for the presence of God’s word in their lives.
Tiger Woods Daddy had introduced him to golf before the age of two, and he’s been working on shaping his craft and skills, his knowledge and his understanding of the game. He like Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis and other great athletes constantly strive to improve. They continue to spend time practicing so they may deliver to the best of their ability. In those first fifteen seconds I watched David Platt passionately recite scripture from memory, there stood a young man who had clearly spent many many hours in the Word. Studying God’s divine book was obviously something that he did on a very regular basis, with great intensity and discipline. His commitment to take the call of God’s messenger very seriously was evident and he delivered God’s message with the type of confidence that comes when you’re completely confident of the results of your efforts in study.
The application for me today is a humbling one, and my friend summed it up best when he said regarding Tiger, Peyton and Dr. Platt, “it’s there obsession.” They are obsessed with the Lord and His Word, and in light of that thought all I can do is repent.
The Dropbox
So I’m the guy thats always needing to transfer files from one computer to another! And sure I have a flash-drive attached to my keyring and sure I’ve had to email files to myself to get what I worked on at home to the office where the printer resides. But a couple of moths ago I relocated to a church, and with said relocation upgraded video editing hardware to the world of Apple. What I encountered was a tedious exchange of plugging and unplugging the flash drive from the Mac to the PC (yeah our office hasn’t converted so publisher is on the laptop). Well, wouldn’t you know that they’ve invented yet another helpful wonder in the world of technology that has solved this problem for me permanently! It’s called the dropbox!
The Dropbox defies all logic and is on its way to rendering flash-drives obsolete, well maybe not, but its definitely a huge time saver. Its basically an online server. You simply download the dropbox and it installs a universal folder that is accessible from wherever you have internet service. So that means work on a text document at home and save it to the dropbox and then open up your work computer and bam! there it is. Or if your like me and you show videos during your Wednesday night service and you edit them on a different computer than you show them on. You simply save them into the dropbox and open them up on the display computer and your in business. Its that simple. All you have to do is create a dropbox account and then download the app on whatever computer you need to use it on. Also, if you have an iPhone you can download it on there as well, which is really cool. For instance I spoke a few weeks ago at a friends Back to School Bash and saved my outline in the dropbox and then right before I got up to speak I pulled it up on my iPhone and went over it once more before taking the stage. Oh, and did I forget to mention you can share a folder with another dropbox user? My good friend is helping build our new ministry a website, and we have a shared “WEBSTUFF” folder that I save information and images I want on the site in. He’s able to access it from his computers that have dropbox on them. It has proven to be a great asset to my regular week and saved me quite a bit of time emailing and saving on flash-drives. The best part of all is “ITS FREE!” That’s right for up to 2GB of storage you simply sign up, download, and use for free. In addition to the 2GB of storage if you sign up through a friends recommendation you score an extra 250MB of space, likewise if you refer someone to use it. So my gift to you, and yours to me is if dropbox sounds like its for you. Simply click the link below and get started. You’ll never be without that file again.
http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTk5MzkzNzk5
What I Learned About Loving People From Robert Pattinson
What I learned about loving people from Robert Pattinson
Stage Lighting on a budget
For most of us small church youth pastors stage lighting is a luxury we can’t afford, right up there with a fully functional sound system. Well let me tell you what we did in this particular situation. I walked down the lighting aisle at WAL-MART and picked up a couple of those clamp lights you use in your garage, or in my case to light up the wooden Veggie Tales nativity scene each Christmas, and a couple big colored halogen light bulbs and presto change-o you’ve got some stage lighting.
Take these back to your stage however impressive, or unimpressive it may be. Plug them in and set them on the back part of the stage ,up against the wall and angle it until you have the best array of colored light possible.
I have even rigged a couple with the plain white halogen bulbs on a bar that I mounted with chains to serve as spotlights for when I spoke. Whats bad, now this I admit is ghetto but still effective, is that I ran the extension cord across the ceiling and down the back wall to a power strip on the back of the stage so that when the time came to transition from just colored lights to spots I could just step on the power strip switch and turn them on.
Two final things to remember when your attempting this:
1. Make sure you cover up and sources of outside light. Being able to control the amount of exterior light coming in is crucial for this set up to work.
2. If you use my power strip spot light idea, be sure to test out the lighting prior to your service, otherwise you could have them positioned where you feel as though your in the tunnel waiting to be struck by the train as all you’ll see is that bright spot light. Don’t worry if you forget and this happens to you to spots go away normally.
