St. Anthony’s Orthodox Christian Church

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 16, 2005 in Church Technology, Sheep&Goats | 0 comments

“Most people have no idea what the Orthodox Church is. When I joined the church, my [Protestant] family was perplexed. They thought I had joined the Catholic Church, and Protestants are Rome-a-phobic,” said David Hunt. Hunt transferred to St. Anthony’s Orthodox Church from Horizon Church after he started to read church history. “I was happy in a nondenominational church, until I had a family member attend New Life Presbyterian Church and say he had found the true church. This got me thinking, maybe there is something more out there.” Hunt said he began to read Ignatius, Clement, John Chrysostom, and several other early Christian writers. “I was initially shocked and distressed.” Hunt said the shock was over beliefs he held for years without any question that were under attack. Hunt and his family began to seek a new church that reflected three truths he saw in church history. These truths included a church with Episcopal government, sacramental focus, and liturgical service. “The historical church is Episcopal in government. This means that a bishop is over the pastor and that there is a leadership structure. In typical nondenominational churches, if someone doesn’t like a pastor, he can just move on to the next church. All it takes is someone who decides to start his own church, come up with his own doctrine, and he goes off and forms his own church. That was not how it was meant to be,” said Hunt. “A church needs also to be sacramental. There should be a focus on the Eucharist and how God works through mysteries to bestow grace to us.

Full Article: St. Anthony’s Orthodox Christian Church

Top Church Business Adminstrators

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 16, 2005 in Church, Church Technology, Ekklesia | 0 comments

Pastor Jamie Munson, a friend from when I attended Mars Hill, was just honored as one of the Top 10 Church Business Adminstrators by the Church Report.

10 Jamie Munson
Jamie Munson is the executive pastor of Mars Hill Church (www. marshillchurch.org), a church of 4,000 in Seattle, Wash. He oversees the Mars Hill staff and all business and financial affairs for the church. He also serves as the president of the Ballard Chamber of Commerce.

Pastor Munson also serves as an advisor for Ekklesia Systems.

Tyler Goodmanson’s New Townhouse

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 16, 2005 in Church | 0 comments

My brother’s Seattle home (He built with three friends) has finally been completed. Congratulations. It has a great view of Ballard and Freemont in Seattle. They also have a community hot tub on the roof. Sweet.

Church Web Standards Project

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 15, 2005 in Church Technology, Ekklesia, Monk Dev | 1 comment

A new site is launched called the Godbit Project. I’m pretty excited about what they stand for. Something I have been pushing for a while here as we speak with churches about how to use technology for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Here is their purpose:

The purpose of this site is to help the Church catch up with the rest of the world in adherance to standards given by the World Wide Web Consortium, the governing body of best-practices on the Internet. The majority of Christian web design agencies are using outmoded methods of coding to create websites that the rest of the world would scoff at. Basically, they are stuck in the 1990’s.

This is so common in fact, that the term “Christian” when associated with the Internet has become synonymous with “sub-par.” Without pointing fingers specifically, some of these practices include overuse of JavaScript, malformed (X)HTML, all-Flash websites, and over-dependence on tables for layout.

We realize that if anything is going to change, we need to stop simply poking fun at these agencies, and start educating them, as well as making churches and pastors aware of how they are being short-changed by doing business with such individuals. Our vision then, is to highlight churches, freelance designers and web agencies that are on the cutting-edge of web methodologies, in order to give others something to aspire after. We want to be a city on a hill.

They have started a gallery of church websites that adhere to valid XHTML 1.1, CSS and 508 accessibility requirements.

Aqualung: Strange and Beautiful

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Nov 14, 2005 in Culture | 0 comments

I am a confessed musoholic (new word?). I eagerly wait for each Tuesday like a child on Christmas Eve – knowing that I will get to hear the new albums that will be released for that week. But as excited as I get by the prospect of hearing something great, I am more than often let down by the lack of creativity that modern music has to offer. This was not the case with the North American release of Strange and Beautiful by British balladeer Aqualung.

Full Article by Brian Thomas: Aqualung Strange and Beautiful