Barna released a report about the extent to which churches are using technology… (more…)

“People thought [my becoming a pastor] was bogus,” said Pastor Stan Miller. “They said, ‘He’s lost his marbles’ and ‘He’s flipped out.’ It angered the media. They vilified me. Most of this came from my former colleagues at KUSI. It’s because I’m the only pastor and news anchor in the country,” said Miller. Pastor Miller took over Sonrise’s Unite service one-and-a-half months ago. “I was assigned this position. The guy who was doing it left for full-time mission work.” Unite is Sonrise’s “postmodern” evening service for young adults. I asked Miller what a postmodern service was. “I don’t know what the heck postmodern means. I tried to ask the old Unite pastor to explain it, but I still don’t get it completely. Your guess is as good as mine,” replied Miller. Miller concluded that it is a service geared toward younger people. “If you don’t reach kids by junior high, you’ve probably lost them by college. A lot of professors who are atheist preach a message against Christianity daily in their pulpits of the classroom. They can sway these kids and I don’t want to lose them. Kids are very much open-minded and receive [what the professors say], which is heresy.”

Three 15-foot video screens projected a timer countdown: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. As the counter hit zero, the band emerged from backstage to lead worship. Noah Balcombe, the worship leader, yelled, “I’m excited to be here!” Balcombe bounced around and jumped as he led the worship. A pianist, drummer, bass player, two guitarists, and vocalists led the congregation in popular songs such as, “Here I Am to Worship,” “In the Secret,” and “Consuming Fire.”

Full Article: Sonrise Community Church

I was introduced to a beta search engine, Clusty that offers a technology to ‘cluster’ search results. If you do a search for ‘Dune’ you can then determine which search cluster best describes what you were seeking. Here are cluster results for ‘Dune’ that allows you to filter the results.

⇨Movie (35)
⇨Dune Buggy (33)
⇨Game (19)
⇨Sand Dune (18)
⇨Science, Fiction (19)
⇨Kevin J. Anderson (10)
⇨Frank Herbert’s Dune (7)
⇨Dune Chronicles (6)
⇨Beach (7)
⇨Mud (3)

Why Clustering?

The problem of not being able to find what users are looking for has now transformed into one of finding too much information. Today’s search engines burden the user with the task of interpreting hundreds or thousands of documents to glean the information they need.

Categorization of all this data has been the obvious solution to enable users to better deal with this “information overload”. Traditional approaches to categorization involving taxonomies, however, are too expensive, time-consuming and complex for most organizations.

Find the Art in Everyday: A good example of Viral Marketing by Bannana Republic. Posted by Reformissionay who found it at Joe Thorn’s blog…

I’m looking at what type of open source Church CMS is out there… Here is one called the Web-Empowered Church (WEC). It uses TYPO3 Here is an example site: Ginghamsburg Church.

“We believe that there is only one religion. All other paths that people take are legitimate paths, which represent only one of God’s manifestations,” said Susan Collins, about Muslims, Jews, Christians, and other world religions. For 18 years, Collins has served on a spiritual assembly that leads the San Diego Bahai community. “While we encourage people to be close to their holy books and continually investigate the truth, our writings tell us it is a responsibility of ours to help [other faiths] recognize the new writings for this age.”

Bahai teaches that God sends a prophet for a specific time period to teach people. The prophet’s teachings change as humanity is ready to understand more of God’s instruction. “Abraham came while people were hunter-gatherers and unified them into a family. Jacob unified families into tribes, Moses took tribes into a nation, Jesus unified city-states, and Muhammad unified city-states into a nation. Abraham, Krishna, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed were a few of the prophets God spoke through. They preached the same spiritual message, even if they taught a different social teaching,” said Cameron Banyan. Banyan volunteers to host introductory gatherings to teach visitors the ways of Bahai. Each Monday night, people are invited to his parents’ home in the hills of La Jolla to ask questions and learn about Bahai. Last Monday, I was the only person to attend Banyan’s introductory session.

Full Article: San Diego Bahai

My quest for a new phrase to be added to our vernacular:

This may sound crazy, but I think Search Engine Optimizaiton should have an additional classification: Search Engine Engineering (SEE).

Often when I work with clients to optimize their pages, I have many limitations to what I can change. BUT if a client brings me in from the beginning, prior to one line of code, we can sit down and build a site that is more than optimized, it is Engineered. The important thing is the ability to differentiate with clients. All too often a client will have been ‘pitched’ SEO services but they end up only editing meta data or other trival seo changes. Now professionals can say, “we’re talking more than just seo, we are talking about engineering your pages from ground up to succeed on search engines.” It’s a totally different conversation.

SEE is a different conversation that says, “ok do you want me to optimize what you’ve got or do you want to engineer these pages. Engineered pages will significantly outperform optimized pages. The choice is yours.

I’d love to have this site be a leader on this conversation because many of us value your insight and others.

Forum Conversations:

Cre8 Forum
Search Engine Watch
JimWorld Forum

Search Engine Enginneered (SEE) Blog
Search Engine Enginneered (SEE) Wiki

A number of Christian groups have said the hurricane was a form of punishment from God. The Columbia Christians for Life said that the storm was God’s way of punishing Louisiana for having ten abortion clinics and to prevent Southern Decadence, a gay-themed bash, planned for Labor Day weekend. Another group, Repent America, stated, “Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city. From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence,’ New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same.”

Pastor Yucan Chiu disagreed with the responses from these groups. “I think it is presumptuous to determine what God’s motives are. Unless we have a direct revelation from God, Christians shouldn’t say those kinds of things.” Pastor Chiu added, “The amazing thing is that God hasn’t done this to all of us. Sin has distorted creation and the human heart.” Yucan said this is why he wants people to hear about Jesus, who provides forgiveness for sin.

Full Article: Ethnos Church

Take a look at Ekklesia Systems‘ first templated design mock-up. There is still a ton to be done but we just got this up there.

I need your feedback. Thoughts on the design?

Added a paragraph on what Ekklesia is all about:

Ekklesia Systems is a scalable Content Management Architectures for churches who are serious about integrating technology into the vision of their church. The system is designed from the ground up around the latest technologies. This allows your church to leverage the online medium and communicate your vision to both your community and to the world. Users will be able to Podcast, stream or download sermons, receive syndication of the newest content and events and interact through the church’s forums and blogs.

I usually write these things and then come back after to remove marketing mumbo-jumbo.

“People keep saying that Muslims are not voicing their opinion by condemning terrorism. This is because Fox News is not coming here to ask us our opinions,” said Usman Khan, a volunteer and congregant at the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD). “Ask anyone here what they understand Islam to be, and they will condemn terrorism.”

Khan often speaks at local colleges and high schools about Islam. “We want to represent the peaceful faith. Yes, there are bad Muslims, but you can’t fault Islam for that. There are bad Christians and bad Jews. Do we fault Christianity with Hitler, who used the Bible to justify his actions? Do we blame Christians because of the KKK? Do people hold the Jews accountable because of Baruch Goldstein?” (In 1994, Goldstein killed 29 Arab worshippers and injured 100 in the Cave of the Patriarchs, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews.) Khan said that 1.2 billion Muslims should not be blamed for the action of a few extremists.

Part of the problem, stated Khan, is that the media indicts Muslims. “I listen to local talk radio, such as Roger Hedgecock and Rick Roberts. They misquote Islam and spread false ideas about what we believe. I have tried to call them, but they either hang up on me or leave me on hold,” said Khan. “Muslims get blamed more than any other group. After the Oklahoma bombing, people instantly accused Islamic terrorists. But there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism.” Khan said the terrorists are motivated over political issues. “The problems in the Middle East that cause terrorism are because the people are oppressed by dictators and past western colonization. It is a political issue. There is nothing Islamic about terrorism. We don’t call the IRA bombings Catholic terrorism.” Khan said that the beliefs of Islam are not compatible with terrorism.

Full Article: Islamic Center of San Diego

A team of us are beginning to build an affordable Church based content management sytem. What are important features that a church system wouldt need? (We’re going to call it, Ekklesia Systems. )

Overview:
1. Built based on Web Standards
2. Powered by a Flexible Open Source Structure – Upgrade path.
-Separation of Content and Web Features (modify navigation and website tools without disrupting content.)
-Separation of Content and Presentation (maintain consistency in design for all new content created with style-based content authoring.)
3. Integrates powerful Technologies – (mp3, podcasting, rss)
4. Easy to Use Administration
5. Great Design

Features: (more…)

“The Roman Catholic Church has a history of changing its position on issues. It just takes a long time. Look at the church’s stance on Galileo. It took them hundreds of years to finally apologize and admit they were wrong. In time, the Roman Catholic Church’s position will change [on homosexuality], but most likely, it will not be in my lifetime,” said Pat McArron, president of the local San Diego Dignity chapter and past president of the national organization. McArron has been active in the dialogue about homosexuality with the Roman Catholic Church for over 30 years. “Dignity was founded as a therapy group for homosexuals in 1969. Today, Dignity is a community of Catholics creating a place for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender people to feel comfortable. It has a two-fold mission: to provide a place of worship without recrimination and to speak to the greater Catholic community about the issues. “Our message to the Roman Catholic Church is pretty simple. Stop calling us objectively disordered. Stop looking at us as any more sinful than any other Catholic. Our sexuality is not an abomination,” said McArron. “We’ve seen a real disconnect between the people in the pews and the hierarchy of the church. The bishops and cardinals feel they need to toe the line. A lot of people in positions of leadership compromise their own beliefs because they are afraid they will lose their jobs.”

Full Article: Dignity San Diego

“Today’s passage tells us about a slave girl that was pimped twice over. She was being pimped by her master and she was being pimped by Satan,” said Pastor Andrea King. King’s sermon, The Art of Praise, was based on Acts chapter 16. “The girl earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. But after Paul cast out the demon, the Psychic Friends Network was canceled; the dial-a-demon network was disconnected. That’s the danger with the power of messing around with Jesus. You may get saved. You can’t come into the presence of God too many times without being changed. “The girl’s owners wanted Paul and Silas arrested because they cast the demon out. They had no formal charge, so the authorities arrested them by pulling the race card. The only charge against them was being a Jew. I wonder if someone here can relate,” asked Pastor King rhetorically. “Has someone here been pulled over for something, or maybe it would be better to say nothing.” Pastor King went on to encourage the congregation to praise God no matter the circumstances.

Full Article: Maranatha Seventh Day Adventist

Well three weeks after my article the letters keep pouring in. One person even calls for my resignation over the issue:
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I have work for some writers who have been published on (at least) sites like Relevant, theOoze, NextWave, etc. and have a established blog presence.

Post your blog in a comment below for me to check out.