Continuing in the theme of cool videos this week, I thought I would post something that is mildly educational. Unless you have been living on mars for the last few years, you would know that the world has had a bit of a crisis with its money. And if you are anything like me, you don’t really understand how it all happened. Well this neat video should explain everything to you.
For the last 2 weeks I have had the privilege of preaching to the people at our church. I’ve loved doing back to back sermons over two weeks, it has given me a rare opportunity as a student minister to prepare two sermons in short succession. Over the two weeks, I worked through Matthew 27, as part of a wider series on the last 24 hours of Jesus life. A series we are doing specifically in the run up to easter.
Matthew 27 can be summed up pretty well by a poem that I discovered by a dude called Albert Midlane. He lived from 1825 to 1909. He wrote heaps of good stuff over the course of his life. But this short verse caught my attention as I was preparing.
Himself He could not save,
He on the cross must die,
Or mercy cannot come
To ruined sinners nigh;
Yes, Christ the Son of God must bleed,
That sinners might from sin be freed.
My main job in preaching these two weeks was to make sense of what Jesus was going to the cross to do, and why he didn’t just pull out and save himself when the beatings and the verbal abuse got too hard. This poem helped me articulate that well.
I’m on holidays this week, so I’ve been having a little down time. This also means that i spend alot of my time on the web looking for cool things to watch.
Motion graphics are especially good for passing the time, and there is usually heaps of that out there to look at. Sites like motionographer.com and Vimeo are great ‘one stop shops’ for really well done videos. But the video below comes from a little closer to home.
On the ABC 2 years ago a great show started up. It is called Hungry Beast and it was started to give a group of budding journos and graphic design freaks, free reign over creating a show that people would like. Well I really like it, and this is one of my favourite videos they have produced. It’s about google, enjoy!
THE BEAST FILE: GOOGLE (‘HUNGRY BEAST’, ABC TV) from HUNGRY BEAST on Vimeo.
I love great videos. Especially when they communicate something really well. In the lead up to easter i came across this great video by Dan Stevers and his team over at danstevers.com. They do heaps of awesome videos, and everyone they produce seems to get a little better than the last.
Anyway this one is all about easter. Enjoy
I love new music. New music is even better when it is free.
In my experience, music can be offered for free by an artist because 1) they are new, and are trying to get their stuff out there. 2) they hope you like their stuff, and let others know about it. 3) they are filthy rich and just feel like giving something away.
I discovered this a while ago when I stumbled upon a website which helps artists trying to get their name out there. Mostly by giving them a simple way for them to distribute some of their music. The website is called Come&Live. It is mostly focused at Christian artists, and most of the stuff up there is pretty good.
Anyway, in the three categories above this band fall into the second category. They are called ‘The Neverclaim‘. They formed in 2007, and I recently bought their album ‘QuietDown’. This was after I downloaded their 2 track sampler of the same album. I don’t have a vested interest, but you might like to check them out here. Let me know of you find anything else you like.
With mission on last week I completely forgot that the month had changed. Smashing Magazine have another set of brand spankin’ wallpapers this month. This is the one I chose, there are lots of season related ones this month. And because I’m in the southern hemisphere, they don’t really apply. But there are still a bunch of cool ones that Australian’s can use.
My time last week down in St George North was a blast. St George North Anglican is a church that I suspect is going to go on to achieve great things in and around St George North. They have a great staff team working there for Jesus. That being said, I don’t think I have ever packed so much into one week for a long time.
This week everyone is back at college, and the assignments are starting to pour in again. I thought I would lighten things up with some random photos I took last week. Enjoy.
p.s you can check out St George North Anglican Church, here.
Yesterday was a really good day here in the south. The day kicked of at 7am, with the whole team stationed at various train stations inviting people to come to Church on Sunday and the Easter services of St George Anglican. The ladies of our team then kicked on, and ran a training event for the Christian women of the church on “Spreading Jesus Through Friendships”. By all accounts it went really well, with lots of women realising that they were already doing everything that was spoken about. Which was encouraging for the ladies on our team.
The day then rounded out with 2 hours of door knocking. Lots of stories came from this also. Lots of conversations were had with people from all different backgrounds. Please pray for all the people we shared the gospel with. We can’t go into specifics about the people we met. Mainly because we don’t want people to be afraid to speak to us because of fear that we will then go and blog about them.
Last night we had the 7pm service here at St George North. It was a great night spending time with a truly great group of Christians. After the morning services, a team meeting and some walk up evangelism/flier drop most of us were pretty tired, so the smiling faces at Church in the Bank were really encouraging for us as a team. The stories this morning of conversations had last night were a testament to this encouragement.
Today was a much quieter day. Today we spent most of the day planning for this coming week, along with a tour of St George North. Because nothing much happened today, I thought I would let you know of some stats.
St George North is a vastly multicultural area. Looking at Census data from 2006 for the suburb of Kogarah the population sits at 11,715 people with a pretty 5,810/5,905 Male/Female split.
So with a quick look at these stats, it is evident that St George North is a very multicultural area. Sadly this is not the case within the Church here. But it is something that they are spending time and energy trying to change. We have been really thankful that there are a few people on our Mission team, who can speak both Mandarin and Cantonese. Meaning that we are able to make vital contact with these groups in Kogarah.
TIM STEVENS 