Simply Beautiful

Chris Allen was the best on American Idol tonight. He covered Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love.” (Which was also covered by Garth Brooks, Billy Joel and many others, yet the judges kept giving Garth credit for the song.) It reminded me of my new favorite cover of this great song though. I give you Adele:

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Unleash Recap

I attended the Unleash conference yesterday and NewSpring church. Wow! The love for God and people represented there was inspiring. It was great to see Perry Noble live and really see his heart for Jesus and the gospel message. He said a lot of things. Funny things. Controversial things. Inspiring things. Challenging things. Tony Morgan shared a lot of the things he said here and here. Pudge Hucakby also shared some here and here.

I also attended the Children’s Ministry (CM) and Student Ministry (SM) breakouts. The church’s facilities were outstanding. They just opened up the children and student ministry buildings in the past week!

In the CM track I enjoyed hearing about their core values. Pudge posted them here. Their team kept saying over and over, “We’re here to help kids meet Jesus on their level.” It was obvious the leadership team had clearly communicated this vision.

I enjoyed the simplicity of their recruitment plan: Ask. Equip. Encourage. They follow the model of Jesus found in Mark 4:19. I was also impressed with their use of technology. In both breakouts they briefly discussed their plans for using blogs, twitter, and text messaging. I look forward to getting more information on each of these.

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The Downside of Facebook

A few years ago I scoffed at social networking. I just couldn’t see any good reason for them. However, in recent months I have seen very real benefits, personally and professionally, from tools like facebook, twitter and cmconnect. Heck, I’ve turned from a non-believer to having over 800 friends on facebook. I’m not sure how that happened, and I sure hope all of my facebook friends don’t show up at my house at the same time! 🙂

Anywhoo, while there are some good reasons for being on social networks, there are some annoying things about it as well. This guy nailed some of the things about facebook that in my opinion serve no purpose.

And just so you know, I never did a 25 things about me!

Thanks Matt for posting this!

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