Inevitably, today and tomorrow, the blogosphere will be inundated with every blogger posting about what they are thankful for. I could choose to rebel or embrace this fact.
I choose to embrace. Being thankful is a good thing right?
I thought I’d share 3 things I’m thankful for that stand out above the rest.
- God’s provision for just enough to meet our needs.
- Loving and caring families on both sides of our marriage.
- A giving church family.
In class a few weeks ago we spent two hours in discussion about prayer and how it relates to our church gatherings.
Just about every church in the world refers to itself as a praying church, yet most churches spend less than two minutes praying in each gathering (that is not an exaggeration). If you figure most church services are about 75 minutes long, that is less than 3% of the total time of the church service for prayer.
As a worship leader it is often my job to pray in the midst of our time of worship together. That could be as an ending piece or the middle of what we had planned.
I’ve found my prayers too often become brain dumps of random thoughts with little to no preparation of what I would like to say. I don’t think I’m much different than most worship leaders in evangelical churches. We (worship leaders) spend most of our preparing songs, and we place no value in the art of a good prayer (and I know many of you would say that prayer should never be planned).
I wonder if the lack of prayer in our services subtly communicates that prayer isn’t important. We encourage people to come to prayer meetings and to pray more, but we don’t change our services in order to pray more.
I also wonder if our meandering prayers that are spoken with a lack of focus pull us away from God more than they pull us closer. I wonder if we lose people as we try to navigate our thoughts into a straight line while we are speaking to God.
I’m not necessary advocating for writing out the prayers we know we will pray during a weekend church gathering, but there has to be a middle ground between that and the usual worship-leader-rambling-prayer….right? Nor am I advocating for making our church gatherings prayer meetings, but only praying a few minutes isn’t good enough either is it?
This goes beyond my usual topic, but I’ve had a ton of people ask me about what I think of the phone so I figured this would be the best place to share those thoughts.
As I said a few weeks ago, I got up early the day the Motorola Droid came out to make sure I could get it on the release date. It is the first phone on the Verizon network that seemed to compete with the best smartphones on the market (i.e. the iphone). I’ve been using it for a little over 2 weeks now and have a good handle on it and the Android operating system it runs on, I thought I’d share some thoughts in case some of you are on the fence about it.
The Phone Itself
The screen is huge and the resolution is quite amazing. I love using the browser on it because it is so crisp. It is a big phone, even bigger than the iphone but having the screen size is worth it. The slide out keyboard is a great feature that I use a lot. The one drawback goes hand in hand with the ability to switch out the battery (something the iphone cannot do). The back piece tends to slide off easily when it is in my pocket. I’ve figured out how to avoid it coming off when in my pocket, but this is definitely an oversight. The lack of multi touch hasn’t bothered me much. Double tap to zoom is pretty effective.
Apps
First off, nothing competes with Apple and the iphone when it comes to apps. But, Android isn’t far off and the release of the Droid along with a load of other phones running Android means the gap will close. I’m able to find tons of quality apps, many even better than what the iphone offers. I have an app to track my runs outside and post them online all for free. I have many google-made apps that you cannot get on other phone operating systems. And, I have the usual suspects of Pandora, Facebook, Twitter, and location aware apps. And there are enough apps with Android that I’m constantly doing research to find new apps, something that I enjoy doing. The only downfall in the apps for me, being a sports fan, is that the number of quality apps for sports is way too low. I hope that changes soon.
Messaging/Phone Calls
Having the extra keyboard is nice for texting. I had an ipod Touch before this, and I was never able to get comfortable with the onscreen keyboard. The slide out keyboard has gotten bad reviews but as long as you use your nail and not the pad of your fingers, it works great. The messaging app for Android is awful though. I just recently got a third party app named “Handcent” that has much more flexibility and blows the default messaging app away. I haven’t had any issues with call quality. The contacts work nicely and are easy to access when wanting to make a call.
Camera/Video
It is a 5 MP camera which is pretty sweet. I was able to get rid of my Flip video camera because my phone’s camera was just as good, if not better than it. The camera software isn’t great, but it isn’t horrible either. You don’t buy a phone for its camera so despite the software struggles I don’t mind much. They are coming up with a fix to the problem of the camera not correctly focusing. Here a sample picture I took in low lighting of my kitchen:
Battery
In all the reviews the battery was said to be quite strong and I’m sure this is true but it is tough to compare the iphone, which can only run one thing at a time unless jailbroken, and the Droid which can run as much as you want. I quickly learned I needed an app that could force quit apps that were running in the background and eating my battery. People have complained that they can’t get through a whole day on the Droid because of the multiple apps that run all day. I’ve found it quite easy to make it through a whole day by being proactive with closing apps that I’m not using and by using a power control widget (yes the Droid supports widgets on the home screens).
My Favorite Parts
- Voice search: It is amazing how well it picks up what I’m saying. It even works with the navigational piece of the phone. The phone is much better at figuring out what I’m saying and turning it into a google search or a phone call than anything I’ve ever seen.
- Google Navigation: I ride a bike so I don’t use this much, but I’ve found it amazing that it is just as good of quality as Rose’s Garmin Nav unit. The Garmin cost us just less than $200 a year ago…the same price as the Droid and it only navigates.
- Multi-Tasking: I can go on a run while listening to music, using my running app (Sportypal), get text messages, and continue syncing my email and Twitter account if I want. Doing all those things at once eats battery life, but having the option is very nice.
- Google Integration: As an avid user of everything Google this phone takes advantage of that more than any other. I can integrate my phone/Gmail/Facebook contacts all into one place. I can use Google Talk, Gmail, Google Calender all together. I’ve found this very handy.
- Notifications: I can personalize how my phone notifies me for every app that I use (including Facebook, Twitter apps, text messages, and email). Each of those syncs and notifies me of new stuff differently. Being able to switch everything from default to how I want it, is the kind of flexibility I need. It could notify me through some sort of a ring tone, flashing light, vibration or any combination of those so I know what it is notifying me about.
Have you used a Droid? Are you thinking about buying one?
Let me know if you have any questions or comments about the phone in the comments.
I’ve been at Idea Camp Pacific Northwest this weekend. Great event being held in Portland. The speakers and conversations I’ve had have been wonderful, but more than anything it has been so great to meet and get to know people I only previously knew through Twitter.
For all the weird looks I get when I carry around and wear a helmet, it paid off yesterday. I took a pretty good spill on 5th Street in downtown Portland yesterday. My head was rattled pretty good, but I would have been unconscious without a helmet.
Blogs
- How not to lead worship.
- Good review by Relevant Magazine on Jesse Rice’s new book “The Church of Facebook.” Check him out, he just moved to Portland a few months ago.
- Kent Shaffer shared an interesting post on the issues with church via the white man.
- Really enjoyed this post from fellow seminarian Jeff on whether Christians should try to convert non-Christians. His position is one I quite agree with.
- Skye Jethani has a take on scrutinizing church leadership that is quite refreshing if you ask me.
- A Christian seminarian professor explains why he agrees that crosses should be taken out of classrooms.
More Blogs (No News This Weekend)
- Adam shares some thoughts on the ordination of Lisa Larges, an openly lesbian woman, into the PCUSA last week.
- When you don’t feel like it, take heart.
- Twitter theology: what pastors tweet shows what they really value. Incredibly awesome post from Scot McKnight, a must read.
- Eugene thinks we should all learn how to bow like Obama did in Japan this week. Yes indeed!
- Blogging tips from super-blogger/author/pastor Mark Batterson. Take heed.
The Christmas season is about to begin (I say about to because I firmly believe it should start after Thanksgiving, not before Halloween like most retailers seem to think).
This is the 2nd in a series I’ll be doing of questions that some of you asked. If you would like to add your question, go here and do so.
Today I’ll answer a question from Jonathan.
He asked: What are your top 5 favorite albums of all time?
- A Rush of Blood to the Head (Coldplay): I sometimes wonder if they will ever surpass the greatness of this album. I doubt it. Probably impossible.
- Where the Light Is (John Mayer): This live from LA album came on 2 discs and it featured everything that makes John Mayer amazing to me. Acoustic set, blues trio set, full band set. The dude nailed each part with brilliance.
- Transatlanticism (Death Cab for Cutie): I’m not actually sure why I love this album so much, but I just do. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.
- O (Damien Rice): Before everyone knew who he was, I was listening to this album on repeat in my college dorm for months on end. I fell in love.
- Jars of Clay (Jars of Clay): It was the first Christian album that didn’t sound like Christian music to me. One weekend I led worship doing all songs from this album. It was epic. It still remains one of the greatest albums from a Christian artist, ever.
So now that you’ve seen some of my music taste, what do you think?
I’ve noticed a trend.
A trend that sadly I’ve been a part of.
Often people will begin praying with “Dear God” or “Father…” or “Heavenly Father…,” all of which essentially means the prayer is directed towards God the Father.
Yet the prayer often ends with the phrase “In your name.” Praying to God the Father by God the Father.
That can’t make any sense right? Right, it can’t. And it doesn’t.
We have access to God the Father through the person of Jesus. It was his sacrifice alone that paved the way for us. And this should be included in how we pray.
We pray to God, through the Son…by the power of the Holy Spirit. This might sound familiar…
We don’t pray to the Father, through the Father…but through Jesus.
In Jesus’ Name.
