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Pop Worship

Posted by Ed and Lois

As we near the starting of a new episode in our church lives, a conversation on what worship is and is not might be in order. The following excerpt is from an article in Relavant Magazine. Be sure to link to the full article as not everyone agrees with the authors (Jon Baker) point of view. We cannot afford to miss the point concerning worship. 

“Pop worship is the love of “worship” simply because it is culturally fashionable. I will provide an example. Often we attend worship events because “there’s going to be a great worship band there.” It is not inherently wrong to desire excellent music as we worship sincerely. But by loving a band because they conform to the current pop notion of worship, we are pulling away from authentic worship and engaging in a trend outside of and distinct from true worship. In this scenario, we often find more pleasure by being part of a trend than we do engaging in authentic worship. This, in my opinion, is clearly problematic. If this comes to be the state of our hearts, I would propose that we have lost the authenticity of true worship and replaced it with the cool, hip, and fashionable world of worship. Unfortunately, as I noted previously, the Christian music industry is not helping either. “

Full Article >>

Song of the Day for Ed

Posted by Mike Boyink

Booker T and the MG’s, Sunday Sermon.

Posting Links

Posted by Mike Boyink

There are a couple different ways to post links to this site.

The easiest way:
-Open the site you want to link to in your web browser (it’s easier if you have two windows open—so Internet Explorer open twice).
-Go to the site you want to link to.
-Select (click and drag your mouse over) the text in the address bar - otherwise known as the URL of the site.  It starts with “http://www”
-Go to the Manna Control Panel
-Click “publish” to get into a new post.
-Click into the “Body” field
-Paste the copied text in (right-click, paste or ctl-v).
-When you submit the post, the site will make that text a clickable link: http://www.boyink.com

A bit fancier
If you want a word to be linked, and not show the URL that it links to (like this) then follow these steps.  This is helpful when the URL is really long - like a link to a Mapquest map, etc):

-Do the same as above then:
-After pasting in the URL, add “[url=” in front of it (without the quotes), no spaces
-At the end of the URL, put a single “]” again, without the quotes.
-Immediately after that bracket, put the word that you want to be linked.
-Immedately after that word, put “[/url]”, again, no quotes.
-It’s helpful to use the preview function here to make sure you’ve got the formatting right.

The Blogger’s Bookmarklet
If you often find yourself reading something on the web and wanting to post a link and some commentary here, there’s a tool called a Bookmarklet to help make that easier.  To install it:

-Go to the Manna Control Panel
-Click “My Account”
-Click “Bookmarklet” on the bottom left
-Choose a name - mine is “MannaPost”
-If you get a choice for which weblog to post in, choose “Manna”
-Click Next Step
-In the dropdown for “Select the default field you want the entry posted in” choose “Summary”.
-Click “Create the Bookmarklet”
-On the next screen, right-click the Bookmarklet link and choose “add to favorites”.  You may get a security warning, click OK.

Using the Bookmarklet
If you’re reading a web page that you want to link to from Manna:

-Select any text from the web page you want to appear with the link (I often select whatever it was that caught my eye).
-Bring up your favorites list and choose the Bookmarklet (it’ll be whatever you named it above, MannaPost for me)
-A window will pop up (note - if you run a pop-up blocker you might need to tell it that this bookmarklet is ok).
-The window will contain the Manna new post form
-The title of the post will be whatever the title of the web page you were looking at was.  You can change this if not appropriate
-The URL and any text you selected on the page you were looking at will be loaded into the Summary field.
-If the URL is really long you can edit it using the above instructions and make a “Full Article >>” kind of link.
-Add your comments to the Body field
- Post!

 

Ethan’s Appointment

Posted by Matt Wolters

Hi everybody!  Thanks again for all of your prayers.  We just got back from the appointment with the neurologist, and we’re very happy about the report we got.

The doctor is confident that the tissue that was found in Ethan’s brain is simply a group of cells that formed while Ethan was in the womb, which means that it probably has nothing to do with the symptoms, and makes it the most scary coincidence that we’ve ever experienced.  As for the symptoms, (White in his vision, and muscle weakness in his hands), The doctor thinks that they’re, more than likely, the cause of a migraine.  He’s not 100% sure, so he’s going to put Ethan on a migraine suppresant, and if his symptoms go away, then we’ll be sure.

Thanks again to all of you for your prayers.

GOD IS GOOD!!

Thanks,

Matt and Wendi

Pop Culture

Posted by Ed and Lois

Monk is a TV detective with more phobias than Sammy Sosa has homers. ( a baseball metaphor) Joan is a high school student who has regular conversations with God. Both of these TV sreies give me pause to reflect. Neatness, cleanliness, and noise are but a few of the phobias that can set Monk off. All the while solving some of the most unusal murder cases I’ve ever seen. My thoughts here are what are my phobias? Are they obvious? Do they make other people chuckle? Do we as Christians have have habits that make the world grin? How about the church? Lunch lady, janitor, teen hunk, and a little girl on the playground are but a few of the guises that God uses to talk to Joan. He usually has a task for Joan to accomplish for Him. Joan argues and wrestles with God and sometime gets it right, and sometime doesn’t have a clue what happened. She always wants to know why. Who does that sound like. It seems to always work out OK, although not in the way she expects. Monk is on the USA network Friday night at 10:00 P.M. Joan of Arcadia is on Friday night at 8:00 P.M. on CBS.  Give them a chance and let me know what you think. It’s summertime. You already seen everything else. Two thumbs up. 

Ed