Post-birthday musings

This will be short, since we returned today from a long camping weekend and I'm bushed from all the walking. The campground was one of the larger ones we've stayed at, and our site was on the opposite side from the camp office and the pool. With the recent bad news I got regarding my health (cholesterol is sky-high), the walking was certainly in order. Today, after we returned home and dropped off all the camping gear, we trekked to the Polar Caves and climbed around through those for the afternoon. I completely forgot I was a year older yesterday, until I started to rise after supper. My leg and hip muscles are screaming at me now! Where's that Advil?

Thoughts on technology and our puny brains

I was thinking about how the average person uses 3-4% of his or her brain capacity. A genius, like Albert Einstein, uses between 6-9% of brain capacity. Yet with that average "incompetence" we've learned to build, houses, high-rise apartments, skyscrapers suitable for over-sized apes to climb, ships, airplanes, and rockets. We've placed men on the moon, and crashed probes into Mars.We launch telescopes into space to extend our reach into the universe and obtain some astounding images from the far-reaches of space. And then there's stuff in the other direction: at the microscopic level, and at the atomic and sub-atomic level.

All this got me thinking that much of what we do technologically enables us to go faster, further, higher, deeper, whatever, than would be possible by natural means. Then I wondered: is this what the world was meant to support? Was this what God had in mind when he told Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth"? Image what Adam and Eve could have done with their perfect brain capacities if they hadn't mucked things up!

And finally, if it wasn't for technology, you wouldn't be reading these random thoughts of mine until after I'd convinced a book publisher they were worth the paper and expense. And after you'd bought the thing, and actually cracked the cover and...

Blogging & FaceBook

Since my last post, I have established myself on Facebook, yet another web-based tool to stay i touch with folks. This blog is fine...when I keep it up. But it's more of me blathering about whatever crosses my mind, and you the reader have to endure my words, or click somewhere else.
Facebook, however, let's me stay in touch with friends with a two-way conversation. When they update or change something on their Facebook profile, I get an email. And vice versa. What's even better is that only those people who are "friends" can see my information. Unlike this blog. Which is why I keep the blog as well as the Facebook account. I get to continue to blather and still keep my friends!
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The worship band that serves ConnecTion (our monthly, mid-week worship service) played at what was supposed to be an inter-church picnic at the town park yesterday. But the majority of the people who came were from our church. We still put on about two hours of music from the gazebo and attracted a few strangers who wandered over to check out what was going on. It was a fun afternoon.

Yesterday morning, I held an orientation session for anyone interested in joining the ConnecTion ministry team. No one showed. I'm not sure what that means, except that we're mid-August and many were away. Only one team member showed up and we kicked around some ideas for keeping ConnecTion fresh. This person's unsaved, self-proclaimed atheist boss attended last week' service and he had some insightful observations for us:

• He said it was the best church service he'd ever been to, but it was still too much like a church service.
• He commented that he didn't feel like a participant because he didn't fully understand what was going on
• Said the congregation members who raised their hands put him off, and he wasn't at all sure what was expected of him.
• The open prayer time "nerved him out" (don't you just love vernacular?)
• Enjoyed the speaker's frank testimony about his struggle with alcohol and was impressed that no one judged him for it.

These comments indicate we still have a lot of work to do to reach our objective to reduce or eliminate the barriers for people to hear the gospel. There is still a lot we do that is "insider" stuff. And this is in a service we're consciously trying to plan from an unchurched person's perspective! I wonder about the barriers during Sunday morning services, which admittedly presume everyone is a Christian.