|
 |
Thursday, November 28, 2002 |
Ark of the Covenant: in Ethiopia?. You thought that the Ark of the Covenant, the ancient and dangerous shrine of the presence of God, was safely tucked away in a U.S. government warehouse --- like you were shown in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Think again. According to a United Press International story, the Ark may in fact be located in Axum, Ethiopia. An archbishop of the Ethiopian Coptic Church confirms this, in any case. [kuro5hin.org]
9:34:01 AM 
|
|
|
Wednesday, August 07, 2002 |
|
Tuesday, July 23, 2002 |
Frank McPherson Thinks Churches Need To "Shift," Too.
"Today I had a good conversation with Matt and his wife, Kim, about the unique perspective that Gen-Xers have on church. In particular, Gen-Xers expect far more use of computers and electronic communications such as e-mail, instant messaging, and yes, even PowerPoint.
One of the things that Matt said that really stood out is that he and his wife checked to see whether our church had a web site, and if it didn't that would have told them a lot about our church. The lack of a web site might have caused them to not come to our church.
I think that for anyone associated with Christian churches today, Matt's comment has got to make you think about how you are reaching out and communicating with today's generation.
The conversation inspired many thoughts. One would be, wouldn't it be cool if churches provided mail servers, message forums, online chats, and web server space for weblogs tools to extend their community into cyberspace? When a person joined the church they would be given an email address. They would be provided the webloging tools to contribute to the community by providing their own content. Not many churches have the ability to provide all this themselves, but it wouldn't take much for technology providers to provide this type of service. Take for example Yahoo, which provides mail, forums, and web server space.
Another thought I had would be to set up the entire church with a wireless LAN. When I say entire church I mean even the sanctuary. Then I would set up an internal web server (effectively building an intranet within the church) and put as much information on that server as I could. You could simply store PowerPoint files on that server to retrieve and view from anywhere, but a church really doesn't need PowerPoint for the types of things it would use. Here again simple weblogging or HTML generation tools would suffice to do things like project words to a song up on a wall. (Of course, you would need the projection hardware to do that too.) Video can be played using many different free tools.
Actually, projection might even be too old today. With a wireless LAN worshipers could access the words to songs, scripture readings, sermon notes, etc.. directly on their PDAs. This could also be an nice application for Mira and Tablet PCs....
The label doens't matter, but the spirit does. The point is that churches today have got to start using technology as a means to reach out to their membership and communicate with them in ways that make sense to the membership." [Notes From The Cave] [The Shifted Librarian]
8:14:18 PM
|
|
|
Thursday, April 25, 2002 |
16628 » April 25 4:22 AM. No zero tolerance for ass hunting priests !! "...the group of cardinals and top bishops stopped short of developing a zero-tolerance plan to punish abusive priests" Attention all catholics ! Be sure to ask your priest if he has already used his one free, get out of jail for sexually assaulting an unsuspecting child card, before you send your kid to Sunday school. It baffles me how they cannot have zero tolerance for this. [MetaFilter]
7:28:26 AM
|
|
|
Thursday, April 18, 2002 |
Henry Copeland: "At Google, roughly 170,000 people a month search for The Beatles, while 850,000 a month search for Jesus."  [Scripting News]
8:30:44 PM
|
|
|
Tuesday, April 16, 2002 |
From the Pastor's Desk (Mike Richards):
Hello all,
Today is Dani and my 14 year anniversary. I know that for some of you that doesn’t seem like much and for others that means we got married while you were still in diapers (or close to it). For us it means that God has richly blessed us with the ability to serve Him as a couple in ministry as a profession for 14 years. We made it through the early on years of newlywed struggles of learning to adapt to living with another fallible human. We made it through the years of crying babies and we are not far from having our first teenager! (Something every youth pastor/former youth pastor faces with much fear and trepidation.) Thanks for joining us in this last year of our marriage on wonderful journey into a new adventure. We look forward to what God had in store for us.
I would like to make you aware of some announcements that I overlooked on Sunday.
1. This coming Sunday night I will be going to Trinity EFC’s Missions conference and sharing about our ministry in Shakopee. In preparation for that, I would like to borrow any pictures you may have of events, services, and people from the Bridge. I will need these as soon as possible this week so that I can utilize Diana Barto’s expertise at putting together a sharp display. Please send them to: The Bridge, 226 1st Ave. E. Shakopee, MN 55379 – or drop them off personally at the office or our home. They will be returned to you.
2. On Tuesday, April 23 from 6-8 p.m. I will be at the Shakopee Showcase – at Canterbury Park. This is a large event to display Shakopee businesses, etc. We are the only Church scheduled to be there. We will have our display set up and I would love to have any of your stop by that evening. Please pray that God will use this event to help get our name into the hands of some people who need Jesus Christ.
3. The Children’s team (Connie Burt and Annette Poole) are in the process of revising our children’s area. They met with me last week and we worked through a purpose statement and guiding principles. Connie Burt will be leading an informational and training time on Saturday, April 27. This will last no more than 2 hours. The time is yet to be determined. The meeting will take place at the church office and childcare will be provided at the Richards’ home. If you have been serving in the nursery or children’s church, or would like to serve in one of these areas, please plan on attending. Issues that will be covered include safety and legal issues as well as policies and procedures and scheduling.
I look forward to seeing you all again throughout this week and especially on Sunday!
Would you join with me in praying that God would bring in 2 new families this Sunday through the regular attendees of the Bridge?
Would you pray with me that these would be unbelievers who need to know Jesus in personal way.
Pray for the following people that individuals at the Bridge are trying to build intentional relationships with in order to share Christ:
Doug, Muriel, Linda, Michelle, Krista, Lisa, Katherine, Danielle, Bernadette, Christina, Amy, Barb, Dori, Cory, Kelly, Scott, Donna, Debbie, Nancy, Steve, Peggy, Kathy, Paul, Maxine, Julie, Martin, Jim, Pat, Ron, Terry, Greg, Gary, Jeanne, Rob, Ken, Sammy, Steve, Renae, Justin, Jeremy, Laura, Nathan, Chad, Debbie, Kari, John, Bev, Kristen.
(If you would like to add people to our most wanted list – email their names to me.)
God bless!
Pastor Mike
2:11:38 PM
|
|
|
Wednesday, April 10, 2002 |
From the Pastor's Desk (Mike Richards)
April 9, 2002
Hello all “Bridgeees” – Especially Sam Geers whose birthday was yesterday and Ameila who is 17 today!
A big welcome back to Bob and Sue Eggan! We missed you so much!!!
I just wanted to drop you all a line to let you know a few things that are happening.
I received a call on Friday from a representative of Harvest Evangelism and was asked to help with a prayer walk in Shakopee that will take place on Saturday, April 27. This is a pre-national day of prayer time. I am working to organize this and will have more information for you on Sunday at Church. For now, please pray that the school will allow me to use the parking lot as a place for people to register on that day.
Sunday we had the privilege of hearing from Ed Smith, a missions candidate to Romania. This was a wonderful blessing to me both to be able to share the pulpit at our church and to be able to hear about how God is working in and through the Smith family. What a blessing to have 10 year old Alyssa play the violin for us!
This Sunday we will be having a missions moment from Gary White and Vonda Jorgenson. They are from Trinity EFC and will be sharing with us the opportunity to pray for (and maybe even participate in) an english speaking camp they will be running in the Chec this summer.
This Sunday I will be starting a new sermon series on the book of Jonah. I am excited about this series and pray that God will use it to impact all of us greatly as we are bringing His message to Shakopee and the surrounding communities.
Anyone interested, Friendship Church will have a ground breaking ceremony this Sunday at 12:15 on their new property just south of Shakopee. I will have more information on Sunday at church if you would like to attend.
For the next few weeks we will not be having children’s church as we restructure that time. Annette Poole has agreed to help develop this area and I will be meeting with she and Connie Burt this week to start evaluating and planning.
As we are continuing to Grow as a church I am excited to see lots of new faces every week.
If you are fairly new at the Bridge and are interested in knowing more about the Bridge and the Evangelical Free Church of America, the Discovery Group is one way to learn.The Discovery Group is an 8 week group that meets on Sunday evenings to discuss who we are as a church. The current class has been put on hold until we have more people who express an interest. If you would like to be a part of this class please let me know. We will start on as soon as we have a few interested.
If you would like more information on how you could be involved or if you have suggestions or questions about our ministries please contact the following people:
Diana Barto – Communications (Bulletin, fliers, newsletter, advertising, web site, etc)
Michael Barto – Facilities (set up, tear down, decorations, etc.)
Dani Richards – Worship (music, vocalists, order of service, etc.)
Blair Geers – Prayer (pre-service, e-prayers, prayer chain)
Timothy Burt – Expansion (outreach, missions, discipling new believers)
Jean Hutchcraft – Welcome (fellowship time, greeters, ushers, follow up of new attendees)
Tom Hutchcraft – Growth (small groups, seminars, etc.)
Connie Burt – Children (nursery); Annette Poole – Children (elementary age)
God bless,
Pastor Mike
8:47:41 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2002 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
|
|
|
