My dad used this clip in a sermon one time. I just found it on the web. Talk about a great way to drive a point home. Watch the video here from Worship House Media. Then think about how great a video like that really is. Why is it great? It hits the nail on the head that so many people get so worked up about things that really don’t matter and sometimes are very selfish. Oh, sorry, you thought it was just a great video. It is, watch it and tell me what you think.
Until next time.
Interesting transcript here. It’s Bono in February of this year at a National Prayer Breakfast with President Bush. I think it’s always interesting when politics and entertainment meet. What I like about Bono is that he sees his role as entertainer much differently. He understands that he is a role model and there is great responsibility with that. Of course alot of entertainers have their charities that they have founded or support. But with Bono there’s a tranparence there that you don’t see often.
What I also like is that he is plugging an organization that I have only recently become a part of. The One Campaign, the campaign to make poverty history. Here’s a good clip from the article,”God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.” That’s why ChurchForward supports organizations like The One Campaign and World Vision. Every time I go to the fridge, I see a picture of a little girl in Africa that we support monthly.
Bono understands something here that I think we forget alot of times. We are here for a purpose. That purpose may not always be clear, and sometimes very difficult to see. Whatever your purpose is, I pray you continue doing it with all your might.
Until next time.
I had a friend get hit by a car the other night. Before we get too far, she’s okay. Well, let me set it up for you. It was a rainy night and my friend had an umbrella trying to cross a fairly busy street in a college town. According to her, out of nowhere a car was coming towards her and slammed on it’s brakes. My friend flew onto the hood and hit the windshield. The lady driving the car only rolled down her windows without saying a word. My friend got off the car after about 30 seconds, and stood up in time to see the car take off.
Now just stop, re-read the first paragraph and think about the story I just told you.
Now let me begin by saying that there could be alot of different reasons as to why the lady drove off. It could have been because she was old, my friend guessed in her sixties to seventies. It could have been because she was an illegal alien because she was of hispanic descent and didn’t say a word, in a town filled with illegal hispanic immigrants. And I could go on about older people behind the wheel or the illegal population in this country and border control. But I want to take this entry in a different direction. Because, you see, I think there was a deeper issue here. One that goes beyond age or citizenship.
I believe the deeper issue here is a spiritual one. One where one person can cause another lethal harm and not care enough to even get out of the car to make sure that my friend wasn’t paralyzed from the impact. Whatever the reason, the lady in the car didn’t even care enough to get out of the car and even try to communicate. What makes one do that? I think there’s a numbness there. Just like there’s a numbness in this country. A numbness in this country of not caring and being okay with status quo.
A numbness in people’s lives that can only be cured with one prescription. His name is Jesus, you know it, I know it. The church knows it. But how are we getting rid of the numbness not only in our lives, but in our communities as well. If we had the cure to the common cold, I guarantee we would be shouting from the rooftops. Yet for some reason, we have the cure to a disease that lasts much longer than the common cold, and we only want to share it on Sunday mornings. What sense does that make. Help me today, by getting rid of the numbness in your community. Get out and tell someone!
That’s it, guess I should have called this ‘The Numbness’, maybe I will.
Until next time.
Why Blog?
That seems to be the question now a days. As the world becomes more and more technological, and as the church strives to be more technological, one wonders how to keep up with everything. The need for some things becomes easier to understand, a website for instance. As you read some reports saying that as many as 45 to upwards of 65% of people will find the church they attend by looking on the internet. The need for some form of internet marketing to world becomes more viable. The idea though of a church having a website needs to be more than an bus-stop on the information superhighway. The website needs to transform itself into a vital part of the unsaved seekers web experience, a minisry of sorts. Thus the idea of a blog comes into play.
Blogging should not be some mystical thing to the church. It should be, and will become a vital part of ministry by the local church. Blogging in it’s simplest definition, is a journal, a web journal. Simply one’s thoughts about a subject, any subject. If the church, in it’s never-ending attempt to stay current, wants to keep on the cutting edge, it needs to find better ways to connect with people, primarily through the internet. Blogging is probably the simplest way to do that. I have seen many different blogs from the church, mainly pastors. Some good, some not so good. Some are simply an informative blog, while others go deep into theology. What do you think is the best? Let me know, I’ll talk to you later.
As some of you may have noticed, the Realtor Blog just had an extreme makeover this past week, as well as IowasRealtor.com. A couple different reasons for that, some more important than others. IR.com was converted to AdamForney.com and blog.iowasrealtor.com converted to AdamForney.net. With all the changing that was going on, I had to make a decision about the blog as well as the website because the blog had been linked.
With all the different issues being brought to my attention, I decided the blog needed a makeover and different focus completely. From here on, you will still see some real estate blogging going on, but the main focus has been shifted to something a little more eternal, the church. Most know of my past with ministry being a youth pastor and such. Eventually I have to realize that it is a part of me that cannot and will not escape. You pastors out there know what I’m talking about.
Most of you know of Thrive Web Group and it’s new partner site, ThrivingDomains.com. Now everything has been brought under one roof with the label of ChurchForward. It’s a way to centralize everything and have future divisions of the company know how it fits into the whole. TWG and TD.com aren’t changing, you still get the quality service from both that you have in the past.
ChurchForward will be able to take all the services we offer in our web suite (i.e. web design, domains, blogs, consultation, etc.) to the next level as we continue to prepare the church for the newest technology that comes out and how we can reach the world through it!
Adam Forney
Founder/CEO
ChurchForward.com
“Fusing together methods to grow the church and reach your world!”
