The forward thinking church?

what is it to have a forward thinking vision for your church? I observed an old style baptist church this last sunday. It was awesome, totally brought of back to my roots. One thing i observed was a ton of really creative retro fitting that looked really pretty clean and a normal paritioner would not notice. So I gauged the building at being 20+ years old. I found out it was over 50-years old.This made of awe at how well the upkeep was. I them asked how full it gets... They pretty much for the last 10 years have done 2 services and always about 3/4 full. On the surface this looks really good. I think its great in a lot of ways. There is one concern i have, what now? I also recently visited a local church that the body has been around for 20+ years and recently completed a new facility. it was a $7-million building. The max capacity was set to be about 500 people and before a split with the youth pastor, their congregation was at 400. Its now at about 200 people. What I'm curious for is why at 400 people in regular attendance would you consider making a building capacity at 500? I understand the idea of multiple services but that has its own set of problems and divisions among the young and old. In a time where the younger generation needs wisdom and guidance from the more spiritually mature congregation, it seems difficult to split those into two different service segments. I am not a pastor, architect or anything else besides a Communication graduate and web coordinator, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. I have been apart of ministries for the last 15 years and worked on the technical end for a vast majority of that. That being said, what happened to believing in long term miracles of revival and drastic increases of church attendance? I know every movement of God has been bathed in prayer more massively then we could have ever imagined but even past that we need to actually BELIEVE in that. Why do I stress that? Well I think we become caloused over the years to unanswered prayers when God really was answering but we just missed what He was really going for.  But the fact of the matter is, God wants to see His children return to Him, correct? If so then why are we not praying and expecting to God to act? If we are really saying we expect God to move, then why are we making buildings that cannot support the ministry that we believe and pray for? Its an entire paradigm shift to believe that way as well. And maybe you are just wanting to support the ministry you currently have and thats awesome, some buildings really are only made for a small group, so hey why not allow some chinese or russian or hispanic churches to meet in there too? Lets build each others ministries with the resources we currently have. Just a few thoughts. Post thoughts in the comments, I would love to continue this conversation because I really believe its important on more levels then we can imagine.

Why we need to re-think urban living and development

so, inherently this is something that comes to my mind pretty often. The main proponents and inspiration of this are Barb Chamberlain and James H Kunstler. As a result of Kunstler, Wal-Mart is also in this. Barb Chamberlain is a pretty involved individual in Spokane, WA. and is dedicated to making places bicycle friendly, technologically green, and to borrow from Kunstler- to create a place "worth caring about." Amidst this a big push of Barb's efforts are related to advocating biking (although I advocate longboarding), is to design, re-design, and build a city that is pedestrian and biking friendly. This would inherently have intense ripple effects and would impact every part of society. Everyone should follow her twitter account because she is really that cool. @barbchamberlain and her website is http://www.biketoworkbarb.blogspot.com/ . This could reduce obesity in the region, promote healthier environments (on the ground and air), and build a stronger sense of community. I don't believe the last one is as explicit as the others however, I believe as we strive to put people closer together, we are going to either have amazing communities that have positive impact or we will have more crime. I believe and would hope for thriving communities that could inherently build stronger interpersonal relationships with one another and by golly kids could actually play outside. Above these things though, I think we have to take it one step further into a different perspective and a step into the realization of what this really looks like. Now the above things hinge on two aspects – how far away we live from our job and how well we design our cities. These are not and cannot exist outside of each other and because of that, for any of this to work would be contingent on one thing. People willing to set aside their selfish images, beliefs and take one for the team. For an example, with Kunstler in mind, if say a designer who works in the heart of downtown Spokane says to himself, "I want a home that kind of has a suburb feel that has four bed rooms and two bathrooms, designed super modern," then he would potentially live 20-30 minutes away from the heart of downtown right? Now in perspective we deal with traffic, but this house location could be 20-30 miles away to reach a suburb or relatively country yet modern location to find and raise a family. However, for the example of Spokane, to get from river park square to the south east corner of the valley is about 12miles, 22+minute drive (without traffic). Now I'm not in the most awesome shape and due to my adverse relationship to bikes (I had a bad experience as a child), I would drive my 32mpg car. So every two days I would spend roughly $10 on gas. Please stay with me on this. That's close to $25 a week in gas just driving to work, a huge mortgage payment every month, headaches, and more construction in further areas because you might have 2+ kids who will want homes in 20 years. All of that just because you "wanted" or "needed" that house. You "believed" that you had to attain an "image" and it was all about "you." Sounds pretty selfish eh? Now you might say you have no other option, the city doesn't provide that kind of housing. This is true. That's where the other hinge has to come into play and Kunstler's ideas come in. We must design better urban sprawls because well, it doesn't fit the current need and over-population doesn't help either. This is where Wal-Mart parking lots could stay parking lots but, have structures that provide housing, or schools in an innovative format that is aesthetically pleasing. I may sound idealistic but how come we don't move closer to our jobs? Why don't we revamp River park mall as a giant condo community with stores on the bottom, condos on the top floor and use that whole middle space for a school? Oh you don't want to live that close to work? But what if you could walk 3minutes and have lunch with your son or daughter? Walk 5minutes and be home? Your first thought is, "But Adam, I want *insert desired noun or adjective*." That's nice, but when are you going to take one for the team? Take one for your family, city, and nation? When are you going to be willing to build a place "worth caring about?"

Anonymous, I appreciate you but careful yo

Anonymous just released its #opIran press releases and this weekend plans on setting up to occupy wall-street and camp there for a while. All the while I dont believe in all the methods and integrity they stand with, I agree in most of their campaigns. However with the recent crackdown by foreign authorities and our own government via the FBI, I wonder what the future holds. One thing as I look at the circumstances is that Anonymous needs to be leery of two things. The first I believe is that even though anonymous is supposedly a collective, which in some cases is true, however there is definitely a sub group of leaders and the second is that they are spreading everything pretty thin. Now I dont know know exactly these people do for a living, however the sub-group of leaders may need some time to relax and re-coup and retain their vision for what is going on. The worst thing that could happen is burn out and fatigue. Past that is going broke and being unable to actually do their own conceived work due to poor financial decisions. I know these people range from 16-60 years of age however I cannot help but wonder what their day occupation is. The second point I think is more serious due to the increase in activity not only of #operations but citizens arrested for participating. The more diversified and strangely un-united the efforts are, the less effective they will become in their efforts to make change. E.g. if you have a collective of 500 working on #opIran, but most of those want to work on different #ops, then their going to be down to maybe 200 people on #opIran and when you have 75 raids and 16 people arrested it can make #opIran a bit more difficult to make a difference and easier to trace with the lowered amount of people. The fix to this is to go back to the core #operationpayback and focus on 5 targets max as a much larger collective than to diversify into some many off branches. This would also hopefully reduce in-fighting as well but also retain the integrity of what #anonymous really is. In my mind, Anonymous is a societal watch dog for the American constitution and a force that does good amongst the nations, once they break past that, then I cant believe in their vision. Some Food for thought.

New kitchen project

So I definitely bought a strange house. One of my room mates calls it the hobbit house and there are some definite oddities So far I painted the main interior, and built a bonus room in the basement. I'm now looking at re-modeling the kitchen in stages. I say stages because I cant afford to do it all at once and one of my room-mates requires a dishwasher which is no biggy. Big Tip for remodels: Check the clearance/refurbish appliances at Home depot and lowes! I bought a $1100 all stainless steel GE Profile dishwasher for $475 (after $25 energy rebate). Why? Because the rubber liner on the machine broke and they had to fix it... they fixed it and sold it for less than half price. Good deal? Amazingly so.

Fake Pho

Ingredients packet of pho seasoning 4 capfuls of memmi soup base 8 cups of water enough beef that you want to eat 3 bags of nissan top ramen noodles 1 small cube of beef bullion 3 chive branches, minced So i know this isnt the real stuff but it definitely made my day. there are sometimes pho soup packets you can get at the store which are high in ingrediants that you dont know, so I thought if I used 1 packet as a base I could get it flavored the rest of the way. So boil the 8 cups of water with the pho seasoning packet and the beef bullion, then add the slices of beef to it with the chives. let it simmer/boil with a lid on it for 15min. As far as noodles go, I only used the nissan ramen noodles, DO NOT use the seasoning packets, just the noodles. Eat when noodles are ready :) tips: the longer you let the soup base sit, the better it tastes. And if you really do like pho, make sure you have a lime with you when you eat, it makes a world of difference.

Anonymous' message to the FBI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abmw0C2NYBU&feature=related - Anonymous So I know this is a little bit of old news, but I just got back from vacation and actually have a slew of written pieces I want to upload, but I figured this would be interesting for now. As unlawful as some things may be, I agree that government needs to change

I have mastered the art of cheap lunch!

So... You ever have those days where you forget to pack yesterday's leftovers and then are super hungry at lunchtime but don't really want to spend money? Well here is my tale of a journey of science with finances and how I mastered the art of a cheap lunch. Option #1: skip lunch Valid option but for dietary reasons really isn't an acceptable model. Although it does save the pennys, its not worth the value your costing your boss, while not performing at you top, nor worth the cost of your body. Option #2: go home and grab food Not always the best solution because you may not have a vehicle or may make it back to work late because of the distance. Once again cheap, but really if your trying to get between two places quickly, your gas economy drops and your possibly costing yourself a lot more than you think. Added negative impact is if your late coming back to work. Option 3: gourmet fast food Even though these places may have $5 deals, they usually charge extra for the drink and with tax make it $5.50-$8 which if your really bad about bringing lunches and regularly get Starbucks on the side, adds up extremely quickly. You could easily spend $25 a week, and over a years period gets close to $1000-$1200 a year you pay on extra food. Option 4: $5 footlong over 2-days The cool thing about buying a footlong is that it gets about two days worth of lunch for $5.40 (without drink). Now this isn't too bad and brings you down to $2.50 a day per missed lunch. Only negative, I'm so cheap I wanted to find something cheaper and the subway bread gets awkwardly soggy after a day in the fridge. Option 5: french bread w/ powerade. Okay so totally your like, "wah?" But I ate today for $2.19. Now the grocer I went to wasn't the cheapest but considering I got a french bread made this morning for $1.50 and a 32.oz powerade for $.69 cents was super encouraging. And because it is a grocery store, they don't charge tax on food. Now you could find french bread for less and when you think about it, straight bread is pretty filling and low calories. A serving of french bread is about 100 calories roughly. So in theory you can cut your costs from $1000 a year down to potentially $350 on extra food. Food for thought ya'll.

and this doesnt scare anyone??

and this doesnt scare anyone?? The ramifications of big brother watching you in all sorts of ways on FB, and other locations is crazy. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/178391/20110712/anonymous-hackers-release-government-passwords-antisec-security-online-hack-hacked-booz-allen-hamilt.htm

The February release unveiled an alleged project Anonymous named Operation Metal Gear -- perhaps referring to the popular Konami Game. Anonymous described the project as having two goals: "The main aims of the project were two fold: Firstly, to allow a lone operator to control multiple false virtual identities, or "sockpuppets". This would allow them to infiltrate discussions groups, online polls, activist forums, etc and attempt to influence discussions or paint a false representation of public opinion using the highly sophisticated sockpuppet software. "The second aspect of the project was to destroy the concept of online anonymity, essentially attempting to match various personas and accounts to a single person through recognition shared of writing styles, timing of online posts, and other factors. This, again, would be used presumably against any perceived online opponent or activist." During its raid, the post by Anonymous alleged that it had discovered documentation linking Booz Allen Hamilton to Operation Metal Gear: "HBGary Federal was just one of several companies involved in proposing software solutions for this project. Another company involved was Booz Allen Hamilton. Anonymous has been investigating them for some time, and has uncovered all sorts of other shady practices by the company, including potentially illegal surveillance systems, corruption between company and government officials, warrantless wiretapping, and several other questionable surveillance projects."

why we need to re-think urban living and developement

So, inherently this is something that comes to my mind pretty often. The main proponents of this are Barb Chamberlain and James H Kunstler. As a result of Kunstler, Wal-Mart is also in this. Barb Chamberlain is a pretty involved individual in Spokane, Wa. and is dedicated to making places bicycle friendly, technologically green, and to borrow from Kunstler- to create a place "worth caring about." Amidst this a big push of Barb's efforts are related to biking (although I advocate longboarding), is to design, re-design, and build a city that is pedestrian and biking friendly. This would inherently have intense ripple effects and would impact every part of society. This could reduce obesity in the region, promote healthier environments (on the ground and air), and build a stronger sense of community. I don't believe the last one is as explicit as the others, however I believe as we strive to put people closer together, we are going to either have amazing communities that have positive impact or we will have more crime. I believe and would hope for thriving communities that could inherently build stronger interpersonal relationships with one another and by golly kids could actually play outside. Now the above things hinge on two aspects - how far away we live from our job and how well we design our cities. These are not and cannot exist outside of each other and because of that, for any of this to work would be contingent on one thing. People willing to set aside their selfish images, beliefs and take one for the team. For an example, with Kunstler in mind, if say a designer who works in the heart of downtown spokane says to himself, "I want a home that kind of has a suburb feel that has four bed rooms and two bathrooms, designed super modern," then he would potentially live 20-30 minutes away from the heart of downtown right? Now in perspective we deal with traffic, but this house location could be 20-30 miles away to reach a suburb or relatively country yet modern location to find and raise a family. However, for th example of Spokane, to get from river park square to the south east corner of the valley is about 12miles, 22+minute drive (without traffic). Now I'm n ot in the most awesome shape and due to my adverse relationship to bikes (I had a bad experience as a child), I would drive my 32mpg car. So every two days I would spend roughly $10 on gas. Please stay with me on this. That's close to $25 a week in gas just driving to work, a huge mortgage payment every month, headaches, and more construction in further areas because you might have 2+ kids who will want homes in 20 years. All of that just because you "wanted" and "needed" that house. You "beleived" that you had to attain an "image" and it was all about "you." Sounds pretty selfish eh? Now you might say you have no other option, the city doesn't provide that kind of housing. This is true. That's where the other hinge has to come into play and Kunstlers ideas come in. We must design better urban sprawls because well, it doesn't fit the current need and over-population doesn't help either. This is where Wal-mart parking lots could stay parking lots, but have structures that provide housing, or schools in an innovative format that is aesthetically pleasing. I may sound idealistic but how come we don't move closer to our jobs? Why don't we revamp River park mall as a giant condo community with stores on the bottom, condos on the top floor and use that whole middle space for a school? Oh you don't want to live that close to work? But what if you could walk 3minutes and have lunch with your son or daughter? Walk 5minutes and be home? Your first thought is, "But Adam, I want *insert desired noun or adjective*." That's nice, but when are you going to take one for t he team? Take one for your family, city, nation. When are you going to be willing to build a place "worth caring about?"

what is the church?

Recently was in the Seattle area and while hanging out with my friends, we went to their home church. It was a med-sized place, 4 sets of greeters before the sanctuary, open spaces and pretty modern. One of the greeters though said something that caught my attention for some odd reason, "Welcome to Church." Now they said that, but it was something that stuck with me as I entered. Stuck through worship. During offering they mentioned stuff about church related and it still stuck out. Then the sermon started. Sermon was extremely good. I thoroughly enjoyed it and there were some really awesome points, one of the best ones was that, we need to "scourge our schedules." As I was listening though, there was philosophical question that begged to be asked and answered. All the while during the sermon, he said that people will not be tired as you dedicate yourself to the church, that the church is a place of restoration, that the church was one of the most important pieces of our lives and if we just committed ourselves to regularly going to church our lives would be so much better. How is church being defined? In this example it almost seems as if church was apart of the trinity. I know that is not the heart motive of the pastor however, a clearly defined definition from the start would have helped. Are we talking about the actual service, physical building known as a church, or the body of Christ that is preparing itself for the Lord's return? For the comment section: how do you define "church" and how important do you think an actual building and service is?

thoughts while riding in a car

So today I spent 6 hours in a car going to seattle my best friend josiah. I spent it with 3 of my best female friends, including my amazingly awesome and cute girlfriend. We had thought provoking conversations that hit a great range of topics. it made me wonder a lot, why I don't see this kind of friendships in others. I know I'm probably blind to something, but it really struck me how really cool my female friends are. This realization came after most of the conversation died and I suggested we listen to a podcast. The podcast was of Mars Hill Michigan and was going verse by verse through 1st John. I bring this up because after 10minutes they suggested we listen to a book on cd called "Crazy Love." I am in no way stating the legitimacy of either audio within the car, however I do want to make the point that I definitely was more amazed by God in the verse by verse analysis of the Bible vs. an author basically saying all of the cool amazing and awesome things God is, does, and did. I bring this up because after listening to 5 minutes of "Crazy Love," I was extremely bored and wondered what was going in twitter-land. In this I realize how different God makes us and the elements of which we enjoy, relate and grow in God. Its cool to me to see that while we're so different we can have supremely profound discussion in other times relating to the majesty of God or how we relate to one another or church culture, etc. God has created us so different, yet so similar. We all share similar needs, wants, desires. We long for family interactions, deep friendships, loyalty, futures, dreams and goals. Yet its the details that have blended us to be such a tight-knit sub-set of friends. Proverbs 18:24  (amplified) "The man of many friends [a friend of all the world] will prove himself a bad friend, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." Although they are not blood or brothers, these are definitely my sisters and I am so blessed by God to have them in my life. As that stands, I can also sit through what I consider boring audio, because I know it blesses them and their hearts.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Real Estate category

So I just added a new blog category and some may wonder why I did. I actually have enjoyed real estate watching, renovations, design, wholesale, etc. for years and was recently re-inspired by my previous supervisor who is currently in Ohio. In a good neighborhood in youngstown , OH. a 3400sq foot 7bedroom, 3bath house went for $12,000. I'm not even joking. Its absolutely crazy but true and since I just bought a house in the pullman area, i'm definitely still enjoying real estate and watching how this all works. So join with me in learning and finding opportunities. Sign up for a mailing list with information and potential deals as I come accross them throughout the states.

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one more test- click to read my setup though

So I just set up wordpress to crosspost to blogger, tumblr, twitter (which posts to facebook). why is this cool? Not sure but I wrote this post from my blackberry :)

another test of the blogging blast system

test

Test-

Working on a multi-link synchronized setup. sounds fancy but its really just a bunch of plugins

Been a while yet, life is busy

Manm cant believe its been 4-5 months since my last post, yet so much in life has happened since those days. New frustrations, friends, life, etc. I do believe I will be closing this blog though. I have personal stuff I want to write out but, somehow I dont feel at ease or free to put anything here anymore. its almost like I wonder who all is still reading it, yet I doubt very many. my analytics hasnt been working so I cant trace stuff as well anymore. So this will probably be the last post on this blog. Farewell and may this blog RIP in the archives. This has been a blog since 2005 I think. crazy...

-AdamMosesJones