Timothy's Thoughts

O ur church is doing a new pictorial directory using this service called Instant Church Directory . The service makes pictures and addresses available through a mobile device app. Using your smart phone, or a tablet, you can scroll through the pictures and find the person you’re looking for. But what it doesn’t allow you to do is to access the information from a website. Okay, that’s not exactly true. What they will allow you to do is download a PDF, which most people will be able to use if they have Acrobat Reader installed. Okay, it’s great that they implemented it as an app, but what about people who don’t have one of the supported devices? Have we reached the point where those of us who prefer to use a PC are the dinosaurs of the technology world? Is the PC dead? No, an here’s why. If you do a lot of typing, you’re going to want something more than a phone or a tablet. If you are doing graphics of some kind, you’ll want a larger screen, and maybe two or three. If you are doing proc...

C heck you’re e-mail and you’re likely to find a few spam messages. We’ve come to expect it and when the spam filters let some of it through, most of us hit the delete button and away it goes. Or maybe we don’t read our e-mail at all because most of it is stuff we don’t want to see. Many of us communicate more through Facebook than we do through e-mail. Unfortunately, Facebook has its own problem with spam. Worse, many of us perpetuate it without realizing what we are doing. Let’s take a look at how Facebook spam works. Troll Linking One of the most obvious forms of spam is the work of trolls and can result in click-through profits for the troll. It works like this: first, the troll finds a Facebook page that has several thousand followers. He then adds a comment to the page along the lines of “That’s interesting, but you should check out http://e4htWos.jnk.com.” The people curious enough to follow the link will be taken to a site advertising some product and the person who placed the ...

S ome people are asking why Robin Thicke isn’t taking the heat that Miley Cyrus is for their raunchy performance at the VMA show. And quite right—he should be taking heat for the performance and not just from his mother, who has been quoted as saying, “I can’t unsee it.” That fact is, you don’t put on a show like that without a lot of planning and practice. Based on her comments, it appears that Robin Thicke’s wife was forewarned about the raunchiness of the performance. In a nutshell, Robin Thicke is every bit as responsible for the performance as Miley Cyrus is. One comment I saw online summed it up for me, “I don’t know who Robin Thicke is.” The reason Robin Thicke isn’t getting hammered in the media is because he hasn’t alienated his fans (other than his mother). Miley Cyrus, on the other hand, has turned her back on the fans she gained from Hannah Montana and those fans are mourning that loss. So many people thought they knew her. She was that kid who found plenty of ways to make...

B y now, you’ve probably heard about Jase Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame being kicked out of New York City’s Trump International Hotel. [1] The story is that Robertson asked one of the staff where the restroom was and the staff member showed him the way out the door instead. Robertson attributed it to “facial profiling.” The staff member assumed Robertson was a homeless man. I don’t know that we can blame him. They probably encounter several unshaven men who are homeless and if not shown the door, would hang out in the lobby. I believe the lesson we can learn from this story is that how we dress is important in our interaction with other people. In the Bible, we see the statement, “man looketh on the outward appearance, but he Lord looketh on the heart.” [2] We tend to look at that statement and say something along the lines of “we should all look past the outward appearance.” So we should, but let’s not miss the truth of the statement, “man looks on the outward appearance.” At best,...

How the Organic Church People See Themselves I ’ll admit it; I don’t keep up with all the latest fads. When the organic church came up in a conversation with my pastor the other day, I was pretty clueless and then showed my ignorance by opening my mouth. So, I went looking to see what I could find out about this thing called, the organic church . The first thing I came to realize was that the words in the name have little meaning unless you understand how the people using it are defining the terms. As a friend pointed out, to be organic, something has to contain carbon compounds. That’s probably not what is intended by the use of the term. Neither can we use the etymology of the word church . The word originates from a word used to refer to a place of worship. (In other words, a “church” is the building, not the people.) In looking for a definition I found the statement, “an Organic Church is born out of spiritual life, not constructed by human institutions and held together by religi...

P icture this scene: a group of people are gathered in a room. Someone, the president, gets up and calls the meeting to order. A few reports are given. Some miscellaneous business is discussed. Then the people begin getting up and giving ten-minute speeches on various topics. What organization is that? If you are in the business world, you might say, “That sounds like Toastmasters.” And in fact it does sound like that well respected organization in which people learn leadership and speaking skills by doing. But the scene I described comes from a monthly youth meeting I attended when I was a teenager. The churches of the Cane Creek Baptist Association held these meetings (still do) and called it the Youth in the Harvest. At one point or another, I held most of the jobs within the Youth in the Harvest. I had to give “a part.” I was elected treasurer. I led the singing. I was vice-president. I was president. And not once did I think, “I hope they elect me.” Not once did I think, “I hope o...

I n our Wednesday evening services, our church is discussing the book, I Am a Church Member . Our pastor asked how we should plug in a new church member to a place of service. There were several answers, but I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the answer, “They can plug themselves in.” That is most certainly true. There are some people who join a church and whether the existing membership knows how to use them or not, it won’t be long before they’ll be busy doing something. In some cases, they end up doing things the existing church members wouldn’t have thought of. This is the case with the lady who made the observation. Since the time they joined the church, she and her husband have been asked to serve in various ways, (and they have done so willingly) but they ministry they are most known for is one that they were the first to see the need for. As a church member, I feel that I have a responsibility to “plug myself in.” Whether someone asks me to do something or not, I have a resp...