Seems like over and over again I get reminded of how much our lives as followers of Jesus are more about how we participate as a family than it is about what we are “doing” as a church. I hear from the people that hang with us about how they long to be authentic and really be who they are. At what point did the church become something other than that? We are the body and we are to live in community with each other, loving people for who they are and where they are. It is pretty much the norm that we lose track of what is important, but Jesus made it clear that all of the scriptures are summed up in two commands: Love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Leave judgement behind, seek Jesus’ love in and through you, and gain humility, generosity, and many other things along the way!

This morning we are going Roller Skating in Easley from 11-1, and then tomorrow Super Bowl at the Qs…starts at 6:30

Tonight we start our discussion on Wayne Jacobsen’s Book He Loves Me! – Learning to Live in the Father’s Affection. This book is excellent to use as a guide to how we can build our relationship with Jesus. Tonight we will begin discussing the first two chapters and will continue with a couple of chapters a week until we are finished with the book.

Interested as to what its all about? CLICK HERE and select “Look Inside” to read excerpts, and then buy the book and join us!

Heard an interesting news story on the radio this morning as I was headed in to work. Seacost Church which has 12 locations in SC, NC and GA has opened their free medical clinic to provide for medical needs of those in North Charleston who do not have insurance and do not have the financial means to get insurance. Take a few minutes to look at their website : http://www.dreamcenterclinic.org/

In my opinion the church should be more and more about this kind of serving. As the culture continues to change, people who do not know Jesus must see more and more that we are willing to be who we say we are.

Three cheers for Seacoast!!!

Over the past few years, my paying job has exposed me to lots of open source software that makes sense for business, but honestly, many of those same solutions dramatically help churches as well. And, while it takes some level of expertise to install and manage them, most churches can take advantage of very nice software for little or no money at all. While this post does not directly impact our jesusexperiment group, it does speak, I think to our overall goals, so those of you who are not interested in such, you can skip along past this post.

I thought I might give a short list of solutions that can be downloaded and installed that can dramatically help the church:

Desktop software:
Podcasting and digital recording:
Audacity (I have used an edirol usb adapter to connect to an analog sound board and then connect to the PC)

If you are ambitious, you can save yourself from Microsoft Vista and load Ubuntu Linux. If you do, be sure to special order a PC without the operating system, and save yourself the cash. Also many of the open source solutions will come preinstalled on ubuntu.

Office software
Open Office (all of the basic functionality of MS Office, not quite as robust, but getting better)
Thunderbird for email
Firefox for web browser

Now for the biggy, Server software:

Server itself: Ubuntu Server all the way!

Website Content Mangement:
Wordpress
Joomla
Loudblog (for podcasting both video and audio)

Zimbra (Email server to replace exchange)

That’s the core…if I think of others I will update, and if there are any questions, just post here and let me know!

HERE IS ANOTHER GREAT POST on the subject

-DQ

Tonight is the night for discussion! We are meeting at 7pm at the Main Street Deli in Central to discuss the book “The shack” by Wm Paul Young. should be very interesting. Invite everyone who has read the book, and encourage them to have a cup of Java and chat with us for a while. for those who have not yet read the book, you are welcome to come, but BEWARE we will be giving away the plot in our discussion….hope to see you there.

Just thought of this song while listening to a podcast about how Jesus wants
to have a party in heaven for each of us.  Looked up the song and found this
video!  I hope it moves each of you like it did me.

Shari

This Video is hillarious, but very revealing about how our churches market.

OK, so it is official, Pastor Bob has been offered the Interim Pastor position at Fellowship Community Church. If you are interested in joining them, or keeping up with the current sermon series, we encourage you to visit . Fellowship is located on Hwy 93 between Central and Liberty, and they meet at 9:00am and 10:30am each Sunday. Congrats Bob!!

The economic crisis reminds me that the church can play a role in helping people out of their debt crisis.: