Tag Archive - Apple

American Idol Winner Kris Allen Sings God of this City – Does it matter?

May 25, 2009 in life with 5 Comments

A few days ago I posted a video of American Idol winner, Kris Allen, performing “God of This City” at New Life Church. To my surprise it has caused quite a bit of discussion on the comment section of that post, and on Twitter. It seems to boil down to this questions :

“Is a person’s faith a deciding factor on who you vote for (if you vote) on American Idol?”

In other words does the person you vote for (or would vote for) have to be of the same faith as you in order to get your vote? Is that something that is important to you? Do you google every contestant to find out what their faith views are before you vote?

I’m sure many of my Christian friends will quickly proclaim “YES – it does indeed matter to me!”

To which I ask “Why?” (or “Why not?” – if your answer is no)

I’m not saying there is a “right” or “wrong” way to look at this – I’m just curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Also – I’d like to take it a step further. How does the faith of another person affect your decision to interact with them? Does it matter?

For instance; The dentist who cleans your teeth – does his faith determine if you’ll use his services or not?
If there was two dentists next door to each other – one who had really bad service – but was a believer, the other, the best dentist in your city – but he hated God – which dentist would you choose? Why? (and it just so happens that these are the only two dentists in the whole world, the other ones all retired – sorry – you have to choose!)

What about your boss? If you are a person of faith, could you work for a person who hated God?

What about the products you buy? If Steve Jobs hated God would you still use your iPhone?
{SIDENOTE – Did you know that Jews for Jesus has attempted to share the Gospel with Steve Jobs? In fact they even made a tract just for him – take a look}

I Just wanted to throw those thoughts out to get you thinking. Please leave a comment, I’d be very interested to hear what you have to say in regards to this topic!
(by the way – here is the link to the post with Kris Allen’s video of God of this City in case you want to watch it again, or read the comments.)

-Rick

Orange Conference {day 2}.

April 30, 2009 in life, photos with 0 Comments

Wow – what a great day! Things are in full swing here at The Orange Conference! I Had a great day connecting with so many awesome people talking about creative ways to use social media to connect with the students we minster to – among many other things!

Since I am about to fall asleep on my laptop, and I’m not sure drool is covered under my warranty; I’m going to keep this post rather short. However, I did want to share one thing I heard today that really today that really impacted me.

It was from Francis Chan’s (who is a CRAZY cool guy, by the way – and author of the book “Crazy Love” ) talk this morning. In his talk he said the book of Acts was his least favorite book of the Bible because he “never reads it, and says ‘Wow – that looks allot like my church!” He went on to talk about how we act like the things in the Book of Acts were just “for back then.” How we act like God doesn’t move like that today; or that we shouldn’t expect God, or The Holy Spirit, to work like He did in Acts. I’m going to talk about this in more detail later in a video post because it really got me thinking – so stay tuned!

Question : Do we REALLY trust God to move like they did in Acts? Do we REALLY believe He can move in such powerful ways TODAY? Do we REALLY believe in the power, and work, of The Holy Spirit?

And one last question – Do we REALLY preach as BODLY as we see the people in Acts preaching? (If your answer is no – why don’t we?)

That’s it for now – but I have much more to say. Soon, very soon. But in the mean time take a look at a few images from today!