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As we usually do around this time of year, we've just sent out a few hundred newsletters. You may have one coming in the post, but if you just can't wait or if you don't usually get one by email, you can open it here and print your own. It's supposed to be printed on A4 paper and folded into a Christmas card.
We still send a lot out to people we haven't heard from for a long time and wonder if they reach the people they were intended for.
Perhaps you used to get them but you have moved. We would love to hear
that you are still getting them or if you don't any more but you would
like to again, do get in touch. Contact info is in the downloadable letter.
If you'd like to get more frequent updates by email please add your address to our email list.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 18 December 2008 )
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 One of God's "builders' huts" in suburbia
Although Todd is thinking about suburbia in America I think it speaks equally well to the UK context. If you like me are facing that challenge, do read the full paper - it isn't very long. Here's how he summarises the challenges which the church should be bringing to life in the suburbs:
There are at least four main ways the default suburban lifestyle needs
to be challenged. First, we need to speak out against the suburban
value of extreme individualism and call Christians back to community.
Second, we need to deconstruct the value of consumerism in way that
leads instead to sacrificial living. Third we need to question the
suburban value of safety and comfort and judge it against the call of
the gospel. Finally, we need to understand how our individualism and
consumerism lead us to neglect the hurting and needy people in our
neighborhoods and cities.
And here's a taster from the challenge to deconstruct comfort:
Uncritically accepting comfort and safety affects more than just our
personal discipleship and mission. It also has great impact on the
mission of our community. Church communities seeking to maintain and
find comfort for their members will quickly lose the mission they
started with. In his book Exiles, Michael Frost claims:
Timidity squashes our missional impulse. It causes us to
withdraw from any grand sense of purpose for fear of upsetting the
delicate balance of conflicting egos currently residing in each church.
Christians surround themselves with fellow churchgoers, so that their
church’s only goal is to maintain equilibrium. Such timidity and
anxiety leave the church as nothing more than a retreatist, frightened,
ineffective organization.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 06 November 2008 )
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What would happen in your church?
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 15 October 2008 )
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It's not every day that African countries make huge language policy decisions, but today the BBC Africa news is reporting that the Rwandan parliament has decided that all education will be taught in English instead of French. It'll be interesting to see how this works out in practice. AIM has a number of people teaching theology in Rwanda at university level, I can't see that they will be switching to English until students are coming in with adequate English.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 10 October 2008 )
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 How good are your backups? "What backups", did I hear you you say? Don't hesitate, follow this advice and start backing up what's most important to you.
Set your backups up carefully to protect your important data then schedule them to run automatically, for example when you shut your machine down at the end of the day.Maybe your backup software is just not clever enough and backups are such a hassle that you don't bother. As I write this, there is a great deal available on Acronis True Image Home 11, which is probably the world's best backup software for individual Windows machines.This program is very powerful but also very user friendly.
Here's how to buy True Image Home for about £6, which is fantastic value since it would normally cost you about £30, you also get the Acronis Disk Director Suite worth another £30, which lets you do just about anything with your hard drive. Follow this link to the Acronis website - don't be put off that it's the US site, this is a software download. Once you get to the site, click the Buy Now button and in the box which says Coupon Code enter ATIH80 and click the Apply button. The price should now say $9.99. Follow through the checkout process and download you software. No I am not getting commission - just helping my friends!
Update: I hope some of you got in fast - the Coupon code seems to have stopped working by Friday 19th :(
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 20 September 2008 )
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 According to an article on the Christianity Today website a storm is brewing again over the use of Yahweh as God's name. The Vatican is asking for the divine name to be removed from all liturgy. Some Protestants have also been following this line for a while. According to the article that's why we sometimes find ourselves singing "Guide me O thou great redeemer"
This of course isn't a new debate. Jews for centuries have avoided pronouncing the personal name of God, apparently out of respect.My understanding is that the Masorete scribes added the vowel marks to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament (Hebrew was traditionally written without vowels). When they did this they added the vowels of the Hebrew word Adonai (Lord) as a reminder to readers that they should not pronounce the divine name but substitute the word Adonai instead. This apparently lead to the pronounciation Jehovah familiar to us from the King James Version and some hymns.
Neither is this the only debate about what we should call God. There is a long running controversy about the use of Allah by Christians writing in languages such as Arabic. See this helpful article by Mark Naylor for helpful thoughts on that one. Some would question the appropriateness of our English word God since the word is originally the name of a pre-Christian pagan deity.
Personally I believe that since God has revealed his personal name, he intends us to know it, and I find no biblical injunction against saying it. If I pronounce it, then I certainly intend no disrespect in doing so and I don't believe that anyone who does pronounce it is showing a lack of respect by doing so.
What do you think? Any comments appreciated.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 12 September 2008 )
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Please pray for our Bhete friend Eliezer and his wife Angele. Angele recently had a severe case of malaria which led to hospitalisation. Sadly the malaria provoked the premature birth of the baby they were expecting. I don't have many details except that there was no incubator available at the hospital in Gagnoa and the baby died within a few hours of birth. Eliezer was in Abidjan while all this was happening and has only been able to go back today. Pray that God would comfort them and their two year old daughter Margo.
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Like me, you probably already search the web mostly through Google's glasses, so how would you like to take a look using their eyes too? Google's new browser Chrome is out in 'beta'. Knowing Google I wouldn't be surprised to see Chrome remain as a 'beta' for a long time, so I wouldn't let it put you off downloading it and giving it a go.
There are lots of detailed reviews out there, so I won't attempt another, but my first impressions after a couple of hours use are of a clean and simple user interface, low memory usage and very fast page rendering. It is nothing like as configurable and flexible as my favourite Firefox 3, but I'll certainly be using it sometimes when I need fast browsing.
Google has an interesting comic book style introduction to Chrome here (HT Ted Barnett)
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Last Updated ( Friday, 05 September 2008 )
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 This might look like SPAM, but it really isn't. I am no fan of advertising on websites, but I do appreciate good service, so please forgive me for shamelessly plugging the great web hosting company which I use for this site and for our AIM International websites:
Siteground not only provides fantastically powerful low priced hosting, its technical support is really fast and high quality. If you are thinking of setting up any kind of site from a basic blog to a complex web-based business, Siteground will get you off to a great start at a fantastic price of about £30 a year ($5.95 per month). That will get you your own domain name, email, automated installation of almost any content management system or blogging software you might name and 24/7 live support. They are based in the United States, but that should not have any noticeable effect on performance and you can pay with any credit card.If you already have a sitehosted elsewhere they will port it to siteground and get it working for you at no extra charge.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 25 July 2008 )
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 Yet another oxymoron: 'Microsoft Groove' - almost as bad as 'Microsoft Works'!
I hesitate slightly to blog about Groove because I'm not sure that anyone should pay the full price: amazon.com $179 amazon.co.uk £200(rip-off Britain again!). However if like Eddie and I, you get your Microsoft software at sensible prices through their generous charity licensing programme, then I recommend buying the top end Office Enterprise Suite which includes the wonderful OneNote and Groove.
Groove can do a number of things, but primarily it is intended to help with team collaboration. Groove enables users to create workspaces which can then be shared by a number of users. The workspace can keep track of files, discussions, calendars, meetings, pictures etc. Once users have joined the workspace the copy on everyone's machine is kept in sync and they are kept informed about what has been updated.You don't have to be online to work on files either because you automatically get local copies.
Groove is also able to keep ordinary file folders in sync across different machines. I use this a lot to synchronise OneNote on my different machines and to make sure that my sermons, presentations & other documents are available to all my machines at home and at work.It isn't good for database type files including Outlook .pst files but for most documents it works really simply. There is no need to open up paths through firewalls or struggle with changing IP addresses, Bill Gates takes care of that for you.
Nice one Microsoft - shame you have priced so many people out of grooving together.
Demo and free 60 day trial on the Microsoft site.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 30 June 2008 )
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