Justin Struik
Hello, I have recently become the Director for the Areopagus campus ministry at Iowa State University. I am new to Iowa State and to the campus ministry world. I am also new to married life. My beautiful wife, Erin, and I were married in July of 2010 and our first year has been very good. I look forward to working with students and learning from you all and sharing my experiences as well. Justin
Posted in: Reading Scripture Creatively
Haven't various lectionaries helped the church do this for years? Why do we need to reinvent the wheel, when we already have a wonderful tool easily available to us?
Posted in: Books for Youth
Tim,
King's Cross by Tim Keller is one that we used for a Bible Study recently with group of students and it was well received. It is a relatively easy read, but quite challenging. It walks through the book of Mark and challenges us to really see who Jesus is and apply it to our lives. Also, many things by Eugene Peterson would be wonderful as well. Glad to hear that you have some students craving for more!
Justin
Posted in: Video Record 101
Andrew, thanks for the post. The church that I work as campus ministry director at just recently did a remodel and added video recording capabilities. We are still working through some of the bugs and figuring out the best way to get things done. Since we don't really have a programmer, I think some of your ideas, which sound awesome are probably beyond us. Anyways, that's not what my comment is about. Like you, we also use a Hauppauge card to record, although it is different from yours. What I am wondering is what software you are using to do the actual recording. Right now we are using the softward that came with the Hauppauge card. However, the issue we have been having is that after we record three or four services it seems to "max out" or something and when we are done recording a service there is only like 4 seconds that get saved. But if we move the recordings out of the default folder so that it is empty again, then the problem is solved. I haven't had a chance to investigate this well, but I would be interested in knowing of a better piece of software out there that we could use. Preferably open-source. Thanks for your help!
Justin
Posted in: What Do You Think of Planting a New Community in a Declining Church?
I don't really see the point in this. It seems that what you basically want to do is reinvent the church within the church. Where does this approach leave the "declining" congregation? Are they supposed to hobble on with no one to care for them? Or will the new plant eventually drive them out? Or is it expected that the "declining" church will eventually come to see the light and join in with the new church? Why do we have to plant a new church when we could just go about the work of re-enlivening the existing one?
Posted in: What Do You Think of Planting a New Community in a Declining Church?
John,
Sorry for taking so long to respond to this... I guess I have a few thoughts.... I agree with a lot of what Bob said, but would make a couple of other points.
I'm not saying that church planting is a bad thing, but I would disagree with the assumption that the best way to fix a declining denomination is to plant churches. I think this is what Bob is getting at. Especially if we are talking about an entire denomination. When we talk about it this way it almost seems like we are talking about the church like it is model year of a car. When the old model wears out we pitch and redesign to peoples desires, or even to our own and then hope people like it. The problem is, is that the church is not a car, it is a living breathing organism.
I would love to have you expound on what you mean when you say:
"I would love it if we could re-vitalize declining churches. My hope is that we can and many will be. But with this huge church planting movement sweeping the church, it just seems like a better way to make the generational leap."
When I read that, my interpretation of what you are saying is basically: It would be really awesome if it were even possible to revitalize churches, but it's really not so let's just plant new ones. What exactly is this "generational leap" that needs to be made? Shouldn't each church embrace and encompass all the generations that are in it? If it can't then we have a deeper issue in the church (Bob's post) and all that planting a church is going to do is put paint on a rotten board.
I thought the church planting movement was more of a result of churches realizing that we need to not be so enclosed and self-preserving and instead be active in engaging the world with the Love of Christ. I did think it was a desperate attempt to make the church relevant again...
Posted in: The Power Of Being Present
When I was in college, for a semester abroad that I spent in Uganda, we were required to read a book by John Taylor, entitled "The Primal Vision" It's emphasis was on being present with others. It was not an easy read, but it was good and it set the tone for our entire semester there. I would highly recommend it as a help on this topic.