Filsinger.org

In evangelical circles the emergent movement gets a lot of flack for some of their view points and take on theology.  What I believe most of the fundamentalist miss is that the emergent tend to understand some of Jesus’ principals better than they do.  His compassion, his love for the lost, his desire to help people in their need.  Most of Rob’s detractors lash out, and miss most of his points while yelling as loud as they can with their fingers stuck in their ears.

People have asked me what I think of this book, as it has gotten a fair amount of attention in certain circles.  Well, I think Rob Bell’s theology is a little too loose in some areas.  But his honesty, humbleness, transparency, and view on compassion outshine any problems I have with his theology.  This is a book I feel people need to read, digest, chew on for a bit and take what they great things he does say from it and add it to your world view.

It is a book I recommend, but as Rob states, it is one that you need to read critically, to do so would be an injustice.

I’ve been recently involved in a process of building a document around what I think Youth Ministry should look like.  I have brought together a great number of people at various points in their life to bring their unique insight into the issues that face them, their kids, and their peers.  It has been an interesting process, and I have learned a lot from it.  We’re also only half way there, and another 2 months, we should have something a little more tangible and written down.

I’ve also recently been looking into the tech industry latest trend of having an Unconference .  Essentially it’s a conference/retreat/getaway where there is no speaker, no planned agenda, and the agenda is then set by the attendees.  Usually, there is a group of people with similar interests that end up attending.  My idea that I started to throw around was having one for Youth Leaders, of all denominations, or all walks of life, from even *gasp* any religion.  Why not create a place to allow people to dialogue about what is working in current Youth Ministry trends, what is not, and allow people the time to get away, talk, and gain knowledge, experience and new insights into their own world.

Right now, this is just an idea, a seed, will it germinate into something? Possibly, probably not, but one can dream a little.

I’ve said all that to say this, the church as an institution has segregated itself from everyone, including other churches.  Dialogue exists very little outside of our own circles, and that needs to change if we want to deal with pressures, and difficulties of trying to reach kids, and meet them where they are at.
If anyone reads this blog, which I know there is very few and are in the maritime area.  Ping me, start a dialogue with me, let me know your thoughts.

filsinger@gmail.com <- My inbox is never closed.

So my first year under branzone.com as my webhosts has come to a close.  So far I have been really happy with their service, my down time has been at about the advertised 0.01%.  If anyone was looking for a hosting solution I would recommend them.  Except today, I have been trying for 3 hours to pay for my next year of service, and their paypal integrated system is just not working.

I don’t think the issue is on paypals end either… I just want to pay my money and move on.  Not fight with a webserver for 3 hours… oh well.  I’ll try again in a few hours.

Oh and I’ve now joined twitter, http://twitter.com/rfilsinger , if you really care to follow my daily rituals and thoughts.

So yesterday, I wrote about how the economy down turn has not affected to me.  Right now in North America, we are approximately 2% of the worlds population, but consume 40% of the worlds resources.  Perhaps, it’s time we slow things down, perhaps its ok if the economy is not as robust.  Maybe this will help out the earth, maybe this will help re-evaluate how we look at wealth distribution.  A good depression might make us look outside the little box we have created for ourselves.

It’s estimated that we could feed, cloth and give water to pretty much the entire world for a fraction of what the bailout package cost the US, for a fraction of what the war in Iraq cost.  Look outside your box, take a moment, look around, and give where you can.  We aren’t simply here to consume, spend and be greedy.

Give what you have, and you’ll have more joy then you have ever known.

So as of right now the tsx is down 963 points and the dow is down 715 poitns.  Something like a trillion dollars have been lost in wealth in the last few weeks.  But, oddly enough the affect on my life has been close to nil.  I still make the same salary I did two weeks ago, I still owe the same people, the same amount of money.  I have lost a bit of my savings in WestJet, but I’m still way ahead of where I started a couple years ago.

My feeling in all of this is that, most of what we are seeing in the last few days has mostly been a reaction to the terrible housing market in the states catching up with itself and affecting the rest of the world.  Now I am definitely not an expert on economy, at it is something I’d like to learn more about, but as of right now.  My life has not changed one shred.

Perhaps it has to do with me never having enough money to play the stock market, or perhaps has to do with the isolation of the island economy from the rest of the world.  No I don’t work in tourism here, which I can see being affected by lots of people losing their money.  I work in the game industry, and at the moment, it seems recession proof, as hardware sales climb, software sales keep setting new records.  There will be work for me, and it should last long enough to get me through this down swing.

On the bright side, gas is going down.. its now hovering around $90/barrell ($1.15/L), hopefully it will drop below $1/L again… we shall see.