… to watch this video all the way through without crying.
I spotted an interesting article on TechCrunch a few days ago.
In the post Gospelr: Twitter For Christians, Don Reisinger wrote about a brand new service specifically for Christians. Gospelr is microblogging for Christians and can even be set up to send posts to Twitter.
It’s got some interesting features that make life easier for users such as the colour coding. A normal post to Gospelr is shaded brown. Replies made to you are shaded green, while imported messages from services like Twitter are colored in blue.
I’ll admit that I headed on over to the site and signed up to check things out. It was a very busy site a few days ago as many people started signing on but it seems to have slowed down now. I guess it’ll need to reach a certain critical mass for it to be worthwhile.
I suppose the question remains, why do we need a service like this specifically for Christians? If extra functionality is added to allow it to display my tweets from Twitter I reckon I’ll get a bit more use out of it but I’m always cautious of anything that creates a Christian subculture.
While I fully understand the desire and even the need for like minded people to gather together, I wonder if there is good cause to duplicate services that could already achieve that purpose.
Ryan left the following comment at the TechCrunch article:
Couldn’t this have been done by setting your Twitter account to private, and only following people who align with your beliefs? Just sayin’…
He wasn’t alone in questioning the need for Gospelr. Buddy commented:
keeping the christian subculture alive! thankfully, because Jesus really would prefer us not to associate with sinners.
i’m headed over to my favorite christian restaraunt to eat some christian pancakes and read my christian paper, then i’m going to go to my christian job and open my christian computer and communicate with my christian friends and cohorts.
please stop making this stuff. just use twitter or the ten million other tools like this if you want to communicate “share thoughts, ideas, words of encouragement, prayer requests, daily scripture readings, and oh so much more.”
christian t-shirts are a bad idea. christian bumper stickers are a bad idea. christian twitters are a bad idea.
Dave said:
brings an interesting new meaning to the expression, “preaching to the converted”
Joe commented:
My question for gospelr is what prevents us from sharing thoughts, lifting others in prayer, announce causes that need help, encouragement on twitter in the first place.
You know when I think Jesus will return? When the entire Christian subculture dies a horrific death.
Jesus did not call us to huddle amongst ourselves and exclude all others. Light much? Salt much? Get into the world. Love them. Serve them. If necessary, you die for them.
While I admit that some of the posts I’ve seen on Gospelr would suggest they were made by people hopelessly out of touch with the wider world, I think there are still plenty of people using the service who have every intention of staying connected to the society around them.
So if we’re going to jump in and use a service like Gospelr, how should we use it? As a way of ‘shutting out the world’? I hope not. How about a way of connecting with others who share our faith and combining to reach out to the world? That would be my hope. I appreciate any opportunity to have my faith sharpened by others and being able to connect with other Christians through Gospelr might be a very good thing.
If you haven’t tried Gospelr, give it a go. Let me know what you think.
Do you think we need to duplicate services like Twitter and others or should we simply use the original and be salt and light? What do you see as the benefits or the disadvantages of such services.
How far is too far?
Can a deed be so dark that there’s no pardon or forgiveness from God?
While we don’t seem to hear people talking about sin so much these days we still know that there are things that cross the line.
Can we be forgiven for murder? Are sexual crimes unforgivable? Is there forgiveness for the increasing number of people facing child pornography charges?
Does forgiveness mean that people no longer have to face the consequences of their actions?
My regular Wednesday morning guest on 98.5 Sonshine FM is Ross Clifford who is the Principal of Morling College in New South Wales and current President of the Baptist Union of Australia. Each week we chat about a range of issues relating to spirituality and belief.
Today we tackled the subject of unforgivable sin.
Ross talked about the many calls he gets from people asking if they can ever be forgiven for the things they’ve done. Many people call his Sydney radio show asking whether suicide is forgivable.
One woman spoke to Ross about having a harsh conversation with her son. When she visited his home the next day she found his body. He had committed suicide. The woman wanted to know if she could be forgiven for the harsh words she’d spoken and whether her so would be forgiven for taking his own life.
I’ve heard people say that God could never forgive the terrible things they’ve done and I wonder whether it’s likely that their sense of unforgiveness comes from an inability to forgive themselves.
You can hear what Ross had to say by clicking play on the audio player at the bottom of this post.
I must admit that I haven’t seen a lot of Oprah over the years but what I have seen just serves to confirm that she’s the ultimate television professional.
Her programme, The Oprah Winfrey Show, has earned a number of Emmy Awards and is the highest rating talk show in the history of television.
According to Wikipedia, she has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the most philanthropic African American of all time, and the world’s only black billionaire for three straight years. That’s an amazing achievement for someone who has battled the odds to be where she is today.
Born in rural Mississippi to a poor unwed teenaged mother, and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighbourhood, Winfrey was raped at the age of nine, and at fourteen, gave birth to a son who died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated. – Wikipedia
More and more these days Oprah’s programme has focused on spiritual themes that have found a very welcome audience amongst her millions of fans. Many say she is the most influential woman in the world, so when Oprah endorses something, millions around the world not only listen, they act on what they hear.
My regular Wednesday morning guest on 98.5 Sonshine FM is Ross Clifford who is the Principal of Morling College in New South Wales and current President of the Baptist Union of Australia. Each week we chat about a range of issues relating to spirituality and belief.
This week we looked at the kind of spirituality that Oprah endorses and the latest author to have received a massive career boost via Oprah’s television show, Eckhart Tolle. Tolle’s brand of new age spirituality has been embraced by millions since attaining Oprah’s endorsement.
Oprah rejects any idea of there being one pathway to God as being unthinkable. She seems to be on a spiritual search, earnestly seeking answers and taking her vast international audience on the journey with her.
If you’d like to hear what Ross had to say about Oprah and her thoughts on spirituality, just click play on the audio player at the bottom of this post.
I had an interesting email from a reader a few days ago. He said that he no longer considers himself a Christian because he doesn’t agree with living “some of the ways we should live as Christians”.
He says doesn’t feel bad or guilty about it, in fact he feels happy that he’s doing what makes him feel happy and what makes his family happy and secure.
He made a very interesting point.
I feel that so many Christians are so wrapped up in God, church, activities for the church, giving money to the poor, helping people in the church that they lose sight of their own brothers and sisters. It seems to me that Christians are too busy with all this Christian stuff that they forget about spending time with their own family (Mum or Dad, brothers or sisters and extended family).
While he didn’t want his name mentioned, he wanted me to throw this one out for some comment.
What’s your experience?
Have you encountered this kind of attitude in Christians? Have you found yourself so wrapped up in church stuff and ministry and everything that goes along with it that those closest to you have missed out?
Here’s part of what I emailed back in reply.
I’ve seen this kind of attitude far too often in far too many Christians. People get so taken up with what they see as their ‘Christian duty’ that they lose sight of what I consider to be their greatest ‘ministry’ and calling – their family.
This kind of attitude is especially prevalent in those working in full time ministry such as pastors. I made a decision when I started working in a Christian workplace that I would ensure that my family would remain a priority. I also make a point of not getting so wrapped up in ‘church activities’ that I don’t get to spend time with those who aren’t what we might call religious. A lot of the time I prefer the time I spend with those outside the church.
My relationship with God, through Jesus, is supremely important to me but all the extra stuff that people try to add onto Christianity isn’t.
The writer of the email is smart enough to know that one size doesn’t necessarily fit all.
Maybe this doesn’t apply to all people, but it makes me feel unhappy with my own biological family. I have tried to talk to them about this in previous years and some change was there, but not enough to build a better relationship. Do I have to go back to God to have a better relationship with a member of my own family? Is this going to change anything? I don’t think it will.
What do you think?
So what are your thoughts? Are many Christians neglecting their families because they’re too busy doing what they think God wants them to do? Would God really want us to neglect family relationships? Are you able to maintain the balance between faith and family?
I think a lot of the answer could be found in the difference between what we ‘think‘ God requires of us and what he actually does require.