Photo by Northview Some years ago, I was reflecting on how God sent revivals throughout history. At first, I was baffled at the fact that we haven’t been experiencing the type of revival that we read about in history. There were some of the more recent revivals in the 1990’s and […]
Obama’s Possible Miscue on Culture
Photo by Presswire The 2016 Olympics will be officially held in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (yes, I am spelling it with an “S” instead of a “Z”… spelling with the “S” is the official Portuguese way). It was a joyous occasion for people of Brasil because this will be the first […]
Batiks are Indonesian
Photo on Friendster On October 2nd of this year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has officially recognized the batik as an Indonesian cultural treasure. In order to celebrate this recognition, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono asked Indonesians to wear a batik on this day. This was a huge […]
Earthquakes in Indonesia
Photo by Reuters So much has happened in our 3 months in Indonesia. Not only in terms of the church plant, but we have been welcomed by a terrorist bombing in Jakarta, an earthquake (that we actually felt), and now another earthquake in Sumatra Island. The death toll is slowly rising […]
Enough is Enough
Photo by pdesigner.com I don’t know how many of you have been following the news this past week, but there are a lot of global things going on right now. Recently, the United Nations (U.N.) had their 61st General Assembly session in NYC. Not only was this meeting a bit tense […]
Making Changes
Photo on Flickr Even though it has been a little less than 3 months since we have been here in Indonesia, God is showing us a lot of different things. By His grace, God has allowed us, not only to transition well, but to reinforce a lot of the values that […]
The Concept of Personal Space
Photo by Reuters As you can tell from the picture above, things are crowded in Indonesia. This picture describes not only the massive amount of motorcycles on the road, but also the chaos on the streets as people are all trying to get home for the Hari Raya Idul Fitri holiday. […]
The “I” in Idolatry
Photo by Anne Elliott The American Heritage Dictionary defines “idolatry” as, “blind or excessive devotion to something.” It is interesting that throughout the Bible one theme that keeps on coming up is the topic of idols. It is germane to who we are as God’s people. God created us to worship […]
True Freedom
Photo on Diane Beeler website In class yesterday, we had a good discussion on the topic of freedom. I challenged the students to think about the true meaning of freedom as we were going over the Old Testament. I pointed out that we see the plight of humankind constantly disobeying God, […]
Kanye West and Manners
Photo by Getty It has been a couple of days now and I was debating whether to write some of my thoughts on what happened at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA). At first I wasn’t going to write anything, but then I decided for the sake of reinforcing the values […]
Producing Racist People
Photo by Smart Expressions There was an interesting Newsweek article entitled, “Is Your Kid a Racist?” It caught my attention to say the least. What parent wants to raise their child as a racist? I guess there are probably some but that is for another blog entry. If a parent knew […]
The Greatest Ever
Recently, in light of Michael Jordan’s induction to the NBA’s Hall of Fame, I was reminded of the inspiration Michael Jordan has been to so many people who played and play the game of basketball. It is hard not to get a bit nostalgic, since I grew up in Chicago. I still remember in […]
Music by the Birds
Here is something for those of you who enjoy music. Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo. “Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes […]
The 8th Year Anniversary of 9-11
Photo by Derek Jensen It is hard to believe that eight years have passed by since the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States. It seems like a distant memory. As every year passes by, more people will either get numb to what happened or they will feel distant from […]