Church Hopping

I’ve tried to brainstorm some ideas of how we can use an iPad for the ministry. I usually do this with all new technology, though this time it just gives me an excuse to get an iPad. Thus far I have not come up with enough to justify the purchase, but here is my list:

• Ad-hoc donations

This is a pretty compelling one, but we don’t do enough events to make it worthwhile. But if someone is wanting to donate online right away, the iPad would be a simple way to get to our online donate page. This plus Square has a lot of potential.

• Mobile Presentations

The iPad would be great for showing a small group of people our website and some videos to add visual content to a conversation. This would probably be more for the marketing guys to carry around.

• Group Changes at Camp

We pick all the kids in each group that comes to Camp LIFE before the American even gets there. There are however numerous things that can happen that mean the kid can’t be there or needs to be in another group. The groups have to be right come picture day so we know who is who. If I could design an interface to make these changes in the field on the fly, then it would be so much smoother. This would require a Filemaker app though as there is no internet access at camp.

• Sponsorships

I have a vision of a bunch of iPads on a wall with a slideshow of images of individual kids available to sponsor. A sponsor walks up, taps on the kid they want and enters their name and credit card info. I think this is a really cool idea, but requires a bunch of iPads and a lot of traffic in front of them.

Any more ideas?

I am working on creating the rosters for Camp LIFE 2010.  That means I need to match 500 Americans to 10,000 children in Zambia.  There are a few things that factor into the decisions:

• Returning Ambassadors will get their same kids as a previous year
• Everyone can submit preferences as to what age and gender they would like to have
• Sponsors will get their sponsored kids
• Kids should come from geographically close locations to cut down on fuel costs
• Groups should contain kids from the same school
• Kids in a group should be relatively close in age
• Groups should have about 15 kids each
• Families should get kids from geographically close areas if possible

Now we have to automate the process because selecting each kid individually would take days (trust me I did it last year).  That is a summary of the variables and assumptions we are looking at.  In reality this is the easy part.  The hard part is actually locating a specific orphan in a slum in a third-world country.  But our Zambian staff takes care of that work and they are great.

John begins his letter by stating his purpose. Not just the purpose of this letter, but the purpose of his life. He is proclaiming what he has seen and experienced to others. He says his purpose is not just to make converts to what He believes, but rather that the people who hear this would have fellowship with them (which is fellowship with Christ). And then his end goal in this is that our joy may be complete.

There is an interesting note in the text because apparently translators are not sure whether it should be “our joy” or “your joy”. Some early, reliable manuscripts have “your” while several other early, reliable ones have “our”. I don’t think it is a huge issue either way. By saying “our” he could be referring to all of us or he could be referring to just himself and those who are proclaiming with him. In this case it would go well with the idea of proclaiming the gospel because it is good news and you can’t help buy sharing. Plus there is the anticipation of God saying well-done, good and faithful servant. So there is joy in the proclamation of the Gospel.

By saying your joy may be complete, he is referring to the joy that comes from salvation which he has already mostly received. I think this is obvious when we see the excitement of a new believer. So there is also joy that comes from salvation.

I think the most difficult to grasp verse here will be verse 6. It could easily be taken that if we sin, we are not saved. But a more careful read shows that this cannot be what he is saying for the following reasons:

• He specifically says fellowship instead of salvation. Salvation could replace “fellowship with Him” but it doesn’t.
• If no sin is a qualification for salvation through Christ, then it is impossible according to verse 8.

Well we are at the final chapter of Nehemiah and it is a pretty interesting one.  Nehemiah has left the city because he promised the king he would return.  While he is gone, everything he had put into place had started falling apart.  God had made a rule not to allow Ammonites or Moabites into the temple due to the story in Numbers 22 about Balaam’s ass (go read it).  Now God wasn’t completely prejudice against a entire people group, although He is often accused of it by detractors.  He still is concerned about the individual (Ruth was a Moabite and she got her own book in the Bible), but He knew that the majority of the Ammonites and Moabites were not God-fearing.

To make matters even worse, the specific Ammonite whom they had built a tomb for in the temple was for Tobiah, who as you remember was an enemy of the reconstruction of Jerusalem and also had corrupted the nobles of Jerusalem.  So this is about as big of a betrayal as can happen and has to baffle Nehemiah.  On top of that they haven’t been allotting the tithes to the priests, so they had to leave the city.  And they are not honoring the Sabbath, but are working instead.

I think that every single person who ministers (not necessarily in a paid position) will face this kind of let-down at some point.  For some reason, probably sin, men are going to fall back into their old sinful habits (Proverbs 26:11).  I think that very often that this is devastating to people who have poured so much time and effort into discipling and teaching just to see little results.  It’s times like this that God’s sovereignty is important to me, because I know I can’t change hearts but I am just called to go preach the Word and make disciples.  God is the one who changes hearts.

The majority of believers that I encounter, do not have radically different lives from the non-believers I encounter.  I think that Nehemiah is seeing this and trying to make the people understand the eternal weight of the decisions that they are making.  I know its not very acceptable to question people’s salvation today, but I think there is great value in individuals wrestling with their salvation and wondering why if they are saved, why does their life not look in the least bit like more mature believers?