The guys at Midnight Oil Productions have some interesting reading on the subject of what “contemporary” worship is (or isn’t) and what “emergent” worship is.

In the first article, Temporary �Contemporary� Worship they do a great job of reminding us that what we first called contemporary has a way of becoming the new tradition. Think you know the difference between contemporary and traditional? Read this article and see what you learn!

In the article, Being Cultural and Counter-Cultural at the Same Time, they talk about how the tension that should exist in a healthy church around the two sides of Jesus’ nature, fully human, fully God. Which Jesus do you worship? Which Jesus do you lead people to worship? Does church favor one of the other? Which do you relate to more? Read this article for some thought provoking ideas on the subject. Feel free to put some comments here about your thoughts and impressions and get a dialog going.

A little late, but here is the schedule for our BVBC Media Team for the second quarter. Note, I will be posting the schedule to this new location going forward so go ahead and bookmark it:

http://www.geocities.com/gregdavispsu/BVBC_Media_Team_Schedule.html

Let me know if you have any problems with the dates.

Greg

There is a relatively new site called Glide Effortless which we are starting to use in our Worship & Music Ministry at BVBC. One of the mainy features it has is the ability to upload and share media with a group of people. We have started to experiment with that for our Sunday services, especially at 6:00. This feature is know as Glide MailShare and is a pretty need concept for easily sharing media files. It is easy to use once you get the hang of it, but does look different and requires a little getting used to. To help with that, I’ve put together a little training video on how to use the MailShare feature.

If you get a script error when you click on the link for the video and if it asks you if you want to keep running scripts on that page, say “no” and then reload / refresh the page and it should work. Also, it has sound with it, so be sure to have your volume turned up.

If that doesn’t work, then try this link instead. Just click here. Let me know if one works better that the other for you.

Please take a look at it if you have tried using MailShare but were a bit confused. I think it will help. As always, send me an email if you have questions.

I was very fortunate to get to attend the Sunday morning English service of City Harvest Church, which is held in the Singapore Expo Center. The church has over 20,000 members with 7,000 to 8,000 filling Hall number 8 of the Expo Center for the English Service at the 10 am Sunday service!

It was obvious that the Holy Spirit is alive and working among these passionate believers. I was truely a blessing to be able to be half way around the world yet still able to praise and worship Jesus Christ in this way.

While these photos are from their Opening Services of Singapore Expo Hall 8 in December, there are very much like the service I attended on March 12. Theses give a idea of what it was like to be there.

The place was filled to capacity with people excited to praise our Savior.

It was exciting to see worship that was lead in a very dynamic way.

Worshippers coming in before the service.

Another very interesting thing is how they are organized to get volunteers who want to sign-up for the various ministies they have. If you look at this web page you can see the different ministry areas where they have needs and by clicking on one of them, you see what positions are currently available and can even sign-up online! Great way to make use of techncology.

You may stumble across situations where you have downloaded a compressed folder (ZIP file) from the internet, but cannot open it with Windows XP (SP2). There is a security “feature” built into Windows to protect you from malicious programs that are created on another computer but running on yours.

For example, when you go to open the ZIP file by double-clicking on it, it will appear empty and if you try to extract the files that are in it you will get the message that they are being blocked or the extracted folder also appears empty. If this happens you should first try to unblock the file, by right-clicking on it, then selecting properties. You will then get a window that has an “Unblock” button near the bottom like this.

This still may not work in some cases however. If the web site you are getting the file from has created the zipped file and used the complete file name and directory of the source file this will be a problem. For example, if the source file was named “File 1.txt”, but was stored in a directory like “c:/My Documents/New/Sample/” this information would be kept in the zip as well and would created problems for Windows XP because that directory is not on your local PC and Windows is protecting you from allowing it to be created. See this article. (It is 2 pages, just click to page 2 when you get to the bottom).

If this happens, the web site or provider should be notified so they can change the way they are creating the zipped files to not include the complete file directory information. As a workaround, however, you can use a product like WinZip to open the folder and actually get to the files. Hopefully, Microsoft will provide a fix or workaround for this as well, but you never know. In the mean time work with the creator of the file and try WinZip (or StuffIt) as an alternative.

As we have been using more and more media produced from Oxygen, I found this special “behind the scenes” feature interesting. I have found many of their graphics to be both thought provoking and inspiring. Seeing the preparation and the effort they exhibit is testimony to the good work they are doing and how the Lord is using their creative talents in a powerful way; something for us all to inspire to!

I have published a new site from Glide Effortless that we can test out as a place to keep our video clips that we have (legally) aquired. Here is the link (be sure to bookmark it). They can be ones that we purchased or free downloads. Just click on the video strip icon on the left hand side of the site to see the available clips.

The first one I put up here is this month’s free download from SermonSpice.com and is part 1 of 4 in a series called “Life of Noah”. I like the clip very much up until the end where the narriator comes in, but we could drop that part if we are using it during a worship service. Try it out and see what you think. Post your thoughts and comments right here using the “comments” link below.

Another new online tool we’ll be using in our ministry team this year is Glide Effortless. It will be a handy tool for us in both the design and preparation of our weekly worship. Here is a quick link to how “containers” are shared from Glide with users both inside and outside of Glide using a feature known as MailShare.

Check back for more updates and tips!

I have set up our BVBC online photo catalog under a FLICK’R. The group name is “BVBC Worship” and the URL / link is below. It is free to join and you can use your Yahoo id to sign-in with.

I’ll be be posting additional tip & tricks on how to get the most from our group site, but try it out and let me know your thoughts. Feel free to add comments here in the BLOG.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/bvbc_worship/

LifeSaver
Originally uploaded by gregdavispsu.

This is the latest upload from the O2 Starter kit.