Here are some Blog posts I’ve enjoyed over the last few weeks.
Seth chats about failure.
Jake gives his fresh new music likes. I trust him.
Pete shares this amazing truth/comic piece.
Chad hit me in the face with this quote.
Vince shared his small group philosophy and I liked it.
Mark Cuban is…well, Mark Cuban is a genius.
Brian is a genius too,and his friends, myself included, couldn’t wait to hear this news.
What are you reading these days?
We have driven more than 1200 miles, stopped for a 2 hours in Greenville, and now attended the New Thing Networks pre-lab. eally we were too tired to enjoy it, but if I had been more awake… I even met Vince Antonucci, author of “I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” and met a blogging friend for the first time, TIm Chambers.
Billy drove 800 miles.
I drove 400.
Steve stayed up with us most of the time.
Steve Bramlett did not.
And now we’re in our hotel room, at noon on Tuesday, and ready to sleep.
On FCTV, via Fellowshipholden.com, at 5:45pm, we’ll broadcast our first live thoughts.
Please check out what’s happening!
And now it’s time for the 2nd Bloggle awards, an award ceremony that happens every 6 months here on martyholman.com, giving the common person (like the author) access to some amazing blogs on the web 2.0. Hopefully, we’ll get some acceptance speeches.
Most focused blog
Nominees:
Ethos: a cultural Watercooler by Randy Elrod; From where I sit by Michael Hyatt; Gotcha by Jake Holman; History in the making by Ben Arment; Reluctant Republicans for McCain by Clay Davis
THE WINNER: History in the making by Ben Arment
Anything this guy writes is gold. He’s somewhere around brilliant and then some. His focus is creativity in the church.
Best blog, comedy
Nominees:
Rainy Day Communications by Katie Ferguson; Stuff Christians like by the Prodigal John; Don Miller is by Donald Miller; Vince Antonucci by Vince Antonnuci
THE WINNER: Stuff Christians Like by The Prodigal John. Wildly funny, and will make you laugh out loud in your office every time you dare to read it.
Best blog, story
Nominees:
Trek to the summit by Tom Hogsed; Scott Hodge by Scott Hodge; Jenn with 2 n’s by Jenn; Connecting with Pastor Mike by Mike Laurence
THE WINNER:
Jenn with 2 N’s by Jenn
Best blog, pastor
Nominees:
Velocity by Dave Ferguson; Leading Smart by Tim Stevens; Life Church.tv: Swerve by Craig Groeschel and Bobby Gruenewald; Perry Noble dot com by Perry Noble; Tony Morgan Live by Tony Morgan; Without Wax by Pete Wilson
THE WINNER:
Life Church.TV: Swerve by Craig Groeschel and Bobby Gruenewald. This was the hardest to judge. These blogs are amazing!
Best blog post
Nominees:
“A couple of my rules for startups” by Mark Cuban (March 14, 2008); “Creating WOW product experiences” by Michael Hyatt (May 17, 2008); “The Lifetime of an opportunity” by Steven Furtick (July 30, 2008); “The Secret of the web” by Seth Godin (August 11, 2008); “The Bible said so” by Winn Collier (September 2, 2008); “What Complaining says about you”, by Ben Arment (September 9, 2008); “Palin, Religion, and how Secualrism is out of touch” by Dale Fincher (September 15, 2008)
THE WINNER:
“The Secret of the Web” by Seth Godin (August 11, 2008). This was not an easy task. I have so many subscriptions to blogs and highlight very few of them, but very few of so many is still a lot. These are all excellent posts, written originally by the authors.
Best blog, pictures
Nominees:
It’s all going to change by Kevin and Jen Richardson; Mark Beeson by Mark Beeson; Ethos: A Cultural Watercooler by Randy Elrod
THE WINNER:
Ethos: A Cultural Watercooler by Randy Elrod Randy always helps me to think more artsy than I really am. He bring out the culture in me, and I don’t use that term scientifically.
Best blog, intellectual
Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk; Dale Fincher by Dale Fincher; Jeffs Deep Thoughts by Jeff Campbell;
Jenn with 2 N’s by Jenn; Winn Collier by Winn Collier
THE WINNER: Winn Collier by Winn Collier. I’m pretty sure his nominated post for best blog post won him this award.
I wish I knew him or her (no winners, just a list of 3)
Steven Furtick by Steven Furtick
Flowerdust.net by Anne Jackson
Blog Maverick by Mark Cuban
I’m glad I know him or her (no winners, just a list of 3)
Mill Industries by Eric Mill
Brian Howe by Brian Howe
You can know God by Michael Lukaszewski
Thanks for joining me for the 2008 Bloggle awards! Check back for the acceptance speeches and comments about how wrong I was. And…
Please vote for your favorite all around blog
Sometime in 2005 I took a test to find out what my strengths were. I found that my top 5 were as follows: 1. Ideator, 2. Positivity, 3. Connectedness, 4. Competition, 5. Developer
I noticed as several of my friends took the same test that several of us had one of those in common. Out of the 7 people I know that took the test, 5 of them had connectedness as a strength.
Some qualitites of someone with this strength – “That I gain confidence from knowing that we are not isolated from one another or from the earth and the life on it; I am part of a larger picture, and I must not harm others because I will harm myself; and I am a bridge builder between people of different cultures.”
Enter the beauty of web 2.0 to people like me.
I’m not a fan of compartmentalizing my life. I like things, whether it’s people in my life or web sites I go to, to all be connected to one another. This makes my mom and google both very happy.
How does this affect me?
I like it when my family and my friends and all the people in my life meet. What makes this interesting is when they don’t get along. I think everyone should get along. Not like each other, just get along.
I like using google and itunes. My friend Clay swears against itunes, and probably rightfully so, but I like when things connect together easily, so I use it. I know, I know Clay, I sacrifice things to use itunes. Google connects a lot of things in my web life, like my Calendar, my way to find where I might be going, my blog reader, my connect with Fellowship Church podcasts, and even my weather, not to mention my documents (I don’t have to pay for Microsoft office again!)
Weather
I think that there is a terrific connection between Don Miller’s “Blue like Jazz”, Vince Antonucci’s
“I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy T-shirt“, and Gregg Easterbrook’s “The
Progress Paradox”
So yesterday I’m going through my blogs via google reader, and I come upon Vince Antonucci’s latest blog. For those of you who don’t know, Vince is the author of the book we did as a church this spring called “I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”
It appears that Vince was checking out the blogs where people were writing about him and his book and found BIlly’s blog,and specifically this post, which mentions the author and the book.
So anyway, congratulations Billy for making the big time, and to you too Vince, for writing such an amazing book. By the way, the jury’s out and it’s about 80%-20% – 80 love the book and 20, well, let’s just say they don’t get your sense of humor.
To you, that is.
Welcome to MoMo’s! HERE are the guidelines. If this is your first time giving your “amazing story”, PLEASE take time to read them. It will save us both a lot of time.
To join me, write a post today (or a post you’ve written from last Monday to Sunday) sharing something tht has happened to you this last week - anything funny or interesting, crazy, fulfilled, too busy, hilarious, wistful, or any number of out of the ordinary happenings that made you happy or miserable last week. Put a link in your post to this post permalink (not my general URL) and then put the permalink of your post (not your general URL) here at the end of this post. Thanks. By the way, I do this because I love stories. To tell them, to hear them, and to read them.
So tell me your “Inspired by the truth” story every Monday…
Here’s mine.
As many of you know from here and here and here and maybe even here, last week was an amazing week, and I learned more than anything that I wanted to “live in the speed of love.” (This is a quote from Vince Antonucci’s book, “I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”) But in thinking back to last week and toward the future of my life, I want one more thing.
I want to be the person who lives his life, not who watched others live theirs.
I love watching TV, and I love watching sports, but I don’t want to waste my life watching everyone else do their thing. I want to be used by God to live a life of action for Him (when He calls me to) and when He doesn’t, still I don’t think moving is that bad. Things like exercise,walking up to someone I don’t know and talking to them, and taking the occasional risk are all a part of doing living a full life, and I want to be that person.
For me, more times than not, that means relationally. I love talking to people and learning from other people who have been there and back again. But sometimes I get slothful and would rather just sit back and watch TV. As I get older, this is not happening less, but more, and I want it to change.
I want to actively find out about you and what makes you tick and succeed, so that I can learn something to better prepare me for ticking and succeeding.
Except on Sunday afternoons. I still like to nap and watch sports on Sunday afternoon.
What does “Living your life”mean to you?
I’m amazed at how sometimes when life seems crazy and things are moving 100 mph in 1,000 different directions how all of a sudden, certain themes can rise through the chaos and into your head, united and ready to move you to a new place in your life.
Like the time when all seemed lost in the football world and the evil empire of the dark lord Bill Bellicheck and his jedi apprentice Tom Brady were amassing several super bowls in a row, and out of that chaos came a young football QB named Ben and an old bus who was ready to return home. All seemed lost, yet light came from all of that darkness.
This month seemed a bit like that to me when I was moving very fast in a lot of different directions and was having trouble focusing,and then this week happened. To put it bluntly, I was looking for God to do something, to move in a way, and to take me to “the next level.” I know, I know, it all seems so abstract, and it was. That was the problem.
Then the last two weeks happened. On Sunday Morning @ Fellowship, I’m going through a series called,”Live Different“, where I’m focusing on ways that we as the body of Christ, individually and corporately, can make a difference by living differently. On Easter, we started it off by discussing “Living passionately”and then we’ve dealt with “Living generously”and “Living Truthfully.”
I suppose last week when I was studying truth is when it all started. I just really had a feeling, like I have had for a while, that sometimes Christians hijack the word truth to their own end, and go who knows where with it. This week’s topic really hit me – “Living Free”.
And all of a sudden, I believe I was being hit over the head with this topic in every area of my life, and continue to be. People were coming to me talking about their situations in this area. I was having conversations with friends about this and trying to figure out why we constantly enslave ourselves as humans to every fleeting fad and event. Carie and I had begun to discucc this topic regularly in our conversations. And then my life group went there because we’ve been reading the book, “I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”
The chapter we read was 6, entitled “Hungry”. In it, the author Vince Antonucci, pastor of Forefront Church in Virginia gives this amazing illustration of being hungry for Christ, and how we, as followers of Him, so many times try to feed our hunger by things and material possessions and relationships and Atari game systems (not sure what he was thinking).
He goes more into detail about how our relationship with Jesus is good, and it certainly is better than a religion, but it is not as good as abiding in Christ, which is where Christ says we should be heading. You see, relationship is good, but abiding, or being in Him, and allowing Him to be in you, is better.
Then Vince shares this illustration of a baby inside of a mother’s womb, who is abiding inside his or her mother. If you were to ask the baby how his relationship is with his mother, the baby (if it could plainly communicate the way we communicate) would probably say that he has a relationship with his mother, but actually, he could not live without his mother. He is connected to his mother. He remains inside his mother.
I have a great relationship with Jesus. I hang out with Him. I talk to Him. I even think He likes me. But I don’t want the kind of relationship with Him that I have with pretty much every other friend I have – that is, the kind that if they or I were away or moved away that I could live without them. I want to be in so tight with Him and His Father that I can’t live without Him.
I think that’s where true freedom lies.
