Color scheme designer

I didn't want to forget where this tool is located on the web... It's fantastic for getting a color scheme that impacts. I've just been thinking about designing a church website, so I was looking at some color schemes. Oh, it's also a fun toy.

Color scheme designer

Prayer requests for July

I was talking to Holly about the changes we made to our website. One thing I'd dropped was the prayer blog, mostly because I wasn't disciplined enough to update it regularly. But prayer is indispensable for our ministry. We're going to be on the front lines of church planting and leadership training. Satan does not like that! So, from now on I will post our prayer requests here on my blog and on our homepage there will also be a link to the "prayer" category.

Prayer requests for July:
1) We're traveling out to ABWE for our board meetings this Thursday.

2) We'll be at Bass Lake Camp from July 20-24. Please pray that God would work mightily in the teens' lives. I have four sessions to teach them, and the topic is "Cross-centered missionary ministry in Colombia." Pray that they would understand the gospel and all of its implications for our lives. Pray that teens would be saved and called to missions.

3) We are praying that the last $260 of monthly support needed would come in. Pray that the new churches considering our ministry would have the economic capacity to take us on as missionaries.

4) Spiritual growth in our lives. Prayer for chances to share the good news of Jesus with more people. Pray for our personal walk with God and as a family.

Taking care of your brain

Think Smart: A Neurologist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance

I skimmed this book on brain health and learned some interesting things. I've always felt that missionaries, pastors, and seminary professors need to take care of themselves. As we seek to share God's Word, we must devote much energy towards studying.

A lesser emphasized point is that we must spend time taking care of our bodies (which directly affects our brain and thus our ability to think well). For biblical proof, note that Paul says that God is "for the body" (1 Cor. 6:13) and that our body is the "temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 6:19). Obviously our body can become a god to us if we overemphasize it, but we must not neglect its care either.

Here are a few points about our brains that were new for me:

• Our bad cholesterol level affects every aspect of our health, including the ability of our brain to function well. This is an important point for me to read, as the doctor said that I need to lower my bad cholesterol levels.
  
• Our short term memories are stored in the frontal lobes of our brain. We need to develop this part by intentionally trying to hold different things in our memory at the same time (work it a little), and by trying to remember things that we should know (Google doesn't help here).
  
• Memory experts use the part of the brain that deals with spatial relationships to remember things. For example, a man who could recite about 10,000 digits of pi saw all of the numbers in a landscape of colors and sounds. Now, I can't do that, but I have tried to view the Bible as a spatial entity. For example, I almost see Romans as a cathedral in my mind. People sometimes wonder how I can remember passages so well and that's how I do it. I don't just think of a the numbers of a Bible reference, but think about the book like a building and note where I'm at in the building.
  
• Working on memorization or on a certain skill is only effective up to a certain point on any given day. Your brain needs a night of rest to cement the memorization or the new skill. In other words, writing your whole sermon on Saturday night is not the best way to recall your study on Sunday.
  
• People who have an advanced degree (or extensive informal study) are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease (or at least it staves it off). Along a related note, watching TV is one of the worst things we can do for our brains. In contrast, reading a book or writing or even playing video games can help us develop our God-given mental capacities.
  

One final note for those who love Colombian coffee: It's very likely that drinking two cups a day is beneficial for our brains. Yeah science!

New (simple) website

I was thinking yesterday about how we should spend our time on furlough. I thought about how I should be doing everything that I might want to do next year but won't have time because we'll be in the midst of a new church plant.

One goal was to redesign our website and blogs. You can see the results. Let me know what you think.

The Boyds to Colombia
Holly's blog

Reasons for a Christian NOT to use a Kindle

I finished reading a free ebook on my Kindle last week called World Wide Rave, which the author offered free for a number of days on Kindle. What an interesting book! His basic idea is that you need to write something and offer it for free on Internet. If a ton of people start downloading it and talking about it, you'll soon be known as an authority on the subject. Then you can charge big bucks to speak at conferences, etc. Although his focus is different than mine, you can learn a lot about how today's culture works and how to spread your ideas better.

All that to say that he recommended negative titles in blogs. So you'll notice the word NOT in the title, which according to the author will drive more people to this post.

Here are a few reasons not to use a Kindle reading device (see my previous post on the Kindle to hear my initial reaction):

1) You don't want to read great Christian classics for free.
I had wanted to get Calvin's Institutes for a long time. The price tag was stopping me. Now I have it on my Kindle and I can read it lying down (try that with the print edition!). To access lots of free Christian classics, go to the Christian Classics Ethereal Library and download the book in PDF (unfortunately it can't be scanned images of the pages). Download the free Mobipocket eBook Creator and convert the PDF to an ebook. Then just dump the SRC file into your Documents folder on the Kindle and you've got a free Christian classic. But if you want to pay for all of those free classics or not read them, don't get a Kindle!

2) You don't want to get a feel for new/interesting/important books for free.
How many of you have read The Shack? Neither have I, but I have read the first chapter for free on my Kindle. You can always download the first chapter for free from the Kindle store. If I see a book that listed in "Books of Note," I'll often download the free content just to get a feel for the book. Or if I am reading in one book and it mentions another one that interests me, I'll just download the first chapter for future reference. But if you don't want to be up on anything new for free, don't get a Kindle!

3) You don't want to be able to take advantage of downtime on the spur of the moment.
Yesterday we were traveling back from Illinois and it dawned on me that I had some time to do some reading in the car, but I didn't have the book I wanted. I talked to Holly about buying it and went onto the Kindle Store and bought it within about 2 minutes. In our trip back I read about four chapters of my new book on apologetics. But if you don't want to be able to stock your library in a few minutes with a new book, don't get a Kindle!

Well, it's kind of fun to be negative, isn't it?

You've gotta read this book!

I've mentioned various cross-centered books before, but I received a book for free that is frankly one of the best books I've read on the Christian life. It's entitled The Bookends of the Christian Life by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington.

The book explains practically how the righteousness of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit need to be the two bookends of our Christian life--in other words everything in our lives must be channeled through these two aspects of the Christian walk and rely on them.

The book helps us answer the following questions (taken from their material):
* How can I overcome persistent guilt?
* How can I deal with the pressure to measure up?
* Where can I find the motivation it takes to grow?
* How can I live the Christian life with both my head and my heart?
* How can I be sure God loves me?
* How can I change in an authentic and lasting way?


I'm not done with the book yet, but I've already been encouraged and challenged by a number of points in the book, especially when the authors talk about the gospel enemy of persistent guilt. For each topic they ask a series of practical questions to see how you're doing. The section on persistent guilt spoke to my heart as I tend to beat myself over the head with my failures and shortcomings.

The authors also have a website that includes study guides. I would recommend this book for every Christian, for small groups, for church-wide reading, etc.

My only question is, "When is it coming out in Spanish?"

Back to the drawing board

(Photos of Santa Marta from vcardenas' on flickr.com)

Well, it looks like Operation Cali has been put on hold. I talked to José two days ago, and his family will not be able to accompany us to Cali for various reasons. I told him not to worry about it because God is sovereign and we have other options.

We are not committed to a Plan B yet, but right now our most likely option would be to join the Carters and the Medinas on the Colombian coast. In fact, Alfredo called me today to encourage me and talk a little about the possibility of working on the coast. I've gone with Alfredo and Scott on three investigative trips around Colombia and have always had a blast with them, not to mention been spiritually encouraged and challenged.

Our most likely starting point for working on the coast would be Santa Marta. If that's the case, I'm sure we'll have more "work teams" that want to come down to help us.

Note: I'm blogging from a Mac... We bought the kids a used iMac G5. It's nice.

Bring the (cross-centered) books!

Since we've been on furlough I've have had more time to read. I've been reading a number of "cross-centered" books, but have also had time to read some more diverse books. Here are a few:

Living the Cross Centered Life by C. J. Mahaney
This book is easy to read, but the concepts are wonderful! I've been on a six-month quest to think through the implications of cross-centered living and ministry and this book helped me.

The Cross of Christ by John Stott

I'm reading an older edition (McGrath doesn't show up), but this book has given me a deeper understanding of the cross. Stott is great for pointing out things that I'd never noticed in the text before (e.g. Jesus was "saying" "Father forgive them...", not just "said").

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose
This has been the most fascinating book I've read this year (I read it on my Kindle). It's about a student from Brown University who goes to Liberty University and pretends to be a Christian. He experienced in one semester more of college life than I think I experienced in four years at my Bible college. He writes from a secular persective and sheds light on many aspects of Liberty's culture and the way that American college students view the Christian faith. There are a few things that are a little rough around the edges, but I felt like I was living in the Liberty dorms with Kevin. Highly recommended for you Bible college deans out there!

Cross-cultural Servanthood: Serving the World in Christ-like Humility by Duane Elmer

Pastor Will loaned me this one and I enjoyed it. I thought that most of the book was common sense, although I know that that isn't always that common. We need to model openness, acceptance, and trust in order to serve people as Jesus did. The author shares a number of moving illustrations of these truths. Note: this book is not just for missionaries. If we look around we need cross-cultural servanthood almost every day in a lot of the U.S. (Today in Ames I interacted with two people from Colombia, a friend from Morocco and a lady from Israel).

Great church music

I just ran across a site that offers free-of-charge hymns that are Christ-centered. I've only sung "His Robes for Mine," but it brought tears to my eyes. Wonderful piece!

Church Works Media

How to make (great and inexpensive) prayer cards

We used Innovative Graphics for our first prayer card, and Nate Horton did a great job. I was thinking about using his services again, but a missionary told me about a way to do it myself. Note: I'm a second termer now, so I tend to think more about the budget (if I spend less on the cards I can spend a little more on conferences this year).

I designed our new card in Photoshop Elements. The key is to use large images and set them to a resolution of 300 DPI. We had to get a copyright release from Target to be able to use the photo for our prayer card. The only other thing that I had to learn about is that they should be formatted in CYMK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key [black]) for printing, rather than RGB (which is for graphics on your screen). Photoshop Elements can't do that, but the Copyworks in Ames has the full version of Photoshop which can easily convert the file.

Once the design was ready, I went to Overnight Prints (thanks Jim Leonard for telling me about this site!). 1,000 glossy cards only cost $115 plus shipping!

Here's the front of our new card: