Conference for Children Ministry

Children Desiring God and Bethlem Baptist Church are hosting a conference for leaders of Children’s minstries:

“We have planned a number of seminars designed to provide practical help and encouragement that we trust will benefit parents, teachers, leaders, and all who are invested in ministry to children.”

For full details, check out their website, which includes a PDF brochure and mp3/video by John Piper.

April 26th to 28th, 2007 – Children Desiring God 2007 Conference
Topic: Standing on the Truth: How Great a Salvation
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Speakers: John Piper, Wayne Grudem, C.J. Mahaney, David Michael, and “a number of gifted seminar leaders”

Seminars on date of posting:

• Vision-Driven Children’s Ministry Leadership
• Recruiting & Retaining Volunteers
• Partnering with Parents
• Nursery Ministry & Teaching Toddlers
• Preparing & Teaching Preschool Lessons
• Introduction to CDG Curriculum & Sequence
• Lesson Preparation & Presentation
• Preparing & Leading Application Time
• Leading Children in Worship
• Teaching Youth: Watch Out for Your Method
• Presenting the Gospel to Children
• Theology of Salvation Q&A
• Preparing Children to Hear the Gospel

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Teaching Imputation to Children

Yesterday, DesiringGod.org had an article by John Piper titled, “Teaching Doctrine to a Six-Year-Old.” The article was about teaching the meaning of imputation to Piper’s daughter, Talitha, using a story.

What I really like about John Piper is that he desires to teach the deep and important doctrines of the bible to children, which I noticed listening to some of his sermons on Romans.

This is reflected in Children Desiring God’s, “Philosophy and Distinctives“:

“Depth

We believe that children can handle deep truth at a young age. We want to fill them with solid Bible truth that will give them a foundation to fall back on when they go through deep waters. For this reason, the curriculum continually refers children to the Word of God; Bibles are an essential tool for children studying Children Desiring God curriculum. We believe that the Bible must be taught in depth, yet in a child-friendly, interesting manner. For this reason, much attention has been devoted to the development of creative presentation of essential Bible truths.”

Children Desiring God’s website is mainly a portal to purchase the resources developed and used at Bethelem Baptist Church.

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More about ‘Snap Preview Anywhere’

If you haven’t noticed, when you hover over external links (links going to outsite sites), it will show a preview of the page in a little popup.

WordPress has been beta testing this feature, giving it to all wordpress blogs. Previously, only 10% of the blogs have the feature.

Snap comes from Idealab, based in Pasadena, California.

Disabling Snap

If you dislike the Snap popups on your wordpress blog, you disable snap by unchecking the box on the dashboard under presentation/extras.

A internet surfer can also disable Snap in their browser by clicking here, creating a cookie to disable the feature. If you delete the cookie, the Snap Preview will reactivate.

Other Info for Snap Users

By default, Snap Preview Anywhere only gives previews of external links, but you can enable it for internal links by inserting the code from here. Keep in mind, only WordPress users that can modify the code can do this. (Thus this blog cannot.)

Snap supports TypePad, WordPress, and Blogger.com and includes instructions on how to install the feature on your blog.

Snap can be modified to only preview or exclude designated links as well. For more information view their FAQ.

Snap uses Javascript and creates a snapshot image of a link when triggered by hovering over the hyperlink.

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Baby Laughter (not holy or unholy)

If you like babies, you’ll like this video from YouTube’s blog. It was included as one out of ten best clips of 2006:

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YouTube Outreach Oppurtunities

I was watching the YouTube staff 2006 highlights. One of the top YouTube vidoes was about YouTubers, featuring clips of other YouTubers. I got the sense that YouTube has grown a large and diverse community of people that record blog-like video clips.

Though I maybe kind of slow noticing (since apparently the Times did a feature about YouTubers), but this is another venue of outreach to non-believers in the areas of debate, evangelism, apologetics, or even theology (if talking to other Christians). If no Christians has realized this yet, I hope this post may spur some Christians to outreach to the YouTube community.

I sense a real oppurtunity for Christians to make waves. There are many Christian blogs now, however I haven’t come across any prominent Christian YouTubers. I really think the first few Christian YouTubers that attempt to reach out, respond to other YouTube videos, and debate in apologetics and doctrine will be prominent. Right now, Christian blogs such as this one are attempting to carve itself an audience, because of the massive amount of blogs available to read by online surfers.

YouTube is a golden oppurtunity to gather an audience.

All you need is a good internet connection and a webcam.

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Resolved Conference Registration Closed

The Resolved Conference has closed registration for the February 16 to 19, 2007 Conference in Long Beach, CA.

The Resolved Conference is based off the 70 Resolutions Johnathan Edwards made for himself when he was 19 years old. You can find the 70 Resolutions listed as #10 bullet from my post or just click here to go directly to the 70 Resolutions.

Upon reading, the following resolutions stuck out to me:

• 3. Resolved, if ever I shall fall and grow dull, so as to neglect to keep any part of these Resolutions, to repent of all I can remember, when I come to myself again.
• 8. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God. July 30.
• 11. Resolved, when I think of any theorem in divinity to be solved, immediately to do what I can towards solving it, if circumstances do not hinder.
• 24. Resolved, whenever I do any conspicuously evil action, to trace it back, till I come to the original cause; and then, both carefully endeavor to do so no more, and to fight and pray with all my might against the original of it.
• 37. Resolved, to inquire every night, as I am going to bed, wherein I have been negligent,- what sin I have committed,-and wherein I have denied myself;-also at the end of every week, month and year. Dec. 22 and 26, 1722.
• 38. Resolved, never to speak anything that is ridiculous, sportive, or matter of laughter on the Lord’ s day. Sabbath evening, Dec. 23, 1722.
• 41. Resolved, to ask myself, at the end of every day, week, month and year, wherein I could possibly, in any respect, have done better. Jan. 11, 1723.
• 62. Resolved, never to do anything but duty, and then according to Ephesians 6:6-8, to do it willingly and cheerfully as unto the Lord, and not to man:‹knowing that whatever good thing any man doth, the same shall he receive of the Lord.Š June 25 and July 13, 1723.
• 65. Resolved, very much to exercise myself in this, all my life long, viz. with the greatest openness, of which I am capable of, to declare my ways to God, and lay open my soul to him: all my sins, temptations, difficulties, sorrows, fears, hopes, desires, and every thing, and every circumstance; according to Dr. Manton’ s 27th Sermon on Psalm 119. July 26, and Aug.10 1723.

I was curious to see if anyone had a copy of Dr. Manton’s sermon listened to by Johnathan Edwards mentioned in resolution 65. I couldn’t find any but I did find a website that had a diary of Johnathan Edwards when he listened to the sermon. It must’ve affected him a lot, because he mentions it twice in two seperate diary entries: July 20th and July 26th.

Resolution 11 really struck a chord in me, because I recently told a friend that I seemed good at finding questions, but no answers and that finding answers take a long time. Perhaps I should strengthen my efforts to find answers.

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