Funny Church Sign
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My brother-in-law Aaron is a photographer and recently he got a job photographing animal surgery. These pics are pretty cool, plus that's just a cool job.
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Crazy video, and I like it. (ht)
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We are heading on a tour of Ontario in a few weeks to do some filming for the church plant documentary in Canada. Read more here.
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Are you really safe moving away from downtown and into the suburbs.
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On Wednesday
Wear Blue Jeans
If You Are Gay

I've had the opportunity to be the photographer at a few weddings in the past month. This isn't something I've done before at all. So it's all a bit new to me. The pressure of getting the right shot and capturing the day is a lot at times. However, the two weddings I did were friends of mine and knew that I liked to take photos for fun so a lot of the pressure was off. So with that in mind, I got to snap away and try to capture some moments.

The first wedding was Priscilla and Colin's (click here to see all the pictures). There wedding was super casual and they did it all backwards. Bride and Groom speech first, then reception and then the ceremony to end it all off. I only had about fifteen minutes with the bridge and groom to take pictures, so that's why there is a lot less.

Then this past weekend I got to shoot Nathan and Tiffany's wedding (click here to see all the photos). These two are both very close to me and there wedding was beautiful. It was an awesome to see them get married and hopefully I did the wedding justice with the pictures. Darryl also came along with me and we gave him a camera so he got to add some shots to the collection.

I posted some of my favourites below.

When I first started understanding the concept of sharing things I just shrugged it off. The way of the early church is so different than we are today that we can’t really comprehend what it would be like to have all things in common. We have a hard enough time having anything in common at all. We like to own things. It’s important to add more things to your collection, the older you get. You are considered successful if you can be completely independent of anyone else. You don’t and shouldn’t have to ask or need anything from anyone else. You should have your retirement figured out and have your life figured out financially until you die without being a burden on anyone. Like I said, the idea of having all things in common today is like trying to explain calculus to a three year old. We just aren’t capable of understanding it.

Yet I don’t think this is an excuse for not trying to get to that point. There is something healthy about intentional sharing. When we share things it reminds us that whatever we are sharing was not just meant for us. We are given to so that we can give, not so we can hoard or use for ourselves. When we share it reminds us that we don’t really need everything we have, but we can use what is already there. When we share it helps us become a community of stewards not a group of collectors.

With this in mind, we are implementing a new initiative at theStory this week. It’s called ATIC (All Things in Common). It is our attempt to try and relive parts of the healthy sides of the early church in our modern lives. It started off as an idea just to share books so we weren’t all buying the same book and leaving it on our shelves but it has now evolved into something a lot greater. We want to give people the opportunity to share with people of the things that they have been given. We want to give people the opportunity not to buy something because they can share it from someone in the community. We want to give people an opportunity to become a community that is attractive because they take care of each other and depend on each other.

So basically what we have done is set up an online database of items/services that people can post on to with whatever they want. This can be anything from books, movies, sports equipment, vehicles, services etc etc. People can post anything they want online, and then anyone else can scroll through the categories if they are ever in need of something. If you want something you have to login to make the contact information available and then you can contact them to work out the details. You can read our guidelines here for how we think it should work.

So what do you think of an idea like this? Can you see it going somewhere? Is it healthy? Unhealthy? Thoughts?

In UK buy to let mortgages have been working since last ten years. These unethical banking tactics of promoting loans have raised the property prices very high. On the other hand, Credit card premiums have been reduced tremendously by the banks and people are now availing this facility by paying minimal bank charges. This has added to the fame of plastic money which has got so much popularity that payday loan is offered by almost all the banks. When you are filling a credit card application, you will also find brochures of other allied facilities offered by the bank such as life and health insurance, car lease & instant loans. Banks are using a referral network system names as insurance leads to spread out in the market.

This week at theStory we spent some time talking about children and the role that they have in our community. It’s been something that lays heavily on our hearts because we don’t think that the church in general has been doing a very good job with them and we don’t think we are doing a very good job with them. As it stands right now, children on Sunday mornings are no more than babysat in another room. We want to get away from thinking that the important spiritual formation and the real ‘church’ is happening in the ‘main service’ and start actually looking at children as equal parts in the gathering.

I’m quite fascinated really how the church, since I have been noticing, has dealt and worked alongside of children. It’s basically the opposite of what Jesus has told us. Jesus says that we need to be like little children, yet every church program there is somehow manages to put children through a system to make them more like us. Jesus says that the secrets of the kingdom are given to little children, yet we run things as if we have secrets to tell them. He tells us that unless we change and become like children we will never enter the kingdom of heaven, but we’d rather discipline and make the children to ‘adult things’ at their own level. There is something that Jesus keeps bringing us back to in seeing something special in children, yet we seem to brush it off or use it as a sermon illustration instead.

I wrote a post a few days ago wondering what it would be like if children were considered more important than adults on a Sunday morning. What if church was about having the adults teach the children instead of getting the children out of the way so the adults could learn? I don’t think something like this could ever happen until we start to change our theology towards them. Unless we actually believe that they have something to offer a community besides ‘aw ain’t that cute’ moments then I have a feeling understanding the kingdom of God is going to be quite tough. Why do we think that a pastor has a better ‘understanding’ about the kingdom than a child? Why have we elevated teachers above children?

I am still struggling to see what this balance will look like. We’ll be meeting once a month with different people from theStory who are going to be part of involving the kids in what we are doing and involving us in what the kids are doing. So I am praying that out of this come a new understanding of children and what they can offer a church community.

I've started to keep track of my library on Library Thing. I've got about half my books on there now. It is going to be quite a useful too when we pull out our new surprise idea on Sunday. More to come about that later. You can see my library here.
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I just finished reading a few books on the harm that foreign aid groups are doing to third world countries by bringing in loads of food from the United States. So this is an encouraging story to read. (ht)
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Here is a link to my OPML file, a list of all the blogs I get notified when they update, in case your wondering where my inspiration comes from. They are in no particular order.
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Dan is writing some great posts again. This one is great, and this one, and this one.
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Watch this and be absolutely wowed. I love you technology.
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Chalk one up for Google, if they can do an online Powerpoint equivalent, they have almost completely offered their own version of Office, but its all online.
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I've started to love Smashing Magazine over the last month or so ever since I discovered it. They have so much too offer to a web developer. Now I love them even more because I was one of their winners at their latest giveaway and won a free subscription to OmniGraffle, a mind mapping program, and the only reason I picked this software was for Joe.

We've been having a lot of struggles with children and how they fit into the overall picture of theStory. We value our children and we have made it the point publicly many times that we want to make sure children are treated and given attention just as much as the adults. I don't think our desire has changed at all in the last year. I think we still value kids and want them to get the most out of their experience with theStory and for adults to get the most out of the experience with the children. I think most of us would agree that we have really dropped the ball on this one. We have defaulted to just sending this kids out of the room into a weight room (we call it the dungeon), with usually one helper who has been doing it every week. We don't really have an organized program for them or really an organized anything for them and its like we give up on them every single week by sending them into the dungeon hoping that they won't come running out in costumes with crafts until the 'important parts' are over.

We are doing a lot of thinking of how this needs to work, and we are coming up with all the same ideas in which we see in all other churches. Things like buy a curriculum, split up the ages, have a fun safe space, rotate teachers on a schedule or hire a children's pastor (you know with all that money we have as a church plant). We are at a loss for the most part. We want to make children a meaningful part of our Sunday expression but we end up getting them out of the way.

All this gave me a thought. I don't know if we could do this at theStory on a consistent basis, but I would love to try and fail till I succeed at it a few times. Most of us have seen the movie Shrek (or a lot of other of those types of films). There is something about a movie like Shrek that is able to communicate to a room full of people no matter what age you are. If you are a child, any age, you love Shrek. It's funny, stimulating and keeps you entertained and can teach you lots of things. Yet I can sit in the same room as these five year olds and enjoy the movie, but for an entire different reason. I'll get things that they never will, but we are watching the same things. The movie has layers, like onions.

What if a church's Sunday service was like Shrek. There is something wrapped in the service that speaks to everyone but its primarily a kids thing. What would that look like? Is that giving too much importance to kids? Or is that exactly what is looks like to teach adults what the kingdom of God really looks like, after all it does belong to them. What if we created a service every week for children and we incorporated things for adults amongst the chaos of what was going on. Why do we always do it the opposite? It would probably take a lot of time to create and maintain something that was able to connect children and adults at the same time, but I think that the positives it would bring to a community would be priceless. I think it would be worth it. Though I wonder if adults would get ticked off because they weren't getting fed enough. Then I wonder how much adults would be growing if they were in constant teach mode to children.

These ideas seem far-fetched even to me. I'm just so frustrated right now with how children fit into a community. During the week it's great. Children are amongst us during every aspect of us hanging out. During games, eating, watching television, trips and work we have children next to us, yet for some reason on Sunday we have to get rid of them to something more 'age-appropriate'. It just doesn't sit right with me yet sometimes and yet sometimes it makes perfect sense. I sound confused don't I.

For some reason I've always hated asking for money. I actually hate talking about money with most people. Money always seems to be a touchy subject for people and I'd rather just stay away from it. Maybe that's cause for some posts in the future. All that to say, Rachel, Charity, Shane and I are entering Race to Erase Homelessness in Sarnia and we need to raise $500 to be able to go into it. So I'm asking for money. This is great on two levels. For starters we get to help participate in eliminating poverty in our town of Sarnia, they are hoping to raise $50, 000 towards that cause. Second, Rachel is obsessed with the Amazing Race and this gives her away to at least pretend she is on it. Any help you can give would be awesome, $10 or more gives you a tax receipt. Just click on the link below (click on the same button on the next page, not the please click here link, after reading the instructions). In the message box where you fill out the donation stuff just don't forget to put my name [Nathan Colquhoun, in case you forgot who's website this was] so it goes towards our team.

This should give some of you who love decorating (Mom) and buying new things (Charity) endless hours of fun. Design your room.
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This is a bit harder to explain, but there is this new technology being developed that prevents you from having to crop photos, but instead intelligently knows what parts of the photo aren't as necessary and what are and organizes the image to bring them together without stretching it. It's quite amazing actually. It's called Content Aware Image Resizing Click here to try it out for yourself, or click here to see a video with some examples of what I'm talking about.
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Tired of plain text in Photoshop, some great tutorials on how to get different effects.
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Google Earth has a secret.
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Pastors of a mega church splitting up. For some reason it doesn't surprise me.