TheGeoffRe(y)port

Jesus Tries to Save Your Soul But Windows Stops Him - Gizmodo Australia

Religious slogans suck. So does Windows.  But laughing at them doesn’t.

Christians of the world, this is my solemn request.

Stop going to church. Read the rest of this entry »

Beijing Olympics Stadium: about 30 min. before Men’s 100m Final.

Check out the link - it’s a freaking cool take on what it’d be like to be in the photographer’s pen at the Olympic stadium.

Natalie du Toit carried the flag for South Africa at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games. She wore a prosthetic leg, but few likely noticed. She has long awaited this moment, when she can stop being a disabled swimmer and start being just a swimmer again.

Wednesday, du Toit will participate in the Olympic marathon swim with no lower left leg or prosthetic assistance to help her kick through 6.2 miles of open water, competing as the first female amputee in an able-bodied Olympics.

South Africa’s du Toit fulfills a dream derailed - International Herald Tribune

Just an amazing story, and I know that makes me a sucker, but that can’t be a surprise to many of you. Even South African’s can do inspiring things. And this story just got me:

As Japan’s oldest Olympic competitor in history, Hiroshi Hoketsu says his long experience has taught him one key trait of a good rider: patience.

Hoketsu, who at the age of 67 will become Japan’s oldest Olympic representative when he rides in Thursday’s dressage qualifier, first competed in an Olympics 44 years ago at the 1964 Tokyo Games.

Training a horse requires first getting inside their minds, Hoketsu said.

“You have to understand them, rather than ask them to understand you. You need to understand what kind of situation they are in and what you can ask of them,” he said.

Sport Feed Article | Sport | guardian.co.uk

They are a curious breed the morning commuter, never making too much interest in their fellow traveller, never giving much conclusive proof that they realize there are other people in the vicinity except to gently shuffle out of their way when someone leaves the train.

Any other time and train travellers will interact; at least on some level but the morning commuter is the picture of self containment. Whether it be a book or laptop, or even just the view out the window, the commuter drone gives their full attention to the activity at hand.

Of course I’m no better, I’m sitting here on my iPod touch blogging about it all.

I must admit that I do feel like a bit of a sell-out having bought an iPod touch, aka: the phone planless man’s iPhone. But a combination of seeing a shiny new iPhone in the wild and having already decided that I didn’t have enough justification for getting an iPhone, plus apple having a good deal going on refurbished iPod touches led to a moment of weakness that I’m having a hard time trying to regret.

The ongoing wait for home Internet has meant that I’ve had this little beauty since Monday but haven’t had it all updated until last night. And with all the funky apps that you can pick up that’s when she really comes alive. Apart from anything else this post will have been completely written in the wordpress app, which has been remarkably well designed. Like a massive chunk of the iPhone apps, it just does what you expect it to, in the way you expect it to work.

Suffice to say my train trips just got a whole lot more bearable.

This day, I offer thee a challenge. Below is a quote which I could almost guarantee a great number of you will disagree with. But anyone can disagree. I’m interested in why you disagree, which is a much more difficult question. Don’t leave your thoughts here (unless you really want to), read the whole post and comment over at The Crowded Handbasket.

Loving God is something different than loving a person and so, it is not a personal love. Loving God is acting in response to the Resurrection by loving others and that is how we in turn love God. When God comes to me, shakes my hand, and cares to sit down and get to know me and I God, on a personal level, my idea of the love of God will become more than an idea, but a personal engagement with a being. Until then, love of God is a once removed response to God by loving my neighbor, who I can physically and actually love. And perhaps God can love me through that

The Crowded Handbasket » God Can’t Be That Personal

Yesterday I was sat back on the couch, watching Richmond spit in the face of their supporter base, and got a phone call from friends trying to organise a time for us to catch up. During that conversation, I was casually asked “what’s the deal with Georgia and Russia?” I hadn’t heard anything at that stage, so I took that as a challenge. The process of then listening to radio and television news didn’t really give me a lot to go off, so I’ve taken it on myself to better understand what is happening there. This is a little bit outside of what I’d normally do on TheGeoffRe(y)port so feel free to go away now if you don’t want to read any more. Otherwise, read on!

Read the rest of this entry »

“The Chinese government puts people first, and is dedicated to maintaining and promoting its citizens’ basic rights and freedom,” said the statement by Qin Gang, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, as translated by The Associated Press. “Chinese citizens have freedom of religion. These are indisputable facts.”

Bush arrives in Beijing - International Herald Tribune

Well, I feel relieved. Turns out the Olympics won’t descend into a farce after all!

“The celebrity church must die. And doing anything—like video venues—that prolongs its life, even in the name of the lost, runs counter to the best interests of the Church in all its expressions, big and small, and its mandate to see more people not only reached, but gifted, trained, and sent.”

Multi-site the Low-tech Way | Leadership Blog: Out of Ur

Have a read of the whole post - it’s a great explanation of why it’s not such a great thing to have churches going the “multi-site, teaching via satellite link” type of direction. But I especially love the start of this quote: “The celebrity church must die”. Because I think that the “celebrity church” is such a dangerous mindset - this concept that the work of the kingdom gets performed by paid staff that we support financially.

And at the moment, that’s the challenge (it seems to me) for YVV. My church has grown to the point where we can’t all fit into one service, and while that’s fundamentally a practical issue, the move to two (theoretically identical) services has the potential to change how the church community sees itself, as well as how the church sees it’s leadership. The size of the church necessitates that the leadership doesn’t know everyone in the church. So how we deal with that necessary aloofness without having that communcate value and status, is a very difficult thing.

Of course, we might just plant a bunch of churches, give away all our best people and the problem goes away