Posted by Ben Simpson on July 27th, 2010 at 9:52 am
In partnership with Christianity Today and the Lausanne Movement, Fourth Line Films has produced a series of excellent short films that address a number of important issues in evangelicalism. You can view the films at the links below:
Posted by Scott McClellan on July 26th, 2010 at 7:16 am
Last week, I found myself looking for some information on the website of an extremely well-known church. It wasn’t long before I was completely frustrated. The site is an aesthetic hodgepodge overrun by banners, menu and sub-menu buttons, links, and text. And yet, among all those choices, the information I sought wasn’t there. Too bad.
The experience on this church’s website, combined with years of visiting church websites, prompted me to tweet this:
Here’s the thing: I don’t have any magic bullets or one-size-fits-all solutions for making the perfect church website. But I will offer you this challenge — spend some time this week making an effort to see your church website with new eyes.
Come up with a list of questions (Where/when do you meet? Where should I park? What options do you offer for kids? Do you have a marriage ministry? Who should I contact about finding a small group? Who should I contact about volunteering in the children’s ministry? How many families were helped by that recent service project?) and then try to answer them using your website. Better yet, ask someone who doesn’t attend your church to answer the questions, and watch them as they try to navigate your site. During the process, ask them how they feel (Confused? Overwhelmed? Welcomed? Comfortable?) and take note.
In many ways, your church’s website is the window through which your community looks in. It’s time to evaluate it thoroughly and honestly. Then, take your findings and act on them.
And finally, Nate Henn from Invisible Children lived an amazing story. Following his death in Uganda after a terrorist attack, this video tribute was created:
Posted by Ben Simpson on July 20th, 2010 at 10:55 am
According to a study cited in Newsweek, for the first time in history American creativity is on the decline. Based on the research of E. Paul Torrance and other scholars over the past several decades, researchers have concluded that American children are less inclined to use their cognitive faculties to innovate and derive creative solutions to complex problems, while in other areas of the world creativity is on the rise. A number of reasons are cited, including standardized education and the prevalence of video gaming among children. But foremost among the reasons given: we have failed to grasp what creativity is, and how it is taught. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman conclude:
Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.
You can read the full article here. You’ll find an excellent overview of the science behind creativity, as well as insight concerning how creativity has been measured by researchers over the past several decades. There are also a couple of good examples of how creativity has been taught within different institutions beyond the tradition realm of “the arts.”
As the church, we are called to be a creative people. For those of us located in America, perhaps this decline in creativity presents us with an opportunity to be a people who shine as a light in the darkness, and thus provide a renewed gospel witness.
Posted by Scott McClellan on July 19th, 2010 at 9:29 am
We featured this little contest/initiative in the July/August issue of COLLIDE (hitting mailboxes any day now), but I wanted to feature it here, too. Check it out:
As we were rearranging and cleaning out our offices not long ago, we found ourselves thinking a lot about environments. Specifically, we began wondering about your environments—where you work and where you worship. Our guess is that some of you have creative and cool work environments—offices, studios, production booths, conference rooms—and we want to see them. We believe creative environments are conducive to creative work, so we’d love to see where you do your creative work, and then we’d like to share those spaces with others.
Along those same lines, some of you have creative worship environments and we’d like to see those, too. Environments have an undeniable influence on our worship moods, attitudes, and experiences, so it would be interesting to see the different environments you guys are working with. When you have a chance, snap some pictures or go through your archives. Then, send your best pictures to info@collidemagazine.com. We’ll compile the best and most interesting pictures of work spaces and worship spaces into a future article. So come on and send in those pictures! (It’ll be fun, like America’s Funniest Home Videos, except without the funny or the home videos or the prize money.)
