If we rebuild someone’s home, reroof their house, wire the electrical, hang sheet rock, lay down flooring, paint the walls with fresh color, add trim, install the air conditioning, and all it takes to move a family from tents and campers into a beautifully renovated house and shut our mouths concerning Christ our supreme treasure, what have we done? We must accompany our benevolent actions with explanations of hope. Let us do more than provide folks a comfortable home to go to hell from.

— Pastor Don Elbourne, Jr. of Lakeshore Baptist Church.

I found this quote while looking through the archives of his blog in preparation for a little project I have going for the members of our team and had to share it!

The top of this monument is pointed … and appropriate for the Fourth of July weekend!

Technorati Tag: PhotoHunt

Happy Fourth of July! Or at least what is left of it. Rather quiet around here. Not much to blog about. Somehow I like that for a change.

So I randomly decided to visit Charlie Hall’s web site and found that the charts to four new songs have been posted. I know there’s more people out there who haven’t heard the songs yet than who have, but you ought to at least check out the lyrics. WOW!

Then, a click to the forums revealed all this loveliness …

• A release date: August 19

• A title: “The Bright Sadness”

• A track listing:

1. Chainbreaker
2. New Year
3. Walk The World
4. My Brightness
5. Scenes
6. Thrill
7. The Second Alive
8. Hookers & Robbers
9. Bloom Again
10. You Are God
11. Knit My Heart
12. Mystery

Personally, I can’t wait to hear what “Hookers & Robbers” is all about.

• Sound clips:

1. New Year
2. Walk The World
3. My Brightness

Click here for more.

And, as AntsGoMarching (the brains at the forum behind all this research), said, “How about a FULL version of Chainbreaker to end the night with?”

I’m so looking forward to this one!

Here’s the freebie list I downloaded from XPN during the second quarter of 2008. It’s not nearly as lengthy a list as the first quarter, but it is more proof that I probably ought to support the station in some manner as it is public radio and darn good public radio at that …

Sore by The Annuals

Maladies and Hold On by Windsor For The Derby

Better Things by South

Josephine Street by I Love Math

Social Competence by Peter Moren

Cacophony by Tilly and the Wall

Soul on Fire by Spiritualized

The World The People Together (Come On) by Dandy Warhols

Revolution of the Heart by Ed Harcourt

Another month is finished! I posted 23 times on the main blog in June, bringing the total for the year so far to and even 200 posts. Of course, I probably should somehow factor in the 12 posts on the Carlisle to Lakeshore blog and the post on everyday::images photoblog. There were 1,041 visits to the blog, fueled, I suspect, by the Giglio-Tomlin church plant rumors (which, by the way, Louie addressed in the latest Passion podcast.)

Here are the top posts for June:

Tomlin + Giglio = new church?

Go and sin no more …

Downloading from eMusic …

Randomness …

Passion::Kampala

The top posts for the quarter (as June ends the second quarter of the year) were:

Wednesday Worship Thoughts: The Easter Journey

Tomlin + Giglio = new church?

I just want you to know who I am …

#47 How to come up with creative ideas

So, how tall is Chris Tomlin? (Somehow the height of Chris Tomlin continues to be a question on many minds as there is at least a Google search every couple of days that leads here.)

Technically, I suppose I failed in the attempt to make it the full 365 days because we didn’t get to the hotel in Bristol until 12:05 … meaning that it was Sunday morning instead of Saturday night. So I missed a Saturday post by a mere five minutes. I’m thinking it ought to count because it was still Saturday somewhere.

It’s funny how a week out of your element wrecks your sense of how things work. I hope you were able to follow along during the week at the Carlisle to Lakeshore blog. Fun stuff there.

My mind is racing around with ideas of what to post … none of which are coherent enough for actual posting. Instead, listen to this lovely song about blogging from Kristian Stanfill.

“I will not eat  fruit unless it’s in loop or pebble form.”
— Stephen Colbert, June 16th episode of The Colbert Report

I was on a hike and jumped a few rocks to get to the center of the stream for a photo. When I looked down, I saw that the water running over some plant or another had created this abstract design

Technorati Tag: PhotoHunt

… for posts for the next week? I will try to cross-post between this blog and the one I am keeping for the mission trip, but click here if this site is not updated and you will find the most recent information. Such as you would today were you to click.