10 reasons why James is better than Mark Driscoll

I’m a massive fan of Mark Driscoll and have listened to everything
he’s put up on the web for over the last two years…
but lately I’ve been hearing how great and grand he is and although I enjoy listening to him and I do think he is fantastic.
I’ve decided to write a blog entry detailing how top-notch
James Glass is, My aim is to encourage James Glass and those who serve under his leadership,
it is NOT my intention to rip on Mark Driscoll at all.

REASON 1: James Glass is near -
James is near and you get all of the benefits of that such as when you’ve had a tough day he can actually
give you a hug! not that I’m a dude hugging kind of guy(maybe a side hug), but those days when its needed
James is near and in crawley(or at least closer than Mark Driscoll)

REASON 2: James has Time -
“and if he had more time to spend then he would be with you my friend!”
no doubt James is an all round nice guy, but not only that but he manages to invest in his leaders, I’m not saying he meets everybody and chit chats and trys to fix the worlds problems. He does however invest a HUGE amount of time and effort in prayer, with his family and in the leaders in the church

REASON 3: James gets his point across without yelling -
I know he may sound like a goody two shoes in this blog entry thus far but I can assure you he is not, I’m not saying James doesn’t yell. Oh yeah he can yell great, its just that he doesn’t do it every week like some accuse Mark driscoll of doing. I still remember EVERY time James has yelled when I’ve been in the service. Can you say that about Driscoll?

REASON 4: James is Irish -
this has to be the best reason of all and I’d love to leave it at that…

actually I feel the need to clarify, James is from Northern Ireland and thus can use all the Irish Jokes and “play the Irish card” when needed, yet he is still British….
Those not from around here may not understand this phenomenon, but I feel its a great advantage.

REASON 5: Both James and Beryl(his wife) are active in the local Community -
they are both local School governors and invest a lot of time in people wherever they go, I know personally of some people from James’ Church have gone and helped clear out a local youth club, “just because” without really being asked, this sort of thing makes me glad to serve Jesus under James’
leadership.

REASON 6: He doesn’t need to inspire”the troops” with long speeches-
although your all expecting me to rip on Mark Driscoll for his long sermons here, I’m actually not going to
I think the word is important so I can’t in good conscience criticize him for it.

What I mean by “troops” is more literal than you might believe, picture the scene – INTER-CHURCH paintball!
Yes James was there leading his troops, the opposing pastor started talking to his team and taunted us for a good 10 minutes, about how much more ammo they had than us and how they were better trained
and how “great they were” amazingly inspiring speech, was brilliant and everyone was impressed.

James stood up and said, I don’t need to give long speeches to you guys you
know how great you are” We were like YEAH!!!!!!! and went a little crazy, and out-gunned and despite
the fact they had the better plan and we had a bunch of poor students we
managed to against the run of play shoot their pastor and win that game.
memories like that don’t fade quickly

REASON 7: He doesn’t boast his Sex Life -
I don’t really want to know, I know more about Mark Driscoll’s than I care to, sorry Mark I know your in america but its just not “the British way” I feel this is going to spark some issues.

REASON 8: James Blog’s nearly everyday -
this is tough to do, even for professional bloggers, I find it an inspiring read with even a few funnies thrown in. check it out at jamesjglass.blogspot.com

REASON 9: James understands the british sence of humour -
IE irony and self deprecation, its very important to reach the british to have a great sence of humour, sorry Mark I know your reaching a different audience, and we still love ya, its just we ARE just funnier than you

REASON 10: James is Led by the Holy spirit -
and has a great prophetic ministry, he is able to receive words not only for individuals in prayer and ministry time after the service but he is also able to bless the whole church with his prophetic gifting.

Other Reasons that didn’t quite make the Top ten:

James can YELL if he needs to – I found this out when to my detriment one evening a few years back when james played a game called YES/NO where you have to answer questions without saying yes or no(or repeating yourself) You could say that I lost and very quickly, James fired off about 10 questions in quick succession without letting me answer, lets just say I’m satisfied that church discipline is in safe hands.

James encourages everybody, I don’t know how he does it, I’m not saying he condones SIN or is all lovey dovey, far from it, James comes across as very real and genuine and my head is always clear after chatting to him about any issue.

James can deal with different challenges in the local church, and believe me Crawley has a few…from terrorist plots to chav’s to single mothers to hoodies, you name it people in crawley need Jesus, I’m glad James is here to help equip me and the rest of the church in crawley to do that, if I were to compare to driscoll again I’d say James doesnt just always have ppl in his church sleeping around, although that may be an issue, there is just so much more that’s more obvious.

James is big on church unity -
James is one of the key players amongst all the pastors in crawley, and rightly so. He is an incredible man of God and encourages and builds up leaders, I wouldn’t swap him for another pastor in the world.
Thank you Jesus,

Shameless Plug

Those of us who are christians have probably attended our fair share of
“church conferences.” I know I have.

apparently according to my good friend Todd Rhoades, who has inspired this
post by the way, one of the top questions asked of church leaders is: “What
does your day look like?” In other words, “How do you schedule your time,
and how do you prioritize your tasks?” The answers are nearly always
interesting and insightful.

However … (here comes the plug) I’ve found that using a simple, free
online tool called Twitter , you can monitor how some of
the best church leaders spend their day. Using Twitter, you get a glimpse
inside several prominent church leader’s schedule. You’ll find out when
their day starts, what they’re reading, what meetings they’re attending, how
they balance their family time, and what gets them
really pumped (or ticked off). Here are some of the top-notch leaders whose
schedule and life you can follow on Twitter…

(sorry Todd I stole your list – I’m feeling lazy)

Perry Noble (Pastor, NewSpring Church) – @perrynoble

Carlos Whittaker (Production Director, Buckhead Church) – @loswhit
Tony Morgan (Chief Innovation Officer, NewSpring Church) – @tonymorganlive
Tim Stevens (Executive Pastor, Granger) – @timastevens
Kem Meyer (Communications Director, Granger ) – @kemmeyer – this is a MUST
FOR ANY CHURCH MARKETING person… sorry for shouting I just got excited

Pete Wilson (Pastor Cross Point Church) – @pwilson
Ed Stetzer (Lifeway Research Director) – @edstetzer
Dave Ferguson (Pastor, Community Christian Church) – @daveferguson
Scott Hodge (Pastor, The Orchard) – @scotthodge
Anne Jackson (Staff member, Cross Point Church) – @flowerdust
Mark Batterson (Pastor, National Community Church) @markbatterson

Each of these leaders give multiple updates throughout their day (everyday!
even over christmas!!) to let you know what they’re doing. And, you have the
opportunity to respond back to them with your comments at any time ask them
questions, encourage them whatever you like! I like to keep some stuff
private and will direct message them so that no-one else can see it
and they can respond if they like.

Tips on getting responce from some people: 1. Keep it to one question
2. Say why your asking if it appears random such as …. how many people
attend your church? I think you might be the next level up from us and am
looking to learn some stuff.
3. encourage and be nice …. and dont publically critisize or they’ll just
block you

You can also follow other leaders such as @markdriscol however most of these
provide simply info and links to useful resources and are well worth looking
at, just not very personal.

if you read my

To use Twitter, just go to Twitter.com and sign up
for a free account. Then you can easily ‘follow’ each of these leaders for
insight on how they spend their time. It will give you some great insight,
and you will “get to know” each of these key leaders on a more personal
basis. I guarantee you’ll enjoy the experience.

Also, another shameless plug. You can also follow me at @graemearthur (
http://ping.fm/5FkpF)

Have a great week,

God bless.

Graeme

Shameless Plug

[image: image]

Those of us who are christians have probably attended our fair share of
“church conferences.” I know I have.

apparently according to my good friend Todd Rhoades, who has inspired this
post by the way, one of the top questions asked of church leaders is: “What
does your day look like?” In other words, “How do you schedule your time,
and how do you prioritize your tasks?” The answers are nearly always
interesting and insightful.

However … (here comes the plug) I’ve found that using a simple, free
online tool called Twitter , you can monitor how some of
the best church leaders spend their day. Using Twitter, you get a glimpse
inside several prominent church leader’s schedule. You’ll find out when
their day starts, what they’re reading, what meetings they’re attending, how
they balance their family time, and what gets them
really pumped (or ticked off). Here are some of the top-notch leaders whose
schedule and life you can follow on Twitter…

(sorry Todd I stole your list – I’m feeling lazy)

Perry Noble (Pastor, NewSpring Church) – @perrynoble

Carlos Whittaker (Production Director, Buckhead Church) – @loswhit
Tony Morgan (Chief Innovation Officer, NewSpring Church) – @tonymorganlive
Tim Stevens (Executive Pastor, Granger) – @timastevens
Kem Meyer (Communications Director, Granger ) – @kemmeyer

Sorry for all of the posts & Systems^Hey everybody
I’ve now got a pretty complected setup and I thought I’d blog about what
I’ve got and then try and plug a few things at the end
Ok so I have the following accounts that I use …
Flickr – for all my photo needs
WordPress.com – my main blog that I use and advertise most, I dont know why,
but this is the one that people use
blogger – just a copy of my wordpress blog
facebook – there is some people that will only use facebook
twitter – Love it, its simple and its great to follow some of the godly
people on there, I’m learning lots

Live Journal – still to work on this, at the moment its just a copy of my
wordpress blog

Xanga – awesome blogging platform there is some amazing bloggers on here and
its great for blogging ideas (as if I need more)
again at the moment its just a copy of my wordpress blog.

Friendster – another copy of my blog is or will be here…

SO how do I manage this lot?

well I automattically post to ALL the blogs using ping.fm,
its good and allows everything I email to an address posted to all of my
blogs.

to twitter a link to my blog posts, I use twitterfeed …
it lets me not have to worry about that … this will become more important
as the number of twitter followers increases and I rediscover my blogging
grove.
twittersync updates my facebook status to my latest tweet from twitter

MY INBOXes

Google reader – all the blogs I read come here are read and emailed to my
googlemail account so that its all in one place

Googlemail – everything comes into here all my social networking come IN
here and are processed automatically so I can check up on them when
necessary

tasks are created from emails when I need to do something with it else
everything is just marked as read…
I only spend minutes doing email now everyday … I used to take about an
hour and I keep an empty inbox its great
Google contacts are my central contact list for email addresses and phone
numbers (yes I have a backup including paper copies)
this is then synced with my blackberry… as is

Google Calendar – all my working hours are here as well as birthdays,
(including those from facebook) and ANY appointment I have

including my scheduled social Networking times (this keeps me not spending
ALL my time working on fancy systems, blogging and messaging people

So the things still to fix are …

Facebook chat – some people are great to chat too but ONLY use this
skype – see above
MSN – most of my contacts are here so I don’t mind keeping this

Anyone know anything to replace this – I have tried pidgen but cant get
facebook chat to work
maybe it will work I’m not sure … I might try again and if I succeed then
I’m down to …

google apps
twitter (on my phone so not an issue – in fact I like it that way)
PIDGEN or replacement (maybe use google talk? if it can have addons etc
although I would like a portable version)
My usb stick with bunch of data on.
(obviously I use – automatically – more but this would be all that I really
interact with)

so everything is IN THE CLOUD and availiable from my phone, laptop or any
web browser (or else its on my USB stick attached to my keys)

Man I LOVE systems

Things I’m working on: qik – live video streaming …I will get this to post
to youtube and twitter etc
from my phone and from my new webcam … again more info coming soon

see this photo

title

body – ok So I can post to Ping.fm and it will spew out to my blog

please ignore this post

Posts somehow got deleted from my wordpress blog
whoops dont know how that happened
so yeah on with my post google tasks
amazing! its a google labs feature …
added into Googlemail … to enable it go to settings >labs
its simple yet effective it can only improve as well as google reader it lets google help control the flow of information to me
and I can block out a lot of crap… yet still explore a lot!
I love the task manager! its made my workflow so much easier
more to follow

tommorow aka christmas eve
(gonna try to blog daily)

check out this

Graeme
blogin soon

Redeeming Social Life Online

sorry that I havn’t pinged anything for a while but here goes …

How many of our lives and relationships would radically change if we didn’t have a mobile phone, email, and access to the Internet? How many of us are unable to be fully present with the people we’re with, because we’re distracted by our cell phones, iPods, Blackberries, or iPhones?

Hmm I had a conversation with a few of my good Christian friends, one of whom loves facebook and sees the potential and myself who feels the same way… with two people who don’t like facebook.
it produced some interesting questions, more than answers and after researching on the Internet
I figure I have some advice for you all on how not to use facebook and how to use facebook in a godly way.

Over the last few decades, humanity has experienced greater technological development than in any previous generation.
being a young man I’ve never known much else, but even recently I feel that these technologies have radically affected how we participate in community, how we operate as families, and how we work.

Enter Facebook.

Like most other new things, Christians tend to either embrace Facebook uncritically, or retreat from it and condemn its use. The “cold shoulder”—ignoring/retreating from/condemning a technology—is often driven by misguided fears and shallow biblical interpretation. While the problems with embracing uncritically are more easily discerned, giving a technology like Facebook the cold shoulder also has its problems.
As we participate with integrity in technologies that provide avenues for loving God and other people, we are doing something deeply human and honorable.

Along the way, I’ve detected many ways in which Facebook can hinder our pursuit of the great commandments, and many ways participation in it can be leveraged as a means of blessing.
First, here are ways not to use Facebook:

1. Don’t use status updates to complain. For many, complaining has become a trend on Facebook. With their status updates, many people broadcast consistent grumbles, like: “Joe is bored,” “Joe can’t wait to leave his stupid job,” or “Joe is exhausted.” By all means, be real, be honest and authentic, but beware of the culture of complaint.

2. Don’t measure your worth/identity by the number of your Facebook friends and interactions.
3. Don’t value forming Facebook (virtual) friendships more than real world friendships.
4. Don’t diminish your face-to-face time with people to check what’s going on in your Facebook world. If you’ve ever been out to dinner with friends and found yourself anxious to pull away and check out what’s happening on Facebook, you know what I’m talking about.
5. Don’t be someone online you’d never be in person. Let Facebook reflect the real you, not some pseudo-personality that emerges when you’re alone with your computer.
6. Don’t hurt and exclude others (intentionally or unintentionally) through use of applications such as “Top Friends.” Likewise, don’t become jealous of others having conversations without you. Be patient and gracious with potential misunderstandings that inevitably happen in cyberspace. When you spot something on Facebook that causes feelings of hurt or jealousy, assume the best.
7. Don’t allow Facebook and online life in general to make you a more distracted person. If you’ve noticed that use of Facebook and online life—constant change, updates, movement, and hyperlinks—has made it more difficult for you to sit down and read a book for one hour, you’d benefit from stepping back and evaluating how this technology is affecting you.
8. Don’t allow Facebook to tempt you away from your calling and work. Don’t let Facebook’s little status updates (“dave is chewing gum”) and Wall writings take your focus off the great and big things that your heart should be engaged in, namely the work that God has put you on earth to do.
9. Don’t let Facebook cause you to think about yourself more than you already do. You were created to look outside yourself toward God, other people, and the wonder-filled world he has made for you to enjoy and cultivate.

In the same vein, here are ways to use Facebook to love God and others, and care for your own soul:

1. Use Facebook to get back in touch with far-away friends, showing them how Jesus has changed you.
2. Use Facebook as an extension of face-to-face relationships and to enhance time with people. Get to know people and love and care for them better when you’re with them because, through Facebook,
you know more about who they are and what’s going on in their lives.
3. Use Facebook to take the focus off of yourself. Facebook can actually help you get outside of yourself and your problems. Next time you login, use the time to focus on creatively listening to, loving, and encouraging others. Approach Facebook thinking about what you can give.
4. Use Facebook to sharpen and discipline what you do with your time. Facebook status updates can serve as a form of built-in accountability. Just knowing that my Facebook community can read my updates provides additional motivation to stay on task and actually do what I say I’m doing.
5. Use Facebook to quickly announce and facilitate great face-to-face gatherings. Instead of taking 45 minutes to call 10 people to come over for a spontaneous evening, use Facebook.
6. Use Facebook to influence other people for Jesus. Create a new culture with your status updates. Use them to love, encourage, teach, and challenge people.
Recently, my friend used a Facebook status update to express how their reading of the Gospel of John was encouraging them, with trumendus results and interesting conversations followed.

We are all in different places in our use of technology, Some of us are Internet addicted and need to take a fast or maybe even a permanent break from Facebook. Some of us need to take more time to reflect, get alone with God, and ask him how to engage this technology for his glory, our good, and the good of others. A few of us are giving technology the cold shoulder and need to catch up with the 21st century.

May we work to put our use of Facebook beneath Jesus’ feet, along with everything else in our lives.
God bless,
Graeme