Love it.

I don't recall WHEN it was, but years ago- I discovered James MacDonald on a Christian radio station. His teaching style: so frank, to-the-point, yet relateable, caught my attention. That he stressed the importance of the church body to be grounded in the word & not stray from it. That he has such a respectable perspective on our society & where things are at in this day and age...what we, as Christians, are up against. It's just always RIGHT ON. His sermons are online- you can download the MP3's for free for simply signing up your name & email. They don't pester you with emails- in case you're wondering. I would urge you to take a listen. I don't put this man on a pedestal. I don't hang on his every word. But it's obvious he's annointed. He speaks truth, and I'm all about THAT. WALK IN THE WORD
Click on the "Broadcast" tab at the top to get to the messages.

He also keeps a blog...and he posted SUCH a good entry on Brian McClaren, an Emerging Church figure...I had to share. This is such a burden to my husband and I. This philosophy is taking such a hold in churches today- it's quite sobering. I posted the entry below. You can read other blog entries by clicking his blog tag on the main website.

Let me know what you think...

XOXO

~S

Why Brian McLaren is like my Palm Pilot
posted by James MacDonald on January 23rd, 2009. Filed under: Christian Life, From James, General, Video.
Remember the Palm Pilot? I remember how fresh and cool and capable it seemed sitting there on my desk, syncing so beautifully with the red a black circling arrows. I can see it now so sleek and so incredibly in touch with my needs and frustrations. Yep right there on my desk beside my computer and my phone and my little syncing cradle . . . Palm Pilot was the talk of the town. The best and the brightest got one first, who could afford to be without . . . the next best thing, so much promise!!!
Did you have a palm pilot? Remember learning the new letter forms and mastering the use of the stylus. Such an investment of time seemed worth it . . . I mean the Palm Pilot was here to stay. Never had their been a piece of technology so in touch with what was wrong in communication world so completely geared to everything that bothered me about the current and historic ways of managing your life. Dates and schedules and notes to remember, addresses and other stored information, all entered by me, at the tip of my fingers. Wow, no books to carry around, no need to call the office for a number here at this pay phone . . . No more scraps of paper and business cards. Remember ‘beaming?’ You could actually send your contact information through the air !!!!! to another person!!!!!! Ahhhh “I am so lucky to be alive here in 1999, where we have something as cool as a Palm Pilot.” The stock was soaring the company was exploding. There was no limit to the heights they could achieve.
I actually knew a lot of people that worked for 3Com, the company that invented the Palm Pilot. They built this crazy factory/office complex just down just down the freeway from our church. The walls are tilted and slanted at a lot of weird angles and I am sure they broke every rule of orthodox architectural design, but hey, they invented the Palm Pilot, so who were we to tell them they weren’t cool. Their corporate headquarters had to be different, eye catching, a break from the routine, it was a statement about everything they planned to be. Fresh, current, cool and creative!
Maybe Palm Pilot really got off track when they stopped listening to the users and started believing that just because some good ideas had come from their heads, that everything they thought of was equally helpful and in touch with the customers. At the end of the day it’s always the user that determines what is is truly helpful and powerful, isn’t it? The ditches of the information highway are littered with people who started out with some good ideas about what was missing and needed to change. It wasn’t that they didn’t understand the past and the shortcomings of the old information management systems. It’s that they didn’t understand the future and issues like convergence. Now a days you can get all the corrections to the old and all the benefits of the new in a single handheld device. Today you can escape the historical errors of inferior information systems without giving up the power of what they did well, People who wanted change for changes sake may still carry Palm Pilots, there will always be a handful of uncritical young people who get caught up in the cathartic affect of innovation. However people who have lived a little longer and endured a little more realize that change must continue to bring measureable improvement or in the end it is very hollow. Somehow the Palm Pilot guys just missed that. At the end of the day your ideas for improvement are what determine your success as a company. Palm Pilot’s eliminated some of the problems of the past but in the end didn’t continue to generate innovations of substance that impacted our future in demonstrable ways. After a while I started to feel like an idiot carrying that thing on my belt, it just wasn’t nearly as helpful as I was told it would be. What I thought would set me free actually became pretty cumbersome. I began to notice others who were kind of ticked and disappointed too.
I wish you could see the 3Com headquarters now. It’s really kind of pathetic. Hard to believe but it’s become a bit of a laughing stock. People drive by, giggle and point saying, ‘yeah remember those guys, what ever happened to them?’ Yeah, I don’t know . . . I think I’ll get out my Palm Pilot for old times sake, if I can find it.