2005 National Youth Workers Convention

I know I've mentioned this once before but I'm pumped about the 2005 National Youth Workers Convention in Nashville.

God-willing, I'll be there with Jeremy, soaking everything up like a sponge. I'm excited about all the different seminars I'll be going to, and also the general session speakers and the worship time. I'm thinking maybe it will be similar to Passion except instead of the common denominator being college-age students worshipping, it will be people who are passionate about student ministry worshipping. Very cool.

I plan to be there with my Powerbook in tow, blogging the conference. I'm not sure if I will post here or on the other blog I made for student ministry stuff, but I should have some content somewhere.

Here's an abbreviated look at speakers and music for the convention, which includes some well-known bands; authors of student ministry books (Robbins, Burns); Youth Specialties folks (MarkO, Rice); Emerging church types (Kimball, Pagitt, Jones); culture gurus (Walt Mueller); and other youth/student ministry leaders (Fields, Johnston, Giglio, Nasser):

• Chris Tomlin Band
• Dan Jessup
• Dan Kimball
• David Crowder Band
• David Nasser
• Doug Fields
• Doug Pagitt
• Duffy Robbins
• Hawk Nelson
• Jars of Clay
• Jim Burns
• Kurt Johnston
• Lost And Found
• Louie Giglio
• Mark Oestreicher
• Mark Yaconelli
• The Skit Guys
• Third Day
• Thousand Foot Krutch
• tobyMac
• Tony Campolo
• Tony Jones
• Walt Mueller
• Wayne Rice

Okay, I'll stop carrying on now. Why am I even posting this I have two papers to be writing?

Tragedy in Texas Church

This post on Mark Oestreicher's blog (the President of Youth Specialities) tells about a tragedy that happened at University Baptist Church of Waco, Texas. Perhaps the easiest way many of you could identify with this church is that it is the home church of David Crowder.

The church web site has a little information about what happened and funeral arrangements, at the time of this post.

This has to be a huge loss for this church; remember them in your prayers.

CSS Zen Garden

This site makes me want to learn how to use Cascading Style Sheets. I could design sweet web sites, and my Myspace profile would look sweet.

Bloglines

I use Bloglines as an RSS feed aggregator. I don't remember who pointed this out to me. Probably it was Chris.

But now I've gotten my feeds to a more organized state, with categories for different things. I think it's helped cut down on the time that I spend surfing around from one web site to another.

One area of concern that Wes has brought up is -- does RSS syndication affect his site stats? I bet that if the site counter is added in to the web site, it probably can't count how many times his site is accessed through RSS. In reality, I usually click through to the pages that I want to read, especially if they're longer than the summary that bloglines provides me.

I like using bloglines because it provides me universal access, I can read it from anywhere, and it stays in sync wherever I am. I haven't used alternative methods, but I'm guessing if it's software then it doesn't have the same simple, universal access and synchronization.

Although Bloglines sometimes doesn't stay in sync, some of which could be attributed to people updating their posts, but I think it just shows posts as new multiple times, some of the time.

I think I'm rambling now, so I'll stop.

Trick-Or-Treaters To Be Subject To Random Bag Searches

Read the article here.

I saw this linked on someone else's blog but now I can't remember where it was to give them credit.

Reading at Wendy's

I think there are probably few Wendy's in the world where this would happen... but it happened at this one. I was eating a classic single at the restaurant over near my school. I was reading Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem.

When I was finished with my meal, and giving my entire attention to the text, a guy in the restaurant said "Grudem!", but I didn't realize that's what said, or that he was even talking to/at me. "Good Ol' Grudem", he continued. Then my ears perked up and I realized what he said. I looked up and he said something like... "That's my dogg!" I gave a very meager "Yeah..." as the guy walked out of the office.

Anyhow, it seemed weird and funny and... yeah he definitely called Wayne Grudem his dogg. Or maybe he called me his dogg because I was reading Grudem.

Things are a little crazy for me right now, really busy. I'm kind of tempted to get one of the cheap domains Chris wrote about. I mean, not the ones he wanted, but one that I would want. I've never owned a domain before, but I'd like to. Maybe I should buy up the ones Chris wants, and then sell them to him at a higher rate. Hmm... maybe I shouldn't be writing my plan here.

Random

I finally pulled Haloscan comments out of my blog. Now that blogger lets you comment without logging in, and you can have pop-ups, it makes sense to use blogger's comments, so that they will stay on the site rather than disappearing into the abyss.

I'm still a bad blogger I guess. I've been posting on another site but I guess that doesn't really matter for this site.

In a few weeks Jeremy and I will be attending the National Youth Workers Convention in Nashville. I plan to be here covering the conference, the various seminars I go to, and the sweet music.

I'm excited about it like a little kid going on a field trip. I think it will be pretty sweet to be there around so many others passionate about student ministry, and with so much experience to draw from.