Kyle's Random

There are quite a few blogs that I follow on a daily basis.  Keeping up with friends and family as well as trying to stay sharp in the area of technology and communications.  One of my favorites is a blog called ChurchCrunch.  Because of that, I’m pumped to be a guest blogger there today.

Maybe not the most exciting article unless you’re into video, but it’s cool to get to contribute there today.

I never thought that a video about Google searches would nearly make me cry. What a great example of engaging people’s emotions through media.

I’m a rather huge fan of the Faith Promise Internet Campus.  We’ve added a third service at 9 pm, and this online ministry continues to gain momentum.

The ministry happening online continues to blow me away.  Just this weekend:

• People were connected from four countries outside the United States (Canada, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and El Salvador).
• One family connected from their hospital room the day after their new baby was born. (Yay, Crass family!)
• One family connected while traveling on vacation to Disney. (I think to make the rest of us jealous.)
• Our worship staff connected while traveling home after the roads were closed on their way back from a mission trip in NYC.
• I spoke on the phone with someone who gave his life to Christ three weeks ago while watching the iCampus and now wants to follow up by being baptized.

And that’s just the stories I heard about this weekend.  Many others attend anonymously until they are ready to take the next spiritual step.

My favorite part of the iCampus is that although the staff has provided this tool, it’s people leveraging their social networks via email, Facebook, and Twitter that has spread the word.  If you haven’t already, you’re help letting people know about this would be appreciated and could even make an eternal difference in someone’s life.  Just make sure that you include http:// so that the link will be clickable, and posting right before or during an online service is the most helpful.

To those of you who already play a part in spreading the word and who serve online as volunteers… thanks so much!  You guys rock!

If you attend Faith Promise Church, you can hardly help but get into the spirit of personal evaluation during this time of year.  Both Josh and Pastor Chris start focusing their attention on personal growth and establishing their plans for the coming year (excellent post by Josh here).

I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon to let you know about a cool update to YouVersion (a free Bible website that is mobile enabled and supported with mobile apps) that now allows you to select from a variety of reading plans.  This is a very cool update, and if you’re a person who struggles with reading the Bible, I’d highly encourage you to take a look at their reading plans and find a good fit.  There’s nothing that will help you grow spiritually like the systematic reading and application of God’s Word.

If you’ve ever attended an Internet Campus and dropped into the chat room, you’ll probably like this video.  It’s a parody done by LifeChurch.tv, and I recognize quite a few of their staff playing roles in the video.

Funny stuff!  Thanks, LifeChurch.tv for your innovation and humor.

Today was the day of group presentations at Faith Promise, and I have to say that I was totally blown away by the quality and creativity of the presentations presented by our staff today.  Each had a unique approach and a fresh way of communicating their ideas.

My group decided to do almost the entire presentation through video, and you can watch it below.

(better quality video coming soon – Done, thanks to Matt James)

At Faith Promise, we just finished a marathon weekend of five productions of Home Invasion, Sacred Storm, a story of one family’s struggles and the spiritual battle happening around them.

The acting and script was great, and attendance was pretty amazing.  All services combined, there were over 5,300 in attendance.  From the stories I’ve heard, it’s clear that God impacted a lot of lives.

But not only was it an exciting day on our physical campus, it was also a great day on our Internet Campus as well.  Combined online attendance for the day was 504 – a figure that is nearly three times our normal online weekend attendance.

The graphic above is a representation of the 279 connections during our 9:00 broadcast this evening.

Some other interesting stats for the iCampus today:

• Over 600 hours of video were streamed
• People from five countries joined in
• 45 connected in the chat area
• Twelve people streamed the sign language video format

Every once in a while, when I’m relaxing in my chair – reading the Bible or some other book on my iPhone, or looking at a map to find the location of something on my phone – I feel like pinching myself to see if I’m dreaming.  Technology continues to make so many advances that it really blows my mind.

And then today, I came across this video.  It runs on PCs with a multi-touch screen.  Not sure how useful it would really be, but it sure looks great!

I’m in the middle of trying to kick off an online small group using webcams for people to connect with each other.  I think it will be a great way to build community and discipleship into the lives of people who are already connecting to our Internet Campus each weekend, and several churches seem to be using this technology very effectively.

Just in case someone else trying to do the same thing stumbles across this post, I’ve put together some guidelines and recommendations into a document.  I’m sure that it will be a work in progress, but you can download it in a couple of different formats below:

Online Small Group Guidelines (pdf) (Word Doc)

I don’t know if Mr. Wizard was into  microscopes, but I’m sure he would love this little hand-held device that I bought for my daughter’s birthday last weekend.

It’s called the Bionic Eye, and it’s made by Eye Clops.  It plugs into your TV, and it has zoom levels of 100x, 200x, and 400x.  The best part: it only costs about $30.

Below you can watch a video of me testing out the microscope.

Even if my daughter doesn’t end up playing with it much, I’m going to get hours of fun from this thing.

If you happen to know of anything that’s especially cool to look at under a microscope, please tell me about it.