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3 Jul2009
My life is going through major change at present, and so is bignorm.net
Let me know what you think of my new theme.
N
- In: Blurb
Mad Church Disease: Exposed
2 Jul2009
Dan has delivered a Magnum Opus on DNSLNS - I don’t want to do anything Big for God. Pure brilliance.
For those of you who are in ministry, or even working in a church, this IS a must read post. And for the record, I totally agree with Dan.
Symptoms of “Mad Church Disease” - a term coined by Ann Jackson over at Flowerdust.net, are becoming more and more discussed. Like any type of abuse, it has been around for ages, but it is only now, for reasons beyond me to confirm, that people have had enough.
Why these issues exist is beyond me, as I said, but, we need to talk about the unhealthy stuff, and the stuff we do wrong to at least try to make it right. “Who is to blame?” is not the question leaders need to ask, but more, “How can WE or I stop and prevent this from happening.”
We MUST HAVE more protection for the sheep please Shepherds.
N
- In: Devotional| My Journey
- Tags: burn out, Mad Church Disease
Risk-Reward
2 Jul2009
This diagram makes a whole lot of sense to me right now.
Emily and I are almost at a ‘C ‘.
The floor is open as usual to share where you are and any reasons why.
N
courtesy of Seth Godin
- In: Blurb| Devotional
- Tags: faith, risk
Boxing Vet Minces Menace
1 Jul2009
I’d probably do the same to a knife-wielding intruder trying to burgle my home.
Today’s Irish Independant reports on a story of a burglary that went horribly wrong for the intruder - 24 Greg McCalium. The young intruder got 2 right hooks from 72 years old Frank McCorti, an ex-army boxer, right on the button by the looks of it.
What a cool story of justice. Even the judge told McCalium he deserved what he got!
For the record, what would YOU have done?
N
Happy Birthday Twitter!
30 Jun2009
My geeky side is rampant today friends, so get ready for some weird and wonderful information:
Today’s content is courtesy of Mashable.com
Can you believe that the micro-blogging service Twitter is already three years old? Well, it’s true. Three years ago from today, Twitter Co-founder Jack Dorsey sent his first Tweet and, together with Evan Williams, Biz Stone and others, created a social media company that has grown over 1300% in the last year.
To celebrate on bignorm.net, we are going to show a very cool twitter video:
Just Landed is a beautiful geo-visualization of tweets containing the words “Just landed in…”. It finds the tweets containing the phrase, checks for the location they’ve landed in, and the location they were sent from, and shows all this on a 3D map of the world. For more information check out the author’s blog,blprnt.org.
Silent But Deadly
29 Jun2009
Recent events in my life have allowed me to see how easily we can emotionally break and silently succumb to a level of mental depression.
Lifechurch’s blog Swerve has just published an very honest interview-post from pastor Buddy Cremean where Buddy explicitly talks of emotionally breaking after six years at the top. Yes, 6 YEARS. In Buddy’s own words, “The question is not IF, but WHEN, and will I be prepared?”
More than often we only sympathize with illness that we can only visually see, don’t we? Some even claim depression is lack of faith? Depression can be a taboo matter for a lot of people, particularly Christians. But after all, it should not be as Pastor Buddy reminds of us some interesting and challenging facts:
“Did you know that 80 percent of all suicides are men? If you are over 35, congrats, your chances increase 3 times! If you are over 65? 7 times! Moses, Elijah, David, Peter, Paul, Abraham Lincoln, Wesley, and Spurgeon all battled the dark side of leadership, and God used them to change history.”
Billy Graham claims that God uses the dark parts of our lives as a backdrop to show the brilliance of Christ, just like a painting, both dark and light paints must be used to create a masterpiece.
Love and kisses,
Normy.
- In: Devotional
- Tags: Depression, taboo
Have a Laugh On Me
26 Jun2009
Lovin these new videos of some whacky worship.
Who’s Bad?
26 Jun2009
Someone claimed today that Michael Jackson was the most famous person on the planet. I would not agree.
“Who is then?” you ask. Well, that’s easy - JESUS is.
Don’t believe me?
Well, no other person changed the way we view and measure of history (B.C / A.D), no other name offends, heals and causes SO much controversy, and the name of JESUS is the most used swear word of all time, everyday, all over the world.
Beat that.
N
- In: Blurb
- Tags: Jacko, Jesus, Michael Jackson
Withdrawal
24 Jun2009
2 days without TV and wireless broadband and I am having withdrawal symptoms.
What is wrong with me? and how sad does that sound?
It just proves how sucked-in and semi-dependent my life has become on modern communication and ‘things’.
Here is my top 5 ‘things’ that I know makes me more ‘me’.
1. Emily
2. Food
3. My Bible
4. My mac
5. Working out
What things are you attached too? What would make you fret at the thought of doing without?
- In: Uncategorized
Keeping Up Appearances
21 Jun2009
Why is it so difficult to be really honest?
Some of you may know that been rigorously observing my faith lately and all the religious bolt-ons that go with it. If you did not know, check out bignorm.net’s overall tone over the past few months. I am testing everything.
Why? In short, I have found a lot of man-made holes in the Godly ‘things’ that I once held dear. I probably trusted too much and didn’t test things as much as I should have - to my detriment. But as the old saying goes, “I learned the hard way.”
My latest observations have found that Christ-followers can’t be really honest about their struggles, feelings and opinions about things. Maybe it is an Irish thing, but there certainly seems to be a anxious timidity about airing the less polished things of life.
Why? Peer pressure maybe, or like Hyacinth, it’s all about keeping up appearances and self-preservation perhaps?
My post is not so much to expose faults and play a blame game, but more to highlight things that believers (and everyone else) need to improve on - myself included.
Life is short and we are all in this together. Let’s talk more and get real about our messy lives and mistakes. Life is just too short to pretend.
- In: My Journey| Video
- Tags: christian living, honesty
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