Expelled….the movie

I just got back from watching one of the most amazing and yet disturbing videos I can remember. Ben Stein created and stars in this moving shedding light on the persecution scientists and academicians face whenever they challenge Darwinism. In case after case, many well-respected scientists have lost their jobs in academia sometimes just for mentioning the words "intelligent design" in a lecture or publication. I took my 6^th and 8^th grade boys to see the movie and they both said it was great and thought that all their friends should see it. Having always grown up in a Christian environment, it seems ludicrous that some of the noted evolutionists could believe some of the things they said. For instance, several indicated they believed the first cell came from minerals that attached themselves to crystals and over time, those crystals evolved into living beings and then later said they thought it was possible that we came from another planet of highly developed organisms that planted us on the earth as seeds.

The correlation between Darwinism and Nazism was demonstrated and it was very interesting to see the similarities between these two philosophies. There was also supporting evidence that Darwinism is influencing human lives today much like Hitler did in his reign of terror. One only has to look at the abortion and euthanasia issues to see our society's attempts to devalue human life.

The highlight of the movie, and I don't want to spoil it for you, was when Ben Stein interviewed Dr. Richard Dawkins in London. Dawkins is one of the leading Darwin proponents and an avowed atheist. Stein just let Dawkins talk with only minimal questions for clarification and over the course of a few minutes, Dawkins basically made the case for intelligent design.

This is a movie that you must see!

 

Ministry Tech Pre-event

Well, after a rather uneventful flight and a couple of missed roads in getting from the airport to our first destination, my new boss, Dan Harris, and I made it to Lifechurch.tv for the first of four local church tours. Each of the four churches we toured were distinct and I think there were takeaways from all of them.

More than anything, though, it was great to get reconnected with folks from past roundtable events as they started arriving in OKC. After the biggest loser contest many were in, it was hard to believe how much people's appearance had changed and really served as a motivation for me to get more serious about being a "big loser." I was in the contest but at times didn't show the most restraint so that although I lost weight, I did not come close to reaching my goals. I have about 20 lbs to go that I want to get to before my 20th wedding anniversary in July. After seeing other geeks get serious about weight loss, I need to do the same. That probably will not happen, though, until I get back to KC on Saturday....it is so hard eating healthy when you away from home at a conference!

I am looking forward to tomorrow's lineup of speakers and to visiting with the vendors represented at the conference. Hopefully I can get some notes posted tomorrow evening.

Ministry Tech/CITRT reservations finally done

After the promptings on the blogs from Tony Dye and Jason Powell to get the reservations in for MinistryTech/ITRoundtable meetings in a few weeks, we finally got the reservations completed and we are ready to go. If you have not registered yet, do not miss out on this amazing opportunity to network with fellow church IT geeks. We have reservations for staying at the Best Western so I would like to hear from anyone else planning to stay there for the conference.

As a side note, I have had a couple fellow IT brethren ask me about why all the silence on this blog for so long but let's just say that the past few months have been difficult season for me but I have gotten through it and am now ready to get back to the work God has before me. Thanks to everyone who has expressed concern.

Katharion usage?

I remember at the Spring IT Roundtable in Houston the discussions about Katharion as an option for spam filtering. Who is using this service and what is your impression of it? We are not getting killed with spam but just enough to be nuisance.

Shelby Check-in

We currently are using Shelby's Check-in module for our Kindergarten-2nd grade age group as well as for our Hospitality Team. The way Shelby has the module set up now, we have to use a dedication station for the Hospitality Team because the program is not capable of working with multiple organizations. We are tired of waiting on Shelby to deliver the promised fix for this weakness to their product but have been waiting for at least a year. Does anyone out there know of any type of workaround for this problem? We are getting ready to implement check-in for more grades this fall and eventually for all the children's groups within the church.

Thanks for any input you may have!

Who has access through VPN?

Just curious what criteria anyone has for allowing access to your church network drives through a VPN connection from a home computer. Currently we have very few staff who need access after hours from home. I am trying to establish standards for determining who can access network drives from home? Do you allow any volunteers to have access from home? How to you make sure your VPN users' home PCs are sufficiently up to date to protect against the nasties that abound on the internet? Any feedback you provide will be much appreciated!

Quick Wireless Access Point survey....

We currently have a very low cost wireless solution in place at Pleasant Valley using basic off-the-shelf routers and access points. I would like to budget for a more commercial grade system and would be very interested in finding out what hardware other churches are using for their wireless networks. I have also thought about implementing a Radius server into the mix but need to do more investigation into that. So...what have you found to be useful in your church's wireless implementations?