“Photon gating” makes for interesting cameraphone pictures (via Boing Boing)

“The iPhone has no physical shutter and instead uses photon gating on its CMOS sensor. Some parts of the image are recorded before others, much like with a scanner. The iPhone’s CMOS scanner seems to be a lot slower than, say, the CMOS sensor on your Canon point and shoot camera. Therefore, as the camera is recording the image, any changes over that small but significant amount of time are recorded.”

I wanted to see if this worked with other camera phones as well. Check out the results I got:

I found the photos tend to turn out best when there are strong lines present in the composition.

A mild spin effect can be achieved by simply turning the phone from vertical to horizontal immediately after pushing the ‘capture button’. The more spin, the more bending you’ll see in the photo.

Try it out. Share your results in the comments.

Bob Hyatt (bob.blog) has a good post about video venue and how they will eventually lead to the death of preaching.

This goes right along with the thoughts from my last post.

I can foresee that if church takes this shape, we will have more and more people driven to “discover” preaching as their spiritual gift… when in actuality they will be chasing the fame displayed to them on the screen behind the pulpit. That is no model of maturity to be chasing.

I was thinking about ’spiritual gifts’ this morning. Rolling around the idea that maybe our various church cultures (at least in the evangelical stream) do a great job of promoting the gifts of preaching and teaching… and the personalities that go along with them.

The trend I have seen is that ‘going into (the) ministry’ is equated with climbing the ‘preacher ladder’: start with a pulpit, start writing a book, get published, start speaking at conferences, write another one or two books, speak some more places, leave the pulpit and become a professional speaker.

(OK, maybe that is a bit of a caricature, but still…)

I wonder about the dynamic relationship between our thoughts on ‘ministry=talking’ and the expectation for good Christians to be able to teach.

In my reader this morning, I found Ed Stetzer’s post about Spiritual Gifts and the Church. He’s got some numbers up from the Barna group that suggests a real emphasis on teaching as the primary gift being developed in Churches.

Two thoughts I keep coming back to:

• ‘Gifts of the Spirit’ can also be correctly translated as “Grace of the Spirit’. Should the way we see the grace of the Spirit of God manifested primary be through teaching/preaching? (And I ask thins as someone who is very comfortable with (maybe even spiritually gifted at) teaching and preaching.)
• The emphasis on teaching a preaching seems to lead directly to the assumption that people need academic schooling as the primary form of training. But, are spiritual gifts suppose to be taught? Is that even possible? (Please understand, I believe training is necessary and Biblically mandated. But I don’t think training=schooling)

What would happen if Churches stopped hiring ‘professional pastors’? Would the percentage of those with ‘teaching gifts’ begin to decline as the other gifts started to rise? Would we fall into total disrepair, chaos and be nonfunctional as congregations? Would those truly gifted to teach be called upon by the congregation to teach them, and to also go and proclaim to word to those who haven’t heard? Would we begin to see God’s grace (his Gift) manifest it’s self in hospitality, serving, evangelism, healing, art, etc…?
Two questions to wrap up: What is the purpose of teaching/preaching (and are they the same)? Why does there seem to be a ’spirit of fear’ at the thought of having gifts that don’t demand the limelight?

This was a comment I posted on a thread about spiritual depression at Internet Monk. Wanted to put it up here so that I would remember.

For the past two weeks of so, I have been questioning weather or not I can believe in God any more. I won’t get into it all here, but it has had to do with feeling that everything I thought I knew about God was wrong. Theology didn’t have the answers for me and my (at the moment) crappy life.

The hardest part about this is that if I want answers, i have no where to go.

Sometimes I really wonder if ‘just Jesus’ is enough. I mean, everyone is telling me that I need to believe x in order to be really right or join the real body of believers to truly have life. And I look at there life (at least what small part I can see) and they are happy, or filled with faith, or loving in ways that I wish I was. I see examples of the Christian life and experience in these people and wonder if their theology is right after all. But then I see another example in a ‘competing’ denomination, and my mind swirls again.

Growing up in a myriad of denominational streams, I have always had a hard time finding my balance amid a sea of voices and opinions. Good, God fearing people all telling me seemingly different ‘truths’ about God, the Bible, Jesus, spiritual power, life, the length of my hair, my theology, drinking, coming to the communion table, etc. etc, etc. No matter how used to this I have become, it is always a source of confusion… which leads to depression.

I think the reason depression and the search for ‘the true church’ are so interrelated is because what we are really looking for is hope. It’s what the gospel offers, what we need, and when we feel that we can’t find it despair is the only valid response.

At the core, we are looking for a hope we can understand and find comfort in. We are looking for a place where we are accepted and won’t be left out. We are all dying to be part of the sanctified, holy people of God… and some of us are filled with the fear that at the end of it all we got it wrong and God really won’t welcome our shaky, barely holding on faith into his Shalom.

We fear God won’t love us unless we believe the right things rightly because too many people have filled us with the fear of being wrong and going to hell because of it.

To many people have told us in one way or another that hope really isn’t for everyone. Only those who believe correct theology, who get onto the ‘right side’, only those who are worthy enough will get the salvation Jesus offers. So, our need for hope drives us to listen to each and every take on theology, wrestling with question after unanswerable question, all the wile praying that we can somehow get it right.

Sometimes, people in this cycle find relief. This grace comes to them in the form of a denomination they feel is their ‘home’, or somewhere they find the answers to the questions, the hope they have been longing for. I am happy for them, and quite jealous. But, I have to remember (and here my theological leanings shine through) they are finding God’s favor and grace manifested to them in the denomination or theology that meets their needs. In other words, Jesus is making him self known to them in this way. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have Jesus, or that the denomination across the street is not really part of the true church invisible.

But that’s hard to remember because I can’t see Jesus, sit beside Him on Sundays, hear what he has to say and what it means and have a room full of people say ‘amen’.

I don’t know if I will ever find myself part of a denomination again. But I believe that somewhere, somehow Jesus will show up in my living life, and I will see his grace know his love.

Maybe my addiction to theology is really an addiction to pride, trying to prove to God that I am worthy enough. Maybe I do believe a lie, the lie of pride that binds and kills love. Maybe I need to let go. maybe I can, maybe I can’t. But I can hope that this will all change, that the denominational confusion and fences will be made right along with everything else when Jesus comes to set all right once more.

I don’t have an answer to these questions. I wrestle with them myself, and will probably die with them in my heart. I will go up and down in my life, some days believing and others gripped by spiritual depression of various degrees. But the fact that I can’t solve this answer my self tells me that I still need Jesus to make me right with God. If my theology is driving my further from the truth of that need, then to hell with it. Jesus is the only one who can cure this long dark night of the soul. He may not do it before his return, but It will change.

The belief that something will change and my admission that I am helpless to change it… that is hope. We either chose to hope, or give up and let the night swallow us.