To all those in Ekklesia521 (and whoever may be interested):
This coming Friday (and for every Friday after that for the next few months), we will be going through a new curriculum put out by Desiring God ministries (resource ministry of Pastor John Piper) titled Your Word is Truth: A Study for Youth on Seeing All of Life Through the Truth of Scripture.
Here is the goal of this new curriculum, as stated by Desiring God ministries.
The goal of this study is that, through the work of the Holy Spirit, the authoritative Truth of the Bible might be understood and embraced so students may see and interpret all of life through the Truth of Scripture.
I am really excited to go through this new curriculum for several reasons (some of which include):
This is the first time using a curriculum which I feel comfortable with theologically.
The content is absolutely relevant and necessary (especially for those of us who are seniors and will go off to college next year).
This curriculum is designed differently than any of the other small groups curricula that we’ve tried at GFC. The format will be one which will integrate (in the same lesson) lecture and small group activities.
Multi-media files included.
Our Friday night meeting will start promptly at 8 PM. Please make sure to be on time; bring your Bibles and something to write with.
One last thing: Every lesson in this curriculum loosely builds on the previous lesson. And so, it is imperative that you try to make it every Friday.
I was recently thumbing through an old, out-of-print edition of Letters of C. S. Lewis (Edited, with a Memoir, by W. H. Lewis) that I found tucked away at an old antique furniture store (for Linda). And, in it, I came across this little gem – a letter that Lewis wrote to a girl in America who wrote asking him to give her advice about writing. Here it is:
1. Turn off the radio (substitute in computer, iPod, T.V., etc.).
2. Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines (I wonder if he’d include blogs in that, as well. Hmm…)
3. Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.
4. Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about…
5. Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he wants to know – the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his.
6. When you give up a bit of work don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.
7. Don’t use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.
8. Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.
One of the ways that I continue to feed myself and grow in areas in which I recognize I need growth is by visiting a few, important blogs everyday (e.g. theResurgence, Between Two Worlds, and DG, to name a few).
Well, I’ve found one more. It’s a blog by Matt Perman, who is the Director of Strategy at Desiring God Ministries. In his blog, he frequently posts amazing insights on management and organization. And as someone who is organization and management illiterate, this website has proven invaluable for me. The following are just a few samples of the insight he offers:
In this video (also discovered at What’s Best Next), Julian Treasure, explains how sound affects us in four ways: (1) physiologically, (2) psychologically, (3) cognitively, and (4) behaviorally.
One interesting factoid he offers is that if you work in open plan offices, your productivity decreases by 66%! I’m going to guess that this would extend past offices and include any area that is full of chatter and background noises. Perhaps this will shed some light into why some of us students are so incredibly unproductive when we try to study at Starbucks. (However, he does provide a solution – watch the video to find out).
