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Free Media Sources

March 31, 2007 By 1 Comment

At Park Community Church, a contemporary, non-denominational church of about 1,250 urbanites (20-45 year old) in Chicago, we are always looking to find the right way to express ourselves in our 8 minutes with God daily devotionals, in HTML emails, on our website and in print. Many times, we search and search for the right image to express the related content. The following is a great post by Gina Trapani at Life Hacker who lists out six great places you can find legally-republishable content on the web to impress the boss with a great multimedia presentation.

As the internet has evolved, so have the amount of free media available for you to use. Thanks to organizations like Creative Commons, licenses like the GNU Free Documentation License, and the public domain, there are tons of photos, songs, movies and documents freely available for you to download and republish without fear of the copyright police.

1. Creative Commons search interface

Video, music, images and documents
Creative Commons’ recently released tabbed search interface looks up CC-licensed photos from Flickr, any file type on Yahoo! and Google, and videos on Blip.TV. Very convenient. (Before you go publishing, be sure to check exactly which CC license that perfect photo carries – whether or not it can be modified, used for commercial purposes, or should include attribution.)

2. Wikimedia

Video, music, images, documents
User-edited Wikimedia Commons contains over 700,000 pieces of freely available, modifiable (even for commercial purposes) media that’s categorized and tagged by users. Need a photo of Chicago for your blog? Type Category:Chicago into the Wikimedia search box. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Movies, Tech Tips, Weblog

Today’s Tech Tip: Music in Powerpoint Presentations

March 29, 2007 By 2 Comments

TECH TIP FOR POWERPOINT:

At Park, we use a lot of Powerpoint presentations as we meet with our leaders in order to share our vision to reach 1% of Chicago with the Gospel. Many people want to play music in their Powerpoint presentations. Usually, inserting music only works slide by slide. So how do you insert music or narration that continues throughout the presentation (for PowerPoint 2002 or 2003.)

Follow these six steps:

  1. Create your Powerpoint presentation.
  2. Upon completion, choose Insert, Movies and Sounds, then choose one of the options, such as Sound From File. Locate the sound and insert it. (You see a sound icon, which you can drag off the slide if you don’t want it to appear during your presentation.)
  3. Then you will see a message appears asking how you want the sound to play. Usually, you choose Automatically, but if you want the sound to wait for your mouse click, choose When Clicked.
  4. Next, you right-click the sound’s icon and choose Custom Animation from the shortcut menu. The Custom Animation pane opens with your sound file listed.
  5. Click the arrow directly to the right of the sound icon and choose Effect Options. In the Play Sound dialog box, choose the Effects tab.
  6. In the Stop Playing section, choose the After XXX slides option. Enter a large number (up to 999) in the box so the sound will play throughout all your slides. Note: PowerPoint counts each display as a slide, so if you show some slides more than once, they count.
  7. Click OK to close the dialog box.

Filed Under: Tech Tips

New Jib Jab Video – The News

March 29, 2007 By Leave a Comment

I love Jib Jab — they make very funny videos that parody everyone from the President to Arnold Schwartzenegger.  Check out the announcement on Tech Crunch:

JibJab, the creators of the famous 2004 U.S. presidential election parody cartoon “This Land” have a new original video out called “The News. The new video premiered tonight at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner. All of their original videos can be viewed here. JibJab is slowly expanding from pure content creation to becoming a hub for humor-related video and other media. The company was founded by brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis and is currently headquartered in Santa Monica, CA. JibJab raised a Series A round of funding from Jon Flint at Polaris Ventures in June.

Watch the video here.

Filed Under: Weblog

Where Are the 49% Going to Live?

March 28, 2007 By Leave a Comment

urban

The Census Bureau recently released their estimated population projections for 2050. Overall, the country’s population is expected to continue to grow, increasing from 282.1 million in 2000 (and 300 million in 2006) to 419.9 million in 2050. The nation’s projected 49 percent population increase during the next 50 years would be in sharp contrast to most European countries, whose populations are expected to decline by mid-century.

My question: Where are all these people going to live?

The total U.S. population crossed the 100 million mark around 1915, the 200 million mark in 1967 (52 years later), and the 300 million mark in Oct 17, 2006 (39 years later) The U.S. population more than tripled during the 20th century – a growth rate of about 1.3 percent a year – from about 76 million in 1900 to 281 million in 2000. I agree with all the folks who are concerned about urban sprawl.

This is going to be a huge problem – not so much for cities like Chicago but for all the poorly designed outying areas. Imagine the amount of highway infrastructure (and tax dollars) that will be needed to create 4 and 6 lane highways in the outlying areas to allow people to get around.  Look at Business 2.0′s article about Megapolitan areas which tries to see which megapolian areas will benefit from urban sprawl. I think the total cost on all of America will be quite high as we try to provide for more than 419 million people.

Filed Under: Adaptive Reuse, Chicago, The Cultural Conversation

Only 20 Minutes to Live

March 27, 2007 By Leave a Comment

On Sunday, Ron May spoke about his harrowing experience in the Crash of Flight 232 on July 19, 1989 in Sioux City Iowa. Click here for his audio message. Click here for the Wikipedia page. Click here for the Google video.

chash of flight 232

One of his statements which I have reflected on for the last few days is that the pilot came on with about 20 minutes to go and said to the passengers “Folks, the damage to Engine number 2 is more extreme than we thought….We are going to make an emergency landing in Sioux City in about 20 minutes. I’m not going to kid you, it going to be a rough landing…I don’t want to fool you…it’s going to be really rough. I will come back on and give you several warnings about the time, then finally I will come back and tell you when to brace.”

What would you do if you were told you potentially have 20 minutes to live?

Since Sunday, I have tried to look at my watch and say to myself — Steve, you’ve got 20 minutes to live — then I wonder what and who would I think about, and how would I reflect on my life. I want to love Jesus with all my heart and don’t feel like I have done that yet — that would be a major regret right now if I had 20 minutes. I want to love my wife and kids better. I wnat all of my kids to come to accpet Jesus as their Savior. I want to see many come to know the salvation I have experienced in my own life…..try this exercise and see what you do as a result……

Filed Under: Church, Sunday Services

Jeremy Camp Says It All

March 27, 2007 By Leave a Comment


YouTube Preview Image

My Desire
Jeremy Camp

These last few months have been hard ones for me. We are running flat out and everyone is tired, yet God is at work among us. In these times, I search for songs where others have put into words and music the feeling and desire of my heart. Jeremy Camp says it all in this song MY DESIRE. We want to get rid of all the false pretensions in our life and have a flourishing and vibrant relationship with our Abba Father, and to be used by Him in a mighty way to further the Kingdom. Just close your eyes and take a listen:

You want to be real, you want to be empty inside
You want to be someone laying down your pride
You want to be someone someday
Then lay it all down before the king

You want to be whole, you want to have purpose inside
You want to have virtue and purify your mind

You want to be set free today
Then lay it all down before the King

This is my desire, this is my return
This is my desire to be used by You

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Missional, Music That Moves, The City

I Can’t Stand the Wait – 24 Is Killing Me!

March 26, 2007 By Leave a Comment

24 Map

Why do I have to wait a week for the next episode of 24?

While I appreciate that I can catch any missed episodes online, the wait for the next riveting episode is next to impossible. I love the show and I am a big fan. I wish there was a way to sit down and see the whole year in two nights (wow! those would cardiac nights, don’t you think?).

The only thing we know for sure is that Jack is going to live and save the day. In the back of our minds, we know that with all the mayhem, Jack will be there to get it done.

It is a lot like the redemption story of Jesus in the Bible. We all have ups and downs in our lives but in the end, we take all comfort that God wins. The evil one is defeated and we can spend eternity with God because of the sacrifice of his Son, Jesus. God wins…God wins…….do you believe it? The only thing we know in life for sure is that Jesus provides the way for us to spend eternity with God and we know that God Wins!.

Maybe this will help you — check out “Now Try God“

Filed Under: Church, The Cultural Conversation

Keller: Ministry in Major City Centers — Part 2

March 25, 2007 By Leave a Comment

I came across this excellent article of Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC entitled Our New Global Culture: Ministry in Major City Centers. In this Part 2, I focus on his analysis of what it will take to be an effective church in the major global cities, like Chicago. As Park’s vision is to renew the city, through sharing the Gospel, serving the city, expanding through church planting and multi-site with live teaching, it is helpful to use Keller’s excellent analysis and years of trying out different things to re-look at how we do ministry in the urban environment. What do you think as you look at your ministry in the city?

KELLER: CHURCHES WILL BE EFFECTIVE IN CITY-CENTERS IF THEY:

  1. Hold the historic Christian gospel—orthodox and biblical in doctrine and practice, but are neitheregalistic nor liberal, neither doctrinalist nor ietist, neither individualistic nor collectivistic.
  2. Have a positive regard for the city; recognize that it is the most strategic possible place for ministry.
  3. Neither over or under adapt to the culture of those in their surrounding neighborhood and culture.
  4. Are arts and culture-friendly; both supportive of Christian witness in “secular work” and willing to train people for cultural leadership, not just church leadership.
  5. See church planting as a ministry as natural and important as discipleship, music, education, and pastoral care.
  6. Are intensely, creatively evangelistic and effective in reaching not just people who are already raditional or conservative but who are very secular.
  7. Relentlessly emphasize and seek to build strong, “thick” counter-cultural Christian community in cities, especially through cell groups.
  8. Are holistic, ministering in both word and deed to their community and the poor in extremely creative and generous ways.
  9. Have a bias toward being multi-ethnic—seek to be at least as multi-ethnic as their neighborhood.

We spend lots of time at Park thinking about these sorts of things as we grow and expand the work that God is doing on the northside of Chicago in the city.

Filed Under: Chicago, Church, Methods & Strategies, The Arts in the City, The Cultural Conversation

SUNDAY: Why Me? Why Did I Survive?

March 24, 2007 By Leave a Comment

United Airlines Flight 232 was a scheduled flight operated by United Airlines between Denver and Philadelphia via Chicago. On July 19, 1989, the Douglas DC-10 operating this flight suffered an uncontained failure of its number 2 engine (mounted in the tail), which destroyed all three of the aircraft’s hydraulic systems. With no controls working except the power levers for the two remaining engines, it broke up during an emergency landing on the runway at Sioux City, Iowa killing 110 of its 285 passengers and one of the 11 crew members. See the video. Owing to the skill of the crew and a DC-10 instructor pilot, 175 passengers and 10 crew members survived.

Why me? Why did I survive? Why did I receive life why others died? These are some of the questions survivors were asking after surviving the crash. Our own Teaching Pastor, Ron May, was among those who survived the harrowing experience, while traveling at the time to take a deposition in a legal case, and will talk about God’s grace among the wreckage. This is an awesome opportunity for you to invite your non-churched friends to answer some of life’s real questions. Join us at Park Community Church this Sunday —we meet at Francis Parker School at 2233 N Clark Street at 9:00 am, 11:00 am and 5:30 pm.

Filed Under: Chicago, Church, Sunday Services

The Word is Out: Chicago Attracts the Young and Educated

March 24, 2007 By Leave a Comment

The Chicago Trib ran an article this month looking at the changing demographics of Chicago and the surge of post-college 20Somethings who are flocking to this great city of Chicago. People are finally beginning to see what an awesome place Chicago is to live and be missional!

The article starts off, “ As thousands of Chicagoans leave the city each year, a countervailing force is moving in: twentysomethings, whose growing presence in and near the city’s center is attracting companies to start or expand operations downtown. Kenneth Johnson, a demographer and sociology professor at Loyola University Chicago who has studied the trend, estimates Chicago’s twentysomething population at 450,000, surpassed only by New York and Los Angeles, which also are experiencing influxes of new college grads. The young newcomers, Johnson said, hail from the suburbs as well as cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland.

“Companies are finding that the key asset is no longer the highway interchange, coal vein or port,” said Richard Florida, a professor of urban policy at George Mason University. “Now, it’s this educated, skilled, innovative talent. Companies are moving to be near the kind of people that Chicago is attracting in droves.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breaking News, Chicago, The City

Materialism in our Kids Generation

March 24, 2007 By Leave a Comment

A recent article ran in the Chicago Tribune entitled “Material Kids: Wealth is a Top Priority for Today’s Youth“. How do we counteract this trend in the church?

The key statistics in the article were:

UCLA’s annual survey of college freshman, released in January 2007, found that nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in 2006 thought it was essential or very important to be “very well-off financially.” That compares with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966, the first year the survey was done.

Another recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that about 80 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds in this country see getting rich as a top life goal for their generation.

Key Takeaways:

“Our kids have absorbed the cultural values of more, easy, fast and fun,” says David Walsh, a psychologist who heads the National Institute on Media and the Family in Minneapolis. He’s also author of the new book, “NO: Why Kids — of All Ages — Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It.” As his book’s title suggests, he believes parents have played an integral role in encouraging their children’s materialism. His research found that, when adjusted for inflation, parents are spending 500 percent more money on kids today than just one generation earlier. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Family, The Cultural Conversation

Keller: Ministry in Major City Centers — Part 1

March 23, 2007 By 1 Comment


I am a big fan of Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC. I came across this excellent article of his entitled Our New Global Culture: Ministry in Major City Centers. He looks at who lives in the major global cities, like Chicago, what are the marks of a city-center culture, and how to be effective in city centers. As Park‘s vision is to renew the city, through sharing the Gospel, serving the city, expanding through church planting and multi-site with live teaching, it is helpful to use Keller’s excellent analysis to zero in on who lives among us and the ministry implications. We have learned these truths over the last 20 years and each of these shapes how we do ministry in Chicago.

1) The city-center is a culture of expertise. People who live in city centers are usually highly skilled and highly educated. Ministry implications: a) Artistic quality is very important. Amateurish art and music will not go over well, especially with the high percentage of center-city residents who are themselves artists. And the post-modern “turn” puts more emphasis on the visual, on graphics, and on embodiment. b) Commun- ication needs to be very high in quality and be highly intelligent. There is a surprising amount of anti-intellectualism within the evangelical world. (People have noticed for years that campus fellowships at Ivy League schools are often very anti-intellectual and pietistic.)

2) City-center people are living in their career. Many people work in order to come home and have a life. But city-center people essentially inhabit their careers. It is also so expensive to live in city centers that most have to work hard to make enough money to stay there. Ministry implications: You can’t just disciple people on how to be Christians in their private lives (e.g. prayer, witnessing, Bible study). Centercity people don’t have much in the way of a “private life.” If you are in finance or art or acting or medicine your vocation dominates your life and your time. Discipleship must include how to be distinctively Christian within your job, including how to handle the peculiar temptations and ethical quandaries, and how to produce work in one’s field from a distinctly Christian world-view.

3) City-center people are very sexually active and believe their sexuality is completely private—that is, their business alone. Ministry implications: There must be a lack of prudishness about sex, coupled with strong teaching on the Christian understanding of sex: that it is designed for lifetime commitment and for community-building, not personal gratification. The area of sex and gender is (currently) politically explosive, so it is crucial that teaching in this area be smart, irenic, and nuanced—in other words, carefully co-opting existing cultural narratives (about freedom, identity, and community, for example) while upholding a Biblical viewpoint. Even strong Christians in city-centers will be under great temptation to be sexually active in various ways that can undermine or destroy their spiritual effectiveness.

4) City-center people have consumer identities. Traditional culture had “thick” communities in which identity was experienced through one’s role in the family and society. Modern and post-modern culture thins out community (through mobility), and “frees” individuals to create their own identity. [Read more...]

Filed Under: The Arts in the City, The Cultural Conversation

What are YOU Expecting this Easter?

March 16, 2007 By Leave a Comment

We are getting ready for a Big Easter in the city as we do a three part series on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter on “What Are YOU Expecting?” where we will explore expectations: what people expected of Jesus, what God expected of Him and why Jesus came, died and rose from the dead. Here is the Easter graphic this year and the questions we are asking of people as they think about the resurrection at Easter:

Easter 2007

What are you expecting? People come to the city and have many expectations for their lives: job opportunities, a spouse or meaningful relationship, great friends, happiness, comfort, good times, excitement, spiritual growth, fulfillment. What are you expecting?

Many years ago, the people of Israel were looking for a king, a political leader who would lead them out of the bondage and oppression of the Romans. They welcomed Jesus on Palm Sunday with fanfare, yet less than a week later, he was hung on a cross to die a lonely death. What were they expecting?

Then on Sunday morning, several of Jesus followers went to the tomb but it was empty. What were they expecting?

We’d love to have you come to Chicago and join us this Easter season:

Park Community Church — Easter Season Services – April 6 and 8

Good Friday Services, Apr 6 — 5:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m.
Francis Parker School – Map

Easter Sunday Services, Apr 8 — 8:30 a.m. 10:00 a.m. 11:30 a.m.
Francis Parker School – Map

Filed Under: Church, Inside Park, The City

Free Starbucks Thursday

March 14, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Tomorrow, Starbucks will raise its coffee cup in honor of the daily grind by offering customers a break – a coffee break. On Thursday, March 15, 2007, from 10 a.m. to noon, complimentary, tall (12-ounce) cups of brewed coffee will be served in participating Starbucks stores across the U.S. and Canada. “The Starbucks Coffee Break is about more than just enjoying a great cup of coffee,” said Brady Brewer, director of Marketing, Starbucks Coffee Company. “In today’s hectic, overscheduled world, it’s a reminder to take a break from your day to catch up with a friend or colleague. People connect with each other every day at our coffee houses and our Coffee Break is just one more opportunity for them and others to do so.

”The Starbucks Coffee Break is coming at just the right time, according to a recent survey conducted by StrategyOne. America’s morning coffee ritual is [Read more...]

Filed Under: Breaking News, Chicago, The Cultural Conversation

Church Seat Opinions?

March 14, 2007 By Leave a Comment

We are moving along in our renovation of a 90,000 sq ft dry goods warehouse into an urban church in Chicago and would love to hear from you folks who have built churches as to who I should talk to about church seating.  We expect to have about half theater-seating and half would be stackable seating.  What are your recommendations and what are the lessons learned you can pass on in this process?

Filed Under: Church Construction

Opening for Toby Mac!

March 12, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Tonight, Park Community Church’s own Becky Johnson was opening for Toby Mac, former lead singer of DC Talk, at the Chicago House of Blues! Toby has a new album out and is revving up his new tour.

Becky is a certified talent– check out all her info and her latest songs at www.beckyjohnsonmusic.com and her MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/beckyjohnson. We are expecting a full house so if you get this in time, go check her out performance! You know, at Park, we have this One Percent vision to reach Chicago for Christ, and Becky’s personal 1% vision is to take her music to the people of Chicago in bars, pubs and other performance spots — using the gifts and talents that God has given her for the Kingdom. This will definitely be her biggest venue to date. You can purchase tickets here…. http://www.hob.com/tickets/eventdetail.asp?eventid=43821

Filed Under: The Arts in the City, The Cultural Conversation

All Paths to Dumbness?

March 11, 2007 By 1 Comment

One of my favorite bloggers is Kathy Sierra, who has been interested in the brain and artificial intelligence since her days as a game developer (Virgin, Amblin’, MGM). Her blog is Creating Passionate Users, where the discussion centers around the fascination of brains, minds and what science can tell us about the practice of making users passionate about their lives and tools. She is the co-creator of the bestselling Head First series, and she is the founder of one of the largest community web sites in the world, javaranch.com.

One of her recent posts caused me to stop and reflect as we are bombarded by more and more tech tools to “make our lives easier”.   Each day, we hear about new tools to make our lives easier. My favorite is all the computer chip stuff in our cars. Mechanics tell us “Can’t really mess with your car anymore — it needs to be hooked up to a computer for a summary analysis”(at $94), then the computer tells the mechanic what needs to be done….Are we dumbing ourselves down and creating a society of simpletons? I can totally relate to the kids and calculators part, and I really push our kids to learn and do the long-hand math…….

Here’s how she opens her blog entry:

“It’s lunchtime at the cafe and you give the cashier a $20 bill for an $8 purchase. She gives you $32.78 in change. You mention the mistake. She says, “But that’s what the cash register says I owe you.” She can’t cope with the cognitive dissonance between reality and What The Machine Said. Later that day you get a frantic call from a co-worker–a recent addition to the programming team. “I keep getting this error message that it can’t find the classes I’m using!” You ask, “By ‘it’ do you mean the compiler?” He answers “I don’t know. I’m using an IDE.” That night, you’re helping your 12-year old son with his math homework when you realize–in horror–that while he’s quite good with the calculator, he couldn’t multiply two three-digit numbers using only paper and pencil if his Wii depended on it. These tools were designed to make us more efficient, so that we can focus on something more important than the tedious task of, say, giving change, organizing source code, and doing calculations. But are they helpful timesavers, or are we dumbing ourselves–and our users–down?”

Read the excellent blog entry here.

Filed Under: Weblog

The Science of Jesus’ Tomb

March 10, 2007 By 1 Comment


There is a great amount of hype out there about the recently aired documentary, the Lost Tomb of Jesus. At Park, as a body of believers in the city and in the culture, we want to equip our folks with real information to engage with others in the Cultural Conversation and point them towards Jesus Christ. At the Leader Zone blog, our online resource for all our Park leaders, we have reviewed several good articles and have provided links so you can read all the material. Check it out and leave us a comment — what do you think about the Lost Tomb of Jesus documentary?

Filed Under: The Cultural Conversation
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