A notable new blog
My beloved wife and former writer here is gracing the internets once again with her poetic and insightful writing on children’s ministry over at the the official i61 Kids blog.
21 August 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
children,
church,
i61
Tum tum te tumblr
I have this blog on Tumblr and I’m posting to it more and more and I love it because it is so easy and fun and I don’t feel the need to improve it. My thinking at the moment is that the beloved D Train is going to reserved for writing about Important Things for now at least.
Bonus: My Tumblr blog automatically imports anything I write here.
27 March 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
writing
Beware of bold pronouncements
Over the last few months I have enjoyed some serious world-rockage thanks to Surprised by Hope by Tom Wright, Starting a House Church by Larry Kreider and Floyd McClung, and The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, plus a bunch of podcasts from Greg Boyd and Rob Bell. Now it’s the bible’s turn.
Over the next three to five weeks I plan to read the New Testament. I will be looking specifically at what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus, both individually and as a community of Christians on a mission. The purpose of this is not to know more stuff, rather, I want to make whatever changes are necessary to orient my life around God’s mission on Earth (John 3:16) and my place in that mission through the new birth (John 3:3).
This is more of a read-and-reflect than a study, so I will be using my handy dandy TNIV Books of The Bible. I plan to write about what I read here. And I’m off…
10 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
books,
change,
church,
community,
kingdom of god,
nt
In case you were wondering
Blogs and other things on the interwebs that one or both of us like, not including the dreaded Facebook or most of Flickr.
Friends & Family
Alex and Tara
i61 – our church
Rachel Devine
Joy Unexpected
Tony Allen Mills
Kids International Ministries
Steve & Gill Houghton – our pastors
Other Ministry & Church Stuff
The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus
Children’s Ministry and Culture – one of my favourites
Floyd & Sally McClung – pioneers of missional ministry, pioneering again in South Africa
Greg Boyd’s Blog – my very favourite blog
Letters from Kamp Krusty – American Christian culture is funny
Learning from Sophie
Naked Pastor
One for the road… – Hooray for more Paul Mayers!
Out of Ur – Christianity Today’s leadership blog
Environment, Sustainability & Peak Oil
Doors of Perception
The Archdruid Report – my second favourite blog – the insights into human beings and civilisations are superb
Design, Illustration & Type
Exljbris – free quality font foundry
Illustration Art – beautiful pictures, sharp commentary
The Johnson Banks Thought for the Week
Marian Bantjes – my favourite illustrative designer
Everything Else
Blue Sky Living – positive (but not cheesy) living
Flagrant Disregard
The Happiness Institute
Sasha Dichter’s Blog
Seth Godin’s Blog
Funny/interesting people on Twitter
9 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging
Play
And we’re back.
9 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
change
Pause
D Train is taking a break for a while. Hopefully we will be back fairly soon. Meanwhile, we’ll catch you on Facebook or something.
Happiness,
Jeff
7 December 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
change
My important blog
For me, life is about connections. Synapses in your brain, hugging someone you love, flying halfway around the world – it’s all about connecting. One of the ways I like to keep my connections interesting is to read widely online.
Using Google Reader I follow an archdruid, an open theist, a naked pastor, a koala in Scotland, one of Britain’s best designers, a senior karate instructor in Hawaii, a director at Acumen Fund and a lot of other great, intelligent, witty people.
I learn a lot from them. Because the Google people are clever, I can choose the best of what I read and share it on this page:
If you were subscribed to this page over the last couple weeks you would have learned about planting the gospel vs. planting churches, why trust is more useful to you than hard facts, a great free day out with your kid, the startling news about evangelical teens and sex, why previews are better than reviews, and much more.
Please have a look and a read. Maybe add the feed to your Google Reader. If your reading is interesting and varied too, why not start sharing? A lot of people are probably interested in the best of your blogroll.
4 November 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
community
Eight reasons not to use lists
Keith Johnson is the Ah Ha Architect for Group Publishing. I don’t know what that means, but I think he’s great, especially when he lets rip with a rant on the blog he writes with Larry Shallenberger. His most recent is majestic with ALL CAPS and bold type and exclamation marks!!!. The article is great but his comment (No. 5) is my favourite:
Try this instead: “Have One Point”!!! That’s It! And state, “this was my observation, and you might have another one, that is why I left point #2 BLANK…
Go have a read. It will get you all hyped up for your pastor’s Sunday sermon.
28 September 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
church,
failure
The ongoing journey to freedom
Are you reading Paul and Sonya Armstrong’s blog posts about how they are getting out of debt yet? Start now!
We tried numerous times to curb our spending; sell things we didn’t need, look at our budget (bought books on budgets and management of money, software and programs). And it came in spurts. When the bills piled up and we felt like we were breaking, we got “real serious” about our spending. But we’d go right back to our pattern. I’d get something at McDonald’s or Chick-Fil-A or Wendy’s for lunch, I’d buy a CD, something for my camera, get office supplies; Sonya would buy inexpensive shoes for the kids, clothes at Target, we’d eat out every now and then (to be with friends, etc). Little things. None of them wrong, but it gave us a small excuse to avoid real change. Change that went beyond numbers. We resisted a first step in a real direction toward change.
At the heart our problems was fear…
27 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
cost-cutting,
debt,
failure,
money,
quotes
The Mustang 1
This is me in my first car, a 1965 Ford Mustang 2+2. I had it from about age 17 to 19 (1991-1993). It was the coolest and fastest car in my circle of friends. It had a 302 cubic inch engine (sadly not the original 289), three speed manual transmission (who needs gears when you have that much power?), and an original – but non-working AM radio (which was fine because it had dual exhausts with no mufflers). My dad and I restored it together.
This car, how I got it and why I got rid of it will be the subject of my next few posts in which I will write about the Word of Faith movement, free will and miracles.
18 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
church,
kingdom of god
I thought I would...
…try a little post from my iPhone 3G.
That’s all.
12 July 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging
Rearranging the deck chairs
I moved things around on the edges of the ol’ blog today. The only real change of note is the feed of stuff I think is worth sharing (top right, just under Christine’s latest photo).
There are many people who write more important, more interesting things than I do. Thanks to Google I can share the best of it with you. It tends to be stuff focussed on children’s and youth ministry, some interesting theology, and mind expanding insights from the Archdruid and the Martial Artist. Feel free to subscribe or visit my ninja-themed* shared items page.
*Choice was limited; ‘ice cream’ and ‘sea’ didn’t appeal to me.
15 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging
Blogging will turn you into a self-righteous [insert naughty noun of your choice here]
It’s easy. Just make sure your feed reader is stocked with a steady supply of bloggers you agree with. Make sure you cut out most of the non-Jesus blogs so that all your culture comes filtered and packaged like a carton of Tesco Value apple juice. When you are not online, try to be in your church office. It’s comfortable there. Read enough rants conversations about Mark Driscoll/John Piper/Bill Gothard/Some Other Reformed and/or Fundamentalist White Male to be at least strongly tempted to write something about him yourself – nevermind that he’s on a different continent and spends a big chunk of his life trying to connect people with Jesus. Once you’ve got all that in place, sit back and enjoy the slide into becoming exactly the same kind of [naughty noun] that only a few years ago made you think seriously about whether or not you actually could carry on being a Christian for much longer. Don’t think twice about any of this until your 15 year-old throws out a statement like, ‘You don’t like anything that’s different.’ Immediately deny it and try to ignore its truth by reminding yourself that you aren’t narrow like all those other people. You’re just right. You’re a pastor at the hottest church in [your region], for crying out loud. Carry on with some success until you start to prepare to talk to your teenagers about an area or two where they aren’t acting like Jesus. After you have been crushed by the weight of your hypocrisy, you might find repentance is the best tool for re-inflating your lungs.
2 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
church,
humans
Essential reading for youth ministers
Design project deadlines and Easter deadlines are keeping me from writing the ten blog posts in my head and adding a new section to the site. Nevermind. In the meantime, all people who are involved with church and teenagers must read this blog: Once a Youth Pastor
Personal experience in youth ministry shows me that the #1 indicator of a teen’s spiritual longevity and commitment is the degree to which parents are involved in their kid’s spiritual development. The #2 indicator is the degree in which a teen connects with an older spiritual mentor outside the youth group.
Got it? #1 is parents. #2 is mentors. That’s the starting point for the reasoning that follows.
Now, what do most churches with “effective” youth ministries do? They hire a youth pastor.
I’ve come to believe that this is one of the biggest barriers to #1 and #2 happening! That’s right. In most places, the presence of a youth pastor is the biggest barrier to overcome.
Also related are these two articles that Christine and I wrote about a year ago: Community and Youth ministry is broken, but should we fix it?
17 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
church,
youth
Sunday evening reading
Tia Lynn has started a very promising series on God’s design for women at Abandon Image. She starts here with good definitions of egalitarianism and complementarianism. Her second post speaks brilliantly about NOT glorifying the consequences of the curse of Genesis 3. And I love the fourth post about Deborah. It shows the things you can find in the bible when you are willing to put aside your grid and read what the text actually says.
Greg Boyd has written a very good (and long) review of Chuck Colson’s latest book God and Government: An Insider’s View on the Boundaries Between Faith and Politics.
9 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
books,
greg boyd,
kingdom of god,
women
Her humps
While we are all waiting around for me to have time to write the next installment in our money story, let’s watch Alanis Morrisette’s rather brilliant satirical cover of the Black Eyed Peas song My Humps.
In that same vein, have a read of Tia Lynn’s article on the book Ten Lies the Church Tells Women and my Seven Cheers for St Paul.
28 January 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
leadership,
music,
silly,
video,
women
Jeff said I have to write again
Jeff said that this blog was nothing without me. Jeff said that if I wrote something here our popularity would go through the roof and people would be clambouring, begging, offering large amounts of money etc, for D-Train T-shirts, D-Train coasters, D-Train hoodies and mouse mats…
We’ll See. Maybe I’ll start writing stuff. For now, I’ll inform you all that… I Turned 30 Yesterday.
30!
Shock, Shock, Horror.
11 January 2008 Christine Gill
tags: blogging
I, Jeffrey Gill, do solemnly resolve...
… to be a better blogger in 2008.
Earlier I blamed Christmas busy-ness for my recent lack of substantive posts. But I must also accept some of the blame because of the amount of time I spend with my 58 blog subscriptions on Google Reader.
So here is my rule for 2008: Write first. I will write something for this here blog every day (pretty much) before I go read what other people are writing. I won’t post an article every day, but I will aim to at least one and preferably two substantive posts a week here.
Happy new year.
Amen.
30 December 2007 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging