In which I get all devotional with my bad self
I woke up this morning with Break It Down Again by Tears for Fears playing in my head.
Not a bad way to wake up at all. One particular lyric stuck in my mind:
And all the love
And all the love in the world
Can’t stop the rain from falling
My next thought was from Jesus’s sermon on the mount:
[Your Father in heaven] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
These two thoughts rushed together. All the human love in the world — it’s a nearly infinite amount — is nothing compared to God’s basic care for humanity: sunshine and rain. God’s love for us is utterly unfathomably great. No wonder the apostle Paul prays that we would be strengthened so that we could begin to understand it for ourselves.
13 May 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: god,
music,
video
Now we are all televangelists, thanks to the Internet
7 March 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: silly,
video
I'm a podrishioner
12 February 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: greg boyd,
video
Qualified to follow Jesus
If some guys named Barker, Cleese and Corbett do a sketch together, it is pretty much the law that you have to steal the idea and repurpose it for church, so I have. Here is the script:
Keep reading
8 February 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: drama,
jesus,
silly,
video
Two big names on hell
John Piper:
Tom Wright:
I find Tom Wright to be profound, compelling, inspiring and biblical. I find John Piper shouty. But that’s just me.
Via Out of Ur.
5 February 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: eternity,
video
I made another film
This one is a parable about the meaning of Christmas and incarnation.
11 January 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: films,
jesus,
stories,
video
We talked about fellowship at church
Please give generously.
20 October 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: failure,
silly,
video
We showed this at our church this morning
2 August 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: i61,
silly,
video
Everyone should watch this video...
…especially those of us who are American Christians.
Yes, but it’s too naïve and idealistic.
Oh, you mean kind of like that guy Jesus Christ was when he thought he could save the world by dying for it? Isn’t he the one we’re supposed to be following?
20 July 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: kingdom of god,
music,
non-violence,
video
Hooray for 678
In my group of kids in years six, seven and eight we are studying the parables of Jesus. Obviously, the thing to do is to write a parable. I gave them three ideas to choose from. They picked one and wrote a story. Two weeks ago we filmed it. Today is it’s worldwide premier.
I proudly present a story about the way people view God and the way God actually is and the reason God gives us commands: Daniel and the Lions.
1 March 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: children,
drama,
silly,
stories,
video
Don't (always) make things
If a sustainable life is to be less about stuff, and more about people – with few new buildings and products being made – what is there left for designers and artists to do?
A big part of the answer is to seek out daily life solutions that already exist… and then to adapt and improve them for new contexts.
As a designer my default setting is Make Something New. But there are billions of things that are Already Made. More and more the best answer is to use something already made. This applies to all areas of life, not just design.
But seeing as I am writing about design right now, have a look at the Useful things you can do with a Wii Remote:
1 November 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: cost-cutting,
design,
video
How to fight fair
Some only slightly tongue in cheek lessons on how to fight fair taken from the sword fight in The Princess Bride. This was for our weekend meetings on the theme of conflict resolution.
30 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
i61,
silly,
video
Hi, School!
This is a little event we do for students moving out of junior school and into secondary school. (For those of you outside the UK, this happens at age 11.) We’ve just finished our promo video. A short version may come later.
You can see the video in high definition and download the original 102 MB Quicktime movie on Vimeo, which is kind of cool.
27 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: children,
i61,
silly,
video,
youth
Possibly the best thing I have ever seen in my whole life
12 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: music,
silly,
video
Jeff at his best
I made a video for our church meeting morning. The theme of today’s meeting was you at your best. Here I am at my best, or something.
17 February 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: i61,
silly,
video
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
Money: Intro
This is the beginning of a series on the financial journey of the Gill family. I like stories about how people rise above difficult circumstances, but normally one hears or reads such stories after the fact when the protagonist is rich, the bad guys are dead or in jail, and all the struggle is condensed into a three-and-a-half minute song. I thought it might be nice and possibly helpful to do this one in real time with conversation along the way. So here I go. Let’s start with a slideshow about the finances of Britons I made for my church in February 2007.
When I put that slideshow together we were carrying just below the average amount of UK household debt and I was doing a very poor job of managing our finances. In my next money post I will tell the story of how we got to where we are. After that I plan to write about what we are doing to get out of our mess. Some time in the future this story should have a happy ending. I guess I’ll keep going till it does.
You are, of course, welcome to add your stories and ideas at any point.
3 January 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: money,
video
Look! Another video
This video will make no sense out of the context of the script, but watch it anyway. It’s only a minute long.
If you click on the link for the script you will notice that it takes you to a wiki site called The Crick. The Crick is the site where I post all my notes for my lessons and messages and sketches.
Why would I want to do that? Several reasons.
- It is a good place to store them.
- I can get to them no matter what computer I happen to be using.
- They are easy to share with people (e.g. actors in the sketches or you).
- Anyone can edit and improve them.
There are many, many wonderful people giving away ministry material on a billion websites all across the internet. Some look like they’ve not been touched since 1998. Others are branded up to the eyeballs so you who’s giving you all that goodness.
The thing is, for incredibly picky people like me nothing, whether free or purchased, is quite right. I always end up changing it to make it fit what I am doing. So I thought, what if lots of people could give away their stuff – and really give it away, unbranded, with no usage restrictions and open to improvement? That would be cool. And useful. In time, once enough material was on there, a creative youth or children’s minister could go to The Crick and put together their own curriculum. For free.
That’s my crazy idea. If you or someone you know might be interested, let me know in the comments or at jeff at gmail dot com. Meanwhile, if you are looking for a sketch, there are six here.
2 December 2007 Jeff Gill
tags: drama,
the crick,
video
It's the most covetous time of the year
The thing about Christmas is that it is so easy and fun to poke holes in our own greed. That is the point of this video which we showed at our church yesterday. The production values are not fantastic, but it’s not so bad for a little video camera and iMovie.
In case you are wondering…
- that is the whole Gill family
- the music ( Amy Grant and Stereophonics ) is supposed to go messed up like that
- the logo at the end is a spoof of British electrical retailer Comet
26 November 2007 Jeff Gill
tags: covet,
holidays,
i61,
video