Mark Kvamme

Silicon Valley Executive - Sequioa Capital and start up investor in youtube, yahoo etc

60 seconds

The average website has 10 seconds to get your attention.
The next 10 seconds answering 'what is this'?
The next 10 seconds answering 'can I navigate this?'

If people spend 3 minutes on your website, it's great!

In 60 seconds you can
: read 250-300 words
: type 33 words
: write 22 words

Everything is going digital and getting shorter.
Once it goes digital, it never disappears.

Communication is now becoming asynchronous. Technology was created to bring those who were far away closer. Now it is starting to move those who are closer further away.
"We will soon reminisce about evenings as a family gathered around the TV" Michael Moritz

Where to look in the future? The iphone. If it's not in my phone,does it exist?

Rethink how do I reach people who are bombarded by media?

HB London Jnr

We need to rethink how we live and what our motivations are.

Be an example

Give God the first-fruits of your time
Have healthy relationships
Get adequate rest (or you make poor decisions).
Be in a supportive relationship (accountability)
Like what you do
Be happy
Be vigilant

Bishop Charles Blake

Currently sponsoring 100,000 African orphans.

What go you here, will not get you there.

We live on a planet with great problems. We need great dreams and great faith.

Great dreams mandate great resources. Unless your dream requires a miracle, He will reduce your resources until He gets the glory of a miracle.

Charles Colson - my favourite so far!!

What is Christianity?
A view of total ultimate reality.
All of life is under the sovereign creator God.
Get away from 'God and me'

Christians need to
: understand the basic truths of Christianity
: defend the truths
: live out the truths
: explain these truths lovingly to others

It must affect the way you live.

First impressions

Faith built this place. This campus is incredible and the ladies bathroom is sensational! (They were made possible by an anonymous cash donation from someone who wanted the women of the church to know they were valued.)

Everywhere there are small written testimonies of people who have helped build this facility. One showed a lady who first got saved when she was 6, and came to one of the early services Dr Schuller ran at a drive-in movie theatre. Many years later,she gave the first $1,000,000 gift to build the welcome and hospitality centre.

It is inspiring. Faith and possibility thinking.

Christian Cultural Centre

A great church in Brooklyn - mainly an African American congregation of around 28000.
We attended the 10:30am service (although it started around 11).

Couple of observations:
1. Ushers are SO important! Having no idea what the culture is here, or where to go, and feeling a little overwhelmed having lined up and joining thousands of people coming in, it was so great having competent and helpful ushers. Those who took the initiative to notice we looked a bit lost, and help us out, were a real blessing.

2. Baby Dedications. I loved the way they did this. All the families, relatives and godparents (who had been prayerfully chosen) came up on stage. Elders and pastors all came and prayed for each family, even though the Senior Pastor lead this section. What I really loved was the way the parents all repeated (like wedding vows) a really meaningful vow of dedication of their children. Then, the families and whole congregation repeated a vow as well, relating to how they would pray for the child and care for the family.

3. Change is lead well. This was the last time baby dedications would be done in a Sunday service and this was announced while we were there. Dr Bernard had been doing a series on change, as well as obviously teaching the importance of change over years I would say. The pastor who made this announcement did in such a positive way, and reminded everyone of what Dr Bernard has always taught them. The dedications will now happen on a Saturday afternoon once a month and in a smaller venue and would be done in such a way as to make it special for the families - gifts, video of the service, worship etc. You could tell in the way this was announced, and in the way people responded that this is a church that is lead well.

4. Dr Bernard's 5 levels of renewal:
Personal renewal
Relational renewal
Renewal of purpose
Structural renewal
Cultural renewal

Rethinking....

I will be keeping a record here of some thoughts while attending Rethink...

My addiction

I have a confession to make.

My addiction has resurfaced. With the uni semester over, and the opportunity to read something other than text books or assignment related articles, I have started indulging.

I am addicted to fiction.
Good fiction.
Page turning, stay awake and read until your eyes will not stay open any longer fiction.

Sigh.... I am addicted and I love it!

The boy in the suitcase

There is a sad poetry about the boy in the suitcase. As details of his death, and short life, started to emerge this week, the boy in the suitcase was given a name, and we were shown a photo, and you could sense a palpable community grief for the loss of little Dean Shillingworth.

It was a situation that had stayed in our collective consciousness as we struggled to understand how a little boy could be missing, dead, and no-one be looking for him. And perhaps it was the sad enigma of this story that meant we identified with it so strongly when we discovered who this little boy was.

Dean's death is a tragedy. That his brothers and sisters have to grieve their loss is a tragedy. That his mother has to live with what can only be the greatest regret and pain is a tragedy.

Reading the reports of his sad death, I was reminded that hurting people hurt themselves and others.

We live in a hurting world.

Our response? To weep, and to do what we can, in the lives of those around us, to bring healing and comfort. Government departments can't solve this problem alone. Caring communities, friends, and family however, can provide a powerful part of the solution. And rhe truth of God’s love has the power to heal the broken-hearted.

Evan Almighty

Great article here about the guy who directed Bruce Almighty and the soon to be released - Evan Almighty.

Worth reading!

Great food for thought

"The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose." - C.S. Lewis

Fasting

I am sitting here working on an assignment, and snacking on - wait for it - mung beans and alfafa sprouts! What has the world come to!
And I'm excited about my dinner tomorrow night of brown rice, silverbeet and natural yoghurt. You have to laugh....
Our bodies will be so healthy by the end of this fast.

Why the UN's relevance is teetering

This is a ridiculous joke..

Zimbabwe was voted as the head of the UN Commission on Sustainable Economic Development (CSD) last week. Considering their economy has inflation of about 1200% and their people have no electricity or running water and not a lot of food because their government policies have destroyed their agriculture and much of their country... please! Why does lunacy continue to parade as respectability?

Someone needs to point out that the Emperor has no clothes...

Beautiful teas

I went to a great place last night with some girls. Called Batavia, it is a tea and coffee place that is modelled on the style of the East Indies.

Being a lover of coffee, I surprised myself at how taken I was with a type of tea they had - I even bought the take home bag and am drinking my way through it today as I do my assignment! It is called something like - a watergarden tea, and is white tea, wrapped tightly around a flower in a ball. When you pour hot water over it, it slowly blooms - quite amazing!

Anyway, I have been deciding whether to continue this blog as my postings have slowed down considerably. I'm still deciding....

Daily discipline

A great article - excerpt below

Laws of Lifetime Personal Growth By Dr. John C. Maxwell

....... Rarely will you find a person committed to a comprehensive personal growth plan into their 30’s, 40’s, or beyond.

As children we grew year after year, sometimes in spurts, sometimes imperceptibly, but our bodies were always growing. The growth of a leader can be similar. At times, it may feel like the wheels are spinning and no headway is being made. In other seasons, new breakthroughs and victories are clear indicators of a growth spurt. To grow consistently, the key is to manage your daily agenda. I wish I could pass along an easier solution or secret formula for leadership growth, but daily discipline makes all the difference between growth and stagnation.

The greatest of these....

This last week has seen some interesting correspondence develop between myself and someone I met through my writing. This other person largely disagrees with pretty much everything I believe in. As I read some of the correspondence, which basically likened me to Hitler, and reflected on it, I found myself growing in compassion for the person who wrote it, which almost surprised me.

I feel like I am growing in grace - not as quickly as I would like sometimes but it's a start! I am aware of the logical inconsistencies in their correspondence, and the fact that they have misrepresented me, yet I have been able to let go of the emotions that generates more quickly than I thought. I feel for them, and wish they knew the unconditional love of Christ. And I am aware that they will only see it reflected in people like myself. There is a time for everything under the sun.... this is a time to love.

Faith, hope and love... the greatest of these is love.

Interesting times ahead perhaps...

Christian Magistrate Andrew McClintock has lost his case to have his freedom of conscience recognised when practising as a Justice of the Peace. The decision by the Sheffield Employment Tribunal means that Mr McClintock, will not be able to serve on the Family Panel, even though the Tribunal recognised his "unblemished record and the high regard in which he is held by the Department of Constitutional Affairs".

Difficulties first arose for Mr McClintock when he considered the implications of same-sex adoption on which he was forced to rule. He became concerned that a tension existed between his Christian beliefs in the Biblical model of the family and his work as a Magistrate. In March 2004, Mr McClintock raised his difficulties with the Chairman of the Family Panel at Sheffield. Mr McClintock was not asking for a change in the law, rather he was requesting that his religious conscience should be accommodated, and that he should be "screened" from cases which might require him to adopt children in to same-sex households. He also expressed his concern that children could be put at risk by the untried social experiment of same-sex adoption, in which vulnerable children were being used as "guinea pigs". The Employment Tribunal rejected Mr McClintock's claim that he had been discriminated against because of his religious beliefs.

Commenting on the judgment, Andrea Williams of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship said: "This is yet another example of the repression of Christian conscience and signals the erosion of Christian values at the expense of our children's welfare. Andrew McClintock believes that the best interests of the child are served by placing them in a situation where they would have both a mother and a father and therefore he could not agree to participate in gay adoption. This case demonstrates what will happen as greater numbers of men and women of integrity are forced to choose between applying a law which runs contrary to their fundamental Christian belief or obeying their conscience. The imposition of secular values in every aspect of our lives will force those who hold Christian beliefs out of jobs."

Andrew McClintock commented: "This ruling is going to make it harder for many conscientious people. Anyone who holds seriously to traditional morals and family values will think twice before taking on such a job. There will be more children now whom the courts remove from one kind of harm, but only to face another hazard. So, more needy children will be fuelling this experiment in social science, and suffering what the experts call mother-hunger or father-hunger."

Doctors fight to save wrongly aborted baby's life

ITALIAN doctors are struggling to save the life of a 500g baby boy wrongly aborted after hospital tests misdiagnosed a deformity.

The child's mother aborted 22 weeks into the pregnancy after doctors from the Florentine teaching hospital, Careggi, told her two ultrasound scans showed a high risk of a defective oesophagus. But when the fetus was aborted, heart still beating, doctors realised the child had been perfectly healthy, and rushed to resuscitate him.

Weighing just half a kilogram, the baby suffered a brain haemorrhage during the abortion and doctors doubt he will survive.

Read the whole article here

Sad news

Australian youths are drinking themselves to death at an alarming rate and Australia's drinking problem has become a national crisis. That's according to Bill Stronach, chief executive of the Australian Drug Foundation.

Figures released by the Victorian government revealed that half of all 16- to 24-year olds binge drink at least once a month. The report found 194 young deaths were attributed to alcohol in the last four years. A further 2,135 young people were seriously injured in road accidents and 11,455 drank themselves into hospital, and that is in Victoria alone. Alcohol also fuelled more than 8,800 assaults and almost 5,000 family incidents.

The figures are contained in the Victorian Alcohol Statistics Handbook. Author Dr Anne-Marie Laslett said it was staggering that more than 300,000 young Victorians drank to excess each month. Health Minister Bronwyn Pike launched the handbook, saying it was a serious wake-up call. "Alcohol is second only to tobacco as a drug that causes high levels of disease and death," Ms Pike said. "It's terrifying to see that more than 300,000 people risk serious injury or possible death at least once a month through drinking irresponsibly."

Mr Stronach said Australia's drinking problem was getting worse and the victims younger, labelling it a national crisis. "Australia's infatuation with intoxication costs 4,000 Australian lives each year and another 70,000 people are hospitalised," he said. "We get terribly upset when illegal drug users commit violence or die but we ignore the daily mayhem that results from determined and deliberate dangerous drinking."

Source: Compiled by APN from media reports

Great quote!!!

"And don't be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God's place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there. God, not your marital status, defines your life. " - 1 Cor. 7:17a (MSG)