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The Day My Blog Was Hijacked and How to Protect Yours

By Culture, Encouragement

One day this week, I was sitting at my desk and clicked on my blog home page. What I saw was the screenshot in this post, combined with a eerie instrumental tune. I had been hacked by so-called “Turkish Hackers”. I panicked and instantly called the one who maintains my blog (Thank you Tony!) He tells me the hackers replaced my index page with their own. To fix it, he downloaded the latest version from wordpress.org and uploaded the default index.php file to replace the hacked one. (I don’t understand how to do that, but that’s what he said he did.) My Twitter feed then went wild with people asking me what I did or what they could do to protect their blog.

One of our resident tech gurus (Thanks Jim) at Grace Community Church offers these suggestions to protect yourself from being hacked:

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November 20, 2010
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Could God Be Stirring Something New in Your Heart?

By Call to Ministry, Church, Encouragement, Missions

Changes…

I talk to people every week who are struggling in their current ministry assignment. Sometimes ministry produces a mindset that what you are doing now you’ll always be doing or that you are somehow less than holy if you are considering other opportunities. I don’t know that that feeling can always be supported Scripturally.

God never promised everything would be the same. In fact, God seems to like change as I follow Him. Consider the amount of movement in the Apostle Paul’s ministry. He seemed to experience a great deal of change. If you are experiencing burnout, frustration, and even a little restlessness, could God be shaping you for something else?

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November 20, 2010
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Friday Discussion: Are The New TSA Travel Requirements Fair?

By Business, Change, Culture, Innovation, Leadership

What’s your opinion?

Since 9/11traveling has become much more difficult and time consuming. Our government has assumed new responsibilities as we travel. I am thankful for the diligence of people involved in keeping us safe. Their work should never be taken for granted.

The most active story on my radar this week, however, has been that of the new TSA restrictions on travel.

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November 19, 2010
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7 Ways Fraternity Life Shaped Me For Ministry (Guest Post)

By Business, Church, Culture, Leadership

Recently I had the opportunity to meet with a group of my Sigma Chi fraternity brothers from college. Some of them I have seen, but not really connected with in twenty years. It was fun, good to remember old times, and reminded me that they had made positive impacts on my life. I was a crazy college student sometimes, but the experience has since been used for good many times.

Right after that hang out time, I Tweeted that I should write a post about what I learned in my fraternity days that helped prepare me for ministry. I got lots of reaction, but one in particular appeared to be it’s own post.

Ky Bishop is currently Pastor Of Ministries at Woodlands Church in Houston Texas where Kerry Shook is Senior Pastor. He’s been married 25 years to Terri and they have 3 sons ranging from 16 to 20 years of age. Ky lists his fraternity experience as Delta Tau Delta – UTA – 81

Here are 7 ways Ky’s fraternity experience prepared him for ministry:

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November 16, 2010
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Just Be Glad It’s Not a Pumpkin

By Christians, Devotional, Encouragement, Funny, God

I don’t know where this story originated. If you are the author, let me know and I’ll give you proper credit. I heard it years ago and was reminded of it again today. It may seem a bit corny, but lately I’ve been in a corny mood.

Sometimes we are tempted to question God. I think that’s okay…I even did a whole sermon about that yesterday. I’ll post it later on this blog. In the end, however, we have to realize that God has answers we do not have.

This cute little story illustrates that principle well:

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November 15, 2010
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Great Leaders Don’t Take Opportunities Just Because They Can

By Business, Church Planting, Innovation, Leadership

Part of being a good leader is not taking opportunities even though you can. Sometimes letting your staff do something you could do, maybe even would like to do, is a better for the entire team.

When we launched our church eleven couples took a risk on a dream we felt God was leading us to pursue. We empowered this core team to do things the way they felt best doing them, as long as they were achieving the vision we knew God was calling us to achieve. We encouraged them to explore new ideas, become experts in their field of interest, and then released them to dream and build. It became part of our DNA and we are still allowing people to explore new opportunities.

For example,

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November 15, 2010
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The Speed of Light

By Christians, Devotional, Encouragement, God

How great is God–beyond our understanding! The number of His years is past finding out. Job 36:26

I remember some time ago reading that a scientist believes they have actually sent light faster than the “speed of light”…or …at least what they thought to be the speed of light. I read the article and I have to admit, although I didn’t understand it completely, I was impressed with their research.

Do you know, however, what the story didn’t tell me?

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November 14, 2010
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10 Tweets that Didn’t Make the Cut

By Culture, Funny

Contrary to popular opinion I don’t Tweet everything I think about. I’m a random thinker, so there are many times I think of something, but decide, for whatever reason, it’s not Tweet-worthy.

Don’t believe me? I decided to capture a list of times I decided not to tweet something over a couple days. (That’s another value of Evernote. Read my post about it HERE and never lose an idea…or a Tweet!)

Here are 10 tweets that didn’t make the cut, followed in parenthesis by an explanation of why I didn’t send it:

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November 13, 2010
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7 Funniest Verses in the Bible (Plus One)

By Christians, Funny, Jesus

I have often chuckled when I’ve read the following verses. I’m not trying to be irreverent and hope this is not offensive, but sometimes I read the stories in the Bible and I see the humanity of people. I can hear myself making some of these statements. It brings a smile to my face and I can’t help but laugh.

Here are 7 of the funniest verses I have read in Scripture:

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November 11, 2010
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