This weekend at Hillsong we launched our vision for 2010. There’s some cool plans for the year ahead…. A new church in Moscow, Reaching out to the needy at the World Cup in South Africa and probably the most exciting news, a new church in New York City!
For more info check out this video. If you aren’t interested in our vision watch the video anyways, the videography is amazing!
Vision Sunday 2010 from Hillsong Church on Vimeo.
29 days ago I started out on an adventure to read the complete Bible in one year. Sounds quite simple really, start in Genesis finish in Revelation, right? Well…. yes I could do that but one of my key objectives is to gain a better feel of how the 66 separate books slot together in terms of time.
The best way to fully understand events, people, places, prophecies and how they link together in a timescale is to take a chronological approach at reading the Bible.
The website YouVersion.com recently launched a ‘Reading Plans’ feature. Their superb range of studies differ in length and cover a wide range of Biblical subjects. You can image my excitement then when I discovered a chronological study which lasted 365 days.
29 days into my reading plan I have read almost all of Genesis and all of Job. Interestingly Job slotted in between Genesis 11 & 12 (who would have thought it?).
I’m really enjoying this plan so far and I look forward to learning more and more in the coming months. I’d also like blog my way through this journey if for no other reason than personal reference.
A few weeks ago I was having lunch with Phil (our new placement student) when we started talking about web galliers, such as ‘bestwebgalley’ and ‘cssremix’. We both visited these sites often and found lots of inspiration in them however we noticed there was a massive lack of designs related to Christianity.
In terms of religion (i sadly have to use that word) or global movements Christianity is light years ahead of the rest when it comes to volumn and quality of our sites. So why shouldn’t there be a site deadicated to promoting the very best Christian websites from around the world. Well after some more chatting we decided to give it a go and create such a site.
Over the last few weeks BestChristianDesign has been branded and coded behind the scenes and is really taking shape. This is a very exciting time as we’re hoping this site will have a big impact in promoting our faith to a whole new group of people within the design industry.
BestChristianDesign.com is due to launch on Wednesday 22nd July 2009
I’m pretty excited today over something most of you will not find interesting in the slightest but for me its a cool moment. stephencostello.com has finally made it onto a web gallery. it basically means someone actually thought my site was good enough to allow onto their gallery.
I’m hoping this will the site known throughout designer circles. The ultimate would be getting onto devinecss.com or even bestwebgallery.com but that will come in time folks for now you can view my site at the wpcount.com gallery. Check it out and givme a rating (a good one)!
Sometimes its so hard to see God from a different point of view. We so often think of Him as being single sided, but the truth is God is filled with mystery and none of us can truly understand it. Here’s a litte paragraph from a Matt Redman book which helps us understand the many sides of God and His personality.
“The God we worship is clothed in mystery. He reveals and He conceals. He invites and He hides. He confounds and He confides. The God who rests but never sleeps, who thunders and whispers, terrifies and befriends; whose anger lasts only a moment, but whose favour lasts a lifetime. All-consuming, yet kind. All-knowing, yet capable of forgetting the sins He forgives. The God who wounds and binds up, who injures and heals. The King whose footstool is the earth, yet who humbly washed the earth from the feet of those He discipled. Who reigns in righteousness, yet carried our shamefulness. Who walked in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day, yet sweated drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane one agonising night. The God of the smallest detail and the grandest design, who issued ornate designs for an extravagant temple, yet found pleasure in the humblest offering of a widow‘s two tiny coins there. The suffering servant who commands the universe. The sinless friend of sinners. The Saviour who hung in agony on beams of wood He Himself had called into being. Fearsome yet welcoming. Unfathomable, yet knowable. The God of kings and beggars, presidents and paupers. Who fathers the fatherless and works through our weakness. Burning with holiness, yet refreshingly graceful. This is the God we worship – the God of all mystery.”
Sami Hyypia has stumped up almost £23,000 to rescue a Merseyside hospital charity appeal. The Kop veteran stepped in to make up the shortfall for a playroom at a new Arrowe Park children’s accommodation complex, which is being named after the late broadcaster Phil Easton.
The 35-year-old heard about Radio City’s Cash for Charity appeal to help fund a seven-room £850,000 Ronald McDonald House in Wirral. Hyypia said: “My youngest boy was born in Arrowe Park and from my own experience I know the fantastic work that the staff do. “As a parent myself I realise how difficult it must be if a child is being treated in hospital for a serious illness and I wanted to make some contribution to enable this facility to be built.”
After hearing about the appeal, Sami rang the radio station and promised to meet any shortfall needed to reach the £50,000 target. Radio City breakfast DJ Simon Ross said: “This is incredibly generous of Sami. We can’t thank him enough. “His kindness will help families across Merseyside – regardless of what football team they support!”
Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez and defender Jamie Carragher got behind the appeal by recording messages of support. And Reds captain Steven Gerrard is set to donate his shirt from next week’s Real Madrid Champions League clash at Anfield. The Ronald McDonald House is due to be built at the Wirral hospital later this year giving parents and families of sick youngster’s a free place to stay.
Toy retailer ToysRUs has paid $5.1m (£3.6m) for the Toys.com domain name. The amount has surprised onlookers and hints at a deeper commitment to online retailing for the toy giant. It is believed to be the biggest payout for a domain this year but has some way to go to beat the $14m paid for sex.com in 2007 or the $9.5m paid for porn.com. UK domain name seller Sedo said it had seen prices halved for .co.uk domain names since the economic downturn started to take hold.
A new spectacular image has been taken of the Helix nebula – one of the most beautiful objects in the night sky. The photo was taken at the European La Silla Observatory in Chile using a special camera attached to a telescope. The Helix is a sun-like star and is in its final explosion stage before it retires into a white dwarf. Shells of gas are blown off the star’s surface often in intricate patterns that are lit up by the ultra-violet radiation. The nebula is often called the ‘Eye of God’ due to its strong resemblance to a giant eye peering out of space.
Helix nebula is about 700 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius. It has been studied in much more detail than other planetary nebulae due to its relatively close proximity to Earth. Although the shape of the Helix resembles a doughnut, scientists believe it consists of at least two separate discs with outer rings and filaments. The main ring is about two light years across, which equates to about half the distance between the Sun and its nearest star.
A friend sent me the follow message on facebook last week. I followed the instructions and posted my album artwork below… give it a go and post your artwork!
1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.
It took just four weeks to organise – but thanks to the power of social media, today 20,000 people in 185 cities are hoping to raise £700,000 for charity. Amanda Rose, the founder of Twestival, took time out from her last minute preparations to speak to Sky News Online. “The Twestival is a Twitter festival, put together by volunteers. “It’s bringing people who met on the web together offline, to meet for a social cause, in over 185 cities across the world.” Twitter is a microblogging website that allows its users to communicate with each other in short, snappy text updates.
It has grown from a small network of San Francisco web entrepreneurs in 2006 to a major global network, boasting Barack Obama, Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross among its most popular users. And, through the power of online networking, over 1,000 volunteers across the world from Beijing to Brighton, Dallas to Dhaka will be hosting Twestival events.
The aim is to raise £700,000 for charity: water, which helps bring clean drinking water to people in developing countries. It is an idea Amanda and her co-founders had last September, when a group of Twitter users met in London to socialise and raise money for a local homeless charity. The event was a great success so they decided to have another go, and were blown away by the response.
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