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Art/Film/Literature

Saturday Night at The Heeremas

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

(Matt and Nancy sitting across from each other at the dinner table, each messing with their computers…)

Matt: humming annoying song

Nancy: “If you’re trying to impress me, that song isn’t helping.”

Matt: “What if I tried a different one.”

Nancy: Rolls eyes

Matt: sings “You never close your eyes, anymore whe…”

Nancy: interrupting “Okay, THAT makes me want to close […]

Speak with Authority

Friday, October 26th, 2007

I love this poem. I found it (and thought I linked to it, though apparently not) a couple years ago somewhere. It’s great to hear it spoken. This man is a word smith. Preachers take note. In 3 minutes he give a coherent, compelling, memorable, important thought.

“Totally Like Whatever” by Taylor […]

An Artist’s Inspiration

Monday, October 15th, 2007

“Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a theif. They all kill their inspiration and then sing about their grief.”

U2 - The Fly

(The above quote has little to do with this article other than it’s by one of my inspirations, and it’s about art and inspiration :-D)

Every artist has their inspirations. Almost […]

Cheap Worship

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

Kathy feels we need to unplug… to turn it down. I don’t disagree. (In fact, I do agree.)

We need more quiet reflection, and deeper study of God’s word. We need shared meals, more prayer, more confession (to one another). We need more proclamation of God’s amazing grace and righteous judgment (maybe […]

Church Drama Set to Lifehouse’s ‘Everything’

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

I’m not quite sure what to title this post. All I know is that people are calling this a skit but it’s not. It’s an extremely well done piece of performance art. Not sure if they had the rights to use Lifehouse’s song all coordinated or anything like that, but I’m not […]

Next Narnia Movie: Prince Caspian

Friday, June 8th, 2007

Production on the next Narnia movie is underway. You can track the progress on the movie’s blog (which is really just an overly complex flash Web site…). It sounds like they are restructuring the story a bit. Hope they don’t ruin it :(

Video after the break because it was auto-playng.

Joshua Blankenship on Christian Art, Parody, and Creativity

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

Preach it, brother!!!!

When a church (or Christian organization, or Christian designer) takes existing art and media, makes poor parodies of it (that they probably made in a few days because refuse to plan well), and then distributes it under the guise of creativity it completely devalues the work and skills of the artists […]

C.S. Lewis - The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

Paul got me into a great collection of essays by the highly quotable C.S. Lewis called The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays. Beautiful.

A few especially quotable excerpts:

On the implications of God being who He says He is.

If human life is in fact ordered by a beneficent being whose knowledge of our real […]

Current Reading: Christ The Center - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Monday, February 12th, 2007

After my recent foray into the world of modern emerging church movements in “Confessions of a Reformission Rev.” and “Organic Church“, I thought I would go back to the classics, to some dead theologians whose lives we know we can respect, while the Jury is still out on Neil Cole and Mark Driscoll (both through […]

C.S. Lewis On Excellence

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

Paul showed me this quote the other day. I think it captures the heart of why I am passionate about excellence in our ministry (our music, our Web site, our promotions, our speaking, everything…).

“‘Great works’ (of art) and ‘good works’ (of charity) had better also be good work. Let choirs sing […]

Current Reading and Listening

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

You can see in my footer that I’ve updated Nancy and my current reading and listening. You can see that Nancy is a bit more spiritual and classic than I, and I a bit more “pomo” and hip than her. (hehe…)

Matt Reading: Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church […]

Face To Face: Shoot The Moon

Saturday, January 6th, 2007

Merry Christmas to me.

Pat tipped me off to this wonderful piece of Punk Rock amazingness. I have been a Face to Face fan since I was introduced in 2000-ish, which was entirely too late to catch much of them live. This DVD make me feel that I’m making up for lost time. […]

Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

This was in my “Web site-ings” sidebar yesterday, but I felt it deserved it’s own post.

The Fantastic Four sequel: “The Rise Of The Silver Surfer” is coming July 15th this year. This is the teaser trailer and is an amazing chase scene. If you want good quality, head over to the official F4:Silver […]

The Chronicles of Narnia: Father Christmas

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

It’s probably not exactly legal to post this, but I thought this would be good for a little post-Christmas reading.

From The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. Chapter 10

It was a sledge, and it was reindeer with bells on their harness. But they were […]

Movies: Kingdom Of Heaven

Thursday, November 16th, 2006

I finally got around to seeing Kingdom of Heaven last night with Dave Powers (to celebrate our birthdays…)

Weak.

I LOVE movies of this genre, the epic “knights doing battle against the forces of evil” gets me every time. The problem is, the core message of this movie is: “Religion is dumb, can’t we all just […]

Lost: Season 3 Starts Tonight!

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

The only TV show I’ve really “gotten into” in recent history is Lost. When the season 1 DVD set came out, my parents bought it and lent it to me. I watched the whole thing. The story is compelling, the characters are amazing, everything one could want in a good show. […]

Porn, Sex Slavery - The Constance Video

Thursday, September 7th, 2006

“Constance” By Mr J of The Procussions.

This is probably the best hip-hop/rap song I’ve ever heard. Ever. Telling a very hard store about a shocking reality in our country: The pervasiveness of child pornography, and the sex slave trade that fuels it. Men, if you struggle with porn (which most of you […]

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

Wednesday, July 5th, 2006

“Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is lined up to play the swashbuckling father of a pirate in the third installment of the”Pirates of the Caribbean”series, star Johnny Depp said Tuesday.”

Several cool things:

Keith Richards in a movie A third ‘Pirates’ movie (I think Jack Sparrow is one of my favorite movie characters in a while. Depp stole a […]

Chris Tomlin: The Way I Was Made

Wednesday, June 14th, 2006

I finished reading The Way I Was Made this weekend. (I had started it months ago when I got a pre-release copy, but as I tend to do with most books, I stalled out in chapter 3.)

In the book, Chris walks us through how he got started as a worship leader, how […]

Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi

Wednesday, June 7th, 2006

One of my goals for this summer is to read more. I have just finished And Now Let’s Move into a Time of Nonsense: Why Worship Songs Are Failing the Church by Nick Page and hopefully I’ll find it in my to write a decent review of the book, which, by the way, […]