Of First Importance

The guys at Of First Importance have created a site to help us remember just that – the gospel is the center.  Each day a new quote about the gospel is posted.  They’ve created a widget and an email feed to let the quotes pop up each day.

Here’s today’s post:

“The office of the law is to show us the disease, in such a way as
to show us, at the same time, no hope of cure: the office of the gospel
is, to bring a remedy to those that were past hope. For as the law
leaves a man to himself, it condemns him, of necessity, to death; while
the gospel, bringing him to Christ, opens the gate of life.”

- John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. XX, p. 178.

Tech Roundup

Here are some of the useful online tools I’ve become aware of in the last few weeks:

Web conferencing: dimdim is a new site that lets you share your desktop, chat, and videoconferencing with  someone, for free.  Copilot is also a helpful tool.

Time Tracking: I started tracking the amount of time I spend on different projects at church, and wanted a tool where I could easily enter that time and view it by day, by project, etc.  14Dayz and Freshbooks are both free (depending on your plan), and helpful in this regard.

Database: Dabbledb is a powerful way of organizing a lot of data that is shared by multiple people.  I’ve been trying it out on one of our projects, and really like the functionality.

Logic Studio
: Apple has rolled out a new version of their high end recording software, and it includes an interface for playing your software synths off of a laptop live.  I’d be interested to see how it compares with Ableton’s Live.  (Let me know if any of you spring for it.)  Expensive, but probably a lot cheaper than a new synthesizer…

HT to Ehub for most of these.

Worship Quote of the Week

From Carl Stam’s Worship Quote of the Week:

How do we face troubles with peace, rest, and equilibrium? The ultimate
way to handle the troubles of life is not just through prayers of
petition, but through worship. . . . Worship is the act of ascribing
ultimate value to something in such a way that it engages the entire
being: mind, will, and emotions.

— Timothy J. Keller (Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City), from
a sermon on Psalm 95 and “biblical worship,” July 7, 2002.

Stam has also posted the audio of this online.  There are a number of excellent resources at the Institute for Christian Worship website.