Supernatural Church

These are my slides for the Friday’s men’s group lesson I’m teaching on the final chapter (“Supernatural Church”) of Francis Chan’s 2009 book, “Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit.” Thanks to my mom who gave me a scrapbook from my freshman year at the Air Force Academy this week. I used the free Google iPhone app PhotoScan to scan several photos from basic training and that fall at USAFA, which I incorporated into this presentation and slideshow.

Family Faith Story Sharing Challenge

Since our regular Sunday School teacher has come down with the flu and is also planning to travel out of town over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I’m going to have an opportunity to teach as a substitute the next two Sundays. Our teacher gave me the green light to depart from our normal book study lessons (on “The Comeback” by Louie Giglio). Tomorrow I’m going to share a challenge inspired by the “Digital Witness for Jesus Christ” project.

You can access the full, printable, 1 page “Family Faith Story Sharing Challenge” as a Google Document.

Please share this document and project with others! To facilitate easier reading and sharing of this project, I’ve copied and pasted the text of the Google Document project description below.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Why: God calls us to praise Him, to share the reasons for the joy we have, to show & tell the love of his Son, Jesus, and to be his witnesses in our communities and around the world. (More on www.dw4jc.com/why/)
When: As you gather with family this holiday season…

What: Take some time to:

  1. Audio record at least a five minute faith story with an iPhone
  2. Ask for your interviewee’s permission to share their story with others online
  3. Share the story electronically by either:
    1. Posting it as a video to Facebook
    2. Emailing it to other relatives

How:

  1. Download the free iPhone app “Voice Record Pro” (wfryer.me/vrp)
    Press the red REC (record) button to start recording, then START in the upper right corner.
  2. Ask good open-ended questions like these:
    1. How do you know God is real?
    2. Who do you believe Jesus is?
    3. How have you seen God act in your life?
    4. Tell me a story about your life when you have needed God the most.
    5. How has your relationship with God changed as you’ve gotten older?
  3. Press STOP (square icon) when finished.
  4. Tap the CAMERA icon to add a photo if desired. (optional)
  5. Choose SAVE IN PHOTO ALBUM – SAVE.
  6. Select the desired template which will show date/time info and a photo if you added one.
  7. Tap CONTINUE.
  8. SHARE your recorded interview as a video:
    1. On Facebook by uploading it to your profile with a short message. Add the hashtag #dw4jc
    2. By emailing it to other family members

Tips:

  1. Step out of your comfort zone to accept this challenge! God calls us to be bold and courageous!
  2. Find a quiet room to record your interview.
  3. Share the questions you will ask with your interviewee in advance.
  4. Take a photo (selfie) of you with your interviewee before you start recording.
  5. Consider also uploading your audio recording (saved as a video) to YouTube.
  6. Ask someone else for help if you get stuck on any technical issues.
  7. Access examples of faith story interviews on faithstories.speedofcreativity.org.

Image Attribution: Turkey icon by IconFactoryTeam on The Noun project. Microphone icon by Edward Boatman on The Noun Project.

App Smash: Creating Bible Info Pics

Today I’m sharing a chapel talk at school for upper division, middle division, and lower division students. The talk is repeated, so I’ll simplify it in several ways for the younger elementary students. The title of the talk is, “Pocket Share Jesus with Bible Verse InfoPics.” These are my slides, which include a sped-up video (4X) showing the steps for using these apps. iPhone apps demonstrated include the YouVersion Bible, Safari with the website PhotosForClass.com, Adobe Spark Post, Instagram and EchoFon.

I created a 7 minute narrated screencast demonstrating these steps as well, which I published to YouTube.

These resources are now included on the InfoPics page of the “Digital Witness for Jesus Christ” website, as well as the “Pocket Share Jesus” page where I’m sharing presentation slides on the topics of this project.

This is a work in progress! Please send feedback / suggestions to @wfryer on Twitter or via webform.

I’ve Got Jesus. Why do I need the Holy Spirit?

These are slides for my presentation on Friday, August 19, 2016, at our church’s Friday Morning Men’s Group gathering. We’re starting a study on Francis Chan’s 2009 book, “Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit.”

If I can get the audio speakers to work in the morning, I’ll also share this short video clip of Francis talking about some of the key themes of the book.

Narrated Sermon Sketchnotes on Acts 19:1-7 by Eric Laverentz

This is my sketchnote and narrated sermon sketchnotes for Eric Laverentz’ sermon at First Presbyterian Church of Edmond, Oklahoma, on July 29, 2016. Eric was nominated by our Pastor Nominating Committee to serve as our new “lead pastor,” and this was his sermon on Acts 19:1-7, right before our congregational meeting in which we voted to approve that nomination! The title of his sermon was, “The Christian’s Guide to Starting a Riot.” Eric encouraged us in the sermon to become a “Lampstand Church,” which supports members as we take meaningful stands in our culture for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Follow Eric on Twitter at @ericlav. Eric is the author of the book, “Is Caesar Our Savior?” 

Sermon Sketchnote on Psalms 78:1-8

This is my narrated sermon sketchnote and sketchnote for today’s sermon by Jen Howat on Psalms 78:1-8 at First Presbyterian Church of Edmond, Oklahoma. Key points were:

  1. Don’t hide God’s good news about Jesus Christ!
  2. Remember God calls us to SHARE with others
  3. As disciples we should be reproducing: Helping GROW other disciples!
  4. People can’t follow Jesus if they haven’t heard about him from someone
  5. Remember those who POURED their lives into you as a believer, and resolve to “pour yourself” in a mentor/apprentice relationship into others
  6. It’s good for God to create TENSION in our hearts: Encouraging us to SHARE JESUS with others!

Prayer of Adoration

I had an opportunity to serve as the liturgist today during our early / traditional worship service. This was the opening prayer of adoration I shared:

Dear God,

We come to you this day thankful for this holiday weekend, but remembering our need and desire for you amidst our busy schedules, our many commitments, and our own agendas. We give thanks to you this day, oh God, that you are real, and active, and alive in our lives and in the life of our church. We pray that you would peel back the scales from our eyes, so that we could fully behold you in your glory. After the mix the storms and humidity and clouds of last week Lord, you provided a beautiful Saturday for us yesterday. Help us see the beauty and majesty of your world every day not only in your creation that we can see, but in the relationships we have and the simple conversations in which we can engage this day. Help us to have the eyes of children this day, oh God, to see your creation with a fresh perspective. We give you thanks God for your provision, for our daily bread, and for the daily dose of faith you provide which helps us keep our eyes on Jesus instead of the crises and chaos of our world. It is in the holy name of your son, Jesus, that we pray, Amen

Pentecost Sunday 2016 Sermon #SketchNote

Today was a big Sunday at our church. It is Pentecost Sunday, and also confirmation Sunday for all the seventh and eighth graders who have been preparing to join our church family. I think there were six different baptisms as seventh and eighth-graders joined, and that is pretty exceptional! Here is my sermon sketchnote and narrated sermon Sketchnote from today.

Learning & Sharing at MoRanch Men’s Conference 2016

This weekend I was greatly blessed to again attend and participate in the 2016 MoRanch Men’s Conference. This is the largest annual gathering of Presbyterian men in the United States, and was the 65th year of the conference. Looking back on my blog posts, I confirmed that this was about my 7th or 8th time to attend the conference. My first year was 2007, when I wrote the post “Compatibility between science and faith” following the keynote presentations of Dr. Dan Foster. That post reveals I took 22 pages of handwritten notes at the conference! Yikes! I certainly haven’t done that in awhile. I also recorded a 30 minute audio podcast reflection on what I learned at the conference using the web service and app gcast.com. Unfortunately, that web 2.0 service is now offline, and I never copied/backed up that audio recording, so apparently those recorded digital thoughts are lost to history. Thankfully I don’t think that represents a great historical loss, but it’s still a bit of a bummer and a reminder to me of the importance of locally saving and preserving digital audio files recorded on third-party servers.

The wifi connectivity at MoRanch this year was better than ever, and both of the sessions I presented as well as attended were in the “Trull classrooms” below the main registration building. They are equipped with built-in ceiling mounted projectors as well as wifi connectivity, so I was able to tweet my learning at the conference as I’m now in the habit of doing at educational technology conferences. This afternoon on our 8 hour car trek home to Oklahoma City, I created a Storify archive of my tweets and retweets, which I mostly shared from my Christian twitter channel @eyesrightblog. I also shared a few tweets during the weekend from my primary @wfryer Twitter channel.

Before embedding that Storify archive, I’ll note that a big highlight of this weekend was getting to know Steve Bickley better. Steve works for the amazing Museum of the Bible. It will open in Washington DC in November 2017 just blocks away from the US Capitol and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, but has its headquarters in Oklahoma City. Steve is in our Sunday School Class, and shared several sessions at MoRanch this year about the museum.

I shared a session at MoRanch this year I titled, “Pocket Share Jesus.” The slides and an audio recording of my second session yesterday in the afternoon are available on my “Digital Witness for Jesus Christ” book project website.

I’m very thankful that I was elected again to the MoRanch Men’s Conference Council for another 3 years as well. We have a fall planning session each year at the ranch, and I look forward to continuing to participate in that and bring Shelly down with me as well.

Praise God for another great weekend of worship and fellowship at MoRanch!

Narrated Sermon Sketchnote on Psalms 3

This is a sketchnote and narrated Sketchnote I created today in church as Lee Schmidt preached on Psalms 3:

“Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high. I call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side. Arise, Lord! Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked. From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.”
‭‭Psalm‬ ‭3:1-8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

1 3 4 5 6 7 53