Ok, first thing’s first, PTL MY BOOKS ARRIVED! Now I can start school, ALL my courses, so I’ll be playing catch-up for awhile.

Now on to my latest beef : After getting Breakaway for more than a year I am generally dissatisfied with the magazine’s content. It is 50% sports and celebrity interviews… here’s a breakdown of the last issue’s content:

2pgs – mail
2pgs – spiritual (article about setting yourself on fire for God)
3pgs – nonfiction (article about the holocaust)
1pgs – celebrity (tobymac)
7pgs – sports (2pgs baseball, 5pgs NASCAR)
2pgs – comedy (funny story about outcast highschooler)
3pgs – Q&A
2pgs – workout
2pgs – Other (article about safety on the Internet)

That’s 24 pages total. Not being a big fan of sports in general, and pro sports in particular, one can easily see why the sports/workout articles are of no interest to me. Lose 7 + 2 pages, leaving 15. I don’t particularly care for celebrity interviews either, who cares what tobymac thinks? That leaves 14 pages of semi-interesting content. The article about safety on the Internet was mildly interesting, if that. That leave 12 pages of truly interesting content. 12/24… 50%. Not too impressive 😛 Now this is my personal likes and dislikes, but my brother (who is athletic) has about the same impression of the magazine… the general feeling I get from girls is that they love Brio, so I checked it out and I must admit the content quality is much higher (if girl-oriented ;P)

So here’s the question – does anyone know of another (better) Christian Teen magazine? (not necessarily boy-oriented, it can be generic)… and if such a one were to be found how many others would be interested in it?

We have been doing a Bible study every Wednesday night here about Revelation. Last night we got to Revelation 3:14-22, the letter to the church in Laodicea. I’ll do a quick rundown on it for those not as familiar with it:

1. The Church in Laodicea was ‘lukewarm’, neither cold nor hot, they were not on fire for the Lord, yet still comfortable in their position
2. They were proud, saying ‘I am rich… and have need of nothing’ (17)
3. They were so busy in their ‘good’ that they left Christ out of the church, and he was stadning at their door, knocking to be let back in (20)

There is a theory that each of the seven churches written to at the beginning of Revelation represents a period of church history. If this is so then Laodicea represents the church before the rapture, being the last one mentioned.

Looking out at the church today we can certainly see how much of the church has bought the Laodicean Lie, that they are powerful, and will move into government. So many people believe that many of the recent developments in our cultures can be reversed (legalised abortion, gay marriages). They believe that the church is rich and in need of nothing, having great membership numbers, and members who are important/influential in the community. There is a noted lack of zeal in many churches these days, and being on fire for Christ is looked down upon.

Now I’m borrowing a lot from the sermon, but this all reminded me of my essay The Dead City / Screwtape’s Acceptance Speech, which I should update and write my annotated bibliography to it. The world is going downhill and we cannot fix it. Not that it is not admirable to try, not that we should not be involved, but we should not be deluded into thinking that the Church can gain influence and become the power of the world without serious comprimise that will destroy the message. Our primary focus should be on the salvation of individual souls.

Coming to mid-september I am still waiting for my school books to arrive, which means I’ll be very behind in some courses. However, I hope to get the materials next week, so then I’ll be working to catch up. I am also trying to stay ‘on top of’ the SC this year, as much as that be humanly possible. I’ve decided not to tag my posts on here anymore… it takes a lot of time and all it does is make them easier for complete strangers to find. And what stranger cares that my books haven’t arrived yet?

Yes, life has again become routine. School/IM in the mornings, programming/chat in the afternoons, and maybe some time with the kids on the station in there somewhere. Nothing much interesting happening. I had another person contact me today about mNEWS that wants to use it, so that’s kewl. Maybe with the donation links at the bottom of all these mNEWS emails I’ll get enough donations to pay for my hosting account . Found an interesting site the other day. ShouldExist.org is basically a place where thinkers put their ideas in the hopes that implementors will be interested. Kinda a kewl idea.

Tags: Personal ShouldExist

Well it’s been quite awhile since my last proper update. So here’s the lowdown on what’s happening with me:

• Power : is back up. The PrintShop is running regularly again and I have gone back to using my famously buggy desktop. This means you should all start seeing me at your blogs again, since I have my RSS reader over there.
• School : started. I am a good ways into my math and resonably into Chemistry and English. Physics and Social Studies I have barely started yet, because my books aren’t here. They are supposed to be coming mid-September. Please pray for their arrival.
• Palmview : running, me teaching. They have five students this year: my sister, Janelle Hoyt, Rebecca Symons (3 in grade 8), Pascal Cross (1 in grade 6), and Joseph Symons (forgive me for not remembering his grade). I am teaching a computer class (Introduction to Microsoft Office) every Friday. Please pray that I teach effectively and the kids learn
• Projects : Amateur Writerz, Open Portal, and mNEWS. As always I continue on as managing editor / webdesigner for Amateur Writerz. I have also recently started an opensource web portal project. Detail can be found on the project wiki or at my tech blog. On top of this I am running a service that I have dubbed mNEWS in which I use some of my programming skills and the fact that I have webhosting space to help missionaries send out their newsletters, especially needed as one of the missions here in Chad that used to offer a similar service to their missionaries has cancelled it.

Tags: Personal Palmview Chad Open Portal Amateur Writerz