If you’re in the Indianapolis area, Stones Crossing Church in Greenwood will be hosting a FREE screening of “Nefarious: Merchant Of Souls”, this Sunday, April 22nd from 4-6 pm.

You do not want to miss this award winning documentary and the chance to talk with those that are a part of the project.

PLEASE, post this on your Facebook pages and tell everyone in your scope of influence that you think might be interested.

Teachers, high school students, college students, doctors, pastors, priests, principals, nurses, etc. You get the idea:)

If you have any questions, please feel free to call Jennifer at 446-4845.

• Do you follow everyone back?
• Does it look bad if you follow someone that posts inappropriate stuff?
• Or follow someone that has an inappropriate profile photo?
• Does it turn people off if you don’t follow back?
• Should the account be for information purposes only or should it try to get involved in people’s lives?

My first thought was that church Twitter accounts don’t follow anyone. People follow people. It’s not much of a step to quickly make the jump and understand that the “church” is the people in the first place. If there was ever a Twitter account that should have a human quality to it, it should be the church.

Do you follow everyone back? I’m not sure. I’m not a church account and I don’t follow everyone back. I follow the accounts back that I’m interested in hearing what they have to say. I un-follow and re-follow people as they appear more and or less interesting through their updates. I believe the same could be true of a church account.

If the church is made up of people, the question of “Does it look bad if someone you follow posts inappropriate stuff”? Do you feel bad as an individual if someone you follow posts inappropriate stuff? Are you ashamed to follow them? Should you be? Why or why not? Do you un-follow them? All the same questions regarding profile photos.

I keep thinking that Jesus hung out with the sinners and scorned the Pharisees. If Jesus were on Twitter, who do you think he’d follow? And more importantly, who would actually follow him?

VeggieTales^®: Robin Good and His Not-So-Merry Men, from Big Idea Entertainment is availableTODAY on DVD! This new DVD helps teach young people about handling hurt and overcoming challenges.  As a special bonus, it features a new short story Lenny and the Lost Birthday, all about understanding the importance of a Leap Year. The DVD also includes a new silly song and the digital short, “Larry’s Leapin’ Leap Year”!

Catch the trailer video below. Of course you should go out and buy a copy today, but you should also be sure to enter our contest to win. Details after the video.

Okay, all you’ve got to do to enter is leave a comment on this post, retweet this tweet, “Like” the Mission Notes page on Facebook, or add us to your circles on Google+. For each item you do, you’re name will be collected and picked at random as the winner.

A friend of mine shared the link to this video with me today that was originally on the ChurchLeaders.com website.

The concert was part of the The Rock & Worship Roadshow.

The name of the organization is MATS and their mission is to provide affordable and reliable transportation to ministries and their staff. They’ve been fulfilling this mission since 1977. They have been great to work with and I really can’t explain what they do any better than what their website says.

Since 1977, MATS has assisted thousands of ministries and their staff in finding transportation, including but not limited to:

• Mission organizations and their staff
• Churches and their staff
• Para-church ministries and their staff
• Humanitarian organizations and their staff
• Schools, Counselors, and Teachers
• Colleges & Universities and their staff
• Missionaries

Our Service

The staff at MATS has over 100 years of combined experience in the automobile business and a unique desire to serve those in Christian ministry and education. We are aware of how limited ministry resources can be and we want to help you be a better steward of those resources when purchasing a vehicle for your organization or family. Whether you are located in the United States or Internationally, MATS has the ability to provide the right vehicle for your needs at a significant cost savings from the retail market.

If you’re in ministry and looking for a vehicle, or know a ministry that needs some help with transportation needs, give these folks a call and see what they can do for you. Visit their website at www.mats.org

What are your thoughts?

What other actors, celebrities, influential people and athletes do you feel do a great job of their faith in public and staying true to their values and belief system?

Hammitt and his wife, Sarah, knew something was wrong minutes after finding out during an ultrasound in April 2010 that their third child would be a boy, following two girls. They saw the sorrow on their doctor’s face even before she spoke.

Doctors later confirmed the baby had a rare congenital heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which causes the left side of the heart to be severely underdeveloped. For five months, the couple contemplated all of the possible procedures and treatments while weighing the odds of what could go wrong.

Their baby would face multiple surgeries and an uncertain future at best.

They also didn’t know how to deal with a flood of emotions — the anger, the doubt, the feeling of being alone. Hammitt, 32, decided he needed to tell God how he was feeling, so he started writing songs about their journey.

I think I take the health of my children for granted far too many times. I stress about their “challenges” I face through the day and they’re all normal challenges. How would I have the strength for real battles for my kids if they experienced severe health problems and hurdles.

Reading the story makes me want to hear some of the songs Matt was inspired to write. One of the great parts of the story was that the nurses would play his music for their whole wing after visiting hours were over to soothe all the children, not just Matt’s.

You should read the entire article: Unborn Son’s Struggle Inspires Christian Singer

This past week I had the opportunity to listen to Jeremy Spring, of Abandon Kansas, perform at a friend’s house during his Living Room Tour 3 concert path.

I wasn’t familiar with Jeremy or Abandon Kansas up to this point. After finding out that I was going to the concert, my son looked them up on iTunes and let me listen to some of their songs. Although hard to get a real idea of what they sounded liked as I listened to my son’s iPod while standing in line at Moe’s Southwest Grill, what I did think was that I liked what I had heard so far.

My friends have hosted a number of these concerts in the area but this is the first one I’ve attended. You can’t get much more of an intimate experience with your favorite artist or group than with this type of event. I found out from our host, Rob and Jane, that these concerts take place all of the country a lot more frequently than I would probably expect, but digging into that is probably better suited for another post all-to-itself.

So, let’s focus on Jeremy Spring and Abandon Kansas.

For this concert it was just Jeremy and it was an all acoustic set, something I really enjoy. For me, it doesn’t really matter what genre of music I’m listening to, if there are lyrics and I can’t understand them, I’m not enjoying your music. Lyrics are very important to me and I think they should be heard and legible.

Jeremy weaves his lyrics like a mighty poet. The themes are fairly simple, but the meaning and emotion behind each of the songs really comes out. I think hearing these in an acoustic format first, and in the intimate settings of the living room, really connects the audience with the music and lyrics. What was really nice about this experience as well is that Jeremy shared more of the meaning and motivation behind the words he incorporated into each of these songs.

You can get a little bit of a feel for what the concert was like from the photos and the playlist of videos I put together from four of his songs he performed. You can also still catch him in the next few stops as he wraps up The Living Room Tour 3.

If like me you’ve really enjoyed what you’ve heard, be sure and touch base with Jeremy and the rest of the group by finding them online and letting us all know what you think.

Catch Abandon Kansas and the rest of these guys online in all the cool places!

• Abandon Kansas Official website (www.abandonkansaslovesyou.com)
• Abandon Kansas on Facebook (www.facebook.com/abandonkansas)
• Abandon Kansas on Twitter (twitter.com/abandonkansas)
• Jeremy Spring on Twitter (twitter.com/akjeremyspring)
• Jeremy Spring on Tumblr (jeremyspring.tumblr.com)
• Brian Scheideman (twitter.com/akbrians)
• Brad Foster (twitter.com/brfoster)