A friend of mine from church, Eric Horner, is a filmmaker, and one of his latest projects has been making short inspirational films. He has people say a few things about who are they are, what they like, and so on, and then films them doing an activity they enjoy. Most recently he created some for two young girls in our church, and when he had finished, he approached me about composing and recording some music for the films. I thought it would be a good challenge, and so I took him up on the offer.

This past Sunday afternoon we spent a few hours at the church recording the music. For our first try, I think it turned out pretty well. The church is not equipped with state of the art recording equipment, but we were able to lay down a few tracks with the various instruments and then Eric was able to mix what we recorded. For the first film we used piano, drums, a synth, and a bass guitar. The second uses a guitar, djembe, and some human instrumentation in the form of whistling and clapping.

I'm pretty impressed with the finished product. Eric is very, very good at what he does, and I'm grateful for the opportunity he gave me to write some music. And it was a lot of fun recording it all. So, without further ado, here are the films.

UPDATE:Eric also filmed us as we were recording one of the songs. Here's the video of our little recording session.

Craig Ferguson, of late night TV fame, offers his opinion on why everything sucks:

Ferguson is usually very funny, but I've found that when he engages in cultural analysis like this, he is often quite perceptive as well. Here he picks up on something I have increasingly come to realize, that adolescence is a social construct. And marketers in this culture have not only recognized that, but seized onto it and been at the forefront of propagating the idea that we ought to prolong our youth. We no longer prize 'experience and wisdom', as Ferguson points out.

After you're done laughing, discuss: is the glorification of 'youth and stupidity' a real problem in our culture? How should the church address this issue?

(HT: Mathias Rosenlund)

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I had the privilege of studying under Mike Goheen when I did my undergraduate studies at Redeemer University College. It is not an exaggeration to say that he played one of the significant rolls in the formation of my thought on the Church and mission. Here he neatly sums up the story of redemptive history and talks about how the Church often sees this story in fragmented bits instead of holistically.

Thanks to Steve Bishop and Joe Torres for pointing me to this.

Nicky Gumbel, the vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton in London and perhaps best known for developing the Alpha Course, sat down with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair back in July to ask him a number of questions. Some of them focused on Blair's faith and the intersection of that faith with his political work. Though Blair in these videos is not as articulate as he usually is in public, it's still an interesting interview. Part 1 is embedded here, and you can click through to navigate to parts 2-9.

Any thoughts? I find his answers a little on the ambiguous side, but notwithstanding, I'm impressed that such a prominent figure is willing to sit down and talk about the intersection of faith and public life.
(HT: Jon Swales)

I stumbled across this video tonight, and it was fitting since I've been thinking some about Christians working as police officers. Let me know what you think. I might be blogging more on the subject in the coming weeks.