Stumbling Toward Faith & Grace Creek

< reprinted from http://faithinart.com >

Hey! Its been awhile.....Mars is back!

OK, first I've been doing a lot of surfing and posting recently. First I found this great interview at http://stevebrownetc.com/category/podcasts/the-brown-sessions/ ......it is an amazing & heavy conversation about healing from abuse; she has written a book called: Stumbling Toward Faith . I had never been sexually abused as a child, so listening to this was very emotionally and spiritually educational! (remember, the stats say that: one out of every three to four girls has been sexually assaulted by the age of 18. One boy out of every six will be abused by the age of 18. http://www.registeredoffenderslist.org/blog/sex-offenders/child-molestation-statistics/ )

....anyway, Renée Altson's (the girl interviewed) blog can be found at http://www.ianua.org/ .

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While surfing Renée Altson's blog, I found a post about the movie Pan's Labyrinth. This was the reply in regards to the flick:

...I liked the flick. As a foreign film, it was interesting how the film had a very Euro-Catholic feel, with a underlying 'good works' message. That is very different than the Christian-messiah messages that come thru some American films. I liked how the film scares you with the threat of the child almost being abused....rather than having an artsy movie that has to show molestation or the aftermath of it. Now, I would not recommend this film for most people, unless you like IFC of scifi stuff.

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My (awesome) church had a website facelift: http://gracecreekchurch.com : Thank God!! The last site wasn't bad, it was just one of those all-in-one flash sites. Plus, the new site has a great pic of our lovely church building front and center. The simplicity of the site will be its strength! (yes, the site is still under construction & yes, I know, I don't see a phone number or an address on the site....) Anyway, the site sparked some memory flares of some recent articles and links I've visited recently. Here's some of the email I sent to our current webmaster:

I really like the new simple layout for the church site! I used to do web design several years ago for a gaphics company & still do some as a hobby.....but anyway, I had run across some interesting church site design links.... The main two are sites I like to check ever so often: http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/ & http://www.churchcommunicationspro.com/

...here are some others .....

http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/archives/2007/07/why_your_fancy.html

...first, I'm soooo happy yall did a church site redesign!! This article reminds me why.

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http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/archives/2007/04/googling_for_go.html

&

http://www.churchcommunicationspro.com/2007/01/16/how-a-church-could-use-google-to-host-its-calendar-online-for-free/

...I thought this article about Google calendars( plus other stuff) was interesting.

( http://www.google.com/calendar/ ) & a pay service http://mychurchevents.com/

http://www.technosight.com/silas-partners-and-web-20-in-the-christian-community/

...building an online community

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Here are some other church sites I've seen that were inspirational:

http://www.saddleback.com

http://www.marshill.org/

http://www.mosaic.org

http://www.watermark.org/

http://www.imagodeicommunity.com/

....well, blog off!

- st. Mars (god of worn)