I’m not discounting the fact that short term missions can be quite fruitful, but the long experienced feedback from short term missions is how they were greeted with hospitality and openness by the host community and come back far more transformed than the transformation they wrought whilst in that nation.

SO, are short term missions inefficient, ineffective, in one sense I would say yes; Often the combined travel costs for a short term missions to build something, help somewhere etc from a purely financial perspective would be much better spent employing locals to do the work. Tradesmen would likely do the work to a higher standard and the money would have more impact in the local economy.

But, there are a few reasons why short term missions should continue to play a part in Church life and whilst financial effectiveness should not be the only category considered by the Church as they look into short term missions.

Firstly, these days, who ever heard of a long term missionary who didn’t first go on a short term missions which infused them with passion for a people group/nation etc.

Secondly, the encouragement that can be felt by the injection of energy which accompany short term missions can impact the local missionaries and churches to be re-invigorated to see the Kingdom come in their community.

Thirdly, and in many ways the most lasting impact is the sending community of believers, as we go out, we encounter a holy interruption to our world view which has resulted from the monotony of life in our geographical locality, which creates a blinkered and over-simplified world view. When we leave we meet the real lives and churches behind the caricatures we create around phrases like ‘developing nations’, the ‘persecuted church’ and suchlike. We are transformed though having a genuine relational connection, not just a financial/political/conceptual relationship which is only a small part if a communities identity. We are transformed by knowing the people who are brothers and sisters in Christ in these nations and this knowing creates in us a resistance against the western political and religious rhetoric which patronises the reality which these Christians live in by .

I read this rehash of a missionary support letter in light of some of the considerations above by Andy Crouch at Christianity Today.

Dear members of Bethel Community Church: This summer eight of us will be traveling to spend time with our fellow Christians in ___________, and to serve their neighbors who are not Christians through the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. Our purpose in going is to learn and to bring what we have learned back to this church. Frankly, we will benefit from this trip in more ways than will our gracious and generous hosts. Please support us in this endeavor to become the church God wants us to be.”

Further Resources I’ve been reading on this subject are:

• A Paper on the interaction of western culture Churches training Christians in cross cultural settings by David Livermore.
• Missionary Confidential – A Good blog discussing the realities of living as a missionary.

I have been playing the game on and off as a mindless distraction/work avoidance tactic and still really enjoy it. The game hit the #1 spot on iTunes Store downloads mainly due to its great design, simplicity and playability. Like all games, once you’ve gotten a pretty decent highscore the novelty and playability slowly trickles away and you are less and less enthused.

Well Firemint have certainly kept on their toes, and it would seem, their toes have been in the forums because the latest update includes most of the features that have been on player wishlist plus a few more that are even better than players could have imagined.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of the review, I’m going to come out and say the update is a strong 5/5, *****, 10/10, 100%, or whichever numerical method you like to gauge the conclusion of a review. That is to say, for a Flight Control addict (which after the first time playing you will realise is somewhat inevitable), Firemint have really hit the sweet spot with this update.

Another side note on the nature of iPhone app’s which make updates such as these so much more satisfying is the organic upgrade of app’s. For most app’s you pay the fee (in Flight Control’s case a low £0.59) and get the benefits of all the developers updates, unlike computer operating systems (read vista) where you pay for the upgrade, then find the developer made a BIG mistake, creates an update and the charges you for that too! Back to Flight Control…

The new version has a couple of notable feature upgrades:

- New Maps

For a while now the game has only had the one airfield as the platform for the game, this update adds 2 new levels, an aircraft carrier and a hawaiian themed level. Both of these levels also include new aircraft but use the same basic elements. 2 Runways, and helipads with 2 different aircraft for the larger red runways, 1 faster, 1 slower, and 1 slower aircraft for the yellow runways and a helicopter. Keeping these parameters has meant that whilst the game gains new novelty it hasn’t changed the game formula beyond recognition for the fans of previous editions of the game.

- Fast forward

This new feature is arguably the stroke of genius from firemint. The main frustration for the players of flight control that I have spoken to sigh at the prospect of crashing plane and having to start right from the very start again. The obvious option would be to install levels, but this would have changed the format of the game beyond the original concept, the fast forward button means that at the start of a game those more familiar with the game can speed up the process until the level becomes more challenging. This may also introduce a new trend of high scores on fast forward which seems to have been proposed in the macrumours forum already.

- Cloudcell support

Contrary to a couple of other reviews Ive read on 1.2 online highscores have been available since the last update, but it’s good to see that firemint have developed the new version to have high scores per airfield, as each airfield has a certain character which requires the ranking to be based on the airfield itself.

I somewhat concluded this review before it had started above, but essentially firemint have ensured the longevity of flight control in the real estate of countless users iPhones and no doubt some new converts from the gushing fans (of which it seems I am one) of the game.

The reason is, Gmail in all its ajax glory, takes a little while to load over broadband, but this new feature give you an immediate snap shot of your inbox as it loads over a slow (read whilst in remote parts) internet connection. So no longer do you have to hold your breath as the dial up line you’ve ben trying to connect with for the last 30mins is taking another hour to load your inbox, you get a snapshot of your inbox to see if there are any new and important-looking emails without having to wait for the inbox to load.

note: it also works on my GAFYD mail.

More from the Gmail Blog.

I’m still getting a good tone out of the Fulltone Full-Drive though I would like more a boost pedal on the front end of it to give the clarity and sustain without it all getting too dirty.

Any thoughts out there on overdrive tone?

Check out Es Bueno’s excellent post on the subject here.

For me, the magic comes when I stack these two pedals.  Running the Blues Driver into the Tube Screamer gives me a tone that nails that ever elusive overdrive I hear in my head, but always struggle to achieve.   It’s thick and creamy with some compression -thanks to the Tube Screamer – yet has clarity and sparkle – thanks to the Blues Driver.  For lack of a better term, this tone has balls.  This is my holy grain of overdriven tone.

For now this is an experiment, and not a sign (yet, at least) that Im closing this blog down, but these days Im running out of time to blog longer and more meaningful posts and am wanting to share more of the type of content I publish in the ‘end of week round up’ series. The tumblr software is much more set up for this sharing-type format and allow for a much more interesting interface than simply bookmarking things in services like delicious.

Here’s how tumblr explains it:

“To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks. You can also look at tumblelogs as slightly more structured blogs that make it easier, faster, and more fun to post and share stuff you find or create.”

For those of you who are familiar with web services, I would describe my new blog as a mix between twitter and delicious, with my own comments thrown in every now and again. Come see me over at liambyrn.es or subscribe to the feed.

(The eagle eyed among you may notice that the tumblr blog is featured on the left hand side bar of this site under Liam’s Asides and that the posts from this site are featured as links on the tumblr site.)

From what I can work out tilt shift seems to give a very specific point of focus on the photo making it look as if the photo is a photo of a model or something out of Gullivers travels. Pretty cool!

I had a little more luck with the one below, it seems a shot take from above lends itself best to this effect.

I found this effect through a brilliant video series which I still can’t quite comprehend Keith Loutit’s ‘Little Sydney’ which is a set of videos using the effect, it seems to use time lapsing or something similar, but it is quite remarkable. Enjoy.

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

The falling value of the pound is significantly reducing the value of donations made in UK Sterling destined for workers overseas.

While supporters here in the UK may still be giving the same amount, those receiving gifts overseas are likely to be suffering a shortfall and may be embarrassed to request further financial support to make up the difference.

For example, in Japan, the £1 they had in their pocket a year ago was worth only 62p last month, that is equivalent to a 38% pay cut for a missionary!

In a pretty fascinating article in the New Statesman AN Wilson describes his journey from belief to atheism and back.

"My departure from the Faith was like a conversion on the road to Damascus. My return was slow, hesitant, doubting. So it will always be; but I know I shall never make the same mistake again. Gilbert Ryle, with donnish absurdity, called God “a category mistake”. Yet the real category mistake made by atheists is not about God, but about human beings. Turn to the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge – “Read the first chapter of Genesis without prejudice and you will be convinced at once . . . ‘The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life’.” And then Coleridge adds: “‘And man became a living soul.’ Materialism will never explain those last words.” "

- AN Wilson – New Statesman – Why I believe again.

There was a good article in ChristianityToday which explored the practice of cremation and how it betrays a lack of eschatological awareness, or at very least doesn’t appropriately symbolise the Christian hope of resurrection.

Kent Eilers from the Aberdeen based blog ‘Theology Forum’ shared a good quote about ‘The Promise of Systematic Theology’ by John Webster from January’s issue IJST.

Exiled Preacher gives a pretty amusing list of new the camps of reformed we can be on the look out for.

Trevin Wax shares a section  from his forthcoming book which describes ways in which we can subvert the worlds preoccupation with ’success’. I like it.

Per Crucem ad Lucem writes an interesting essay on the divergent opinions on  Hell inside evangelicalism, including detailing John Stott’s Annihilationist stance which I wasn’t aware of.

Alistair McGrath’s  lectures here at Aberdeen have already been transformed into a book.

A good thought on what’s really happening when we use language such as a ‘high’ and a ‘low’ view of scripture.

Mark Licitira continues his excellent series dispelling myths relating mental illness.

I created my own productivity GTD-esque system after sustaining inbox zero (find out more about that here) to the point that its a habit, so here is my desktop (click on it to see the full size) and a break down of the structure and programs.

Firstly though, I know you are wondering where the killer background came from, It was made by Victor Huckabee, a YWAMer I met in Switzerland a few years ago who is now a designer for, amongst other things Blood:Water Mission. Check his stuff out here.

So, here’s how it works, top left is navigation, our offices servers are like folder rabbit warrens so the folders I use the most I’ve created shortcuts for. I also have RDP which lets me connect to other users computers on the network as I’m often trouble shooting something for someone, this means I can stay on my lazy backside without running down 2 floors to their computer.

Top right, are the files I use everyday, believe it or not I know very little about excel despite the amount of contact we have had over the last 3 and a bit years.

Bottom row are the more play-related activities, Id list the more interesting ones:

Photoshop (elements), which is used for the odd bit of marketing design that I don’t outsource (truth be told I’m not good in Photoshop and I should probably outsource a WHOLE LOT MORE of our design.

Tweetdeck which I evangelised about a little while ago is my portal for all things twitter-related.

Windows Live Writer which is what I use for blog writing.

Chrome – The Default browser of choice (even if it has become a little buggy)

iTunes – Never quite broken out of the mainstream pen with music players, I never liked winamp.

Dropbox – A brilliant file sync tool which syncs folders across mac and windows machines, Im using a free account at the moment, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if I was lured into a paid account, works like magic.

In fact when we got there our perspectives were immediately corrected, we met some amazing people, and observed some incredible ministries, and realised the reality of Kona is quite different from the beach postcard perspective we had before we arrived.

One of the guys we met when we were over there was Tim Dyk, and I have to say, I really like Tim.

Tim was part of YWAM’s PhotogenX team and spent much of last year travelling the world taking photographs for a book the school put together called Sex+Money which sought to raise awareness of amongst other things Human Trafficking.

Tim blogged as he took his travels promoting the book and I recently noticed he has a flickr photo account with some incredible photos. You can find out more about the Sex+Money project, support it and raise awareness of Human Trafficking by buying one of their books.