Rob's Web Adventures January 19-24

Well, life has been pretty busy lately. I have been working to try and grow our 11:30 a.m. Sunday morning service, The Journey, by stepping out of the 9:30 so I could put in more time and resources. It's been good so far, but preparing and preaching two sermons a week is exhausting. Luckily I will only be preaching on Wednesday nights for the next two weeks. Don't get me wrong though, I really like to preach at The Journey and its qucikly turing into one of my favorite worship services ever.

Wesley is very busy these days as we continue to grow steadily, develop leadership, and are in the midst of a logo/website/promotional materials overhaul. I am really excited about it though and I hope things will be in place by the end of next month, at least with the logo and the website.

Strangest conversation of the week was with the Wesley student leadership council. Apparently college students want to be contacted through Facebook, except when they want to be contacted through e-mail when something is important. Interesting thing happening here. Is Facebook reaching its peak? Or do college students just want to use it as a networking tool and not necessarily as a primary means of contact? It used to be no one ever checked regular e-mail, I had to contact through Facebook or Myspace messaging. Anyway, all further "important" messages to college students shall be sent through standard e-mail. What are your thoughts?

The upcoming week brings hopefully settling in to the routine of the semester and of course lots of anticipation for the Super Bowl. Let's go Cardinals!!!

Don't forget, if you want full access to family pictures and videos to create flickr and youtube accounts and connect with user name "robrynders" or robrynders (at) gmail.com

Places I went to around the web this week...

Speak Out Against Massive Budget Cuts to Education In AZ
http://www.speakupnowaz.org/action/index.php
With a new administration in the state and a huge budget deficit, Republicans have proposed massive education cuts to make up most of the budget shortfall. This will have a huge impact on everything from kindergarten to our public universities. Go to this now and contact our legislators. I wrote the following letter:

Dear Arizona Legislator,

I am the United Methodist Campus Minister at Arizona State University. I work with dozens of ASU students, all who are excellent students who have bright futures, not just in the United Methodist Church, but in their communities and in the great state of Arizona. Many of these students, who are Arizona residents, are only able to attend ASU because it is affordable. Many of them are already living on the financial edge and the proposed budget cuts to the education system would force them to drop out of school or borrow large amounts of student loan money.

Accessible and affordable education is one of the things that make this a great state to live in. By accepting these proposed tax cuts we will send a message, not only to our own residents, but to the entire world that Arizona devalues education. We will also effectively put our state into an economic tailspin as our workforce becomes less and less educated forcing companies to look elsewhere for quality employees.

This is also a moral issue. Affordable access to higher education provides students with a good moral grounding, provides opportunities for some students to break the cycle of poverty in their families, and shapes leaders for the future of our state and our nation.

These budget cuts will provide a crushing blow to an untold number of Arizona college students and I implore you to work with each other and the citizens of Arizona to find another way.

I will be meeting with many of the other religious leaders at ASU next week to discuss how we can be part of the movement to keep these cuts from happening. Unfortunately, we will also have to discuss how we are going to provide spiritual support to many of our students who will have to withdraw from school if these cuts occur. My hope and my prayer is that our latter discussion will never leave the planning stages.

Please do your part to make sure these unconscionable and immoral budget cuts do not occur. I hope to continue to tell others that Arizona is place where all of it's residents can get a quality and affordable eduction.

Sincerely,
Rev. Robert G. Rynders
United Methodist Campus Minister
Arizona State University

Slacker Radio
http://www.slacker.com
My favorite Internet radio site. I also have the iPhone app. Put in the name of an artist or band and Slacker will create a custom radio station for you. It's like Pandora and its free too!

AZGreenday
http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/azgreenday/
This environmental blog is managed by a member at First Tempe UMC who is a reporter for the East Valley Tribune .

Virtual Box
http://www.virtualbox.org
A great virtualization program that will allow you to run Windows in OS X. The best part is that it is free!