This Week at The Gate: March 20

Brothers and Sisters,

Welcome back from Spring Break! Congratulations, there are only 7 more weeks of school left before the end of the year. Paul talks about "running the good race" and I want to encourage you to keep working hard until the very end.

Here's what we have planned this week:

Monday March 20:
Women's Bible Study at 8:30 at The Gate
Men's Bible Study at 9:00 at The Gate
Prayer Meeting at 11:00 at The Gate

Thursday March 23:
Thursday Night Alive! Worship Service with Mike Cariker from FBC O'Fallon. Mike is the Minister to Students for FBC O'Fallon's Jr High, High School, and Collegiate Ministries. He has his hands full with student ministry. He is a great guy and a true servant of the Lord. I know the Lord has put something on his heart to share with us that we can all apply in our daily lives. And, if you feel you aren't being used to your fullest potential Mike has many places at FBC O'Fallon where you can mentor and minister to youth.


Down the road a while:

April 6: Pastor Doug Munton from FBC O'Fallon

April 7/8: IBSA's Spring Leadership Training Conference. The state-wide BCM Leadership Training Conference (LTC) will be held in Charleston, IL on the campus of Eastern Illinois University, April 7-8. Cost for the conference is $25. The worship sessions will be led by Jonathan Peters (Bible Study) and Mark Warnock (music), both from Columbia Baptist Church. Breakout session will deal with issues such as Worship, Fellowship, Prayer and Fasting, Evangelism, and Stewardship. For more information contact Serena Butller at serenabutler@ibsa.org. Registrations should be in by March 31.

As always you can check us out at our blogsite located at:

http://opengate.blogspot.com

Take care and God bless you all.

No Thursday Night Alive! Movie Night Tonight

Brothers and Sisters,

I know most of you have already heard that due to McKendree's Spring Break starting tomorrow we decided to cancel the Thursday Night Alive! Movie Night planned for tonight. I just wanted to make sure everyone knows.

We will not have any services next week also due to Spring Break. Our next events will be Men's and Women's Bible study on March 20 and Thursday Night Alive! with Mike Cariker from FBC O'Fallon on March 23.

Have a great break and I look forward to seeing you when we all get back together on March 20th.

Your brother in the Lord,

Rick Marshall

Something New...

I started my new job today with the Environmental Systems Research Institute, also known as ESRI. I am a Defense and Intelligence Account Representative for the St Louis region (Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa). So far it seems like a great place to work. I would be worried if I didn't feel this way after my first day! I work within the St Louis Office, but work for a Supervisor in Washington DC. There will be lots of strange chain of command relationships to navigate through, but it feels like it will be an interesting ride.

The office is in St Charles, Missouri, and although it is an hour drive from my home in Illinois, it is located in a beautiful old historic town and is right across the street from the Katy Trail. I can walk out the back door of the office and ride my bike on the trail all the way across Missouri to Kansas City. Hopefully I will have enough time to take advantage of the good bike riding and running possibilities.

Touch and Gos

Great post over at the Google Earth Blog on using Google Earth and GPS to track where you have flown. The post is located here. Link. Google Earth is helping the world see the capabilities inherent in visualizing what we do on a geospatial platform.

Culture Wars

Answers in Genesis has a great blog post today on the culture wars going on between secular humanism and Christianity. The post is located here. Link. I believe your view on creation versus evolution is at the base of all differences in the current worldview and the Christian worldview. How do we solve this problem?

Check it out!

This Week at The Gate: Feb 20

Brothers and Sisters,

I hope you were as blessed by what the Lord spoke through Jonathan McIntosh as I was last week. What a great evening! This week we have another great evening in store from McKendree's own Pine. They will be in concert at The Gate on Friday evening. I can hardly wait to hear them sing and minister to us.

Here's a little better breakdown of what we have planned in the near future:

Monday February 20
Men's/Women's Bible Studies at The Gate. I am sorry that I am a day or two late again on publishing this, but the Bible Studies are going great!
Prayer Meeting

Thursday February 23
There will be no Thursday Night Alive! service this week. But, The Gate will be open from 7:30 until 9:30 if you would like to come and hang out.

Friday February 24
McKendree's own Pine will be in concert at The Gate at 7:00pm. For more information on local concerts visit the WIBI website located at: http://www.wibi.org/concerts.html

Thursday March 2
Thursday Night Alive! at 7:30 with our guest speaker Marc Sikma. We are really excited to have Marc with us next Thursday. Marc is a McKendree grad who is planting a church in St Charles County called Matthais' Lot. You can get more information here: http://matthiaslot.com/

We'll see you there!

The Gate is located at 225 N. Monroe St, Lebanon, Illinois, 62254. Here is a link to a Yahoo Map of the Gate's location. Link. God bless you all.

Dick Cheney's Accidental Shooting on Google Earth

The Google Earth Blog has a post on Dick Cheney's accidental shooting. The schematic now shows up on Google Earth. The post is located here. Link.

Thanks to the Jeremy W. Crampton of the All Points Blog for the link.

My Latest Read: Mere Christianity

I started reading a new book today. I can't believe I have been a Christian this long and haven't read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis yet. I know it is required reading in a lot of Seminaries, but I just haven't quite gotten to it yet. Today I made it thorugh the preface. I am bogged down in good stuff already. C.S. Lewis amazes me with his insight and illustrations.

Two of my favorite quotes from the preface come from the last two paragraphs. Lewis talks about Christianity being a series of hallways and rooms. He wrote,

I hope no reader will suppose that 'mere' Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions- as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in... (p. xv)

And then Lewis adds in the final paragraph,

When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house. (p. xvi)

Wow, what insight and what a great illustration.

Gay Marriage—How Should A Christian Respond To It?

Answers in Genisis posted an article yesterday on the Christian response to gay marriage. After I read the article I realized it was part 10 of the series War of the Worldviews, an advertizement for Ken Ham's new book. The article states,

This message of tolerance for gays and lesbians comes not only from Hollywood, but also from our public education system. The gay marriage issue is at the center of the worldview wars...

Read more here. Link.

I wish the article would have gone a little deeper into the War of the Worldviews, but as a teaser for Ken Ham's book it worked. It sounds interesteing enough to invest the time and money to read it.

The Geo Web

With the unveiling of Google Earth a couple of months ago interest continues to build in the usefulness of geospatial information. GeoConnexion Magazine posted a great article on where the geospatial information industry is going with regards to geographic information on the web. The article states,

The location of all places and things is rapidly becoming an important commodity. Increasingly, locations of all things or places of interest are being published on the Web with multiple identities based on specific community interests. For example, coffee shops with WI-FI connections will be tagged as locations where coffee is served as well as locations where WI-FI is available; one location, many identities...

Read more here. Link.