It has finally happened. I finally fixed my hosting problems at bhparker.com by dumping yahoo and switching everything over to mediatemple.

bhparker.com is now up and running again! So I won’t be blogging here anymore. you can go to

blog.bhparker.com – obviously my blog
bhparker.com – my online portfolio
bhparker.com/resume – self-explanatory

So, don’t forget to be checking my updates over at my new blog.

UPDATE!!!: It seems Engadget has some evidence to further this mystery.

Macenstein is reporting that there will be a new Mac Mini in the wild soon . . . this is a picture that they received from a “tipster” who was “anonymous.”  Hype or the real deal?  If it’s true then you can sign me up.  But I think it’s to good to be true.

Although either way – I think I would eventually want to pick one up.  I would like to use it as a home computer – something to just browse the web on and manage our family photos, or maybe as a real Apple TV via Boxee.  Also , I have always wanted to experiment with using one of these in my car as a media system.  No more plugging in iPods or burning cds.  Plus you could play movies.  Anyway . . .

Well hello all!  Just wanted to post my latest web endeavor.   It’s a site I did for the Sunday Night service and community at Crosswinds Church in San Francisco, CA.  

They were looking to get a site that more prominently featured their podcast, and that was easy to update.  Enter this one page design – CSS/XHTML/JQUERY – and I feel it matches the emphasis they have on art.  Although my wife said she thinks it is girly.  Whatever. 

You can check it out here.

Just thought I would take a quick minute to share Josie’s new look with you.  She went to the pediatric opthamologist today and her eyes are completely healthy – she is just extremely farsighted.  The fix – glasses.  Here are the frames Josie picked:

I have lots of thoughts on the college football situation, but I don’t have time.  Until then – read what Zach thinks.  Peace out . . .

That of course is a quote from the great Dale Gribble, aka Rusty Shackleford.  And I use it because my computer came up with another creation today;

• Chouteau, OK Chamber of Commerce

This site was all coded today and is an xhtml strict webpage with a tableless CSS structure.  Yeah CSS! This of course is just the backbone.  I still have to add a couple of bells and whistles – then it’s just pasting all the copy into the pages.  Should be live sometime tomorrow.  As always – if you want to hire me just head on over to www.capitolcitystudios.com

Insert shameless plug here.  I do graphic design, psd2xhtml, css, etc, etc.

And if you enjoyed the Dale Gribble quote let me give you a few more:

 If you want, I can teach you how to make a bomb out of a toilet paper roll and a stick of dynamite.

(pretending to be an environmentalist) Earth first. Make Mars our bitch.

I thank my father every day for all the tricks he played on me. He taught me the most wonderful lesson a child can learn: Never trust nobody. That’s how I know Bob Dole’s faking that dead arm.

20 years. If your marriage was a murderer it would be out by now.

Whoa! Hold on, son! I want you to keep an open mind so you can make an informed decision! If you want, you can read a bloated government report on smoking, or go straight to the horse’s mouth and get the facts from the tobacco industry.

My rabies has taken a turn for the worse, I am starting to hallucinate, when I close my eyes I can see strange characters running around chasing colorful geometric shapes in a dark and infinite limbo.  I have stopped closing my eyes.

And finally – maybe the reason I love him so much:

Boil up some Mountain Dew; it’s gonna be a long night.

Anyway – that’s about the biggest waste of post ever.  To make up for it let me share a serious thought by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

I know I have posted this before, but it’s good – and it has been running across my mind today.  Later – I am off to bed.

Well, I feel like a complete Jackass.  It’s true.  And although many of you know that I have been one for years – I am finally being hit with it in an overwhelming fashion.  Let me explain.

A couple of weeks ago Josie came home from school with a note saying that she had failed her vision test.  I was skeptical to say the least.  I know my daughter – she squirms, she likes to have fun, and although she pays attention and can focus – in situations like an eye exam I know that she flat out doesn’t care.

I chalked it up to an inexperienced person running the exams and Josie being Josie.  Anwyay, we did the right thing though and scheduled an appointment with our optometrist just to be safe.

We took her to the appointment today and I went in to the exam with her and she failed miserably.  I knew it.  And I knew it was worse when the doctor sent her out to mommy so we could “chat.”  It turns out that Josie has hyperopia – or in laymans terms – she is farsighted.  Not just a little, but a lot.  So much so that he wanted her to see a pediatric opthamologist so they could diagnose her better and then prescribe her glasses.  He sees kids regularly and said he has maybe seen two in the past two years as bad as her.

Wow – I feel like the worlds worst parent.  She is five – five years old and I just now know this.  He said she probably hasn’t seen anything clearly her entire life.  Eeesh.  How did I not notice?

I ran my own test when I got home.  I had her stand in the hallway while I fixed Ice Cream.  When I had it ready I told her – I’ll give you a bowl of Ice Cream if you can tell me how many fingers I am holding up . . . she wasn’t even close.  She just guessed.  I gave her the Ice Cream anyway.

To quote George Costanza – “For I am George Costanza Ben Parker, Lord of the idiots.”

She goes to the opthamologist on December 1st.  The good news is that the doctor said glasses will fix it, and the other good news is that she will have a whole new world opened up to her.  She will finally get to see things the way they were meant to be seen.  Prayers that it all goes well please.  We at least know she will be in glasses the rest of her life – contacts when she gets old enough.

As for me, I’m still in shock.

I have been working freelance since I got back here in Oklahoma and I realized that I haven’t shared any of the projects I have been working on.  As always – I am always looking for more work – so send it my way if you got some.  If you’re reading this in facebook just message me- if this is on wordpress just leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you.  This is mainly just web work. I am not listing all my logo builds.

• Floran Technologies – OKC, OK – Web Design and encoding
• S.P.I.C.E. – Locust Grove, OK -Web Design and encoding
• Storytellers Contracts – Logo Design and set up wordpress and domain for Kramer
• Crosswinds Church – E-mail design based on web design
• Smith Chapel – Web Design and encoding – Still have to add jquery Scrollto and fix logo
• Norman North High School Baseball

And I am currently working on a projects for:

• Strodl Architecture – Las Vegas
• Locust Grove Chamber of Commerce – LG, OK
• Chouteau Chamber of Commerce – Chouteau, OK
• Mirage Artisans
• Goliath Energy Services

Anyway – I hope you enjoy it – I still have room for more clients so bring it on.

 www.capitolcitystudios.com

by Terrell Sanders of MinistryCOM and the folks of CFCC

1. You’ve ever contemplated breaking into your own church in the dead of night so you can delete the comic sans, Papyrus and Curlz fonts from staff computers.

2. You’ve ever used a cross instead of the letter T or X.

3. You’ve explained DPI more times than you’ve explained your faith.

4. Redesigning the church logo is a weekly project, yet your new design is never used.

5. The words “Don’t worry, this will only take a minute,” send you into fits of rage.

6. Staff members try to make your job easier by asking you to send them last year’s flier and they’ll just ‘update it a bit.’

7. Your suggestions are always brushed aside with, “but that’s how we’ve always done it.”

8. The design they had to have tomorrow is never used. And you’re never surprised.

9. Stolen images, pirated software and breaking copyrights is justified because it’s “God’s Work.”

10. You’ve ever wondered why God gets the credit when things go right, but you get the blame when things go wrong.

11. You’ve ever caught yourself proofreading the Powerpoint slides during worship.

12. You consider yourself bilingual because you’re so adept at translating Christianese.

13. Your only intimate relationship involves late Saturday nights with the church photocopier.

14. You can’t actually attend the events and programs you work to promote because you’re too busy promoting them.

15. Research for sermon series branding means watching tv.

16. You can’t invite your friends to church because you’ve told them to many not-so-flattering stories about your pastor.

17. You and the senior pastor have conflicting definitions of the word “deadline.”

18. It’s perfectly acceptable to use a volunteer’s work over yours, but using a volunteer’s sermon? That’s a good joke.

19. Pastors inevitably become your Art Director, and their previous experience with “art” involved crayons.

20. The Holy Spirit is a legitimate excuse for last-minute changes.

From the Associated Press –

Hiam Shatir may look like your average pastor, but he’s not acting like one. In a nation filled with expensive mega-church buildings popping up, Hiam instead chose to sell his mega-church, Crestview Community Church, and attempt to live into what he says is the call to “be the church.” And although many doubt him, Hiam just knew it was the right move to make.

“We just felt it was the right thing to do,” said Hiam, a businessman turned pastor, from his converted basement where he now administrates the church. “We couldn’t put our foot on the problem. People were sitting in the pews and not doing anything. They would come and sit and leave. And we began to ask if this is the Gospel.”

Crestview was known for its amazing stage productions, heartfelt contemporary worship, and relevant sermon topics often based on current events and pop culture. It quickly grew in numbers—adding two satellite “video campuses” and a recently launched online church campus—and was cited as one of the fastest growing churches in the nation. “Having someone validate what we were doing like that was really cool at first. We were really good at creating the ‘Wow’ factor that would have them wanting more,” Hiam says in reflection. “But I would go home exhausted and consistently wonder what difference we were making. I didn’t like that. And I just reached a point where I couldn’t do it anymore.”

In what many would consider a stunning move for a 8,000-member mega-church, Hiam and the board of elders chose to sell their recently developed $12 million dollar campus to a local technology company, which is now planning to convert the sanctuary into a manufacturing facility. “Selling the building was easier than we thought,” one elder stated.

So what made this ultra-successful pastor of one of the city’s largest suburban communities take such a radical step? Hiam shared that it was faith. “One day I walked into the main sanctuary, and it was empty. It was this huge building that we were paying a mortgage on and it was dark. I just had this sense of wonder if this is really what Jesus would do. Would he have created this building? And then when the economy took a downturn, paying the mortgage became our primary concern. But everyone was hurting. We had to let people go from their jobs. All of a sudden paying the bills became our primary motivation.”

Hiam shared that his messages became motivated by how much those people could give to the church rather than the Gospel. And then a moment of clarity hit me. “I was standing there on a Sunday and, right in the middle of my sermon, I just stopped. I looked around and just realized that, if we let go of this burden, everything would change. It was at that time I started to really question our intentions. At the same time, some really good people asked if we were living ‘missionally.’ Were we really releasing people to minister to their neighbor? I didn’t have a good answer to that question.”

Hiam began to doubt his own faith and purpose. “It was a dark time. More than once I told my wife I wanted to quit and go back to business,” Hiam said. “I felt like I was losing my soul. But the board of elders stuck with me, and they began to ask how we could begin to use money to solve real needs when we saw them. We suddenly realized we had the power to release people to be ‘missional.’”

Hiam wrestled with the decision over a six-month period. He knew that letting go of the building meant doing things in a completely different way. “The show would be gone, and, in some ways, that was hard for my ego to let go. It essentially meant trusting God to work in the people and not being everything to everybody. It was like we had new glasses on. We quickly realized that, before, a small majority of people were doing almost everything. They were burned out and completely exhausted. Now everyone has responsibility and purpose. So many people came to me, thanking me,” Hiam said.

When the building was sold, many felt lost in the transition. “We immediately lost about 30% of the people who attended our church,” Hiam shared. That number roughly translates to almost a thousand people. “Everyone called me and told me they just wanted a place to go on Sunday. They didn’t want to go out into the world. People’s primary concern was the loss of our children’s program.”

In talking with several families that had left, one woman expressed what has become a common refrain of ex-Crestview members, “Who will teach our children about Jesus? We just felt we needed a good children’s program and didn’t want to lose that.”

Life for Hiam and the church is now more complex but, he says, more rewarding. To accommodate the lack of facilities, Hiam took the radical step and converted his basement into an administration center. “We slimmed down everything and focused on following Jesus into mission. We asked what it would mean to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. We now meet once a month for a large gathering and meal, and put all of our focus on meeting in homes. It meant really getting serious about discipleship and putting our trust into the hands of our gifted leaders.”

Once a regular speaker at evangelical conferences on topics such as leadership and church growth, Hiam says the invitations to speak have all but dried up. The shift has allowed Hiam to focus almost exclusively on meeting with leaders. He now meets almost daily with those who run discipleship groups in their homes. One leader, Bill Jarvis, liked the transition, “For the first time, I feel like I am understanding what Jesus meant when he said, ‘Go and make disciples.’ And I like it.”

The lack of mortgage has allowed the church community to give almost 80% of their tithe away. “We’re now seeing people take initiative where they wouldn’t before. We’ve empowered them to be Jesus right where they’re at. And they like it. One part of the community is using their money to help single mothers get through college. Another group has renovated an old warehouse and turned it into a community art complex. A third group builds fresh water wells for third world countries almost every month.”

Hiam is now more aware of his impact on the community and can’t imagine going back. “Someone just yesterday came up to me and said, ‘I don’t have to drive to the church to feel like a Christian anymore. I just have to go out my front door.’ That right there told me we made the right decision.”

This is a work of satire. We hope it causes some reflection and sparks some good discussion about how we steward the church in the midst of this economic crisis.

via [Emergent Village]

It has been way too long since I have written something on here. I have a lot to say – especially about the election and politics in general. I know, we’re all freakin’ shocked I have an opinion. Anyway, I haven’t had time to post any of them. I plan to soon – but in the meantime check out the last commercial I worked on for Cloud Nine.