While watching this video, consider the ramifications it has on evangelism.

We need to reThink evangelism. I'm not saying trash the message, but how we get the message to people. Fortunately, there are people already actively doing this. In fact, lots of them were at the Internet Ministry Conference. The most exciting things I saw on this were from Evangelism Explosion. Check out xeelife.com and What's My Story. You can't see much at What's My Story, but put your email address in. I saw a demo of what this will become in January and it's exciting. I wrote a blog entry on it over at the IMC blog. Their plan is to have 1 Million testimonies on their site by the end of 2008. That's a big goal, but I think they are thinking the right way to make that happen.

I had the opportunity to review a few PDF printers. If you aren't familiar with these sorts of software, they setup a fake printer so that anything you can print can also be turned into a PDF. This is pretty handy when putting information onto the web that you want to be sure looks the same on all computers. PDF is great for that.

Every once in a really great while, I find myself at SlideShare. It is like YouTube, but for presentations. If you have to do some presentation work, be it PowerPoint or otherwise, it is a great place to get inspiration. I found this one on Knowledge Workers to be interesting.

How many Christians do you know couldn't defend their faith against the errors in this video? Go ahead and watch it, then read on. The video can also be found here.

Originally uploaded by thekorffs.

I found this picture while floating around the Internet Ministry Conference group on Flickr. They have a bunch of neat pictures over there, but this one happened to catch me in it. I believe I'm talking to a guy named Evan and he was telling me about his video creation ministry.

I've really enjoyed getting to talk to all sorts of people from huge varieties of ministries. One is PhotoMission. They are a fellowship of photographers from around the world making their pictures available to mission organizations. I thought this sounded like a great idea. Another was a comic book artist producing bible stories, elegantly researched. His ministry was called DUST. I can't find a web presence for them.

I've been signed up to blog about the Internet Ministry Conference on the official IMC blog. If you'd like to follow what I and others are up to and what's going on in general, go check it out. You might also enjoy seeing some of the things I'm seeing over at the collective Flickr photo group.

I wasn't even in Grand Rapids before I met someone else headed to the Internet Ministry Conference. He flew in from the Philippines that same day. We'll, actually, he took off yesterday, but crossed the date line so he arrived before he really left... just take my word for it.

Apparently the Harrisburg local news is buzzing about an event that happened on the floor of my sisters studio apartment. The news includes quotes from the mayor of Harrisburg, followed by a short quote from my sister.

"I’m definitely concerned," said Miriam Ritchie, 23, who’s lived at the complex for about five months. "If this had happened in someone’s apartment, it would have been much worse."

I'm sure you know, but today is Software Freedom Day. To many, that might sound like a rather silly concept, but there are some good arguments for how free software promotes human rights. First, understand that freedom isn't about cost, but about the ability to use and reuse the software. Consider the control of information and its role in human rights. It is software that controls information in today's world.

For a more in depth explanation involving a discussion of voting systems check out SoftwareFreedomDay.org's own explanation of why software freedom is important to our world. I'll try to summarize it for you here. It is a foreign concept to many and I find most people don't understand why they should care. Let me try to help.

Many of you know that I'm a fan of an operating system called Linux. My own use of Linux is motivated in part by the value of software freedom. When we talk freedom, we aren't simply speaking of "no cost". Even if I was able to get Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office for free, I'd not be interested in them. They have other limiting factors. The way they do what they do is hidden and the formats they save their files in are not shared with others. In other words, the information you own is locked behind an artificial gate. The only purpose for it is the profit of the software vendor.

Freedom is what motivated a state government recently to consider using something besides Microsoft Office for their documents. They recognized that the documents they produced were stuck in a format that you couldn't use unless you owned Microsoft Office. If you've ever had to buy Microsoft Office, you'll know it isn't a cheap program. The lowest price I found for the latest version of Office in the standard edition was $210. This is not even close to accessible for the poorest in our country without the use of a library. Further, the fact that the format of the documents is locked means that in another 10 years, when that format is no longer commonly in use or you decide another software fits your need better, these documents will be even harder to make use of, if not impossible.

Anyway, today is a day set aside to try to communicate these values. I think the most important part to understand is that free does not equal freedom. The next thing I think you should know, there are quality alternatives that I use daily.

You may have heard of some of them:

• Mozilla Firefox browse the web in freedom
• Open Office freedom from closed office formats, but the ability to still work in a closed format world
• Scribus Freedom to create your own newsletters, pamphlets, flyers and more
• GIMP Freedom to make your own graphics and touch-up your pictures
• Stellarium Freedom to study the stars and planets
• Thunderbird Freedom to communicate through Email

We're just scratching the surface of the free softwares available. The ones above are all available for both Linux and Windows users. If you take the dive with me to Linux, you'll find a whole bunch more just waiting for you on the other side. :-)

Crazy, it's been almost a month since I posted my last entry!

Lots of thing have happened. We've spent several days traveling on behalf of our "Fund Discovery". We've sent out a newsletter. You should receive that in the mail. If you didn't holler and we'll see about sending it over. The Hospitality Suite here at FIM received the major parts of Rachel's face lift ideas.