h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Tomorrow morning I have to give a ten-minute sermonette. (short sermon)

Ten minutes of trying to change somebody's life. A daunting task indeed.

Sermons give people direction - tell them to actually do things. Classes teach them things, but sermons are about taking action. Doing. The whole "not just being a hearer of the word but a doer" kind of thing. What can I tell people to do in ten minutes? hmm ...

What are our problems?

We don't have enough people. We should be converting people left and right but that hardly ever happens anymore. Whose fault is this?

Probably not ordinary people sitting in pews. They already take every opportunity they can tell others about the church so going over that isn't going to help anyone.

So ...

Perhaps I'm looking at this from entirely the wrong angle. Instead of focusing on a problem we have, for this particular assignment, perhaps I should talk about not something that is a problem now but something we can do better on or obtain in the future.

Trusting in God's plans for our lives ?
which ones?

now the topics switched to personal revelation - not gonna go there. at least not in ten minutes.

aargh. I can't seem to keep on task today. That's why I'm typing this - it's brainstorming. I need to think of a topic for tomorrow morning and I can't go to sleep until I have got ten minutes worth of sermon prepared.

I should have been working on this earlier in the week of course. Well, I was rather busy with school - I only got my college homework done yesterday - and also busy with finding work. I really need to get another job. Not having any real good solid professional references hasn't helped at all.

What I really need is an ability to sell things. To sell ideas to people. I need to be better at getting people to believe whatever I say.

just typing in windoze XP wordpad which is the closest thing I have to a work processor

I often post this kind of thing to my h2g2 journal ... maybe if I finally think of a topic I will post it. That'd be nice and unusual ... just like all the other unrelated junk I put on there. I wonder how many Researchers actually stay subscribed. Probably very few active ones since I started actually using / abusing the Journal entry feature. If anybody actually does read this, that last paragraph may look kinda odd.

There we go again - off on another tangent. I need to stay focused here ...

Staying focused!! Perfect topic! I'll talk about staying focused. I knew this would work.
Nerd42

oh wait never mind that's a terrible topic and for once maybe it's a good thing h2g2 isn't working right because I didn't post it.

sigh.

Welcome to Square One. Population: Nerd42. This historic district of your mind, also known as The Drawing Bored, is the site of many great failures, from Leonardo Da Vince's flying machines to Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, both of which never got off the ground and never will. Now if I could only turn these kinds of random thoughts into a rap, I'd be the worlds first Nerd gangsta!

Maybe listening to some actual Christian music will give me ideas. Probably a phenomenally bad place to start, but it's better than listening to John Reuben and KJ-52 like I have for the past few minutes.

Ah, now I am listening to the great Christian Accapella album "Travelin' Shoes".

Nice music.

No ideas are coming.



Really, when I said I'd do this, I had no idea it would be so unbelievably hard. I was like, "hey ten minutes sure I acn do it."

Easier said than done.

Current time: Saturday, February 18, 2006. 9:09 PM. Zero hour is about 6:00 AM Sunday.

Nine hours. Hopefully I will be able to sleep some of them so I am actually conscious during church tomorrow. I don't have to speak at six, but I have to be ready then - ready meaning not only prepared but hopefully also rested.

Having your lamp lit?

No. Another topic bites the dust.


aargh i can't think of anything. still drawing a blank
Nerd42

Nerd42...
Have faith (seems an ironic choice of words, don't want it to have any conflicting secondary or tertiary meanings latched on top ).
This isn't really my area of expertise since I don't regularly attend any churches much, and haven't since I was just a little boy, but if you systematically approach the task and tackle it in more doable sections/segments, you'll probably do /just fine.

Myself, I've got a research paper to pull together the sources for before the university shuts off it's website (that happens to, incedentally enough... control going into and out of it's databases }Fwap!{), for tomorrow and Monday. Naturally of course, the lab paper itself is due Tuesday.

Databases lead to a Microsoft paved path to ...
No, that isn't it.
()
Why the heck then is it that most sites expect you to be able to send page copies back and forth using Outlook Express? Then they don't let folks circumvent it w/a simple little cut & paste job, out of security paranoia and "plagiarism" fears. If I don't have outlook Express, or theior network 'don't like me' Then the only choice left is to send the thing via a copy & pasted link off of the address bar. So then, you know: resubmit all the data & fill out all the sign-in + registration crud, just to be allowed to have access to the -ing source article in order to print.
...


, um, nevermind.
I'll have to do this... thing is,- the way people keep saying (w/) "Oh, it's just so plain and simple/easy to use" for computers and online stuff, seems kind of more mean-spirited in nature when you are 'under-the-wire' than the people saying that probably intended.

*s to get back to doing his homework*

In times of panic...
No wait, that wasn't quite the word_-_
Duress? <- Shoot, I can't even remember what that one means, so ...
Aha... Stress, no wait... Or, could you do a sermon about stress?

Let's see, idea points: (In a nutshell what the first associations are of the word sermon to non-regular churchgoer, me) :
1. community
2. Er, there is usually a lesson or recurrent theme/motif thingy somewhere that is the central bit on which the rest of it rests (or was that an essay/thesis?).
3. There is often some sort of a
Biblical allusion there in the sermon and a few optional anecdotes.

4. The arrangement probably has a method varying on who it is that is saying it, what sect of what type of church it is, and _, the occasion?
*Wishes he could perhaps be of a bit more help, but probably put a bit too much of an Episcopalean aspect influence to it, since that is the type of Church Thorn has the most experience of having gone to (but only up until about age 12).*

The research paper was supposed to be about a type of flatworm called a planarian that can regenerate itself whole from parts even out of little individual tiny pieces...
<-
Hmm, a whole that can makes other parts out of its individual pieces because each piece also becomes a seperate whole that has smaller pieces within it (that can do the same thing). <- That can get very convoluted rather fast. Deep...
<-
^
|
I'm not quite sure or how, but I think may have stumbled upon something to fill up time with right there. ...Or not. + <- I wonder if there is a cross smiley that isn't of someone grumpy, out there on the Internet somewhere...
This is your journal then huh? Oops, sorry.
Probably don't want other people reading into it; just sorta randomly popped into my convo. posting box, and from trying to research against the clock. *Shrug* Bye! (*has to sleep now*)

"Nerd42...
Have faith"
Yeah, that's what I eventually ended up speaking about. Faith.
Nerd42

Interesting coincidence...
Hmm, odd.

/

so, 'scuse me while I unsubscribe from your journal thread.
Event solved/dealt with... that was good.