Paul Baloche has been known for his great instructional videos on music and worship. I own part of his Lead Worship DVD series and I have enjoyed and learned a lot from them.
I came across this great video on Youtube and I am sure a lot of churches, worship leaders and teams will find this worth it.
For those of us who have accessed Google Earth to see what our house looks like from the sky, this would be very interesting. Have you wondered how it would have looked when Moses and the Israelites crossed the sea? Or when Noah found dry land after the whole earth was flooded?
James Dive is an artist who used images from Google Earth and recreated scenes from the Bible like the parting of the Red Sea, Jesus’ crucifixion, Noah’s Ark in the floods and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Moses & the Israelites cross the Red Sea
Jesus' Crucifixion from above
Noah's Ark finds dry ground in the floods
Adam & Eve in Paradise
The 31-year-old, from Sydney, Australia spent more than three months painstakingly researching the Biblical locations on Google Earth. He then combined them on a computer with 3D models of iconic elements from the religious text. The artist who is a member of Sydney based art collective The Glue Society, said: ‘We like to disorientate audiences a little with all our work and with this piece we felt technology now allows events which may or may not have happened to be visualized and made to appear dramatically real. As a method of representation satellite photography is so trusted, it has been interesting to mess with that trust.’
It is great to see art being used for the kingdom. What do you think of this? What scenes from the Bible would you like to see from up above?
Everyone loves free. K-LOVE Radio partners with artists/record companies to provide you access to free songs from christian artists.
Here’s two:
Starry Night by Chris August
Out of my hands by Jars of Clay
(Simply Him is not affiliated with K-LOVE Radio or any of the artists / record companies listed here.)
New Section: Recommendations
This section will showcase some of the best resources available for a particular task, service or information. They feature websites that provide information on a particular topic in an insightful way. The topics covered will be mostly Christian but we will feature anything that is useful for our daily living. This section will also feature service providers that make our lives easier by doing what they do, the way they do it. Please note, these are personal recommendations i.e. – these recommendations are personal opinions of the writers who have used the services themselves. These are not sponsored in any way by the organization being recommended.
The options that are available for today’s entertainment are plenty. Making the right choice becomes a tough decision when the entire value system pulls down the “this is your limit” line. Let us take mainstream cinema for example – they deal with literally all topics imaginable and do a pretty good job at engaging the viewer. But not all cinema can be watched by everybody. That is where the rating agencies come in – they do a good job at classifying movies or television series to let us know what to expect in terms of content. A movie rated “R” is strictly not to be seen by a child but they are free to watch a movie rated “G”.
Movie reviews are another way of finding the quality of content. For example, reviewers rate the story line, cinematography, direction, acting and finally come to the decision whether the movie is worth watching. This is very important to me because I don’t see a lot of movies and when I do, I want to make sure I watch a good one. (Now I understand that good can be a very subjective word and I will leave that for discussion later.)
Christian Movie Reviews
Today, I wanted to share a resource that I use to pick my movies – ChristianAnswers.net. The website covers a lot of topics including answers to a lot of common questions about faith. One of the sections is devoted to movie reviews. They cover all recent releases and have reviews for movies since 2000 (I think). Anytime I hear of a movie, the first thing I do is check the review at christiananswers.net. I can quickly decide if I should see this or if it is okay to take my nephews with me.
One of the key features at the review section of the site is that it classifies the movie on two meters – “Moviemaking Quality” and the “Moral Rating”. Moviemaking Quality gives you the technical view point i.e. storyline, action, direction, cinematography etc. come in this category. Moral Rating tells you whether it is okay to watch the movie as a Christian. That part also tells you whether you can show it to your kids too.
At the beginning of the review, they have a box that calls out thestars – “Moviemaking Quality” and the “Moral Rating”. There is also a 3-item meter at the bottom of each review that quantifies the amount of violence, profanity and sex/nudity in the movie. Both of these put together should give you a
3-point ratings
good idea of what to expect from the movie. I have agreed with their ratings most of the time. I have rarely differed with the reviewer about moviemaking quality but I have never disagreed with the moral meters.
So the next time you want to watch a movie at the theaters or rent a movie at home, check out the review at christiananswers.net first. Especially, if you have kids around.
Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/905071
