I am working on a little project for church where we are going to illustrate some specific themes from the Bible using short movie clips. Want to help me think of good scenes to use? I’m going fo un-obvious. For example, i will not use The Passion for the crucification…but a complex Christ character would be great (say the green mile). Here are the chapter names and the focus that i am looking for:

• The Beginning of Life as We Know It (creation)
• Deliverance (exodus and moses)
• New Commands and a New Covenant (moses and the law)
• The Battle Begins (joshua and invading the promised land) – ok, i might go a bit obvious on this one…it hard to pass up the lord of the rings for beginning battles.
• From Shepherd to King (david)
• A kingdom Torn in Two (the division if israel)
• The Return Home (ezra)
• The Birth of the King (Jesus)
• No Ordinary Man (jesus)
• The Hour of Darkness (jesus crucifixion)
• The Resurrection (jesus)
• New Beginnings (early church and pauls journey)
• The End of Time (2nd coming, etc)

Any ideas? Let me know the movie and the scene you are thinking of.

About 10 months ago we moved to Tulsa to work at a new church, live in a new place, meet new people, and see what God has for us as participants in the Certificate in Missional Leadership program. You might remember that the program lasts 10 months…which means we are done. Its been a good 10 months, we have learned a lot, experienced some new things, met new people, seen different ways of doing ministry, and grown in our understanding of ourselves.

It’s kind of hard to sum up 10 months into an email, so we are not really going to try. We do want you to get an idea of what we have been doing though, so we each did a little project that tries to capture a bit of what we have been up to. Beth’s project is a pdf that you can download. Ben’s is a video which can be found here: http://vimeo.com/13713546. The video is about 30 minutes long…be warned!  If you want to get a good idea of what the last 10 months have been like for us these are a great way to find out…or, stop by sometime, we would be glad to take you out to coffee and talk about it.

The big question we have been asked a lot recently is “what’s next?” For now we will be staying in Tulsa. We will both continue to work part time at Garnett Church of Christ. Although at the beginning we were a bit unsure of what our time with Garnett would look like, and even wondered if we’d enjoy worshipping there on Sundays-we are excited to stay involved. We have been blessed by Garnett & were welcomed in right away as members of their family. Beth will also be working for Chris King doing administrative work for CQ Missional. She will be focused on a program called GPS Tulsa (http://www.cqmissional.com/gpstulsa/). Ben will be doing a couple of things, including freelance graphic design and working for Challenge Quest (the “CQ” part of CQ Missional) on their new zip line canopy tour at the Buffalo River in Arkansas (http://www.buffaloriver.com/blog/default.aspx?id=136). For now that’s the next chapter.

We really do want to thank you for the support you have given us over the last year. Your financial support, prayers and encouragement have been a huge blessing to us. We are very thankful for all of the people who are a part of our lives, and are honored to count you among our community.

We are excited about the adventures to come, we will continue to blog at www.benandbethwest.com, and we might send out occasional emails. We would love to keep talking with you!

Thanks again for your involvement in our lives! We will keep you up to date as we continue to work here in Tulsa, or wherever God takes us.

Ben and Beth

I used to be a student of design. I spent a lot of time looking for inspiration, reading magazines, stuff like that. somewhere along the line I kind of list that, so i am recommitting to seeking inspiration. Here are a couple videos i found tonight:

The Attenborough Design Group from Tom Judd on Vimeo.

and

The other day I ran sound for an ITT tech graduation. There are several technical schools that use GCEC for graduations, and I actually really like being there for them. The graduating class of a small technical school in Tulsa is a lot different then that of the average 4 year institution. Last night there were several graduates who told their story. One was a single father who took care of his 9 year old daughter, worked, and put himself trough school.  Another had been in jail for simple possession and when he got out he wanted to change his life, so he went to school, in the mean time his dad had died and his mom had a stroke and was not even able to be at the graduation. There is something really cool about seeing a group of people who have struggled to reach a goal get there.

Everybody has their struggles with school (i know i took my time getting done), but there is something different about seeing people who have experienced some pain in life, realized that there was something that they needed to learn, and choose to go to school to learn it. They didn’t go to school just because it was what they were supposed to do after they graduated, they went because they had decided that they needed to.

It’s gone fast and we are nearing the end of our time as interns at Garnett Church of Christ and in the CML. So, lots of people (including us!) have been wondering what we will be doing next. We really don’t know exactly, but we have a little bit of a plan.

An experience like we are having with a set ending date is kind of nice, it has been a really good way to transition away from NLR into something that has given us new experiences and new things to think about, without having to commit to a new job or city. We want to have time to process the last nine months when we are done, so we are not going to make plans to move to Africa or something like that (although we would like to visit Uganda sometime).

So, for now the plan is basically to stay around Tulsa. We might be able  to work part time for the church and the event center, which would be great. We like it here, and we can hopefully contribute to what is going on, and it would be some steady income.

Beth will (hopefully) be working with Chris doing admin work for GPS Tulsa. GPS Tulsa is a program that Chris is staring that is targeted to students in Tulsa Achieves. Tulsa Achieves is a program that allows Tulsa student to attend Tulsa Community College for free for two years. Because of this a lot of high school grads stay in Tulsa for college.

GPS Tulsa is designed to be a complement to Tulsa Achieves. Participants will serve at John 3:16 Mission (which will complete there required service hours of Tulsa Achieves). After a day of service they will process the experience so they can learn from it. There will also be a mentoring component to it so students can start figuring out who God created them to be, future vocation, stuff like that. The basic idea is to give students a place to belong, help them change their community, and help them learn how God has uniquely created them. If you know Tulsa people who you think might be interested in this send them our way!

I (Ben) will be trying my hand as a freelance designer. Kind of scary! I have not really been doing serious design for a while, so i feel kind of rusty and behind the curve, but more then that I am not very good at networking, selling myself, and finding jobs. Freelance can be a very up and down business. Ultimately I am not sure where this might lead. I would love to be able to do major project on a contract basis for organizations that i think are doing interesting things.  For example, if there was an organization doing economic development that needed a catalog or video made i would do the project for them.

Another possibility is that I think it would be really interesting to be part of a group of people with a diverse set of skills who are consulting and doing projects for non-profits. So, I might go that direction. There is not a ton of plan yet (im sure that makes our parents happy to hear!). I have wanted to freelance for a long time, and I think I have something to offer organizations that I could work for, and now seems like a good time to see what that it’s like.

We will also probably work some for Challenge Quest, get random jobs if we need to, sell our possessions, that kind of thing.

We have also talked about trying to travel some (anyone want to fund a Ben and Beth world tour? We’ll be sure and send you a postcard…), finding cool hobbies, and listening to lots of podcasts. Those options are on the table also.

So…blogging….

We have been busy! We will do some posts over the next week about some specific stuff, but for now here are a few random things:

Concerts we have hosted in the last month: 4 (Cass Harris, Jared Hard, and Sara Swenson all of whom you should check out)

Art shows we have hosted in the last month: 1 (with various artists, including Austin Penick)

Freelance design projects im working on…and getting paid for: 1 (hey, you have to start with one!)

Random interesting info: here

Morning radio station:  KRMG (but..i have to make this disclaimer, i cannot handle Neal Boortz. He likes to yell…a lot)

Rest of the time radio station: KWGS unless you are Beth..then its 106.1

Side Project: GPS Tulsa

If you recently graduated from college and are looking for something to do you should check out: The CML and LEAD

Productivity today: Low

Years in a row one of us has not been at NLR Sunday of week1 until a few days ago : 9

next week: first day of pottery class

I have a flickr account, but its sort of like my other blog, and this other blog, i dont post to if very often…even though i want to. Although i do have a sort of cool set of pictures i will be uploading soon.

One of the most popular CQ Missional posts: here

Last weeks wedding: Russia

The week before that: Mexico

miles on my bike this week: 0

Ok, thats it. We will start blogging again. promise.

Firday (thats tomorrow!) we are having an concert at Cafe Mosaic at the Green Country Event Center. You should come. Jared Hard will be playing, and we have 5 artists who will be showing their work ranging from painting to pottery. I’m finishing up a video about each artist to show so people will know a bit about their story.

If you want to come here is the info:

Friday, May 28, 2010, 7pm-9pm (its come and go, like a coffee shop right!) at Cafe Mosaic 12000 E. 31st street, tulsa, in the lobby of the Green Country Event Center.

see you there…bring a friend!

Greg, the pastor at Garnett Church of Christ, is headed to Uganda with his family, part of what they will be doing is taking a well kit from water4.org. We have talked about water4.org on a little bit before. They are an organization that is doing some really innovative work in water wells. If you have any interest at all in providing clean water to the developing world you should check out their web site. It’r really cool to see how God has brought several people an organizations together to make all the right connections to make it possible for the Taylors to bring a well kit to Uganda.  Check out this sort video explaining the kit and why they are willing to carry it half way around the world:

I had an interesting conversation the other day with a neighbor. He came over and said something along the lines of:

“I had to come over to your yard 3 times last night to chase off homeless people, just wanted to let you know…so be sure and close your gates and stuff so they can’t get in. We have been working hard to keep the homeless people away, just wanted to let you know.”

I have been thinking about this some. So, here is my question. What happens when “love your neighbor” conflicts with “help the poor”?

I don’t think that this particular situation is so mutually exclusive, but what if there was a situation where you had to choose?

Yesterday I was downtown talking to Margin. Margin is homeless, although she does have a lot of resources through friends. Somehow we ended up talking about cell phones. She has a cell phone, which is an asset to her in terms of finding a job, staying connected to people, stuff like that. This is actually kind of a big thing: how can those in poverty have access to communication tools that will help them find a job, stay in touch with family, etc. Cell phones are one tool that is important (although not universally accepted as a good thing i suppose). Community Voice Mail is an organization that works in this area as well. CVM does not deal in phones, but does give people a voice mail box so they can receive messages.

Margin mentioned that one of the hard parts about having a cell phone is being able to keep it charged. So, i think that if i ever live or have a business in an area where it makes sense i’m going to put a couple power outlets and a bench outside so people can charge there phones.

It’s kind of crazy, the things we never really think about that become hard when you don’t have a permanent roof over your head that is not a bridge.