Tag: blogger

Episode 7 – Vine Grafting; special guest Ray Hollenbach

Show Notes Episode 7 – On Grafting Grape Vines and Special Guest Ray Hollenbach

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Life As Prayer: Revive Spirituality Inspired by Ancient Piety


Learn about 16th century Brother Lawrence and how his understanding of God’s presence continues to affect lives today.

 

It’s a fact: the plants that produce wine grapes don’t come from seeds. You can’t “sow grapes”. More on that soon.

And later, Student of Jesus blogger and disciple-maker Ray Hollenbach and I talk about the fruit of the spirit (debunking the most common myth about it), and a little bit about the Vineyard church he is a part of, and what his “Deeper” seminars and workshops are all about.

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Wine segment:

Wine grape plants don’t come from seeds, so how are vineyards created?

There are two main ways commercial growers get their fields ready for a grape harvest:

The first way is to plant seedlings taken from healthy and mature grape vines. This means that a harvest of good grapes for wine is 4-5 years away. Booo.

The second way is to use an older and mature vineyard and graft in (attach) new plants into the vine.

They prune down the top of the plant. They chop it nearly down to the ground, and expose some of the top to the vine stem. Then, they graft living plants into it. The grafting process means that whole new varieties of grapes in just one year, using the original root system to obtain all the necessary nutrients. Grafted in plants can also inoculate older vines against certain diseases with disease resistant pants (usually hybrid seedlings) that make the whole system healthier.

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It can cost $150, per plant, to graft in new vines and it’s done in a precise sort of way with notching the root stem, adding in plants and sealing them together so they merge.

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(how to graft plants and trees)

Grafting plants has been done for thousands of years. In the bible, the church is compared, by the apostle Paul, to a wild olive plant grafted into an olive tree. The first audience hearing Paul’s words would understand this word picture: the church is an introduction of something very new. Something able to impart a whole new vitality into the current understanding of religion and closeness with God.

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 Sparking your Muse

An interview with Ray Hollenbach

Ray Hollenbach writes at Students of Jesus.com

He does the Deeper Seminar nationwide.

View his YouTube Videos on his new channel.

Interview Notes –

Minute: 4:30

Fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22-23 New Living Translation (NLT)

22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

 

Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

4:48

“Fruit of the Spirit is not a gift that we get; but come as a result or outcome of natural (spiritual) health”. -Ray Hollenbach

6:30 – How parenting matures us in the same way that “making disciples” matures us.

7:30 – The Impossible Mentor 

8:30 –

“The goal of the Christian Life is NOT to get to heaven.”

9:47

The Vineyard Church

• John Wimber

10:06 –

Fuller Seminary

George Eldon Ladd 

Dallas Willard

Richard Foster

Eugene Peterson

NT Wright

12:20

Grape Vines

13:50

Grafting

14:40

“Jesus taught practically and transpositionally.”

(i.e. interacting with the transcendent in a practical way)

15:30

Student of Jesus Videos

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Spark My Muse

(Inspired by Michael Hyatt) Why I Blog

(click for attribution)

Michael Hyatt just wrote a blog post about why he blogs…what he has learned 1,000 posts later.

It got me to thinking that this is a great question to reflect on. For all of us. How long have you blogged? Why did you start? Has that changed over time? What are some things you’ve learned?

I’ll try to tackle that too:

In my pre-blogging days I sent out weekly emails to a list of family and friends called ethoughts (emailed thoughts). They were like little bits of inspiration in article form, and I grew a fervent and modest following.

Then Xanga (one of  the first blogging communities) caught my eye, and the birth of blogging began for me. Back then, social media didn’t exist, so getting the word out had its challenges.

By 2006, I went to Blogger because of the flexible style, and I branched several blogs off as I tried to keep my personal thoughts and observations apart from spiritual and ministry style posts. The “emerging Christian conversation” was in its meteoric rise, and I wanted to dialogue and connect with other Christians asking tough questions that pat answers couldn’t solve.

From there I started a website; it also contained all my thoughts articles which numbered in the hundreds. My website didn’t connect seamlessly with the blog. That changed when I went to wordpress, and got my own domain name. It was then I re-grouped things into one area and web presence. Once I harnessed social media to promote posts and interact with other things really took off.

I’m not sure how many posts I’ve done, but writing 1 to 5 times per week since 2005 means I’ve pounded out many many ideas. I’d say thousands. The why of my blogging has changed. Maybe evolved.

It started as a way to share a message. Then, as I wanted to get a book published, it provided a platform for that to build an audience. My first manuscript got me noticed and signed by a well-known agent, but also did the impossible: It died not once but twice in the final round of the “pub board meeting”. I think everyone but the accountants wanted to print it.

When that failed, I had to rethink why I was blogging. I got more creative, and posts got more amusing, as well as covered deep and serious topics. So much has changed in publishing that I’ve wondered if I’d be better off publishing my own ebook. For me, blogging has distracted me from longer writing projects. (…more on that in another post…)

Here are a few things I’ve gleaned from blogging:

• Blogging can focus your talents and passions.

• Blogging can show you your faults and thoughtlessness (making room for growth).

• Blogging can connect you more deeply with others more than you might first assume.

• Blogging well is hard work of persistence.

• Blogging–for good or bad–can often reveal one’s inner life, like it or not.

Stuff I Do:
Now, I do blogging as more of a ministry. But, not a ministry in any traditional sense of the word. By using it as a tool, I try to make it help me be a better person, and encourage the same in others. It’s not just that of course; it’s many others things.

Stuff I Don’t:
I find that I’m not drawn to “Dear Diary” or “My random thoughts” or “rant” type blogs, unless there is an obvious personal (or universal) aspect; or it’s someone so interesting, that I can’t stay away. So, I find that I don’t write in that style on my own blog. I wonder if this will change?

The simplest way to put it is that I am a creative person. I would be creating even if no one was looking. Sometimes I do that with design, art, photography, cooking, but here, I do it mainly with words. They say writers write. I think so.

What style blogs do you steer clear of? What ones are you attracted to? What things have you learned along the way? 

If you write a “why I blog” post this month, share the link!

NiNJA attack (interview video) of Kristin Tennant: kt_writes

Kristin Tennant (blogger at halfway to normal) a.k.a. kt_writes gets a NiNJA Interview. Great stuff (If the interviewee spits out coffee while watching it, I think I’ve done my job.)


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about SURPRISE.