Mike King

Recovering and Discovering Ancient Manuscripts, A Project I'm Working On.

The following video features Mike Phelps, Director of Early Manuscripts Electronic Library. I'm working with Mike and others to create a Laboratory at MOTB where scholars all over the world can do the amazing work of discovery, restoration and learning about ancient manuscripts, scrolls, pamplimpsests (a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain) and other important work.

Youthfront Youth Worker Training Event - Faith Formation in a Secular Age with Dr. Andy Root

Exploring Faith and Science With Young People - Youthfront Training with Dr. Andy Root

 

Next Sessions

SAVE THE DATE for each of our Youth Worker Training Events for the 2016-17 season!

 

We are really excited about the lineup of speakers. This season, you'll find a range of topics that will inspire you personally, challenge you theologically, and equip you practically.

 

• Thursday, OCTOBER 6: Exploring Faith and Science with Young People, by Dr. Andrew Root. Location: Christ Community Church - Brookside Campus

 

• Thursday, DECEMBER 1: More Than 'Getting Together': Youth Ministry and Race, by Rev. Tina Harris and Dr. Brandon Winstead. Location: TBA

 

• Thursday, JANUARY 26: Emerging Adults, Spirituality, and the Church, by Dr. Steven Argue. Location: TBA

 

• Thursday, MARCH 30: Saying is Believing: The Power of Testimony and Storytelling, by Dr. Amanda Drury. Location: TBA 

 

Individual sessions will be $10/each, or you'll be able to register for all four for just $30.Stay tuned for more details about each of the sessions! 

 

A very special thanks to Museum of the Bible for sponsoring our Youth Worker Training Events:

I Am So Excited To Be A Part of Museum of the Bible, Watch This Video and You Will See Why.

For the last two years I have been a part of an amazing project called the Museum of the Bible. I have served as a Senior Advisor for the museum. I am working closely with former Youthfront staff member and current Youthfront Board member, as well as my dear friend and colleague for the last forty years, Tim Smith. Tim is a Vice President and Director of Development. The video below is is an extended virtual tour of the 430,000-square-foot Museum of the Bible being constructed in Washington, D.C. The Museum is slated to open in November, 2017 and is located a couple blocks off of the Washington Mall, near the US Capital Building. Watch the video and you will see why I am so excited to be a part of this legacy project. Below the video is the Official Executive Summary for one of the projects that I'm heading up for the Museum. In the fall I secured a substantial planning grant from the John Templeton Foundation for Museum of the Bible and I'm excited about the potential to change the conversation concerning the Bible and Science. 

Official Executive Summary for the Museum of the Bible and John Templeton Foundation Planning Grant:

A narrative has developed in the Western world that scripture and science are incompatible. Many believe science has shown the Bible to no longer be relevant and even responsible for holding back human progress. There are also those who believe that scripture necessitates an adversarial position against science. While elements of this narrative are certainly understandable in our current cultural milieu, we believe they are mistaken and damaging. The MOTB has an opportunity to help overcome these misleading views. We will use this planning grant from the John Templeton Foundation to determine the best, most effective ways to develop initiatives, programs, research, scholarship and exhibits focusing on the Bible and its impact on science in an accurate, comprehensible, compelling and memorable manner. This grant will support planning for the Bible and science portions of a signature traveling exhibit and for the Museum itself, and add rich science and scripture content to other projects and initiatives of MOTB. The planning grant will enable us to plan and facilitate up to seven strategic gatherings involving scholars, theologians, scientists, practitioners, literary and cultural experts who will together explore how MOTB and its initiatives can enhance the public dialogue concerning the convergence between the Bible, science and scholarship. In addition, we will engage in a small but high leverage research project to assess secular openness to initiatives we hope will change the conversation in the broader culture concerning the relationship between science and the Bible. This project will produce a detailed plan for compelling exhibits focusing on science and the Bible and create a fully- developed proposal for the John Templeton Foundation requesting support to implement plans. We believe the stakes are high if the presentation of the Bible and Science relationship is not informative and intelligent.

The Demise of Guys?

The topic of the demise of guys is being increasingly being discussed.  If a prominant Christian leader, psychologist or sociologist was behind this data it would be dismissed by many as moralizing.  However, the article on CNN's website entitled, "The Demise of Guys: How Video Games and Porn are Ruining a Generation," is from world-renowned Psychologist Dr. Philip Zimbardo is a professor emeritus at Stanford University.

Zimbardo believes the consequences of pornography and excessive gaming "is creating a generation of risk-averse guys who are unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to real-life relationships, school and employment."

Read the full article here.

Zimbardo has also released a book with artist and psychologist Nikita Duncan entitled, "The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It."

Zimbardo has also been featured in the following mini-TED talk discussing this same subject.

Hubble Pics

Click here to check out more amazing pictures taken by the Hubble Telescope.

String Theory reconciles Science and Scripture

I have been fascinated with Quantum Physics for some time.  I believe that as we move out of the realm and epistemology of the Rational Scientific Certainty of the Enlightenment into the modern scientific environment of the postmodern times in which we live, faith is no longer dismissed as superstitious ignorance.  Modernity attempted to dismiss the concept of God and metaphysical reality as a product of premodern dark ages.  Quantum Physics and the science emerging in our postmodern environment has discovered the essential aspect of metaphysics and has dismissed much of the arrogant mindset of modern scientific certainty concerning the existence of the supernatural (GOD).  It is my conviction that Christianity Theology is amazingly compatible with so much of the current scientific discoveries.  I believe that new scientific understanding of such fascinating concepts as String Theory will serve as God's General Revelation and inform our Written Revelation in wonderful ways.  Thinking through such things as the Atonement, the Eucharist, the body of Christ, etc., in light of Quantum Mechanics almost blows my mind - making the Scripture take on a whole new level of literalness that has nothing to do with what "literal" has meant in Enlightenment thinking.  All I know is to contemplate on these things makes me more profoundly in love with Jesus.

Also, one of the things that I have contemplated on much over the last year is the importance of Trintitarian Theology and the concept of the Perichoresis of God.  I am passionate about joining in the dance of God (the Three in One) and God's plan to bring about a return to Shalom in the Cosmos.  With that in mind read the following from a weekly e-mail I get from Roy Williams who is a marketing guru.

String Theology

Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are both accepted as scientific fact even though they're mutually exclusive. Albert Einstein spent the second half of his life searching for a unifying truth that would reconcile the two.

Einstein was searching for String Theory. It not only reconciles General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics, but it reconciles Science and the Bible as well.

Listen to a group of physicists talk about String Theory and it will slowly dawn on you that they're explaining the entire universe as nothing but the quivering, dancing echo of the voice of God. "Let there be light."

String Theory describes energy and matter as being composed of tiny, wiggling strands of energy that look like strings. And the pitch of a string's vibration determines the nature of its effect.

In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God's creation...as music.

Strings of gravity vibrate at a different frequency than strings of light. The strings that make up protons vibrate at a different pitch than the strings that make up electrons. Strings composing the strong nuclear force vibrate differently than the strings composing the weak nuclear force. And electromagnetism vibrates at its own unique frequency as well.

We've known for a while that matter is made of protons, neutrons and electrons – which are themselves made of quarks. Now String Theory comes along to whisper in our ear that quarks are made of vibrating, wiggling strings of energy that are unimaginably small. According to Brian Greene, a Columbia University physicist educated at Harvard and Oxford, "If an atom were enlarged to the size of the solar system, a string would only be as large as a tree."

Greene goes on to say, "Just as different vibrational patterns or frequencies of a single cello string create what we hear as different musical notes, the different way that strings vibrate give particles their unique properties, such as mass and charge. For example, the only difference between the particles making up you and me - and the particles that transmit gravity and the other forces - is the way these tiny strings vibrate. Composed of an enormous number of these oscillating strings, the universe can be thought of as a grand, cosmic symphony."

According to String Theory, what appears to be empty space is actually a tumultuous ocean of strings vibrating at the precise frequencies that create the 4 dimensions you and I call height, width, depth and time. We live in these 4 dimensions and know them well. But String Theory describes an additional 7 dimensions beyond our ability to perceive.

Suddenly the idea of an invisible world isn't quite so hard to believe.

Physicist David Gross of the University of California in Santa Barbara says, "It's as if we've stumbled in the dark into a house which we thought was a 2-bedroom apartment and now we're discovering there's a 19-room mansion at least, and maybe it's got a thousand rooms and we're just beginning our journey."

So what can String Theory teach us about art and advertising, journalism and truth, persuasion and seduction?

Come to the inaugural session of Wizard Academy's new class on Advanced Thought Particles and Third Gravitating Bodies and we'll do our best to open your eyes to a whole new way of looking at communication.

Read the details at WizardAcademy.org.

Roy H. Williams

LOVE TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS...