I have known about OpenDNS for a long time now, but never looked into it for several reasons. But recently I found myself in the need of an alternate DNS solution. The functionality OpenDNS offers is leaps and bounds over what I expected to see. The most important thing that I think you will find useful is it’s ability to filter content. You can set different levels of protection to prevent things like porn on your network. I think this is great because it relatively transparent (although there are always ways to get around these things). But if you have a child who frequently uses the internet you can use this as a primary way to help prevent accidental or intentional website browsing.

Here is a simple tutorial:

Go to www.OpenDNS.com and click the “Home Network” tab at the bottom of the page.

Go to www.opendns.com and click Home Network

You should be at the Home Network page, read it if you wish, but ultimately you’ll want to click the “Start using OpenDNS ->” link on the right hand side of the window.

Click the "Start using OpenDNS ->" button

The next page is Step 1 of 3: Change DNS settings). It will ask you an important questions, “Computer” or “Router”. Last night I choose “Router” for several reasons. This step may confuse some of you, so let me try to explaint he difference. The “Computer” is merely choosing 1 computer. So if you have a single desktop that all your family uses, this may be a perfectly valid option for you. However, if you have DSL or Cable Internet, then you probably have a router built into your modem. Your Internet Provider should be able to provide you with more information about this, but OpenDNS makes is very user-friendly. Choose the option that suits your needs.

Choose the option that suits your needs

In this screen you are asked what system or device you use to connect to the internet. If you chose “Computer” on the previous screen you are given a list of possible operating systems or specific devices that you may want to setup. If you chose “Router” you are given a list of common routers people use. Choose the option that suits your needs (I choose 2Wire because my ISP provided me with a 2Wire brand router).

If you chose "Computer"

If you chose "Router"

Open DNS provides you with great screen shots explaining everything you need to do to update your system ot use Open DNS. Sometimes it takes a few minutes before the changes take effect, which may effect your ability to access the internet - this is normal - do not panic! Last night one of my machines had an issue with accepting the changes, I just rebooted it and everything was fine. After you follow the directions, click “Continue to Step 2″ at the bottom of the page.

If you chose "Computer" > "XP"

If you chose "Router" > "2Wire"

Here you will be asked to create an Open DNS account. This is completely optional if you merely want to use Open DNS as an alternate DNS solution. However, it is required if you want to use the added functionality of Open DNS (such as porn filtering). Enter the relavant information and click submit.

Enter the relavant information and click submit

It will send you an email to confirm your account.

It will send you an email confirmation

Check your email and click the link to confirm your account request.

Check your email and click the confirmation link

It should log in into your Open DNS Dashboard automatically. If not, you will be ask for your username and password.

Login with your username and password

Your Dashboard is where all the magic happens. Here you can change your settings to filter your web content. You should see a message that reads, “You haven’t added a network yet. Add one now…” click the “Add one now…” link to get started.

Add a new network

The next screen should automatically fill in your IP address. If this is correct, then click “Add This Network”. If you are unsure, you can go to http://www.ipchicken.com/ to verify your IP Address.

Verify your network address

You will receive a popup message asking your for more information. First, you need to enter a name for the network, like “Home” or “Work”. Second, it asks you if you have a Dynamic IP. You probably do, so you can leave this checked - unless you know you don’t. The third option is to download and install the OpenDNS Updater. The third option is completely optional to you and depends on where you’re intalling the program. For instance, if you install it on a laptop that you use outside of the house, it will mess up your OpenDNS settings. When you leave the house and get a new IP your house will no longer be using the OpenDNS settings. So I would recommend only installing this on a computer that stays in your house and stays on your network. The down side to this is that you’ll have to periodically check to make sure that your IP hasn’t changed (or ask your Internet Provider for a static IP). Once you have completed these steps, click “Done”.

Name your network

This next screen will confirms the network you just added. From here you can click the “Settings” tab or button on the Network you just added to change the filtering settings for your network.

Click "Settings"

Finally, the last step! This is where you can setup your filtering options. OpenDNS provides you with several options, the default option is “Minimal” which protects you from Phishing attemps. It goes up from there with, Low, Moderate and High. The best thing about this is you can customize each setting. So if you choose High but want your children to be able to use Facebook, just click “Customize” next to High and uncheck “social networking”. This will allow all social networking sites through the filter.

Choose the desired protection level

I am extremely impressed with the service that OpenDNS offers for its subscribers. Not only does the service act as a great alternative to ISP DNS, it provides a fresh set of tools for protecting your network and family. As a relatively simple and FREE solution it is definitely something you should consider adding to your home network. As with anything, there are always ways around any protection, but this can be another tool in your toolbox to prevent your children from accessing adult or unsafe content. Did I mention this is free?

If you have any questions or need any help, please comment and I’ll try my best to answer your questions.

God Speed.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with a scheduled time to sing, a scheduled time to teach, a scheduled time to fellowship, or a scheduled time to pray… but I wonder if we are not encouraging people to be compartmentalized by making their church life compartmentalized. This is when you sing, this is when you listen, this is when you pray, this is when you give, this is when we disciple, this is when we fellowship, etc. Is it really that much more of a leap to say “this is when you act like a Christian” and this is when it’s ok not too?

She said, “WOW! I’ve gotta stop cussing in front of you…”

I explained to her that I didn’t want her to censor herself in front of me. Then we started talking about “church” life. She and her husband aren’t really church people. They both went to Methodist churches from time-to-time growing up though. Recently her husband expressed interest in going to a local Methodist church. He wants to go somewhere that he can hear the word preached without feeling pressured into anything weird. She said that she wasn’t really into the idea, but wanted to go with her husband anyway.

Up to this point in our conversation, I had already explained that I am a heretic and defined the word for her, as “a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church.” I explained a little bit about my history, what I believe, what I don’t believe, etc. Basically just enough to let her know what I am all about.

Knowing this, and having her recent church experience, she had some questions/concerns for me. This is what they were (in her words).

1) During one songs, they sang about Immanuel… who is Immanuel? I thought they were suppose to worship God?

2) When it was time for prayer, everyone bowed really low with their heads down. Why did they do that?

3) After the community prayer, instead of everyone saying “Amen” they all started to say their own little personal prayers - is that normal?

4) After the service a couple cornered us and asked if we were saved, it was really ackward.

5) The husband of the other couple convinced her husband to fill out a vistor’s card. Then they received a call that afternoon asking if they were going to visit that night.

6) They had “children’s church” during which they took up an offering/tithe. Our little girl felt bad because they were trying to build a new church building and gave 10.00$ to the offering. I feel like that’s wrong, that should be up to the parents, not pressured little kids.

Hearing some of these questions and concerns, I had the feeling that I knew exactly what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthins 14, “Therefore if the whole church assembles together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad?” Granted, this is about “tongues” not about Christian Music, Childrens Church, Prayer Stance, etc. I think it still relates though.

We hang out with unbelievers when they come to our meetings and programs.
Jesus hung out with unbelievers.

We develop programs to attract the world.
Jesus developed relationships with the world.

We raise funds to build buildings and additions.
Jesus didn’t have a place to lay his head.

We believe that true fellowship with God happens once a week.
Jesus expects true fellowship every day.

We make the gospel attractive.
Jesus made the gospel unattractive.

We create religious systems, doctrines, polity, rules, and more; in the name of being right.
Jesus tore down all those; showing that he was right.

We expect non-followers to act like his followers.
Jesus expected his followers to act like his followers.

We believe that classes equates to discipleship.
Jesus walked with his disciples.

We believe that we cannot perform miraculous things.
Jesus told us that we could perform greater miracles than he did.

There are at least three parts to preaching. The first part is the preparation for preaching, the second part is the act of preaching, and the third part is listening to preaching. In today’s Christian life it is hard to find a place that does not encourage people to preach and people to listen to preachign. So, today I would like to discuss how each of these parts of preaching reflects on and affects our maturity as Christ followers. I am going to ask a few questions that I’ve thought of… questions that I’m thinking about. I will not answer these questions, I hope to get some conversation going about them.

Preparation for Preaching

I have prepared for preaching, I have attended many Sunday morning meetings where there was preaching, I have attended school where I was told how to prepare for preaching, I listen to preaching on CDs and the Radio, I talk about preaching with my friends and family. I’m not saying this to boast, I’m saying this so you understand where I am coming from. Of course, my experiences may differ vastly from others with similar experiences, but I have a feeling any difference will be purely semantic when it comes to how preparation for preaching reflects on and affects our maturity.

There are usually several things a preparer does when preparing for preaching.

1) Prayer that God will speak to him
2) Study a particular passage
3) Study what other commentators say a particular passage means
4) Study similar passages via a lexicon or other commentators
5) Put it all together for your listeners.
6) Practice, Practice, Practice…

None of these things are necessarily bad or wrong. In fact, if someone came up to me tomorrow and said, “I want you to preach two Sundays from now,” I’d pretty much follow this little outline (give or take a few things). To be perfectly honest, sermon preparation is really just glorified Bible Study - in our context it usually comes with compensation.

My questions are these: Does doing these things make you mature? Does doing these things mean you are mature? Does doing these things increase your maturity?

The Act of Preaching

Recently I saw a video of John Piper called “The Gospel in 6 Minutes“… to be honest it was really the gospel in a few seconds with an illustration and a lot of the word “never” - but that really isn’t my point. In this video John Piper said this, “You never outgrow the need to preach to yourself the gospel.”1 This quote got me thinking about the need to preach to ourselves… and the need for us to preach to other. It made me wonder about how the act of preaching reflects on and affects our maturity. In most traditional churches there is one man who does the preaching, often times called the Pastor. He is usually considered to be very mature. But sometimes, he will ask someone else to preach, perhaps a deacon or a seminarian. To most the act of preaching means that you have reached a certain maturity level. There is a hierarchy built into our thinking - levels of maturity if you will.

This is how I understand the hierarchy:

1. Layman
2. Layman who serves in some capacity
3. Layman who teaches
4. Layman who preaches
5. Deacon
6. Preacher
7. Pastor

I’m not saying that I agree with this hierarchy, this is simply who I understand it. If you were to corner me, I’d have a much different hierarchy, but this is what I believe others traditionally see in the church.

My questions are these: Does preaching make you mature? Does preaching mean you are mature? Does preaching increase your maturity?

Listening to Preaching

As normal church-goers we are always encouraged to listen to “good” preaching (among other things). We are encouraged to order CDs from the big named preachers, listened to Christian radio which has preaching, and even join churches where there are properly trained men to preach. There is actually a hierarchy built into this thinking as well. The more preaching you expose yourself to the more mature you are considered.

Consider this layman:

1. Goes to Sunday morning service
2. Does #1 and goes to Sunday School
3. Does #1, #2, and goes to Sunday evening service
4. Does #1, #2, #3, and goes to Wednesday evening service
5. Does #1, #2, #3, #4 and listens to preaching on the Radio or on CD.
6. Does #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 and watches preaching on TV or DVD.
7. Does #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6 and reads biographies about famous preachers.
8. etc., etc., etc.

By the way, I think this list also leads into the list for the Act of Preaching.

My questions are these: Does listening to preaching make you mature? Does listening to preaching mean you are mature? Does listening to preaching increase your maturity?

Before you answer any of these questions, consider these three verses from Scripture:

Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And this we will do, if God permits. - Hebrews 6:1-3

Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature. - 1 Corinthians 14:20

For everyone who partakes {only} of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.- Hebrews 5:13-14

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Here is a list of bloggers who are taking part in this month’s synchroblog on the topic “Maturity in the Light of our Faith”:

Phil Wyman at Square No More with “Is Maturity Really What I Want?”
Lainie Petersen at Headspace with “Watching Daddy Die”
Kathy Escobar at The Carnival in My Head with “what’s inside the bunny?”
John Smulo at JohnSmulo.com
Erin Word at Decompressing Faith with “Long-Wearing Nail Polish and Other Stories”
Beth Patterson at The Virtual Teahouse with “the future is ours to see: crumbling like a mountain”
Bryan Riley at Charis Shalom
Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church with “Maturity and Education”
KW Leslie at The Evening of Kent with “Putting spiritual infants in charge”
Bethany Stedman at Coffee Klatch with “Moving Towards True Being: The Long Process of Maturity”
Adam Gonnerman at Igneous Quill with “Old Enough to Follow Christ?”
Joe Miller at More Than Cake with “Intentional Relationships for Maturity”
Jonathan Brink at JonathanBrink.com with “I Won’t Sin”
Susan Barnes at A Booklook with “Growing Up”
Tracy Simmons at The Best Parts with “Knowing Him Who is From the Beginning”
Joseph Speranzella at A Tic in the Mind’s Eye with “Spiritual Maturity And The Examination of Conscience”
Sally Coleman at Eternal Echoes with “vulnerable maturity”
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules with “What I Wish The Church Knew About Spiritual Maturity”
Cobus van Wyngaard at My Contemplations with “post-enlightenment Christians in an unenlightened South Africa”
Steve Hayes at Khanya with “Adult Content”
Ryan Peter at Ryan Peter Blogs and Stuff with “The Foundation For Ministry and Leading”
Kai Schraml at Kaiblogy with “Mature Virtue”
Nic Paton at Sound and Silence with “Inclusion and maturity”
Lew Ayotte at The Pursuit with “Maturity and Preaching“

Launched in July 2008, the Amethyst Initiative is made up of chancellors and presidents of universities and colleges across the United States. These higher education leaders have signed their names to a public statement that the problem of irresponsible drinking by young people continues despite the minimum legal drinking age of 21, and there is a culture of dangerous binge drinking on many campuses. 1

As it currently stands, 18 year olds are allowed to smoke, drive, join the military, get married, open lines of credit, vote, etc. but you are not allowed to drink a glass of wine with dinner, or have a beer with friends. The Amethyst Initiative was started as a way to prevent Alcohol abuse among young adults. Their theory is that if 18 year old College Students are allowed to drink, then they will drink more responsibly. The reason why they do not drink responsibly now is because they’re not allowed to do it at all.

I started to drink when I was about 16. We drank and got drunk. It wasn’t a weekly occurrence for me, but when we drank, we did it with the idea that we were going to get drunk. I believe the Amethyst organization believes that if we were allowed to drink, then we wouldn’t need to find excuses to buy an excess amount of alcohol to get drunk. It would be a more casual thing for everyone. It seems to make sense, in a way.

By the way, Amethyst “is derived from the Ancient Greek words meaning ‘not’ (a-) and ‘intoxicated’ (methustos). According to mythology, Amethyst was a young girl who incurred the wrath of the God Dionysus after he became intoxicated with red wine.” 2

Personally, I think that drinking at 8 is fine. There are whole countries that have no limit on the drinking age, many of which have lower alcohol related tragedies than America. I also believe that God does not condemn drinking alcohol.

What are your thoughts on all of this?

Here are some more articles about this:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/18/college.drinking.age.ap/
http://gpbnews.blogspot.com/2008/08/ga-college-presidents-want-to-cut.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,418822,00.html

I’ve updated my blog theme and made a few other changes. Like, my blog now resides at http://www.the-pursuit.net/ instead of http://www.the-pursuit.net/blog/.

I’m going to make those big bubble things on the right side a tad smaller too… I think they take up too much room.

Anyways, this new theme makes me like my blog a little better, so I might start posting more often :).

So what do you think of these changes?

The past two weeks have been hectic for us. As many of you know we have been in the process of moving to Athens. Well, I was finally able to close on our house August 29th. My wife and I moved from Dublin to Athens August 30th after a horrible experience with UHaul (I will never use them again). To make a long story short, if you reserve a 17′ truck at 8AM in your town, you should expect to get a 14′ truck at 10AM in a town an hour away. We expected to have everything loaded up and be in Athens in the afternoon. Instead, I found myself unloading our truck at 11PM to get our mattress out so we could sleep that night. By the way, I’ve never had this issue with Penske or Budget. But, we’re moved in, we still have tons of boxes to unpack, furniture to move around, and all sorts of things to get situated.

WOODY

Last Tuesday we took Woody to the Vet Hospital for an overnight. He had to have an MRI Wednesday morning. The good news is that the MRI came back positive. His brain is fine, his spine is fine. The bad news is that Woody is still broken and no one knows why. The doctor said that it is probably a genetic condition - pretty much uncurable. They took a urine sample and discovered a high keytone level (which is usually found in diabetics). But he doesn’t have diabetes. So they are sending the sample to California to find out if there are any oddities. We started to change his diet a little to up his protein and we’ll have to probably put him on a multi-vitamin. But basically, unless California finds anything, Woody will remain the same. Of course God could always do something miraculous. I know you’ll all probably laugh at me, but the night I closed I went home and put some oil on Woody and prayed over him. It hasn’t really changed anything with Woody, but I felt like I should at least do it, since we are told to have Elders come and anoint us with oil and pray over us if we are sick (James 5:14). We’ve also been looking into getting Woody some booties so he can grip the wood floors in our house better.

I think that’s all for updates.

Your prayers are always welcome.