I have recently updated p2pConverter to 0.5. This now integrates better with post-2.5 Wordpress installations, as it no longer includes Scompt’s ManagePages files to incorporate customized columns under Manage > Pages (a much need feature). If you are still using a pre-2.5 installation, you can download 0.4 or a previous version at the p2pConverter Archived page.

I restructured this plugin in the new version, and included a new feature that one commenter requested. Now you are able to limit users who have priveledges from being able to convert between posts and pages. This checks if the user is allowed to delete a Post and/or a Page, and if he is he is allowed to convert. This “Capability” can be adjusted on a per role basis with a plugin like Role Manager.

Please click here to download the new version!

Let me know if you have any questions!

I have finally found a place that I can sit down and access a wi-fi hot spot for free! You see, we (the Townesouth / Kernersville Bible Bowl Team) got into Atlanta yesterday and our hotel (the Mariot Marquis) requires you to pay between $9.95-12.95 per day for internet access. What a rip off. But we just got stettled into our rooms and just chilled. The other guy and I both got our hair chopped at the New Underground Mall (yeah, we realized when we got there that we were the minority, but that’s ok, people were still nice to us).

Today, we decided to go to church at a local congregation in northern Atlanta called Christian Church Buckhead because one of the other female sponsors had a friend who was a member.

First thing, we left an hour early, and it sure is a good thing because we would have been late getting there if we had not (the two females occupied the drivers and navigators seats, and I was relegated to the back, and so naturally, we got lost). We eventually found it just in time for service to start.

This congregation apparently has moved quite a few times, and are currently renting a building that the Christian Scientists originally occupied. We were warmly greeted before we stepped inside to the narrow lobby area. We met up quickly with the friend, and stepped into the sanctuary, tall and dim (most of the windows were covered).

At either entrance, there were paperback Bibles that were offered to guests and visitors who did not have one of their own. This is always a nice gesture, and I did not think anything more about it.

The auditorium (I only call it that because it was definitely tall enough) consisted of three sections of folding chairs, a long permanent stage with band equipment on it, and a makeshift stage jettisoning out in the middle of it (this is where the lead singer of the band was eventually positioned). To the left of the stage was a big makeshift black drop with a screen on it positioned at a 45 degree angle so that the congregation could see it, but it was not blaring at you. I later discovered that it used rear projection to display the content, which I assume was Media Shout based.

As we began to find our seats down front, Lifehouse began to play over the speakers their song Make Me Over from their latest CD. A single picture of two feet on a skateboard with the sides of the road in a motion blur was captioned by the word “SHIFT”. At the end of the song, the worship band began to play.

The band was made up of a drummer, a bass guitarist, a keyboardist (who also did backup vocals and I came to learn was the Worship minister) and a guitarist who also sang lead vocals. We sang the typical contemporary songs Here Is Our King and How Great Is Our God. These were all on a plain black background with white text on the projector. Then, in preparation for communion the band broke out into Blessed Assurance, calmly at first but using the full band in the last two verses.

The service led right into communion, which had the congregation walk forward to one of four stations in the sanctuary to partake of the “ancient meal” (the words used to describe communion on a card detailing information about toadys services and upcoming events). As the group partook, the band played a song I had not heard before. After a bit of looking online here, I found out that this is a song by an upcoming band called Fee (I have heard of them, but never really “heard” any of their songs), and the song is called Lift High. This was a song that I quickly became enthralled in:

Lift up your heads
Oh oh oh lift up your heads

Lift high, your chains undone
All rise, exalt the Son
Jesus Christ, the Holy One

We lift our eyes to You

After the offering, we were told that we were going to hear a sermon from Adam (again apparently, Derek the lead pastor was gone for one more week) on the last part of James chapter 3. One thing that really, really (and I mean really) impressed me is their solution to whether they should use the projector to display the Scripture that is being studied during the service. Most churches either decide:

1. No! There will be NO scripture on the screen! People should be looking at their Bibles to find what is being talked about, and if they didn’t bring one, too bad!
2. Or Yes! All scripture content and references will be on the screen at all times so that all people can see and view the Word of God no matter what!

But this church did something that I have not seen, (remember how I told you they were handing out Bibles to those who did not have one?), they put the verse reference and page number (for the paperback Bibles) of the message’s text and left it up. They encouraged everyone to actually view the reading in the text and did not ostracize those who did not own a Bible themselves. When another text was references, same deal, reference and page number only. Only when a famous quote was referenced in the sermon was there other text on the projector. This really stuck out to me as a great and effective idea.

Adam preached on James 3:13-18, elaborating on how what is inside, what exists in our hearts is what will overflow on the outside. If we want to change our behavior to be more Christ-like and beautiful, we need to change the inside first by attacking the root of the problem (our selfishness and sin) instead of the symptoms (oh, I lie, and do bad things).

After the sermon, the worship pastor (Jamie) came to the front and informed the congregation that a well loved couple was having to transfer to Denver, CO. He asked them to come up front, but they were not in the service. Come to find out, they were volunteering teaching the Middle Schoolers on their last day at the church because the youth pastor and his wife were away as well!

The service ended with prayer and the band playing an ending chorus of Here Is Our King. As we walked out, everyone conglomerated in the thin lobby area. We were welcomed again as vistors and asked to come back.

This was an encouraging visit to a church that seems to be truly striving to live together in community without forsaking the foundation of the Scriptures while reaching out to the community surrounding them.

I would love to come back again and visit if I am in the Atlanta area again.

Yeah, we all hate gas prices, especially these days. I can remember when gas was 89 cents… of course I still had quite a few years till I was able to drive… and that’s not really saying much for those people out there who can still remember when it was a nickel.

However, I had to fill up my tank again today, and my Dodge Intrepid came to a whopping almost $60 for a regular tank of gas. That got me to thinking about the good ol’ times. Those times when I can remember filling up for only $21. Those times when I did actually think it was a crime that gas actually was posted at $1.79.

Ah… yeah, well these are the times we now live in.

As I was scouring the internet today, I stumbled across a couple of humurous articles based on this issue of rising gas prices. It just seems that some people are actually resorting to (surprise surprise!) stealing gasoline. I have wondered about that lately, what if someone decides to steal my gas out of the blue.

But maybe if that happens, and I find a way to refuel my vehicle once again, then just maybe a stranger will help me out.

But it saddens me. I had desired and dreamed about taking an awesome road trip this summer. Probably out west. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

Well, maybe instead I should just make a permanent move to southern California and invest in one of those new hybrid cars that actually run on hydrogen.

Or maybe I’ll just stick with my car I’ve had. She’s been a good one at that. Yes. My car is a she…her name is Caroline.

Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do. At least until magic happens.

“Knowing you would fail and fall and finally get back up again, and from the failure understand that it doesn’t matter. You are mine. I have bought you, and no matter what you do, you will always be mine. I do not see your failures…. I see only the man you will become.” -Return of the Guardian King, by Karen Hancock

Reading this passage towards the end of the book really struck a cord with me. I just sat there and reread that section again, and again. I felt it speak directly to me, a hint of God and His truth revealed as a glimspe in a moment of time.

I struggle with failures and even the fear of failing. I feel like if I fail, that just proves that I am imcompentant. Period.

Part of this is the fact that I set too high of standards for myself, expecting that I will be able to achieve these aspirations with little realistic effort. I also tend to refuse to try to achieve perfection within this goal. If its not done to my specifications, to my desires, to my expectation, why should it even be done by me?

Too often I find that I am hurting myself by taking on too much on my own. I set myself up for failure. And amid that failure, I beat myself up over it.

A song that quickly comes to mind is by This Beautiful Republic:

What if I said of all you did, that none of it would really matter?
And if I said of all you have that all of it is torn and shattered?

Questions are not easy
When nothing can satisfy.
Life is more than these fears and failures
Fame is just a lie.

Ultimately, the things that I do, create, plan, develop, and even manipulate do not matter in the eternal scheme of things. Yes, God can, and does, work through these things, blessing and growing us amid these struggles. But it does not matter eternally if I fail or succeed at them.

What does matter eternally is the fact that I am chosen. And because I am chosen, God knows what He can and will do with me, how He will shape and mold me. He alone knows what I truly will become, what potential lies within me. He sees what He can make and create within me, and not what I am now.

This is a blessing, an insight to revel in the fact that what I am now, amid and amongst my fears and failures, is only a shadow of what I can and will be. I will always be His. And He sees the man that I will be.

Stories are awesome! Stories are my favorite. When I was a kid, I loved reading stories, of any nature. And as I was introduced to the Bible, I found that I really and utterly enjoyed reading the Old Testament–to clarify it was one of those cases that I loved to read the Old Testament over the New Testament. I mean, I liked the stories in the Gospels and stuff, but I didn’t really like much else because it wasn’t story oriented (I have since grown to appreciate the New Testament, and it seems that things have switched).

But I loved reading about Joshua getting tricked into an alliance with local enemies that the LORD had commanded them to destroy (Joshua 9). Or about the various antics and exploits of the kings of Judah and Israel (1 & 2 Kings), or about the man of God who disobeyed God when he was tricked into resting and feasting with a deceitful prophet and not completing a journey commanded by God and so he died and was mauled by a lion (1 Kings 13).

Yeah, these exciting, gruesome, bloody, and outrageous stories enthralled me. They taught me that there was such a thing as righteous and unrighteous men, and that sometimes righteous men do unrighteous things. Yet they also taught me about God and his seemingly ambivalent desire for both Justice and Mercy. These elements that I mentioned are themes at the heart of every story ever conceived: good vs. evil, need for revenge, inspiring redemption, forgiveness, a desire to make things right when they have gone wrong.

Conflict. No story is told without it. Otherwise, the information being told would be just that, uninteresting data flowing out of a mouth (or typed or written out by hand). What makes a story interesting, enjoyable, and memorable is conflict. But if you think about it, we ourselves have tons of stories to share, even if we think otherwise. It all depends on the way we look at things.

We all have our share of conflicts (the glass is have empty), but we also have our share of stories that could be told (the glass is half full). I think that is why people tend to like optimistic people better: they tend to share their stories as exciting struggles they have experiences, whereas pessimists tend to just look at them as conflicts that must be over-come….and that’s it.

I know more often (and by default), I am usually apart of the latter group. But I still know and enjoy stories–reading them, watching them, listening to them, singing to them, experiencing them, etc…. They will never cease to amaze me. I think that Jesus knew what he was doing when he told parables to the people….he captured our attention, and proclaimed hope to us who were and are lost in ways that we could comprehend.