Documentation & Demons
In this newsletter:
Praxis Work: Documenting the Month of Content Marketing
Praxis Reading: How to Win Friends and Influence People
Youth Group Q&A Night: Do Demons Still Have Control Over the World?
Art of the Week: The Mural
What’s in the Works?: Week Two of the Entryway Mural
Praxis Work
This was the final week of the content marketing module for Praxis. Taking all of the stuff that I accomplished this month, I created documentation for it. This included another landing page, a post, and a video recap.
I tackled the post first. Using Google Docs, (my new love), I wrote a comprehensive post about all that I learned this month, from making my first landing page to scheduling and posting my finished posts. It includes quotes, and pictures and breaks the month down week by week. I also made a separate blog post for the marketing emails which I could link to the finished product.
For the video, I took my original post and shortened it into a five-minute script. I then created an elaborate setup to film myself for the video, but whatever works, works. Then after around two hours of editing, I posted it to YouTube.
Finally, I put it all together with a different landing page on my website. This part was a little bit tricky, as I had to finish editing my original post, incorporate a video, and add all of my links, but I eventually completed it. If you’re interested in seeing the completed project check it out here!
Praxis Reading
Being a leader takes tact, tenacity, and an understanding of how people work. Everyone hates criticism, so don’t directly criticize. Start with an honest appreciation of their skills, then ease them into seeing from your point of view any improvements that need to be made. Show them your mistakes as well, so that it doesn’t feel like you are above them, and never make any mistakes. Ask them questions to get them to be on the same page as you, instead of trying to force your views on them. Another one can be letting them make up for their mistake without humiliating them, or “Letting them save face.”
While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I think more discussion on boundaries and when to tell someone that they are wrong would have been helpful. The information can come off as very people-pleasing and doormat-like behavior. This book will help you to win friends and influence people, but sometimes, you have to take a stand for what you know is right and say something that might lose you a lot of friends and influence.
Youth Group Teaching
As we are getting closer to the end of October, the kids had a couple of interesting questions for us at youth group. This week the main topic of discussion was demons. Do they have any power over the world? Now, I’m coming at this question from the perspective of a follower of Christ. I believe very strongly in the fact that there are powers at work in the world that we cannot see: Spiritual powers. So the simple answer to the question is yes. Demons do have power over the world. But we can go deeper.
If we look at Mark 5 we see an interaction between Jesus and a demon-possessed man. This man had a legion of demons controlling him, which was probably somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000. So a lot a lot. This guy was so powerful because of the demons, that he had broken the chains that the townsfolk had used to bind him. He was a menace to society and lived a secluded, outcast life, scaring others and hurting himself. Demons will always try to destroy God’s creation, and they were trying to destroy this man.
As Jesus approaches, the demons recognize Him and become afraid. They ask Him why he’s here, and eventually beg Him to send them into a herd of pigs nearby. He permits them and, again, they take the opportunity to destroy God’s creation, by throwing the pigs into the sea. In the ancient Jewish mind, the sea represented chaos and evil. Something like Hell. So the demons going into the sea is reminiscent of them returning to Hell. The pigs were lost, but the man’s soul was not.
All this to say, yes, demons do have power over the world, we don’t fight against flesh and blood, but demons cannot possess Christians. Christians have the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit and a demon, can’t take up the same place at once. Jesus has already defeated Satan and his powers. Anything else they do is ultimately futile.
Art of the Week
We continued working on the mural this week! Here are a couple update photos.
If you want to see more artwork from me, including more progress photos of the art above, check out my Instagram page, Lucid Ace Art. I post update photos of the mural nearly every day.
What’s in the Works?
This week we continued the entryway mural. As you can see above it’s really starting to come together now! All of the planning and just messing with it are paying off! The painting looks arguably better in photos, so we’ve been looking at pictures of it to see how to improve. Today we started the underpainting of the wheat on the vertical panel. On Monday we will start painting the details in the wheat.
That’s all for this week. Thank you so much for reading!