“I think being able to go to church on Sundays and being able to get in the Word every day has helped me. I always tell everybody that the biggest thing that’s helped me in my life is reading the Bible every day and learning examples in there for us.” (Colt McCoy)
What will an Obama presidency do to the culture of life we’ve slowly tried to build since Roe vs. Wade? To find out, you really should take 5 minutes to read George Weigel’s article in Newsweek and Robert George’s article in Public Discourse. Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center. George is MCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton.
After reading the articles, if you still plan to vote for Senator Obama, I have three suggestions you should follow in this post.
Our church was included in a front-page Statesman story on this issue on Sunday. Read it here.
Reading “Links to Your World” every week is good for you! Studies show that Internet use is good for the brain, especially among “silver surfers.”
*Sigh*, Part 1: “I believe in reincarnation. I believe I've gone both ways -- that I have been here before as a man. I will get flak from Christians who will say I can't be a Christian if I believe this. That's true, and I'm sorry, but this is how I live my life, this is what I believe. I believe I have spent time with my son Shelby before. I believe I have spent time with other people in my life before. Who knows? Maybe I'm part Buddhist.” (Country music star Reba McIntire. HT: WorldMag Blog)
*Sigh*, Part 2: According to an early report on the new film, The Secret Life of Bees, we're about to be subjected to another project about the superiority of the “feminine divine” over the patriarchal Christian religion: “It feels as if these women believe they must reinvent and ‘improve’ Christianity because it, at least as it has been handed down to them, does not contain enough of their own belief in the feminine divine. . . . Those who have read the novel of the same title know that author Sue Monk Kidd delves even further into the realms of feminist spirituality and feminine divinity.”
In Time, David Van Biema asks religious leaders, “Is It OK to Pray for Your 401(k)?”
“It's ironic but I think it's somewhat to be expected in God's work and in God's economy that many times the greatest opportunities for ministry intersect with the most difficult times economically.” (Bill Walter of Church Growth Services)
“Stress: Portrait of a Killer,” from National Geographic.
10 People Who Survived the Impossible
Late-Night Comics Skewer Republicans 7-to-1, Study Finds
Are evangelicals underrepresented in media employment? WaPo reports.
“When David Teater's 12-year-old son, Joe, was killed in 2004 by a driver who was talking on a cell phone, he tried to cut back on his own habit of driving and talking. It turned out to be very difficult. . . . Teater became an advocate for curbing what he calls ‘driving while distracted,’ and now, he's part of a company with a technology that can help. Aegis Mobility, a Canadian software company, announced Monday that it has developed software called DriveAssist that will detect whether a cell phone is moving at car speeds. When that happens, the software will alert the cellular network, telling it to hold calls and text messages until the drive is over” (story)
Related: “Nationwide Insurance has teamed up with the Canadian software firm Aegis Mobility to cut the premiums of customers who install a cellphone nanny called DriveAssist that limits phone use behind the wheel. DriveAssist can tell when a phone is in motion and sends a signal alerting incoming callers that you're driving and won't accept the call.” (Wired Magazine)
Michael Duduit of PreachingNow said: “In his well-read blog, Ed Stetzer talks about the origin of the word ‘megachurch,’ which refers to a congregation with more than 2,000 members. He goes on to cite the relatively new term ‘gigachurch,’ which is used for congregations with more than 10,000 members. It all makes me wonder where the terminology is going, even as churches grow ever larger:
•Whomperchurch – a church of 25,000 or more
•Bazillionchurch – a church of 50,000 or more
•Googlechurch – a church of 100,000 or more
•AverageKoreanChurch – a church of 250,000 or more”
Your favorite worship songs sung by a death metal band.
“’It's not the Baptists suing the Catholic church. We wouldn't want to do that.’” Highland Lakes Baptist Encampment executive director explaining why their insurance company is suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Austin for a fire that burned down the auditorium.
“The Bee Gee's 1977 hit song ‘Stayin' Alive’ has just about the perfect tempo for performing chest compressions during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), according to the American Heart Association.” (Wired Magazine)
“Imagine that you stand in the pulpit on Sunday morning and there is a target superimposed on your congregation. In the bulls-eye are the saints, those who know the vocabulary, who know the story, who carry on the mission of the church. The next ring represents the seekers, those who are, as it were, 'in and out.' The third ring represents the people who are there because their kid sings in the junior choir; they are largely marginal to the purposes of the church. To whom do you preach? Some say you preach to the outer ring in order to bring them in. You dumb down the vocabulary of the faith in order to attract people who do not care about the vocabulary of the faith. I would like to say, to the contrary, ‘Preach to the bulls-eye.’ But preach to the bulls-eye in such a way that those in the other rings can overhear and also acquire the vocabulary of the faith.” Thomas Long in The Folly of Preaching. Quoted in PreachingNow e-newsletter).
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