Geo Hill

Good Grief – Five Things Not to Say to the Grieving

2012-01-27T12:35:00.001-06:00

From Ben Witherington at Asbury Theological Seminary:

When a person suffers the devastating loss of a loved one, you should — however well-intentioned you might be — keep your mouth shut. Or at the very least, you should think long and hard before you say anything. Here are some of the things I recently heard that did not help, and frankly were not true.

1) “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” Not a saying from God, rather it’s from the poorly-informed Job, who was later forced to revise his opinion. As it happens, it was Satan who devastated Job’s life and family.

2) “You’ll get over it soon.” Wrong. I hope I never get over the loss of my daughter. I don’t want to forget her love, her smile, her joys, her sorrows, and so many millions of other things that formed the sum total of her life. I do not intend to get over it. I intend to get beyond it by the grace of God, but in no way forgetting what happened to her at the end of her life in this world. There will always be a Christy-shaped hole in my heart. Period.

3) “Sorry about your lost loved one.” This is well meant, of course, but bad theology. Christy is not lost. I know right where to find her. She is safe in the arms of Jesus. One of our good Christian friends shared this experience with me from her charismatic prayer time, this week: “The Holy Spirit came upon the prayer so mightily. My heart is not heavy, like it was before that prayer, and the witness the precious Holy Spirit gave us was that Christy truly has made it home. I know she is home, but the prayer made it very real to us.” Exactly right. She has gone before us, but she is not a lost loved one wandering in oblivion. She is a found loved one who has found her home in Christ.

4) “Well, at least you still have your son.” I am indeed very thankful our son and our Russian daughter are alive and well, but I don’t believe in compensatory theology. Having other children does not make the loss of Christy any less hard to bear. Each life is different, unique, special, and one life does not compensate for the loss of another. As John Donne says, “Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am a part of mankind.” All the more so when it’s a member of my own family.

5) “God will make up for this with a twofold blessing.” Again, I don’t think God is a practitioner of some sort of new math or compensatory calculus, running the universe. God has not been a naughty boy taking away my sweet-pea named Christy, and he has nothing to make up for. I certainly do believe God works everything together for good, for those who love him.

So I leave myself open to such working, trusting it will make me better, not bitter.

Dear Student: I Don't Lie Awake At Night Thinking of Ways to Ruin Your Life

2012-01-23T13:56:00.001-06:00

From Art Carden in Forbes

One of the popular myths of higher education is that professors are sadists who live to inflict psychological trauma on undergraduates. Perhaps you believe that we pick students at random and then schedule all our assignments in such a way as to make those students’ lives as difficult as possible. The older I get and the longer I do this, the more I recognize that we (the professors) need to be more transparent about our philosophies of evaluation. How does this work? Let’s clarify a few things.

First, I do not “take off” points. You earn them. The difference is not merely rhetorical, nor is it trivial. In other words, you start with zero points and earn your way to a grade. . . .

Second, this means that the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that you have mastered the material. It is not on me to demonstrate that you have not. . . .In this light, consider this: the fact that you “don’t understand” why you didn’t earn full points for a particular question might itself help explain why you didn’t earn full points. Don’t take this personally or interpret it as a sneer. See it as a learning opportunity. . . .

Finally, I’m here to be a mentor and instructor. This means that our relationship differs from the relationships that you have with your friends and family. Please don’t infer from this that I don’t care about you, because I do. A lot. I want to see you make good choices. I want to see you understand basic economics because I hope it will rock your world as it continues to rock mine and because the human consequences of lousy economic policy are enormous. That said, you should never take grades personally. . . .

Dear student, I once thought as you do. I once carried about the same misconceptions, the same litany of cognitive biases, and the same adolescent desire to blame others for my errors. I was (and remain) very poorly served by my immaturity. As shocking as it may seem, I still cling to a lot of it, even after four years of college, five years of graduate school, and now five-and-a-half years as a professor. Economics is hard, but becoming a responsible member of a free society is very, very, very hard. I’m still learning to put aside childish things. I hope you will do the same. Start now. The effort is daunting, but the rewards are substantial.

Read the full article here

Atheism 2.0

2012-01-23T08:35:00.001-06:00

It is very important to know how Satan attacks the Gospel with subtle changes.

Target Ad with Down Syndrome Boy Helps Dad Blogger Raise Awareness

2012-01-07T12:10:00.001-06:00

From ABC News:

A recent Target ad featuring a child model with Down syndrome is helping one dad blogger raise awareness about the chromosomal condition.

This week, Rick Smith praised it on his blog, NoahsDad.com, which tells the story of the Smith’s life with his son Noah, who has Down syndrome.

Smith gratefully described how Target had included someone with a disability without making a big deal about it

The story of the Target ad as well as Smith’s post has gone viral, spreading through the media and resulting in the post receiving more than 16,000 Facebook likes, more than 3,000 tweets and 261 comments, Smith said.

Spreading along with it is the core message of NoahsDad.com: “Down Syndrome is OK.” Everything is fine with Noah. Advertisers and TV shows like “Glee” are getting it, and — perhaps most important to Smith — so are parents.

In a section on the blog titled “Our Story,” Smith reveals how he himself absorbed that message. After the shock and confused sorrow following the news about Noah, Smith, a self-described “tech guy,” went online to learn what his life would be like.

“The videos were all so weird and sappy, made by weird people,” he said. ”People need to know it’s not this sad thing,” Smith said he told himself.

Smith bought the Apple video-editing program Final Cut Pro and with his iPhone as a camera, started shooting one one-minute video of Noah each day.

Sometime in May, NoahsDad.com was born.

“It took off like crazy, with people all over the world, on pretty much every continent,” Smith said.

In one third-world village, Smith said fans used video of Noah’s physical therapy as a guide for giving therapy to people with Down syndrome, because they didn’t have access to it themselves.

Another blog visitor, who was preparing for the likelihood of having a Down syndrome child, wrote to Smith to say he watched Smith’s videos every night with members of his family to learn and take comfort.

Most of the blog’s content is simply Rick Smith’s accessible, funny descriptions of the one-minute videos showing everyday life with Noah.

“Fear is very crippling,” Rick Smith said. “If we can just show you what life can be like, take away that fear for you, you can have courage.”

Smith said that “90 percent or 92 percent, depending on the study” of parents who learn through prenatal screening that they have a relatively high chance of having a child with Down Syndrome abort the pregnancy.

A new blood test, less invasive and risky than amniocentesis, makes it easier than ever to screen for Down syndrome, he said.

“Unapologetically, one of the main purposes of the blog is to encourage these parents to follow through with the pregnancy,” Smith said.

“I’m not yelling or picketing outside an abortion clinic,” he added. “I’m more creative. I believe in the power of story, of inviting people into our story.”

NoahsDad.com integrates Smith’s life and faith with his strong interest in social media. A self-described “early adopter,” Smith was one of the first people on Twitter, he said.

“God has given us these tools to reach people,” he said. “How can we use them to further good in the world?”

He recently blogged about a couple featured recently on ABC World News who adopted a girl from Ukraine, where Down syndrome children were found living in adult mental institutions.

“They’re treated like outcasts,” Smith said. “Families are embarrassed by them. It’s so heartbreaking.”

For many, 'Losing My Religion' isn't just a song: It's life

2011-12-28T12:46:00.002-06:00

From Cathy Lynn Grossman in USA TODAY

"The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal," says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

Americans on spirituality

46%
Percentage who say they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.

44%
Percentage who don't spend time seeking "eternal wisdom."

18%
Percentage who don't think God has a purpose or plan for everyone.

Sources: Baylor University Religion Survey, LifeWay Research

As Christmas Day glides by — all gilt, no substance — for many, clergy and religion experts are dismayed. They fear for souls' salvation and for the common threads of faith snapping in society. Others see no such dire consequences to a more openly secular America as people not only fess up to being faithless but admit they're skipping out on spiritual, the cool default word of the decade, as well.

Only now, however, are they turning up in the statistical stream. Researchers have begun asking the kind of nuanced questions that reveal just how big the So Whatset might be:

•44% told the 2011 Baylor University Religion Survey they spend no time seeking "eternal wisdom," and 19% said "it's useless to search for meaning."

•46% told a 2011 survey by Nashville-based evangelical research agency, LifeWay Research, they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.

•28% told LifeWay "it's not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose." And 18% scoffed that God has a purpose or plan for everyone.

•6.3% of Americans turned up on Pew Forum's 2007 Religious Landscape Survey as totally secular — unconnected to God or a higher power or any religious identity and willing to say religion is not important in their lives.

Read the full story here.

The Year that Was

2011-12-21T10:21:00.000-06:00

The Paradox of Giving

2011-12-18T09:59:00.001-06:00

From Leon Neyfakh of The Boston Globe:

Every holiday season in America, as Thanksgiving fades and turkey sandwiches give way to Christmas trees and candy canes, Americans unleash an immense flow of charitable donations. For charities, it’s the busiest time of the year: Salvation Army bell ringers man their corners; workplace pledge drives abound.
The urge to give that is awakened around this time is an important one: Philanthropy plays a crucial role in American society, providing funding for a vast array of services. . . .

Though the tradition of giving to the less fortunate has existed for millennia — and though researchers have long been interested in what makes humans want to help others at their own expense — social scientists have only begun to seriously examine the act of donating money in the past 20 years.

The insights they’ve drawn have been helpful to fundraisers, enabling them to craft better campaigns and tug at our heartstrings with greater precision. But for those of us just looking to donate, and donate well, the emerging research on charitable giving has yielded a difficult truth: Thinking harder about how to give makes us less likely to give at all.

This finding is concerning in light of the strong recent push to give more rationally — for even small individual donors to scrutinize the inner workings of charities and make sure their money is being spent productively. Research by economists and psychologists suggests that the impulse to give does not square with thinking in such a calculating way. On the contrary, it appears that giving is driven by emotional motives, rooted in deep impulses, cognitive biases and even our own selfish needs. (Charity research isn’t necessarily flattering to donors.) And when we think too analytically about giving, we can deflate our initial generous instinct. . . .

One dominant strain of thought among charity researchers is that our donations aren’t chiefly driven by concern for others, or a principled sense of altruism — that instead, it’s largely a way for us to indulge the desire to feel virtuous and happy about our role in the world. This theory was formalized in 1989 by behavioral economist James Andreoni, who described the rush of self-satisfaction and sense of purpose one experiences after committing support to a worthy cause as a “warm glow.” The reason we give money, Andreoni wrote, is that it makes us feel good — regardless of how much it benefits the people we’re ostensibly trying to help.

Another prominent theory to emerge from the research is that people give because of social pressure. We want to avoid appearing selfish or coldhearted, especially in front of people who are suffering or people whose opinions we care about. We might feel this type of pressure when we find ourselves passing a homeless person on the street, or when someone at the office asks if we’d like to participate in the companywide campaign for United Way.

Those aren’t the reasons we like to think of ourselves as donating, but experimental research on charity tends to support the notion that donating and thinking occupy separate realms. . . .

For humans, who distinguish themselves from beasts in part through their analytical powers, this is a troubling conflict. Why should thinking be the enemy of generosity? What does it mean that as soon as we enter the “deliberative mind-set,” to use Small’s term, we become less altruistic towards our fellow man?
One reason analytical thinking might have this effect on the charitable impulse is that, once people really think through what the charity they’ve selected might accomplish with their money, they start realizing just how little their contribution is going to help. This is sometimes referred to as the “drop in the bucket” effect. . . .

Lise Vesterlund, an economist at the University of Pittsburgh, doesn’t share the dominant view of charity as being motivated primarily by people’s desire to attain prestige and feel good about themselves. Instead, she argues that existing research points to something she calls “the temptation to do good.” As she sees it, people are preprogrammed to help those who are suffering, and when we make an impulsive decision to give money to charities that don’t necessarily make the best use of it, we’re essentially indulging that temptation the way we’d indulge a sugar craving.

But appetites can be healthy, too, and Vesterlund’s solution is to be sure we indulge them the right way: essentially, putting carrots closer at hand than a chocolate bar. If you know that donating money to a food bank this holiday season is going to go further toward helping the poor than giving the same amount in quarters to panhandlers, then decide that’s how you’ll do it when the appetite strikes.

“We all know this time of year we’re getting tons of solicitations,” Vesterlund said. “If before going into the season you say, ‘I want to make substantial charitable donations, and these are the organizations I want to give to,’ you don’t fall prey to the temptations.”

What if Tim Tebow were a Muslim?

2011-12-08T10:47:00.001-06:00

I heard the author of this article yesterday on the radio while driving in to school. Very interesting.

From Jen Floyd Engel with Fox Sports:

What if Tim Tebow were a Muslim?

Imagine for a second, the Denver Broncos quarterback is a devout follower of Islam, sincere and principled in his beliefs and thus bowed toward Mecca to celebrate touchdowns. Now imagine if Detroit Lions players Stephen Tulloch and Tony Scheffler mockingly bowed toward Mecca, too, after tackling him for a loss or scoring a touchdown, just like what happened Sunday. I know what would happen. . . .

Stinging indictments issued by sports columnists. At least a few outraged religious leaders chiming in on his behalf. Depending on what else had happened that day, they might have a chance at becoming Keith Olbermann's Worst Person In The World.

And there would be apologies. Oh, Lord, would there be apologies — by players, by coaches, possibly by ownership with a tiny chance of a statement from NFL commish Roger Goodell.

You cannot mock Muslim faith, not in this country, not anywhere really.

It is primarily a respect issue, because religion is sacred and should be off limits. Yet when Tulloch and Scheffler dropped to a knee to mock how Tebow prays — an action known as “Tebowing” that has gone viral among the public, too — we yawned and told Christians to lighten up. We blamed Tebow for making a show of honoring God rather than himself in moments of joy. We excused them because Tulloch said he was mocking "Tebowing," not God.

Because ridiculing a man who chooses to honor God is so much better, right?
His religious fervor is an easy target for the vitriol spewed from those who dislike him, but the reasons are much deeper than that. From his advocacy of abstinence to his infamous “You will never see another team play this hard” speech at Florida, it is like he is too good to be true. He is too nice, and thereby we want him to trip up so we can feel better. We want him to be revealed as a hypocrite, and when that fails to happen, we settle for gleefully celebrating his failures on the football field. And why? Because he dares to say thanks?

I keep telling myself I am done with this Tebow debate only to be drawn offside, this time by a Lions player I had never heard of and a viral web meme that sprouted this week that had fans flooding an ESPN story’s comments section with viciously funny, yet downright mean and very sacrilegious quips of the “X > Tebow” formula.

What this whole repeating cycle of Tebow — rip his game, mock his faith, rise to his defense, repeat — has revealed about religious discourse in America is ugly. We have become so enamored of politically correct dogma that we protect every minority from even the slightest blush of insensitivity while letting the very institutions that the majority holds dear to be ridiculed. And this defense that Tebow invites such scrutiny with his willingness to publicly live as he privately believes calls into question what exactly it is we value.

One of the things Boomer Esiason got right earlier this week in his vicious, radio-show takedown on Tebow as a quarterback was how personal the criticism is. A good many NFL players and fans seem to be rooting for this guy to be a massive failure.

I could not figure out what was causing this onslaught of venom for a guy almost everybody claims to like, and I finally decided it is more about us. He makes us uncomfortable. He is a reminder that the blue-red, liberal-conservative fight over taking God out of everyday life is intellectually dishonest. He is too good.

Tebow is proof that God goes comfortably into whatever arena of your life you wish to take Him. I used to work with a great guy, Simon Gonzalez, a very devout Christian, and he prayed before every meal. Others would be killing free press meals and he would stop, bow his head and silently say thanks. He was not making a spectacle of his beliefs. He believed that God deserved thanks for what was before him, and not just when convenient for Simon. And people would squirm — not because what he was doing was wrong but because it was right. It is the same for Tebow.

There is no organized prayer led by Goodell before every game and no mandate for a post-touchdown prayer. Players such as Tebow — and he certainly is not alone in his belief and faith in the league — do so because consciences request it.

That others chose to mock — and Tulloch is in good company with many journalists I call friends and web posters with a wicked sense of humor — reminds me very much of the final line of The Paradoxical Commandments so often attributed to Mother Teresa. “You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.”

And everybody is getting dropped in the grease on this one.

The defenses of Tebow, by Christians, are so ugly it defeats the point. This is where Christianity so often loses people, the ardent preaching of the gospel of “I'm Right, You're Wrong” and the demand for tolerance and the unwillingness to grant it. Because if Tebow were Muslim and did celebrate by bowing to Mecca, that would deserve respect too. Same for a Jewish player, yet why do I see that blowing up into an ugly mess as well? The level of discourse about religion in this country is frankly embarrassing, a bastard child of political discourse.

The only one who looks good in all this — maybe too good for some — is Tebow.
I find it especially telling that Tebow rarely lectures and does not fight back. He did not create Tebowing, nor is he responsible for it blowing up hipster style. It was kind of cool, I thought, after hearing a kid had said he was “Tebowing” while getting chemo.

Tebow is just a guy with the good sense to say thanks. Instead of taking his cue, we mock his faith.

And that says more about us, none of it good.

Book Review of Almost Christian

2011-11-23T12:11:00.001-06:00

This is a book review that I recently submitted to Bibliotheca Sacra.

Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling theAmerican Church. Kendra Creasy Dean. New York: Oxford University Press,2010.

Kendra Creasy Dean (Professor ofYouth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary) has written a disturbingyet thought-provoking book on the current religious state of America’steenagers. The background research for this book was the National Study ofYouth and Religion (NSYR). One of the largest studies ever of the religiousviews of teenagers, the original research was conducted from 2002 to 2005 and consistedof extensive interviews with 3,300 American teenagers (13 to 17 years old) andface-to-face follow-up interviews with 267 teenagers. The study also continueson with a longitudinal study of 2,500 of these teenagers. The overall summaryof the findings (and the basic theme of the book) is “American young peopleare, theoretically, fine with religious faith - but it does not concern themvery much, and it is not durable enough to survive long after they graduatefrom high school” (3). The most condemning part for us as the parents andgrandparents of this generations is that Dean rightly associates the lukewarmnature of our children’s faith as a “barometer of the religious inclinations ofthe culture that surrounds them, giving parents, pastors, teachers, campusministers, youth pastors, and anyone else who works closely with teenagersfifty-yard-line seats from which to watch America’s religious future takeshape” (9).

Dean summarizes the NSYR findingsunder five general headings. First, most American teenagers have a positiveview of religion but otherwise do not give it much thought. So while teenagersare not hostile towards religion, neither do they care much about it. Deanbelievers that most teenagers equate Christian identity with “niceness” but donot think religion has any influence on one’s decisions, choice of friends, orbehaviors. Second, most American teenagers (for good or for bad) mirror theirparents’ religious faith. Dean strongly states, “[The] religiosity of Americanteenagers must be read primarily as a reflection of their parents’ religious devotion (or lack thereof) and , by extension, that ourtheir congregations. . . . Lackadaisical faith is not young people’s issue, but ours. . . . The solution lies not inbeefing up congregational youth programs or making worship more ‘cool’ and attractive, but in modeling the kindof mature, passionate faith we say we want young

people to have” (3-4). This theme is elaborated on later in thebook.

Third, mostAmerican teenagers lack a theological language with which to express theirfaith or interpret their experience of the world. These teenagers callthemselves Christian yet did not have a readily accessible faith vocabulary, fewrecognizable faith practices, and little ability to reflect on their livesreligiously. Fourth, there is a minority of American teenagers - but asignificant minority – that say religious faith is important and that it makesa difference in their lives. According to the NSYR numbers, approximately 8percent of American teenagers were classified as “devoted.” This designationmeant that these teenagers attended religious services weekly, believed that faithis very important in everyday life, felt close to God, were involved in a religiousyouth group, prayed a few times a week, and read scripture once or twice a week.While not too much confidence can be place in exterior actions of faith (andcould even lead to legalism), it is at least one means of assessment. It isinteresting to note though that Mormon teenagers actually did well in the NSYRstudy, so it should be noted that adherence to orthodox Christian theology wasnot taken into consideration in the study. As an evangelical, this would be theonly shortcoming of this study overall.

Finally (butthe most insightful), many American teenagers enact and espouse a religiousoutlook that is distinct from traditional teachings of most world religions.Dean calls this codependent outlook Moral Therapeutic Deism and is convincedthat it is supplanting Christianity as the dominant religion in the UnitedStates. The guiding beliefs of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism are as follows: 1) A“god” exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth,2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in theBible and by most world religions, 3) the central goal of life is to be happyand to feel good about oneself, 4) God is not involved in my life except when Ineed God to resolve a problem, and 5) good people go to heaven when they die.Instead of God being active in the lives of His people, Dean sees the primaryrole of God in Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as passive – “stand back andapprovingly watch us evolve” (39).

After paintinga very bleak religious landscape for American teenagers, Dean devotes the rest ofthe book to providing ways for parents and churches to engage the mission fieldof America’s youth. One way is by providing a “cultural toolbox” to make faithconsequential. The items in this toolbox would include a creed (an articulatedGod-story and belief), a community (a sense of belonging with peers andadults), a calling (a sense of purpose and significance), and a hope (thebelief that God is moving the world somewhere). The goal is to move teenagerstowards spiritual maturity; marked by seeking spiritual growth, being keenlyaware of God, acting out a commitment of faith, making faith a way of life,living lives of service (“ethic of giving”), reaching out to others, exercisingmoral responsibility, speaking publically about one’s faith, and possessing apositive and hopeful spirit. Adults in faith-supporting congregations can helpto cultivate consequential faith in teenagers by modeling the transformingpresence of God in life and in engaging in conversations, prayer, Biblereading, and service that nurture faith and life.

Just as amissionary in a foreign land, adults need to engage in several missionpractices to reach and retain this next generation. First, adults must helptranslate the faith by handing down the catechesis, language, and practices ofChristianity in tangible and understandable ways. Parents especially can nolonger abdicate their role (“let the experts do it”) in articulating theirfaith to their children. Adults (and parents in particular) must becomeincarnational in walking alongside teenagers, demonstrating acts of love andallowing their love of Christ to show in others.

Second,adults must help teenagers in articulating their own faith. Faith communitiesmust encourage public conversation about faith to help teenagers develop theirown religious articulacy. Adults must give teenagers opportunities to talkabout their own faith in families and congregations, and teenagers needopportunities to hear adults talk about their faith as well. Theseconversations are an opportunity to develop good theology as well (“Jesus-talk,”not just “God-talk”). Faith immersions (camps, mission trips, etc.) are alsoexcellent venues for teenagers to practice “speaking Christian.”

The finalmission practice is one of detachment. The goal is to help teenagers de-centerfrom themselves to focus on God and others. Adults need to be intentional inplacing teenagers in environments where they can come in contact with the“otherness” of God and people. Adults also need to be intentional in placingteenagers in environments where their usual cultural tools do not work, introducinga state of disequilibrium. This will actually involve creating space forteenagers to be with Jesus (through prayer and reflective space) instead ofbeing busy for Jesus through activities.

As a parentof a teenager myself, I found the book very sobering. Much of what the modernchurch calls ministry is little more than entertainment, with little eternalimpact in the lives of the participants. But closer to home, every parent needsto reexamine the faith that he/she has practiced in front of their own teenageaudience living under our roofs. Our kids are watching to see if our faith isconsequential in our own lives first.

A Prayer for Thanksgiving

2011-11-22T16:27:00.001-06:00

From The Book of Common Prayer:

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have
done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole
creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life,
and for the mystery of love.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for
the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best
efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy
and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures
that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the
truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast
obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying,
through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life
again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.

Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and
make him known; and through him, at all times and in all
places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

Book Review of The Millennials

2011-11-22T16:17:00.001-06:00

This is a book review that I recently submitted to Bibliotheca Sacra.

The Millennials: Connecting to America’s Largest Generation. ThomRainer and Jess Rainer. Nashville: B&H Books, 2011.

As in his other books (Simple Church, Breakout Churches, SurprisingInsights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them, The Unchurched Next Door, etc.), ThomRainer (President and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources) and his team ofresearchers brings to the surface the latest in research on contemporary issuesfacing American Christianity. This time the focus is on the Millennial generation,a population of 78 million Americans born between roughly1980 and 2000.Business and educational organizations have already been grappling with how towork with this emerging generation. Rainer (joined this time by his ownMillennial son Jess Rainer) offers church leaders a glimpse into this massivegenerational wave, considered by most observers to be the most diverse and themost educated generation in American history.

The research method behind the bookwas an in-depth survey of 1,200 older Millennials born between 1980 and 1991.The racial mix of the respondents was 61% White, 14% African-American, 19%Hispanic, 5% Asian, and 1% mixed. The actual survey consisted of questionsrelated to one’s worldview (i.e. “What is important in life?”), views on theenvironment, insights on money, understanding of relationships and marriage,optimism versus pessimism as an outlook, perceptions on leadership, relationshipto technology, and spiritual views. Out of the survey and its follow-up, the authorsidentify four overarching themes to describe this Millennial generation. First,Millennials are a hopeful generation, believing that they as individuals and asa group can do “something great” for society (although what that “great thing”is may not be identified). Second, Millennials are very relational, includingrelationships with parents, with co-workers, and with their friends. Third,Millennials are perpetual learners. For this generation, schooling was/isessential and parents were/are very involved (sometimes to a fault in being“helicopter parents’) in their children’s education. And finally, Millennialsare not very religious. In fact, one could almost call this generation agnostictowards all matters of faith.

Springing off these four themes,the authors then spend a good deal of the book developing ten insights aboutMillennials. These insights (developed into individual chapters) includeconnectedness in regards to family (desiring close family ties), longing for parentalinvolvement (still looking for parental advice), assumption of diversity (inrace, lifestyle, age, and religious background), making an impact or adifference (strong belief in serving others), attitudes towards work (valuingbalance and personal time over career), desire for mentoring, environmentalsustainability, “on the go” instant communication, financial confusion, andreligion. Being a book written for church leaders, the authors spend the mosttime developing this last insight concerning religion.

According to the research conductedfor this book, the Millennials are the least religious generation ever inAmerican history. While 75 percent of survey respondents would claim to be“spiritual,” most respondents would not claim to be religious and most couldnot even define their beliefs. This is a generation by and large that is notinvolved in established religious services or religious small groups of anykind. Applying the survey results to the larger population, the authors surmisethat only 10 to 15 percent of Millennial are true professing followers of JesusChrist. Over 80 percent of Millennials, according to the authors, believe insome type of works-based salvation. The authors sum up the belief system ofMillennials as theistic, ambivalent towards the Bible, and anti-institutionalchurch. Shockingly, 70 percent of the survey respondents saw the church asirrelevant today. In addressing the Millennials’ belief system, the authorsstate, “[The] church’s challenge is not overcoming an adversarial attitude fromthe Millennials. The true challenge is overcoming apathy. Christianity is notthe belief of the vast majority of this generation. And they believe theAmerican church to be one of the least relevant institutions in society. . . . Thebottom line is that most Millennials will not be lukewarm in their Christianfaith. Most of them have made the decision not to embrace Christianity and tobe forthright about their beliefs. . . . The vast majority is declaring thatreligion in general, and Christianity in particular, is not high on their listof priorities.” (244, 246).

While much of the findings from thesurvey are very depressing for an evangelical believer to hear, the authors dohold out hope for the impact of the professing followers of Jesus Christ amongthis generation. Instead of being satisfied with “business as usual” churches,Christian Millennials are highly motivated to invest in churches engaged in thecause of Christ through outward focused ministry to the community and to theworld. Thus a key to connecting with those Millennials who already professJesus Christ is for churches to demonstrate tangible ministry in the localcommunity and to the nations. Values such as transparency, humility, andintegrity ring true for this generation. The authors also see this outward focusand these demonstrated values as appealing to nonbelievers who see the churchas out of touch with the needs of the world.

While there are other books thataddress the topic of this Millennial generation in greater depth and with morefocus in specific areas of application, the Rainers have done a good job indeveloping a primer for those who have never explored the intricacies of thisrising generation. Just as the Baby Boomers influenced an entire nation(including the church), the Millennials are comparable in size and will make a similarimpact in all facets of life. The church cannot ignore this generation.

Five Myths about Young Adult Church Dropouts

2011-11-16T09:13:00.001-06:00

From The Barna Group:

The Barna Group team spent much of the last five years exploring the lives of young people who drop out of church. The research provides many insights into the spiritual journeys of teens and young adults. The findings are revealed extensively in a new book called,You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church…and Rethinking Faith.

The research uncovered five myths and realities about today's young dropouts.

Myth 1: Most people lose their faith when they leave high school.

Myth 2: Dropping out of church is just a natural part of young adults' maturation.

Myth 3: College experiences are the key factor that cause people to drop out.

Myth 4: This generation of young Christians is increasingly "biblically illiterate."

Myth 5: Young people will come back to church like they always do.

Read the full report here.

Unpaid Interns: Real World Work Or Just Free Labor?

2011-11-12T15:24:00.001-06:00

From Bennish Ahmed with NPR:

Over 1 million Americans a year work as interns. About half of them are unpaid.

Alex Footman was among them, until recently. He worked as an unpaid intern for Black Swan,a film that won numerous awards and grossed over $300 million.
Footman was hoping an internship with Black Swan would open doors in Hollywood. Instead, it has made him rethink his career plans. "This was six months of my life which left me nowhere further along in my career than before," Footman says. "It was not a learning experience and that was what I had expected. This really just seemed like I was just working and wasn't getting paid for it."

He's now part of the open class-action lawsuit against Fox Searchlight Pictures, the film's producer. He and another unpaid intern, Eric Glatt, are suing to win back pay for the hours they worked. They're also filing for an injunction that would keep the company from hiring unpaid interns in the future.

Footman says he filed papers and ran errands alongside paid employees. Glatt worked as an accountant who kept financial records for the production. Their lawsuit is the first case on unpaid internships in over a decade.

The Department of Labor has said that this sort of work may be illegal for unpaid interns to do. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled over 50 years ago that only work done for training purposes could go unpaid. The Labor Department says companies began skirting the rule. Last year, it moved to issue a six-point test that for-profit internships must pass to comply with labor laws.

Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, pushed for that test. His organization looks at life for working-class Americans. He says the test's "essential ingredient is that it has to be for the benefit of the intern, not for the benefit of the employer."

Representatives from Fox Searchlight declined to speak with NPR for this story, but they did issue a statement about the case. It reads in part: "Fox Searchlight internships comply with all federal and state laws and regulations." The statement also says that the company provides interns with a "valuable 'real world' business experience."

It's this "real world" experience that Bob Yari thinks is necessary to make inroads in Hollywood.

"The film industry is an industry that's very difficult to break into," says Yari, who heads Yari Film Group, which made the films Crash and Dave Chappelle's Block Party, among others. "Internships are a way to allow the outsiders to come in and start the process of getting a foothold in the industry. I don't think they're done because [companies] don't want to pay someone to get coffee."

Internships have become an almost essential first step on the career ladder, says Phil Gardner, who directs the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. He says companies don't pay interns because they can get away with it.

"Nobody's been called on this. And in economic times when you're cutting the bottom line and meeting your third quarter, I think the rationale is, 'Why pay anything for them?' " he says.

Gardner says interns don't know what to expect from employers or what laws they might be breaking. Since interns hope to land a paid position, they aren't very likely to file complaints.

But some think companies are just as hard pressed as job seekers in the current economy. Among them is Helana Natt, executive director of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce.

Natt contends companies just can't afford to pay interns the minimum wage. "I'm sure if they can, they would. People don't understand, when you're hiring people it take a lot of time away," she says.

According to Natt, companies have scaled back human resources budgets and use internships as a low-cost screening process.

But EPI's Eisenbrey thinks unpaid internships cut costs beyond hiring expenses. He says companies have saved big-time by turning the entry-level jobs of yesterday into the unpaid internships of today.

"The middle class is being undermined and the way it's being undermined is by having salaries, wages and benefits undermined," Eisenbrey says. "Nothing does that more directly than allowing employers to employ people without paying them."

Eisenbrey is closely watching the Black Swan case. He says a win for the plaintiffs could mean serious changes for this booming class of workers.

What Spurs Students to Stay in College and Learn? Good Teaching Practices and Diversity

2011-11-10T08:58:00.002-06:00

From Dan Berrett in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Good teaching and exposure to students from diverse backgrounds are some of the strongest predictors of whether freshmen return for a second year of college and improve their critical-thinking skills, say two prominent researchers. . . .The likelihood that freshmen returned to college for their sophomore year increased 30 percent when students observed those teaching practices in the classroom. And it held true even after controlling for their backgrounds and grades. Good teaching was not defined by test results. Instead, its attributes were identified on a nine-item scale, which included student appraisals of how well the teacher organized material, used class time, explained directions, and reviewed the subject matter. . . .Exposure to students of diverse backgrounds was measured on a nine-point "interactional diversity scale," which asked students whether they had made friends with a person of a different race, attended a diversity workshop, or interacted with others with different religious or political views, among other measures. The gains in critical-thinking skills over four years were strongest for students who entered college with weaker academic backgrounds, defined as those with scores of 27 or lower on the ACT college-entrance examination.

Read the rest of the article here.

Will Dropouts Save America?

2011-11-06T09:00:00.001-06:00

From Michael Ellsberg in The New York Times:

I typed these words on a computer designed by Apple, co-founded by the college dropout Steve Jobs. The program I used to write it was created by Microsoft, started by the college dropouts Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

And as soon as it is published, I will share it with my friends via Twitter, co-founded by the college dropouts Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams and Biz Stone, and Facebook — invented, among others, by the college dropouts Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, and nurtured by the degreeless Sean Parker.

American academia is good at producing writers, literary critics and historians. It is also good at producing professionals with degrees. But we don’t have a shortage of lawyers and professors. America has a shortage of job creators. And the people who create jobs aren’t traditional professionals, but start-up entrepreneurs. . . .

If start-up activity is the true engine of job creation in America, one thing is clear: our current educational system is acting as the brakes. Simply put, from kindergarten through undergraduate and grad school, you learn very few skills or attitudes that would ever help you start a business. Skills like sales, networking, creativity and comfort with failure.
No business in America — and therefore no job creation — happens without someone buying something. But most students learn nothing about sales in college; they are more likely to take a course on why sales (and capitalism) are evil.

Moreover, very few start-ups get off the ground without a wide, vibrant network of advisers and mentors, potential customers and clients, quality vendors and valuable talent to employ. You don’t learn how to network crouched over a desk studying for multiple-choice exams. You learn it outside the classroom, talking to fellow human beings face-to-face.

Start-ups are a creative endeavor by definition. Yet our current classrooms, geared toward tests on narrowly defined academic subjects, stifle creativity. If a young person happens to retain enough creative spirit to start a business upon graduation, she does so in spite of her schooling, not because of it.

Finally, entrepreneurs must embrace failure. I spent the last two years interviewing college dropouts who went on to become millionaires and billionaires. All spoke passionately about the importance of their business failures in leading them to success. Our education system encourages students to play it safe and retreat at the first sign of failure (assuming that any failure will look bad on their college applications and résumés).

Certainly, if you want to become a doctor, lawyer or engineer, then you must go to college. But, beyond regulated fields like these, the focus on higher education as the only path to stable employment is profoundly misguided, exacerbated by parents who see the classic professions as the best route to job security.

That may have been true 50 years ago, but not now. In our chaotic, unpredictable economy, even young people who have no interest in starting a business, and who want to become professionals, still need to learn the entrepreneurial skills that will allow them to get ahead.

Read the full article here.

Three Leadership Skills That Count

2011-11-06T08:52:00.000-06:00

From Morten Hansen of the Harvard Business Review:

How do you lead successfully in an uncertain, disruptive, even chaotic world?In our new book Great by Choice, Jim Collins and I pondered that question. To get some empirically derived answers, we studied leaders of companies that grew to become great in highly uncertain, even chaotic, industries. They include the biotech, semiconductor, personal computer, and airline industries. Over the years, the CEOs of these companies faced massive technology disruptions, deep industry recessions, sudden collapses in demand, price wars, oil shocks — you name it. But even so, they led their companies to great long-term financial performance. Their experience can guide leaders who now must lead in today's disruptive world.

Some of these leaders have become legends, such as Andy Grove of Intel and Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines. Others remain fairly unknown outside their industry, such as John Brown of Stryker and George Rathmann of Amgen. What then were the leadership characteristics that separated the winning leaders from their industry peers?

Surprisingly, they were not more visionary (they did not stand out for their ability to "see" the future), and they were generally not more charismatic (yes, a few were, like Herb Kelleher, but not all, and so were some industry peers). Instead, we found three other characteristics.

Productive Paranoia. Bill Gates was hyper-vigilant about what could hit and damage Microsoft. "Fear should guide you," he said in 1994. "I consider failure on a regular basis." Herb Kelleher predicted eleven of the last three recessions. Andy Grove ran around "looking for the black cloud in the silver lining." Productive paranoia is the ability to be hyper-vigilant about potentially bad events that can hit your company and then turn that fear into preparation and clearheaded action. You can't sit around being fearful; you must act, like Herb Kelleher, who insisted on cutting costs and running lean operations in good times, so that they would be prepared for the next storm, imagined or real.

Empirical Creativity. Well, just staying alive does not produce greatness. You must also create. So we should expect these leaders to be highly creative — to create new, wonderful products. Yes, but here's the rub. The leaders of the average industry peers also displayed lots of creativity. We found that the differentiating leadership principle was a certain approach to creativity, what we call empirical creativity — the ability to empirically validate your creative instincts. This means using direct observation, conducting practical experiments, and engaging directly with evidence, rather than relying on opinion, whim, and analysis alone (and, as a prior management consultant, I would include pure market analysis void of testing in this category). When Peter Lewis of Progressive, the car insurance company, had the idea of expanding into the safe-driver market, he did not move in one big swoop. Rather, he started with trials in Texas and Florida, then added more experiments in other states, and finally, three years later, when the concept was validated, he bet big on the new business. His idea was rooted in empiricism, not analysis alone.

Fanatic Discipline. Discipline can mean many things — working hard, following rules, being obedient, and so on. We mean something else: The best-performing leaders in our study exhibited discipline as consistency of action — consistency with values, long-term goals, and performance standards; consistency of method; and consistency over time. It involves rejecting conventional wisdom, hype, and the madness of crowds — essentially being a nonconformist. When John Brown of Stryker set the long-term goal of 20% annual net income growth, year in and year out (he hit it in more than 90% during 21 years), he was so committed to this quest that it could only be described as, well, fanatical. Markets down? Competition severe? Recession? Market hype? He did not care. He built a system of fanatic discipline to achieve the quest, no matter what. He was highly disciplined by showing consistency between his words (the goal) and his behaviors (everything he did to make it happen).

You need all three leadership skills in an uncertain world: Fanatic discipline keeps you on track; empirical creativity keeps you vibrant; and productive paranoia keeps you alive.

When I speak to leaders, I find it helpful to ask: When you consider these three leadership skills, which do you perceive as your weakest one, and how can you turn that into a strength?

70 Million Americans Feel Held Back by their Past

2011-11-04T10:11:00.003-05:00

From The Barna Group:

In the middle of the economic recession and the Occupy Wall Street protests, residents' economic mood and outlook has been well documented. Yet, underlying emotional and identity factors are often overlooked, such as whether Americans feel they are fulfilling their own personal potential or not.
A new study by Barna Group examines these kinds of indicators, looking at how Americans think about their lives these days. Four characteristics of millions of residents emerged from the survey.

1. One-third of Americans are struggling to live to their "fullest potential."One out of every three adults in this country say they are not living life to their fullest potential, including those who say they are "not at all" (6%) or "not much" (26%). A slim majority of adults (57%) feel they are "mostly" fulfilling their potential, while about one out of eight (12%) feel "completely" fulfilled. Those most likely to feel they are fulfilling their potential include Elders (ages 65-plus), practicing Christians, and Bible readers. Interestingly, education was correlated with fulfillment, but only to a certain point: college graduates were some of the least dissatisfied, but they were also some of the least likely to feel completely fulfilled. A similar pattern emerged with regard to personal economics: the wealthiest Americans were some of the most likely to give extreme responses, either very fulfilled or very unfulfilled.

2. Seventy million Americans feel held back by their past.Overall, 70 million Americans (31% of adults) feel "held back or defined by something in their past." This perception was most commonly expressed by younger adults, blacks, divorced adults, unmarried individuals, and those who have some college experience but never completed their degree. Those with a practicing faith were among the least likely to feel defined or held back by their past. Lower-income households were more likely than average (38%) to feel defined by their past, though 25% of higher-income households were also likely to share this perception.

3. Nearly 70 million Americans are dealing with emotional conflict.When asked if they are dealing with unresolved emotional pain or conflict in life, three out of 10 adults (30%) confirm this description is a present reality for them. This perception was most common among lower-income adults, divorcees, women, and those with no faith allegiance. Married adults, Elders, men, and practicing Christians were the least likely to be dealing with unresolved emotional conflict.

4. One-sixth of Americans are wrestling with the role of church and religion.In total, 15% of Americans said their experiences with religion have caused them to question God, a sentiment that was most common among twentysomethings, college graduates, unmarried adults, non-Christians, and unchurched adults. Similarly, 16% of Americans said they have been hurt by experiences in churches. This perception was most common among women, Boomers (the generation born between 1946 and 1964), and divorced adults.

We Are What We Sing

2011-10-25T12:26:00.005-05:00

This is from Charlotte Kroeker with The Alban Institute:

Music creates memory that is more lasting than words alone. Music helps us to see the same idea in new ways, to find new insights, to uncover new ways of being, to love again, to express emotion otherwise unknown. It takes us into another dimension where we can live more fully. The better the music, the greater its capacity to do its work. Although music has been a part of Christian worship as long as Christians have prayed and praised, we are only beginning to realize its importance. As a good friend has said, “We are what we sing.”

The word liturgy has its roots in the Greek word leitourgia, which combines the words for work and people. “Liturgical” describes communal Christian worship that is participatory. Thus, if we speak of Christian worship or liturgy, we are speaking about the work of the people. What do the people need to participate fully in worship? What do people need to know to sing God’s song faithfully? Granted, participation can be defined as listening or speaking, but singing requires full body involvement and hence has been a primary means of communal participation.

Today’s church lives in a culture where we are more likely to listen to music than to sing or play it. This state of affairs has profound implications for a church whose worship has been sung for all of its history. If we value this head, body, and heart experience of worship, congregations need ways to build their singing capacity. If we ignore this value, we not only lose hundreds of years of worship practice and tradition that have made the faith real to worshipers since Old Testament times, but we also lose the capacity for congregations to do their work through song, in the one way that allows head, heart, and body together to offer praise and prayer to God.

Read the full post here.

The Changing Seminary Landscape: An Interview with Daniel Aleshire

2011-10-20T21:32:00.000-05:00

The Changing Seminary Landscape: An Interview with Daniel Aleshire: The Changing Seminary Landscape: An Interview with Daniel Aleshire

Dissertations vs. Journal Articles for Grad Students

2011-10-07T10:19:00.006-05:00

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

There is an interesting new op-ed piece just co-authored by Anthony Grafton, the Princeton historian and current president of the American Historical Association. Called“No more Plan B: a very modest proposal for graduate programs in history,” somewhat to my surprise it did not advocate fattening grad students and then serving them up for supper at faculty get-togethers. It did rather suggest that the time has come – the time has very long come – when we should all be thinking about alternative jobs for those with academic doctorates, alternatives to being professors that is. . . .

If we are preparing folk for the market place or for other jobs outside academia – and I personally very much think we should do this, because I am jiggered if I want to spend more time working with worthwhile young people who are going to spend their adult lives dashing from one institution to another to teach a course here and a course there – a massive, traditional, history-style dissertation is the last thing they need. Get them used to writing shorter pieces that are going to be criticized and revised again and again. That’s how you do projects in the real world. Not by shutting yourself away for two or three years and emerging with a monstrous opus, but by responding to challenges as they come up and working on them and then moving on.

Believe me, going this way does not make things less onerous nor is one easing the requirements. The stress and strain of publishing articles in refereed places is just plain awful when you are young and frankly I don’t find it gets altogether easier as you get older. But it does prepare you for the real world.

Read the full article here.

Joining the Eternal Song: How liturgical prayer is saving our community from burnout.

2011-05-13T21:35:00.000-05:00

From Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove in Christianity Today:

As an evangelical, I grew up knowing that the turning point in life is a conversion experience—a radical encounter with the living Christ that turns us away from sin and selfishness, toward the life we were made for. When I got to know the Benedictines, I learned they too were adamant about conversion. According to the Rule, when a brother or sister joins the community, they promise three things: stability, obedience, and conversatio morum—the monastic rhythm of prayer and work that is, itself, a way of conversion. Benedictines believed in a conversion experience that happened not once but upon every return to their common prayer. Reminded of Christ's sustaining power, they drew from liturgical prayer the strength to endure. This, I began to see, was the sort of everyday conversion our community needed. . . .

At the heart of every liturgy, we found a familiar prayer: the Our Father. We learned that it had been the core of fixed-hour prayer since the earliest document of Christian teaching, the Didache, which instructed believers to say the Lord's Prayer three times a day. It echoes throughout the creeds that helped us affirm our faith, the Psalms that taught us to wrestle honestly with God, and the ancient prayers we prayed with the dead, who are alive with us in Christ. This new "we," stretching across history, also stretches across time zones, like a relay team passing a prayer baton around the globe each day, manifesting the church's unity. Liturgical prayer teaches us to remember sisters and brothers half a world (or half a millennium) away. . . .

One of the most important lessons I've learned from liturgical prayer is that, by God's grace, we have all the time in the world to do the work of Christ's kingdom. We pause for prayer morning, noon, and evening as a confession that our work depends not on our efforts, but on the faithfulness of a God who has already redeemed the whole creation.

Read the full article here.

Why God Isn’t Doing Well: The universities are fighting an undeclared war on faith.

2011-05-11T11:54:00.000-05:00

From Dennis Prager:

God is not doing very well these days. Here are four reasons why:

The first is that increasingly large numbers of men and women attend university, and Western universities have become essentially secular (and leftist) seminaries. Just as the agenda of traditional Christian and Jewish seminaries is to produce religious Christians and religious Jews, the agenda of Western universities is to produce (left-wing) secularists. The difference is that Christian and Jewish seminaries are honest about their agenda, while the universities still claim they have neither a secularist nor a political agenda. . . .

A second reason God is not doing well among Westerners these days is that many members of the Jewish and Christian clergy decided that their primary role was not to advocate their religion’s moral and religious standards, but rather (1) to make congregants comfortable (“Don’t call me ‘Pastor’ [or ‘Rabbi,’ or ‘Father’], call me Jerry”) and (2) to promulgate the values they learned at their secular left-wing universities.

A third reason God is not doing well is that most of the men and women who are products of this secular left-wing education (meaning a large majority of Western men and women) are theologically, intellectually, and emotionally ill-prepared to deal with all the unjust suffering in the world. . . .

The fourth reason is Islamic violence and the tepid response to it by the liberal churches and synagogues. . . .

That God is not doing well in the Western world may trouble God. But it is we humans who should be most troubled. The moral, intellectual, artistic, and demographic decline in Western Europe (people in secular countries don’t even have the will to reproduce themselves) is only gaining momentum. And the consequences of that decline will be far more devastating than all the tsunamis and all the earthquakes that may come our way.

Read the full article here.

Arousing Ourselves to Death: Porn Is Ravaging Our Churches

2011-05-11T11:39:00.000-05:00

From Russell Moore at Touchstone:

In one sense, the issue of pornography is not new at all. Human lust for covenant-breaking sexuality is rooted, Jesus tells us, not in anything external to us but in our fallen passions (Matt. 5:27–28). Every generation of Christians has faced the pornography question, whether with Dionysian pagan art, or with Jazz Age fan-dancers, or with airbrushed centerfolds.

But the situation is unique now. Pornography is not now simply available. With the advent of Internet technology, with its near universal reach and its promise of secrecy, pornography has been weaponized. In some sectors, especially of our young male populations, it is nearly universal. This universality is not, contrary to the propaganda of the pornographers themselves, a sign of its innocence but of its power.

Like all sin, pornography is by definition a perversion of the good, in this case of the mystery of the male and female together in a one-flesh union. The urge toward this is strong indeed, precisely because our Creator, in manifold wisdom, decided that human creatures would not subdivide like amoeba, but that the male would need the female, and the female the male, for the race to survive.

Beyond that is an even greater mystery still. The Apostle Paul tells us that human sexuality is not arbitrary, nor is it merely natural. It is, he reveals, itself an icon of God’s ultimate purpose in the gospel. The one-flesh union is a sign of the union between Christ and his Church (Eph. 5:22–33). If human sexuality is patterned after the very Alpha and Omega of the cosmos, no wonder it is so difficult to restrain. No wonder it seems so wild.

Read the full article here.

42 Great Chapters of the Bible

2011-05-06T13:52:00.000-05:00

Between May 1 and June 11, Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton, TX (my home church) is going to read a chapter of the Bible everyday together and they have come up with 42 of the great chapters of scriptures. Here's what our church wants you to do--sit down with a Bible, open it up to the chapter, and say, "Alright Holy Spirit, let's have a conversation about this chapter that you wrote." Let the Holy Spirit show you Jesus, teach, rebuke, correct, and train you. Be available and read the passage. Take out a notebook and write whatever you thought while you were reading. If you miss a day, just pick back up the next day. We want to be consistently in God's word. Every week starts on Sunday.

May 1-7
1. Genesis 2 – Creation of Man
2. Genesis 3 – Fall of Man / Proto-evangelium
3. Genesis 15 – The Covenant With Abraham
4. Exodus 12 – The Passover and The Exodus
5. Deuteronomy 5 – The Ten Commandments
6. Job 38 – Who Are You to Judge God?
7. Psalm 23 – The Lord is My Shepherd

May 8-14
8. Psalm 103 – Praise the Lord
9. Psalm 119 – The Word of the Lord
10. Proverbs 16 – Wisdom’s Instruction
11. Isaiah 53 – The Suffering Messiah
12. Isaiah 55 – Invitation to the Thirsty
13. Daniel 6 – Daniel in the Lion’s Den
14. John 1 – Incarnation of Christ

May 15-21
15. John 3 – The Purpose For Christ’s Coming
16. Matthew 5 – Sermon on the Mount (part 1)
17. Matthew 6 – Sermon on the Mount (part 2)
18. Matthew 7 – Sermon on the Mount (part 3)
19. Matthew 13 – The Kingdom of God
20. Matthew 22 – The Great Commandment
21. John 15 – The Vine and the Branches

May 22-28
22. John 17 – The Prayer of Jesus for His Followers
23. Mark 15 – The Crucifixion of Jesus
24. Matthew 28 – Resurrection and The Great Commission
25. Acts 1 – The Ascension of Christ
26. Acts 2 – The Day of Pentecost
27. Romans 3 – Righteousness Through Faith
28. Romans 6 – Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ

May 29-June 4
29. Romans 8 - Life in Christ; Now and Always
30. 1 Corinthians 13 – True Love
31. 1 Corinthians 15 – Resurrection Life
32. 2 Corinthians 5 – A New Creation
33. Galatians 3 – Not Under the Law
34. Galatians 5 – The Fruit of the Spirit
35. Ephesians 2 – Alive in Christ

June 5-11
36. Ephesians 6 – The Armor of God
37. Philippians 2 – Imitating Christ’s Humility
38. Colossians 1 – The Supremacy of Christ
39. Hebrews 11 – Hall of Faith
40. 1 Peter 1 – Living Hope and Holiness
41. Revelation 1 – The Revelation of Jesus Christ
42. Revelation 21 – The New Jerusalem

Follow Jesus on Twitter

2011-04-23T16:01:00.002-05:00

Where Your Tax Dollars are Going

2011-04-22T16:57:00.002-05:00

Via: Heritage Foundation

Research on How God Transforms Lives Reveals a 10-Stop Journey

2011-03-17T09:37:00.001-05:00

From Barna Group:

Six years after beginning what he assumed would be a relatively typical research process that sought to better understand how God transforms people’s lives, researcher George Barna discovered that he had tackled a deeply challenging and amazingly revealing journey. The product of his effort was the ability to identify some of the developmental processes, experiences, and obstacles that are common across the lives of Americans of all backgrounds. He contends that while the details of people’s developmental story differ, everyone is on a spiritual journey and there is sufficient similarity in those journeys that we can describe a normative life path – a map that can help people make greater progress if their goal is to become more Christ-like.

Using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, including more than 15,000 telephone surveys, George Barna distilled his findings and conclusions in a new book, Maximum Faith: Live Like Jesus, that he hopes will motivate and enable Christians in the United States to re-imagine the goal and methods related to their faith journey. . . .

The transformation journey has ten stops en route to wholeness and freedom. Most Americans , according to the research, never get beyond stop three (awareness and concern about sin and its effects, but not cooperating with Christ to alleviate that problem). Among those who become “born again Christians,” most never move past stop five (i.e., having invited Christ to be their savior and then engaging in a lot of religious activity). In other words, a majority of the American public never reaches the second half of the stops on the journey to wholeness. Barna also determined that most church programs are designed to help people get to stop five of the journey but not to move farther down the road to Christ-likeness.

The single most challenging stop is what Barna identified as “stop 7, which is that of brokenness.” The researcher indicated that in order to move closer to completion of the journey, a person must be broken of three things: sin, self, and society. He noted that America’s culture serves as a strong barrier to people being willing to completely abandon themselves and the world in favor of listening to, obeying and enjoying God.

Barna also pointed out that a biblical pattern of spiritual development would require brokenness prior to a person becoming “born again,” but that Americans typically follow a different ordering of the experiences than that identified in the scriptures. That re-ordering is responsible for the prolonged time it takes to make real spiritual progress. . . .

Driven by social mores, few adults who believe they are Christian are willing to abandon worldly objectives in favor of seeking godliness. Only one out of five (22%) stated that they live in a way which makes them completely dependent upon God – and follow up research, according to Barna, indicates that such dependence only emerges in times of crisis or suffering.

Read the full article here.

MSNBC Host Makes Rob Bell Squirm: "You're Amending The Gospel So That It's Palatable!"

2011-03-15T21:48:00.001-05:00

Revising Hell into the Heterodox Mainstream

2011-03-15T15:48:00.001-05:00

From Denny Burk:

Much has been made of Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Before the book was even released, promotional materials seemed to suggest that Rob Bell would be heading in an unorthodox direction in this book.
Now having read the book, I am convinced that the promotional materials were correct. Bell has launched out into a heterodox, unbiblical accounting of sin and judgment, the cross and salvation, heaven and hell. He pictures a God without wrath who would never create a place of eternal conscious punishment for the wicked. No one needs salvation from God’s wrath; they only need to be rescued from themselves. No one needs to have conscious faith in Jesus Christ in this life to find salvation in the next.
While Bell does not want to be labeled a universalist, this book does more to advance the cause of universalism at the popular level than any book I have ever seen.

Read the full review here.

Where Have All the Presbyterians Gone? Nondenominational churches are the fastest growing in the country.

2011-02-05T10:32:00.001-06:00

From The Wall Street Journal:

Are we witnessing the death of America's Christian denominations? Studies conducted by secular and Christian organizations indicate that we are. Fewer and fewer American Christians, especially Protestants, strongly identify with a particular religious communion—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, etc. According to the Baylor Survey on Religion, nondenominational churches now represent the second largest group of Protestant churches in America, and they are also the fastest growing.
More and more Christians choose a church not on the basis of its denomination, but on the basis of more practical matters. Is the nursery easy to find? Do I like the music? Are there support groups for those grappling with addiction?

This trend is a natural extension of the American evangelical experiment. After all, evangelicalism is about the fundamental message of Christianity—the evangel, the gospel, literally the "good news" of God's kingdom arriving in Jesus Christ—not about denomination building.

Read the full story here.

Sherrington: Recent weather events make us look less than Super

2011-02-03T07:49:00.001-06:00

From the Dallas Morning News:

On behalf of the volunteers who have worked tirelessly to put on the world’s biggest party as well as those of us who survive just fine here between cataclysmic meteorological events, please accept this in the spirit offered:
You should have been here last week.
No death-defying roads. No rolling blackouts.
No freezing finger of wind down your collar.
No ice up your shorts.
Contrary to all appearances, the local forecast for major sporting events doesn’t always come from the Book of Exodus. While technically true that it was just a year ago when we greeted the NBA All-Star Game with Dallas’ biggest snow job since plans to turn the Trinity into a theme park, it was only a fluke. Just like every year when a round of the Nelson or Colonial washes out. Or like the summer of ’63, when it was so hot out at the Dallas Athletic Club that Jack Nicklaus couldn’t pick up the Rodman Wanamaker Trophy without oven mitts.
Dallas hasn’t been able to coax a major golf tournament since.
Let us pray it’s not the same with the Super Bowl.

Read the full story here.

Are We Afraid of Single Pastors?

2011-02-02T17:42:00.001-06:00

From Out of Ur:

Paul opens his chapter on singleness and marriage by saying, “It is good for a man not to marry” (1 Corinthians 7:1). It’s good? Have you ever heard singleness taught as “good” from the pulpit? Paul would be happy if “all men” (vs. 7) were single, celibate, and serving Christ undivided by the concerns of a spouse and children. “Now to the unmarried and widows I say: it is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do” (vs. 8). Are you crazy Paul? Do you really think someone can stay unmarried and be an effective senior pastor? You seem just a bit out of touch with our Evangelical culture.

Paul wasn’t crazy. There is nothing more holy, righteous, or godly about marriage than there is about singleness. Nothing. They are both equally good before God. That’s Paul’s message in 1 Corinthians 7. If you’re married, that’s wonderful. If you’re single, that’s wonderful too. You can effectively pastor the church single or married.

We need to move from a church culture that says “Many of my best friends are single” to one that can say “Many of our best pastors are single.” I don’t want to lose heart; I want to believe that it’s possible for 650 million Evangelicals to finally embrace the equal dignity the Scriptures bestow upon both singleness and marriage.
The bottom line is that it is not about being single or married. It’s about being called and gifted by the Spirit to minister to people both like and unlike us (race, gender, marital status, etc). I plead with search committees everywhere to reflect on the implications of 1 Corinthians 7 before overlooking your next single pastoral candidate. They deserve to be evaluated on their excellence, not their marital status.

Read the full article here.

Packers players not enjoying the weather: 'Right now, it's beating me'

2011-02-01T17:03:00.001-06:00

From Dallas Morning News:

While sitting on podiums and standing on the playing surface at Cowboys Stadium during Tuesday's Super Bowl media day, it was difficult for the Green Bay Packers to pretend like they didn't notice the chilly weather outside.
But why would they notice? They just arrived on Monday from Green Bay.

Living in cold weather should be second nature at this point.

However, that is not the case.

Dressed in just his jersey and game pants, the chattering teeth of wide receiver Greg Jennings were an obvious sign of how cold it was inside the covered stadium.

"I want to get a little bit warmer because I am shivering," Jennings noted. "I tolerate the cold. It takes a lot to get used to it. I tolerate it as best as possible.

"Right now, it's beating me."

Read the rest of the article here.

Starbucks Meets Giant Culture

2011-01-17T10:53:00.001-06:00

From RELEVANT Magazine:

Apparently, the American impulse to buy gigantic sizes of everything has now hit Starbucks. Starting tomorrow in a handful of states (and rolling out nationwide), Starbucks will introduce the "Trenta" size, which is seven ounces bigger than a Venti. "Trenta" is Italian for "My hands won't stop shaking" ...

Intellectual Discipleship — Following Christ with Our Minds

2011-01-15T22:04:00.001-06:00

From Al Mohler:

The biblical master narrative serves as a framework for the cognitive principles that allow the formation of an authentically Christian worldview. Many Christians rush to develop what they will call a “Christian worldview” by arranging isolated Christian truths, doctrines, and convictions in order to create formulas for Christian thinking. No doubt, this is a better approach than is found among so many believers who have very little concern for Christian thinking at all, but it is not enough.
A robust and rich model of Christian thinking—the quality of thinking that culminates in a God-centered worldview—requires that we see all truth as interconnected. Ultimately, the systematic wholeness of truth can be traced to the fact that God is himself the author of all truth. Christianity is not a set of doctrines in the sense that a mechanic operates with a set of tools. Instead, Christianity is a comprehensive worldview and way of life that grows out of Christian reflection on the Bible and the unfolding plan of God revealed in the unity of the Scriptures.
A God-centered worldview brings every issue, question, and cultural concern into submission to all that the Bible reveals and frames all understanding within the ultimate purpose of bringing greater glory to God. This task of bringing every thought captive to Christ requires more than episodic Christian thinking and is to be understood as the task of the Church, and not merely the concern of individual believers. The recovery of the Christian mind and the development of a comprehensive Christian worldview will require the deepest theological reflection, the most consecrated application of scholarship, the most sensitive commitment to compassion, and the courage to face all questions without fear.

Read the full post here.

What's the Message of the Bible in One Sentence?

2011-01-12T22:34:00.001-06:00

From Dane Ortlund at Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology:

What is the message of the Bible in one sentence? That's what I recently asked a handful of thoughtful scholars and pastors. Answers here.

Understand that I specifically asked these brothers to keep it to a single sentence (ahem . . . that's pushing it, Dr. Beale). There is inevitably much that is selectively omitted, so think twice before responding (or commenting) 'How could he not mention anything about ____?!' Little exercises like this are not a replacement of reading the Bible itself in all its contours or big books that trace out the Bible in detail, but a pointer to the Bible and to such books.

In fact, it really is impossible to answer my question. How could you ask, for instance, what the Lord of the Rings is about in a single sentence? It can't be done. You must simply enter in and get swept up in the story. We can all resonate, therefore, with Hugenberger's valid response. Yet while we can agree to eschew simplistic reductionisms, this need not include an eschewing of synthetic summaries. We find such summaries in the Bible itself--psalms summarizing Israel's history, Jesus in Matt 22:40 or Luke 24:25-26, several speeches in Acts, and Paul in Gal 5:14 or 1 Cor 15:3-4 all come to mind.

The point here is to refocus and recenter on the heart of the book that is the greatest earthly treasure to fallen human beings outside of God himself.

You can read the responses here.

National Human Trafficking Awareness Day

2011-01-11T21:37:00.001-06:00

Love146 Overview from LOVE146 on Vimeo.

Pima County sheriff should remember duty

2011-01-11T21:24:00.001-06:00

From The Arizona Republic:

On Saturday afternoon, with his friend Gabby Giffords in surgery fighting for her life, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik railed against the tense partisan politics - "the anger, the hatred, the bigotry" - that prompted the mass murders outside Tucson, in his view.
And, jarring as such claims may be, we understood. Or tried to understand, despite the spectacle of a lawman - an official whose very job it is to dispassionately gather facts and to maintain order and calm - tying the attack on Rep. Giffords and others to political speech in Arizona, which he considers prejudiced and bigoted. There is no evidence that the state's politics in any way contributed to this atrocity.
Was Dupnik unnecessarily inflammatory? It seemed so. But it came mere hours following a horrific, bloody mass murder. If you weren't on edge, you weren't being human. But then, on Sunday, the venting continued anew. And a horrified nation began paying closer attention to the Pima County sheriff.
The world's eyes, once again, focused on Arizona for the worst of reasons. And Dupnik stood before the cameras interpreting the shootings as politically motivated, despite an increasing weight of evidence depicting the shooting suspect, Jared Loughner, as a mentally ill young man who rambled incoherently about pervasive bad grammar and other apolitical obsessions. Even Dupnik has observed that Loughner had made death threats against others and that they had been investigated by police.
Still, Dupnik used the opportunities to blame Arizona's lax, new gun laws and, again, the angry "rhetoric" of talk radio. The shootings were spurred, he suggested, by "the rhetoric about hatred, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates."
Dupnik took up his cause again on Monday. And, in response, we have to say at last . . . enough. Enough attacks, sheriff. Enough vitriol. It is well past time for the sheriff of Pima County to get a grip on his emotions and remember his duty.
With each passing hour, we learn more about the 22-year-old suspect. And everything we learn adds to the profile of a deeply troubled young man detached from reality. There is nothing to date that suggests any partisan motivation for his crimes, whether right-wing or left.
Dupnik needs to recall that he is elected to be a lawman. With each additional comment, the Democratic sheriff of Pima County is revealing his agenda as partisan, and, as such, every bit as recklessly antagonistic as the talk-show hosts and politicians he chooses to decry.

When You Don’t Feel Like Praying

2011-01-11T20:15:00.001-06:00

From Scotty Smith at The Gospel Coalition:

Dear Father, this is one of those days when I could create a long prayer list and methodically go through it, but I’m not sure I would really be praying. I could go through the motions, but to be quite honest, it would be more ritual than reality… more about me, than the people and situations I’d bring before you. I’m feeling a bit distracted this morning, scattered and not very focused.

It’s one of those days I’m glad the gospel is much more about your grasp of me than my grip on you. It’s one of those days I’m grateful your delight in me is not contingent upon my delight in you. It’s one of those days I’m very thankful for the prayer ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Gracious Father, I have no problem or reluctance in acknowledging my weakness this morning. In fact it’s freeing to know your Spirit doesn’t abandon us when we’re weak, but helps us in our weakness. Just as Jesus constantly prays for us, the Holy Spirit faithfully prays in us with “wordless groans.” Though I don’t understand everything that means, I do get the part about you searching our hearts and you knowing the mind of the Spirit, and that brings me great comfort today.

No one knows our hearts better than you, Father. And you search our hearts to save us, not to shame us… to deliver us, not to demean us… to change us, not to chide us. You know my dignity and my depravity, my fears and my longings, my struggles with sin and my standing in Christ. No one but you knows how little or how much of the gospel I actually get.

And at this very moment your Spirit is praying inside of me… perfectly tuned into my needs and in total harmony with your will. I cannot measure the peace that brings. I surrender right now, Father. I will gladly groan to your glory. I know you are at work for my good in all things, including this season.

All I have to do is look at Jesus and know these things are true. You have called me to life in him and you will complete your purpose in me… and in each of your children… and in the entire cosmos. I do love you, I would love you more. So very Amen, I pray, in Jesus’ merciful and faithful name.

Members of Congress Read the U.S. Constitution

2011-01-06T22:12:00.000-06:00

Faith on the Hill: The Religious Composition of the 112th Congress

2011-01-06T19:49:00.001-06:00

From The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life:

Many analysts described the November 2010 midterm elections as a sea change, with Republicans taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives and narrowing the Democratic majority in the Senate. But this political overhaul appears to have had little effect on the religious composition of Congress, which is similar to the religious makeup of the previous Congress and of the nation, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The 112th Congress, like the U.S. public, is majority Protestant and about a quarter Catholic. Baptists and Methodists are the largest Protestant denominations in the new Congress, just as they are in the country as a whole.
A few of the country’s smaller religious groups, including Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Jews, have greater numerical representation in Congress than in the general population. Some others, including Buddhists and Muslims, are represented in Congress in roughly equal proportion to their numbers in the adult U.S. population. And some small religious groups, such as Hindus and Jehovah’s Witnesses, are not represented at all in Congress.
Perhaps the greatest disparity between the religious makeup of Congress and the people it represents, however, is in the percentage of the unaffiliated – those who describe their religion as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” According to information gathered by CQ Roll Call and the Pew Forum, no members of Congress say they are unaffiliated. By contrast, about one-sixth of U.S. adults (16%) are not affiliated with any particular faith. Only six members of the 112th Congress (about 1%) do not specify a religious affiliation, which is similar to the percentage of the public that says they don’t know or refuses to specify their faith.

Read the full report here.

Ohio Homeless Man Earns Second Chance With 'Golden Radio Voice'

2011-01-05T19:24:00.001-06:00

I heard this on the radio today and had to see it myself.
You never know who that homeless man is who you pass everyday.

From Ryan Murphy with Radio Television Digital News Association:

Looking for a second chance in life and in journalism, an Ohio homeless man got more than he probably ever expected when a video recently posted to YouTube demonstrated his extraordinary radio voice as he begged on a Columbus, Ohio roadside and turned him into an overnight sensation.

The man, Ted Williams, is known by locals (including police) in Columbus as "Radio Man."

Originally trained to be a radio announcer, Williams said he turned to drugs and alcohol and ruined his chances of a journalism career.

Williams was frequently spotted asking for money at a junction of I71 on Houston Street in Columbus carrying a sign that reads: 'I have a God given gift of voice. I'm an ex-radio announcer who has fallen on hard times. Please! Any help will be gratefully appreciated. Thank you and God bless you. Happy Holidays.

Williams shot into the spotlight after the Columbus Dispatch posted the video of his amazing voice on Monday, and, as of Wednesday morning, Williams had reportedly received job offers from the Cleveland Cavaliers, MTV, the NFL and ESPN. The Cleveland Cavaliers reportedly offered Williams a house.

Williams had previously worked overnight shifts at WVKO (1580 AM), a former Columbus soul music station which now offers Catholic programming, according to Mail Online.

Mail Online also reported that TV channel WBNS-TV wants Williams to provide narration for its first-ever One Day To End Homelessness telethon on January 31, said Frank Willson, director of operations.

"Just to get back to some normalcy and responsibility -- If I can a job, whether it's a twenty-five or even $18,000, I'd be happy," Williams said in a NY Post report. "At least I know God has me where he wants me."

National Debt Tops $14 Trillion

2011-01-03T21:40:00.001-06:00

From CBS News:

The U.S. Treasury website today reported that as of last Friday, the last day of 2010, the National Debt stood at $14,025,215,218,708.52.

It took just 7 months for the National Debt to increase from $13 trillion on June 1, 2010 to $14 trillion on Dec. 31. It also means the debt is fast approaching the statutory ceiling $14.294 trillion set by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last February.

Individualism Shines Through Americans' 2011 New Year's Resolutions

2011-01-03T20:30:00.001-06:00

From The Barna Group:

As the calendar shifts from holiday celebrations to January, a new
survey from the Barna Group explores what Americans describe as their
New Year's resolutions. The nationwide survey of 1,022 adults provides a
snapshot of people’s personal growth priorities for 2011, when they
make such commitments. . . .

When it comes to the types of resolutions people make, Americans not
surprisingly focus on self-oriented changes. Among those planning to
make resolutions, the top pledges for 2011 relate to weight, diet and
health (30%); money, debt and finances (15%); personal improvement
(13%); addiction (12%); job and career (5%); spiritual or church-related
(5%); and educational (4%). Personal improvement responses included
being a better person; giving more; having more personal or leisure
time; organizing their life or home; and having a better life in
general.
While people concentrate on themselves when making priorities for the
New Year, it is telling that so few Americans say they want to improve
relationships with others. There were virtually no mentions of
volunteering or serving others; only a handful of comments about
marriage or parenting; almost no responses focusing on being a better
friend; and only a small fraction of people mentioned improving their
connection with God.

Read the full report here.

Moments that mattered: 10 plays that shaped the Cowboys' season

2011-01-02T17:24:00.001-06:00

From Jean-Jacques Taylor in The Dallas Morning News:

1. The Fumble -- September 12 vs Redskins
2. The Injury -- October 25 vs Giants
3. The Whiff -- November 7 vs Packers
4. The Hold -- September 12 vs Redskins
5. The Interception -- November 14 vs Giants
6. The Penalty -- October 10 vs Titans
7. The Arrival -- September 19 vs Bears
8. The Kickoff Return -- October 17 vs Vikings
9. The Bomb -- November 25 vs Saints
10. The Point After -- December 25 vs Cardinals

Watch the full slideshow here.

This Year, Change Your Mind

2011-01-01T07:58:00.001-06:00

From The New York Times Op-Ed page:

NEW Year’s resolutions often have to do with eating more healthfully, going to the gym more, giving up sweets, losing weight — all admirable goals aimed at improving one’s physical health. Most people, though, do not realize that they can strengthen their brains in a similar way.

While some areas of the brain are hard-wired from birth or early childhood, other areas — especially in the cerebral cortex, which is central to higher cognitive powers like language and thought, as well as sensory and motor functions — can be, to a remarkable extent, rewired as we grow older. In fact, the brain has an astonishing ability to rebound from damage — even from something as devastating as the loss of sight or hearing. As a physician who treats patients with neurological conditions, I see this happen all the time. . . .

Neuroplasticity — the brain’s capacity to create new pathways — is a crucial part of recovery for anyone who loses a sense or a cognitive or motor ability. But it can also be part of everyday life for all of us. While it is often true that learning is easier in childhood, neuroscientists now know that the brain does not stop growing, even in our later years. Every time we practice an old skill or learn a new one, existing neural connections are strengthened and, over time, neurons create more connections to other neurons. Even new nerve cells can be generated. . . .

Whether it is by learning a new language, traveling to a new place, developing a passion for beekeeping or simply thinking about an old problem in a new way, all of us can find ways to stimulate our brains to grow, in the coming year and those to follow. Just as physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy body, challenging one’s brain, keeping it active, engaged, flexible and playful, is not only fun. It is essential to cognitive fitness.

Read the full article here.

The Afterlife Guarantee: An Invitation to Watch and Pray

2010-12-31T17:11:00.001-06:00

From Ramesh Richard:

In just a few hours, commercials and print ads about Dr. Ramesh Richard's 2011 state of humanity address, "The Afterlife Guarantee: Perfect Future," will begin airing in 100 countries with the greatest penetration in South Asia, East Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Pray for the deepest penetration, widest seed-sowing and greatest response ever in our 12 years of this project.

After you've watched, please pray for the following requests:

-That those who are wondering about the afterlife would be eager to learn about this
very relevant topic.
-That there will be no technical challenges.
-For many thousands to register on our Web site, view the talks and engage in
dialogue toward salvation.
-For discerning conversation with our follow-up team as they respond to questions.

The 10 most significant gadgets of 2010

2010-12-31T10:34:00.001-06:00

From CNN Tech:

10. Kindle 3
9. Canon S95
8. Samsung Galaxy Tab
7. MacBook Air
6. iPhone 4
5. Sprint Evo 4G
4. Windows Phone 7 on Samsung Focus
3. Microsoft Kinect
2. Berkeley Bionics eLEGS
1. iPad

New Year's resolutions 'barely last longer than a week'

2010-12-30T23:16:00.001-06:00

From The Daily Mail:

Many people do not have the willpower to make their New Year's resolutions last longer than a week, research reveals.

Attempts to quit smoking, stop drinking alcohol at home or eat healthier food would be far more successful if people got support, according to health campaigners Change4Life.

University of Hertfordshire researchers followed 2,000 people who made a two-week resolution and found that those who relied solely on their own willpower failed even before the half-way stage.
The study also found that just 30 per cent of women stuck to their guns, compared with 37 per cent of men. Researchers found that those who told family and friends about their plans were far more likely to succeed.

Read the full story here.

Apple Says "No" to Manhattan Declaration App 2.0

2010-12-30T17:54:00.001-06:00

While I am a huge fan of all things Apple, I am disappointed by this move by Apple.
From Manhattan Declaration:

We received notice from Apple last evening regarding their rejection of our resubmission of the Manhattan Declaration iPhone/iPad app to the Apple App Store. This is an appalling response from Apple. Nearly 500,000 Christians have signed the Manhattan Declaration including representatives from many major Protestant denominations, leading Catholic Bishops and leaders of the Orthodox Church.

Apple is telling us that the apps' content is considered "likely to expose a group to harm" and "to be objectionable and potentially harmful to others." Inasmuch as the Manhattan Declaration simply reaffirms the moral teachings of our Christian faith on the sanctity of human life, marriage and sexual morality, and religious freedom and the rights of conscience, Apple's statement amounts to the charge that our faith is "potentially harmful to others."

It is difficult to see how this is anything other than a statement of animus by a major American corporation against the beliefs of millions of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox citizens. It is our sincere hope that Apple will draw back from this divisive and deeply offensive position. The corporation's leaders must be made to understand that they do the country no good service in capitulating to efforts to stigmatize, marginalize or defame people on one side or the other in important moral debates.

We will be taking this to Apple's App Review Board after they come back from the Christmas and New Year's holiday observances they mention. If Apple is in good faith, perhaps they will be willing to submit this matter to arbitration. We will keep you informed. Until there is more to report, we will not be making further comments on this matter.

When the fat girl got mad at God

2010-12-30T08:52:00.001-06:00

From Lysa TerKeurst at CNN Belief Blog:

I was relying on food to be my comfort, my ever present help, my guide, the thing that got me through the valleys and the first thing I wanted to celebrate with in the good times. Honestly, I might as well have taken Psalm 23 and replaced the Lord’s name with various food choices.

My proper little Christian self would have never expressed that out loud. But my body wouldn’t keep secrets. I had an issue. And the ever increasing size of my body demanded the REAL issue be addressed. . . .
The root of my issue was craving food more than God. I desired and depended on the instant high of physical gratification because I hadn’t learned how to let God satisfy my deepest needs.
God wasn’t causing my weight issues as some sort of cruel consequence for my poor choices. God was actually the very thing I needed to help overcome my issues. . . .
Learning to turn to God to fill my soul instead of food to overstuff my emptiness, has changed more than just my jeans size. It has changed my outlook on life. I did lose the extra weight I needed to shed and kept it off. But the real reward was what I gained with Jesus in the process. He became the best part of my journey. And I wouldn’t have missed this new found closeness I now have with Him for anything in world.

Read the full article here.

Bent Tree Bible Fellowship Offers Help for Parents with Special Needs Children

2010-12-28T22:29:00.001-06:00

From CBS 11 News:

“Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you,” sings mom Amanda Bird-Needham.
Michael was celebrating his tenth birthday. The day was even more special because doctors didn’t think Michael would live past age five.
“They had told me he would never walk – never talk,” Bird-Needham said. “He would have continual seizures, need a feeding tube – that he would never have enough brain activity to know that I was his mom.”
Michael suffered a spinal cord injury when he was a baby. He’s also diagnosed with Autism.
His mom, Amanda, was by his side to care for him throughout the day. She’s doing it thanks to her church.
“I couldn’t get through life without the group at the church,” Bird-Needham said of the Bent Tree Bible Fellowship in Carrollton.
The congregation is helping families restore their Sunday traditions by going out of its way to make a place for those with special needs children.
Volunteers wait patiently before the Sunday service. They look after the kids, giving parents a chance to listen, concentrate and pray.
The Roberts family said they are grateful they found the church.
Their daughter Amy looks like a child, but she’s actually 23 years old.
She’s been through more than 20 surgeries and now has a kidney from each of her parents.
Amy is able to sit through the service, but really enjoys working with the volunteers at the ministry.
“We were loved and accepted with our circumstances just like they are,” said mother Donna Roberts.
Circumstances were almost too much for Jackson Drake’s parents to overcome. He’s also severely autistic.
One Sunday afternoon, his father John struggled to describe how he felt before he heard about the ministry.
He choked up and simply said that he’s grateful for the program.
“We just found ourselves not going to church, rather than deal with him being upset in the setting they had for him. Or us taking him to church with us and not paying attention,” said Cindy Drake.
The Drakes are at church every Sunday now, or they at least try to be if Jackson is up to it.
The idea for the “Lifeguards Ministry” began 10 years ago.
“One individual noticed a family who was handing off a child in between services and they were worshipping separately,” said Michelle Harrell, director of Caring Ministries. “He introduced himself and said, ‘can I help you? I’ll sit with your son so you two can sit together.’”
Volunteers now look after more than a dozen special needs children every Sunday.
There’s also a support group at the church where parents meet every other Thursday to talk while their kids have a safe place to play.
“We can be brutally honest with each other with what is happening with our kids. There is no judgment,” Bird-Needham said.
For families like Michael’s, Jackson’s and Amy’s it’s a place they can always feel safe, understood by friends and comforted by faith.
More than half of the families who attend the church are now members because of the special needs ministry.

In 9th Square, A Freelance Community Gels

2010-12-28T17:06:00.001-06:00

From The New Haven Independent:

For months Mason Rabinowitz was unhappily working from home, where in his solitude he resorted to talking to his cat, Buckamuskineer. Then he joined the Grove, a new “coworking” space on Orange Street.

Now Rabinowitz not only has people to talk to. He’s poised to launch an idea that will help freelancers like him use their powers for principles, not just for profit.
Rabinowitz (pictured) is one of 15 people who pay a monthly fee for the privilege of working at the Grove, a new venture in the Ninth Square that provides a workspace for solo entrepreneurs and independent contractors who might otherwise be operating out of coffee shops or their homes. It’s part of a recent movement known as coworking, which aims to provide solitary freelancers with the benefits of communal office space.
Some of those benefits are logistical: wi-fi, a copy machine, hot coffee. Others are more intangible, like companionship, networking, and mutual support.

Those intangibles are a focus of Grove founders Ken Janke and Slate Ballard. In the two months since they opened the coworking site in a downtown storefront on Orange Street, they’ve offered more than just coffee and copies to their 15 members. They’ve organized events to help members and others create personal connections, refine and share their ideas, and find collaboration and encouragement for their ventures.

It’s a process that is about more than just work. For some Grovers, it’s been a process of transformation, with the Grove environment and events acting as a catalyst for personal growth.

Read the full article here.

A Cosmic Culmination: Recalling the earth-shaking, kingdom-sized message of Christmas.

2010-12-26T22:54:00.001-06:00

From Chuck Colson at Christianity Today:

Sometime this Christmas season, you are sure to hear those rousing words of Handel's Messiah, taken from Revelation 11:15: "The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ" (ESV). Tradition has it that the music so moved King George II that he stood to his feet out of respect for an even greater King. The rest of the audience followed, as have audiences for generations since. The Hallelujah Chorus is the culmination of our Messiah's story, a story that Handel rightly showed was foretold by the Prophets, heralded in the Annunciation, and has at its heart a message about a king and a kingdom.
Sadly, that kingdom message is often missed in our saccharine retelling of the Christmas story. Somehow we glaze over the angel's words to Mary, that she will give birth to a son whose "kingdom will never end" (Luke 1:33). The myopia continues as we read the Gospels. We skim over pages of kingdom references. We miss Christ's inaugural address when he opens the scroll of Isaiah and proclaims that Scripture has been fulfilled in the people's hearing (Luke 4:21). We muddle through the parables that tell us repeatedly, "The kingdom of God is like …." And we glance over the very reason our Savior was crucified, a sign crudely scrawled beneath the cross: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" (John 19:19).
Along the way, the Good News is truncated. An earth-shaking, kingdom-sized announcement is reduced to a personal self-help story. Our gospel has grown too small.

Read the full article here.

Coburn: Control Government Spending or Face 'Apocalyptic Pain'

2010-12-26T17:34:00.001-06:00

From Fox News:

"Apocalyptic pain" from an out-of-control debt could cause 18 percent unemployment and a massive contraction in the economy that would destroy the middle class, a leading Republican deficit hawk said in an interview that aired Sunday.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who recently issued a report on government waste, warned that the U.S. only has about three or four years to get its fiscal house in order or it could find itself facing austerity measures seen in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and earlier in Japan.

"The history of republics is they average 200 years of life. And they all fail in the history over fiscal matters. They rot from within before they collapse or are attacked," Coburn told "Fox News Sunday."
"The problem that faces our country today, the last 30 years we have lived off the future, and the bill is coming due," he added. . . .

"I don't care if you're rich or poor, liberal or conservative. If we don't fix the problems in front of us, everybody is going to pay a significant price," he said.

Read the full article here.

Andy Dalton provides a greater faith for TCU Horned Frogs

2010-12-26T17:20:00.001-06:00

From Stefan Stevenson in The Dallas Morning News:

The 78th Psalm ends with a tribute to King David: "He [led] them with the integrity of his heart and the skillfulness of his hands."
It's a passage Greg Dalton instilled in his son, long before Andy Dalton threw his first touchdown pass at TCU.

Andy Dalton, 23, grew up in a family of strong faith and unconditional love. His unwavering Christianity has only strengthened as he's gotten older. It has provided an inspiration to carry him honorably on and off the football field during a record-shattering career.

He's been the unrivaled face of the Horned Frogs the past four seasons, and he will finish his storied quarterback career in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 against Wisconsin. He has won more games (41) and thrown for more yards (10,095) and touchdowns (70) than anyone else in school history.

But Dalton will not only leave a massive football legacy behind at TCU, he'll leave a spiritual mark as well.

Along with 10 other TCU students, he helped create Ignite, a weekly nondenominational gathering. The first Monday meeting was held April 5, which happened to fall on the same day of the NCAA men's basketball championship. The group wasn't sure if anyone would attend.

"Lord, if it's just us in here, it's OK," Dalton recalled the group praying just before the doors of the Brown-Lupton University Union Ballroom opened that night. "He placed it on our hearts to do something like this. And we walked in there and the place was packed. We had around 400 people the first night."

This fall the student-led ministry has often drawn more than 700 students to worship, along with a speaker and Christian rock band. The group's popularity was helped by familiar faces such as Dalton's, and teammates Curtis Clay and Jeff Olson, both of whom are part of the leadership team. Former Frog and current Green Bay Packer Marshall Newhouse also helped in the group's creation.

"In here, they're not football players," said co-creator Kelsey Taylor, a senior from Aledo. "They're just part of the family. They're just solid guys who love Jesus. It's awesome that the quarterback of our football team wants to be involved because he's so busy all over the place."

The goal was to replicate similar groups at Baylor and Texas A&M, which give students a place to gather for worship, without the strict and stuffy church setting. The group slogan is Come As You Are.

Read the entire article here.

It's time to get rid of all that stuff

2010-12-26T17:08:00.001-06:00

From Steve Blow at The Dallas Morning News:

So, another Christmas has come and gone. And now comes the real challenge – finding a place to put all those presents. Across America, people opened gifts yesterday. They said: "I love it!" They thought: "Where will I put it?" We may be at yellow on the terror threat scale, but the storage crisis in this country is Code Red. . . .
Think of it: We have so many possessions that it's a problem just finding a place to put them. Aren't we blessed? Sort of. Maybe.
And today we all have even more stuff to deal with than we did day before yesterday. Merry Christmas!
I honestly thought about asking my wife for a backyard storage building for Christmas. Her eyes lit up at the prospect. She loves fresh space to fill. But I couldn't bring myself to actually put that on my Christmas list. It felt too much like a drunk asking for Jack Daniels.
We don't need storage. We need an intervention.

Read the entire article here.

Is Christmas Necessary?

2010-12-25T18:22:00.001-06:00

From Jerry Solomon at Probe Ministries:

What do you think of when you hear the word "Christmas"? Frantic
shopping? Family traditions? A commemoration of the birth of Jesus? Or
a combination of all these responses and more? If you've been living in
the United States long, you probably find it difficult to focus on just
one without the others. And if you're a Christian you probably want to
focus on the birth of Jesus, but you spend a great deal of your
December on shopping and traditions. Then you may finish "The Season,"
as it has come to be known, feeling guilty because you didn't focus on
Jesus as the "Reason for the Season." You may even want to ask if the
season is really necessary, because you're exhausted, broke, and
relieved when it's over for another year.
So we want to ask, "Is Christmas necessary?"

To read the complete article, click here.

North Texas' long, hard commute

2010-12-23T12:00:00.001-06:00

Now I know why I am wanting to move downtown once Katherine graduates high school.

From The Dallas Morning News editorial page:

You probably thought commuting to and from work in North Texas couldn't get any worse. Not so fast: Road gridlock around here has gone from bad to – literally – worst.
A new study released last week anoints Dallas-area commutes as the nastiest of the nation's 90 largest metro areas, the first time a traffic study has placed us at the very bottom of the bumper-to-bumper heap. Even commuters in perpetually gridlocked Los Angeles , San Jose and Houston now fare better than Dallas-Fort Worth drivers, according to an analysis of commuting, population and spending data by Bundle.com and reporters at TheStreet.com.

So how bad is worst? For most of us, it costs time, money and peace of mind. And, oddly enough, it might have cost the Texas Rangers a pennant next year – or certainly complicated their efforts. The wife of half-season Rangers pitcher Cliff Lee , a key to the club's first World Series appearance, told Philadelphia reporters that easier game-time commutes up there played a part in the family's decision to turn down the Rangers' longer and more lucrative free-agent contract offer. "Even in Dallas, where we were staying, it was hard to get to the ballpark because of traffic," Kristen Lee said.

Yikes, now that hurts – and not just in the American League West standings. Traffic congestion has been unacceptable for too long in North Texas, and lawmakers must find new ways to improve road infrastructure and expand public transit. North Texas is a primary contributor to the state's economy, and the do-nothing option means losing our competitive edge in attracting residents, businesses and, yes, maybe even a premier left-handed starter.

Since the early 1980s, no other urban area has seen traffic grow worse faster than Dallas-Fort Worth. Four of Texas' 10 worst traffic bottlenecks are in Dallas or Tarrant counties. Overall, North Texans average 28 minutes on the road each way to work and lose 53 hours each year in traffic jams. And the quaint idea of "rush hour" actually means "rush hours," as in about eight hours of stalled traffic per work day.

Money for congestion-easing transportation projects obviously has not kept pace with traffic, and lawmakers have made matters worse by raiding the highway fund to pay for non-road programs, a shortsighted path they will be tempted to repeat to close a huge shortfall in the current state budget.

Instead, given the high stakes, they should find creative ways to keep Texas moving. Among two things, how about increasing the gas tax for highway construction and stop raiding the road fund? They also should allow voters in congested urban counties to decide whether to impose transportation fees or taxes to pay for local rail and road projects.

More of the same only means more and more time staring at taillights in traffic. And it's time lawmakers realize that.

Join Us for Christmas Eve at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship

2010-12-21T19:53:00.002-06:00

A Social Network Christmas

2010-12-21T17:03:00.001-06:00

Logos iPhone Bible App Version 1.5 Released

2010-12-20T07:17:00.001-06:00

From Logos:

It has been a little over a year since we launched the Logos Bible Software iPhone app, and we are still finding ways to make a great app an even better Bible study tool!
The latest update to the app is available for you to download today. The update, version 1.5, includes some great enhancements like:
Footnotes available offline
Automatic book update notification
Increased performance when resources are downloaded
Most links between books now available offline if the specific books are downloaded
Full table of contents for books with many entries
Reading plan end markers link to the next reading
Text comparison now uses the book you came from as the base for comparison
Support for Chinese text display

In addition to these updates, we have improved upon the rendering of offline resources: now tables and interlinear displays will be appear more accurately in your downloaded books. After updating, make sure to download your offline books again. (The app will prompt you to.)

Version 1.5 improves upon an already phenomenal app. Now even without internet access, you will have all the tools you need to take your Bible study on the go.

Sixty-Six Clouds: Visualizing Word Frequency in the Bible

2010-12-19T20:11:00.001-06:00

The Word of God is powerful, no matter the format.

From Sixty-Six Clouds:

Sixty-Six Clouds is a visual exploration of word frequency in the Bible where the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and twenty-seven books of the New Testament were individually imported into Wordle.net to create a unique word cloud for each one.

The beauty of word clouds is that they quickly present the gist of large bodies of written materials at a glance. Wordle gives greater prominence and size to words that appear more frequently in the source text. Therefore, the larger the word is in the cloud, the more prominent it is in the text. Within Wordle, clouds can be adjusted with different fonts, layouts and color schemes. The original source text was the New International Version of the Bible. However, before importing any text into Wordle, the word limit was set at 150 and most common words (and, the, of, a, etc.) and all numbers were meticulously filtered out prior to any word clouds being generated. The exact same parameters were used for all sixty-six books of the Bible to give Sixty-Six Clouds a consistent style and appearance. All word cloud images are attributed to Wordle.

A Father’s Role in His Children Going to Church When They Are Adults

2010-12-16T08:10:00.001-06:00

From Between Two Worlds:

Robbie Low, writing in Touchstone (June 2003), points to an interesting 1994 study in Switzerland about the connection between the churchgoing habits of fathers and mothers and the effect on their children when they are grown.

Read the summary here and the full article here.

Ten Questions to Ask at a Christmas Gathering

2010-12-16T08:08:00.001-06:00

From Don Whitney at the Center for Biblical Spirituality:

Many of us struggle to make conversation at Christmas gatherings, whether church events, work-related parties, neighborhood drop-ins, or annual family occasions. Sometimes our difficulty lies in having to chat with people we rarely see or have never met. At other times we simply don't know what to say to those with whom we feel little in common. Moreover, as Christians we want to take advantage of the special opportunities provided by the Christmas season to share our faith, but are often unsure how to begin. Here's a list of questions designed not only to kindle a conversation in almost any Christmas situation, but also to take the dialogue gradually to a deeper level. Use them in a private conversation or as a group exercise, with believers or unbelievers, with strangers or with family.

What's the best thing that's happened to you since last Christmas?
What was your best Christmas ever? Why?
What's the most meaningful Christmas gift you've ever received?
What was the most appreciated Christmas gift you've ever given?
What was your favorite Christmas tradition as a child?
What is your favorite Christmas tradition now?
What do you do to try to keep Christ in Christmas?
Why do you think people started celebrating the birth of Jesus?
Do you think the birth of Jesus deserves such a nearly worldwide celebration?
Why do you think Jesus came to earth?
Of course, remember to pray before your Christmas gatherings. Ask the Lord to grant you "divine appointments," to guide your conversations, and to open doors for the gospel. May He use you to bring glory to Christ this Christmas.

Copyright © 2003 Donald S. Whitney.

Six Themes of Change in the Church

2010-12-15T08:25:00.001-06:00

From Jesus Creed:

Change usually happens slowly in the Church. But a review of the past year’s research conducted by the Barna Group provides a time-lapse portrayal of how the religious environment in the U.S. is morphing into something new.
Analyzing insights drawn from more than 5,000 non-proprietary interviews conducted over the past 11 months, George Barna indicated that the following patterns were evident in the survey findings.
1. The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
2. Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented.
3. Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life.
4. Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating.
5. The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian Church.
6. The influence of Christianity on culture and individual lives is largely invisible.

Read the full list article (explaining the list) here.

Wasteful Earmarks in 2011 Omnibus Appropriations Act

2010-12-14T22:29:00.001-06:00

From Sen. John McCain's website:
“Mr. President, at 12:15 p.m. this afternoon, my office received a copy of the omnibus appropriations bill. It is 1,924 pages long and contains the funding for all 12 of the annual appropriations bills for a grand total of over $1.1 Trillion. It is important to note that the 1,924 pages is only the legislative language and does not include the thousands of pages of report language which contain the details of the billions of dollars in earmarks and, I’m sure, countless policy riders.
“While we continue to uncover which earmarks the appropriators decided to fund – thanks to a new online database – we at least know what earmarks were requested by Members and how much those projects would cost the American people if they were all funded. Taxpayers against Earmarks, www.washingtonwatch.com and Taxpayers for Common Sense joined forces to create this database. According to the data they compiled – for fiscal year 2011 Members requested over 39,000 earmarks totaling over $130 billion. Absolutely disgraceful. I encourage every American to go to the website www.endingspending.com study it, and make yourselves aware of how your elected officials seek to spend your money.
“In the short time I’ve had to review this massive piece of legislation – I’ve identified approximately 6,488 earmarks totaling nearly $8.3 billion. Here is a small sample:

$277,000 for potato pest management in Wisconsin
$246,000 for bovine tuberculosis in Michigan and Minnesota
$522,000 for cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey
$500,000 for oyster safety in Florida
$349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina
$413,000 for peanut research in Alabama
$247,000 for virus free wine grapes in Washington
$208,000 beaver management in North Carolina
$94,000 for blackbird management in Louisiana
$165,000 for maple syrup research in Vermont
$235,000 for noxious weed management in Nevada
$100,000 for the Edgar Allen Poe Cottage Visitor’s Center in New York
$300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii
$400,000 for solar parking canopies and plug-in electric stations in Kansas

“Additionally, the bill earmarks $727,000 to compensate ranchers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan whenever endangered wolves eat their cattle. As my colleagues know, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Gray Wolf program is under intense scrutiny for wasting millions of taxpayer dollars every year to ‘recover’ endangered wolves that are now overpopulating the West and Midwest. My State of Arizona has a similar wolf program but ranchers in my state aren’t getting $727,000 in this bill.
“Mr. President, I will have much more to say about this bill later this week. I assure my colleagues – we will spend a great deal of time talking about this bill and the outrageous number of earmarks it contains. But for now let me just say this: it is December 14^th – we are 22 days away from the beginning of a new Congress and nearly three full months into fiscal year 2011 – and yet we have not debated a single spending bill or considered any amendments to cut costs or get our debt under control. Furthermore, the majority decided that they just didn’t feel like doing a budget this year. How is that responsible leadership?

“This is the ninth omnibus appropriations bill we have considered in this body since 2000. That is shameful and we should be embarrassed by the fact that we care so little about doing the people’s business that we continuously put off fulfilling our constitutional responsibilities until the very last minute.

“One thing is abundantly clear to me – that the majority has not learned the lessons of last month’s election. The American people could not have been more clear. They are tired of wasteful spending. They are tired of big government. They are tired of sweetheart deals for special interests. They are tired of business as usual in Washington. And they are tired of massive bills – just like this one – put together behind closed doors, and rammed through the Congress at the last moment so that no one has the opportunity to read them and no one really knows what kind of waste is in them.

“Let me be clear about one thing – if the Majority Leader insists on proceeding to this monstrosity - the American people will know what’s in it. I will be joined by many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle to ensure that every single word of this bill is read aloud here on the Senate floor.
“I encourage my friends on the other side of the aisle to rethink their strategy and move forward with a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government into next year when a new Congress takes over – a Congress that was elected by the American people on November 2^nd. “The majority may be able to strong arm enough members into voting for this omnibus – but they will not win in the end. The American people will remember – and I predict that we will see a repeat of November 2^nd in the very near future.”

The Scriptural Bible vs. the Academic Bible

2010-12-14T22:21:00.001-06:00

From Jesus Creed:
What happens when the Bible is studied at a university? The bigger question is this: What happens to the Bible when it is studied at a university? Those are questions behind Michael Legaspi’s excellent study The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology).

This book is chock-full of insights and observations, and is a book that ought to be on the shelf of every college and seminary library, for it examines what happens in the 18th and 19th centuries when Scripture moved from being the Church’s Bible or the Confessional Bible to the “death of [the Bible as] Scripture” as it arose anew as The Academic Bible, or the Bible as it was examined in the university. That period developed a “post confessional” hermeneutic. In effect, they cut the claims the Bible had on the individual when the individual read it.
The academic Bible is the one studied post-confessionally: outside the domains and parameters of the confessions of the Church. The scriptural Bible is the one studied through the lens of the Church, and through the lens of the creeds and confessions.
The academic Bible is studied as an object; the scriptural Bible calls the reader to account. The academic Bible is studied at a distance; the scriptural Bible draws the reader before God. For the academic Bible, the Bible is a text; for the scriptural Bible, the Bible is Scripture. The Bible was co-opted by social virtues that are part of the liberal, progressive and culture of irenic toleration.
Read the full article here.

Downside of Childhood Resume Making

2010-12-14T22:17:00.001-06:00

From New York Times:
It isn’t often that a third of a movie audience sticks around to discuss its message, but that is the effect of “Race to Nowhere,” a look at the downside of childhoods spent on résumé-building. “How do you help your children balance when the whole education system is pushing, pushing, pushing, and you want your kids to be successful?” Alethea Lewis, a mother of two, asked a roomful of concerned parents who had just seen the film, a documentary, last week in Bronxville, N.Y., at a screening co-sponsored by the private Chapel School. With no advertising and little news media attention, “Race to Nowhere” has become a must-see movie in communities where the kindergarten-to-Harvard steeplechase is most competitive. . . .
The film portrays the pressures when schools pile on hours of homework and coaches turn sports into year-round obligations. Left somewhat unexamined is the role of parents whose high expectations contribute the most pressure of all. “Everyone expects us to be superheroes,” one high school senior in the film says. Another tells of borrowing her friends’ prescription for Adderall to juggle her many commitments. “It’s hard to be the vice president of your class, play on the soccer team and do homework,” she says.
The movie introduces boys who drop out of high school from the pressure, girls who suffer stress-induced insomnia and worse, and students for whom “cheating has become another course,” as one puts it.
“When success is defined by high grades, test scores, trophies,”’ a child psychologist says in the film, “we know that we end up with unprepared, disengaged, exhausted and ultimately unhealthy kids.”
Vicki Abeles, the middle-aged mother and first-time filmmaker who made “Race to Nowhere,” picked up a camera when a doctor said that her then-12-year-old daughter’s stomachaches were being caused by stress from school. “I was determined to find out how we had gotten to a place where our family had so little time together,” she explains in the film, which has an unslick, home-video quality, “where our kids were physically sick because of the pressures they were under.”
Read the full story here.

Bent Tree Bible Fellowship Christmas List

2010-12-08T21:37:00.001-06:00

From Bent Tree Bible Fellowship (my church here in Dallas):
Do you remember what gifts you received last year at Christmas? Every Christmas, Americans spend over 100 billion dollars on items that often are put on a shelf, hung in a closet and never used or looked at again. What if we spent less on gifts and focused on giving presence to our families, friends and neighbors? What could be done if the money we saved on Christmas gifts was put towards meeting the physical and spiritual needs of people here and around the world?

Let’s do Christmas differently this year.

The needs are great but one person can make a difference. Here’s how, simply replace one item on your Christmas List with the Bent Tree Christmas List. If everyone participates, we can give more Christ at Christmas, making an impact here and around the world.

The exchange of one of your Christmas gifts for the Bent Tree list will benefit nine organizations who are bringing the hope of Christ to people here and around the world.

Crisis Response
Help Build Hope
Help rebuild Haiti by providing homes for families in Port-au-Prince.
www.helpbuildhopehaiti.org

Traffick 911
Help build the safe house in Dallas that will house and rehabilitate young women (10-18yrs old) who were rescued after being trafficked into the sex trade here in the U.S.
www.traffick911.org

Churches
Hesed Ministries
Help set up a computer learning lab In Jinja, Uganda, to be used for ongoing pastoral training.
www.hesedinternational.org

Arabic Church of Dallas & ALARM
Help resettle Iraqi and African refugees in the Dallas area by providing basic household items, food, medical needs, vocational training and transportation.
www.arabicbiblechurchofdallas.com
www.alarm-inc.org

Cities
Global Media Outreach
Help purchase ads that are translated into Marathi to further reach our adopted people group in India with the Gospel. 10,000 ads typically results in 6,000 decisions for Christ.
www.globalmediaoutreach.org

Blood-N-Fire, San Antonio (where Katherine and I have gone on mission trip for the last two summers with the church)
Help fund their monthly grocery giveaway & after-school program which act as a front door to building relationships and sharing the Gospel with those living in the poorest zip code in San Antonio.
www.bloodnfiresanantonio.org

Children
Hope Foundation (this is where I go in Russia each time)
In the Saratov region of Russia, many babies are aborted due to mom’s not being able to financially provide for their babies. Help provides mom’s with the basic supplies needed monthly to care for their babies so these children can have life.

LifeSong for orphans
Many families are deterred from adopting due to financial constraints. Help build the adoption fund to make it possible for more orphans to have permanent loving families and homes and a chance to know Jesus.
www.lifesongfororphans.org

To donate online, click here.
Donations must be received (by check or online) by December 26.
If you don't already have a login, you will need to create one in order to access the donation form. You will not be added to any mailing lists.
Checks can be mailed to 4141 International Pkwy, Carrollton, TX 75010. Please Make Checks payable to “Bent Tree” and write “Christmas Offering” in the memo line.

I Got S.W.A.G.

2010-12-03T08:35:00.000-06:00
Marcus Raven is one of our creative Media Arts students here at Dallas Theological Seminary.
This is a new ministry that a team of folks are putting together to reaching urban culture.
You can find out more here.

TCU going to Big East Conference

2010-11-29T15:25:00.001-06:00

From AP:
TCU is moving to the Big East Conference, where the Horned Frogs would be BCS busters no more.
TCU's board of trustees unanimously approved an invitation Monday to join the Big East in football and all other sports. The move from the Mountain West Conference becomes official July 1, 2012.
The Big East Conference will provide TCU automatic access to the Bowl Championship Series and its five big-money games. That league, currently with eight football teams, has one of six automatic BCS slots.
"Having BCS automatic-qualifying status was a priority for our football program and a great reward for the success we've had the last decade," TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte said in a statement.
The Big East has schools in nine of the nation's 35 largest media markets and will soon add Dallas/Fort Worth, the fifth largest.
"Located in one of the top five media markets in the country, TCU also enables the Big East to extend its media footprint, which already encompasses more than a quarter of the country," league Commissioner John Marinatto said.
The third-ranked Horned Frogs (12-0) wrapped up their second consecutive undefeated regular season and Mountain West title with a 66-17 victory at New Mexico on Saturday.
TCU is third in the BCS standings, the highest for a non-automatic qualifying team, and in line for a chance to play for the national championship if Auburn or Oregon lose next weekend. The Frogs likely will play in the Rose Bowl if Auburn and Oregon both win - players were holding roses on the field after their win Saturday.
The only current Big East team ranked in the AP poll is No. 23 West Virginia (8-3, 4-2 Big East), which is 24th in the BCS standings. Connecticut (7-4, 4-2) could get the league's automatic BCS spot.
But TCU might not have been headed to a BCS game without Boise State's loss Friday night in overtime at Nevada. Had the Broncos remained undefeated, there was a real possibility that the Broncos could have passed the Frogs in the BCS standings and been the only non-AQ team to get into one of the top-level bowls.
TCU was a BCS buster for the first time last season, then lost to Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl.
The Frogs have won 25 consecutive regular-season games, and 38 of 41 overall. The only losses in that span were in the Fiesta Bowl, and games at Oklahoma and Utah.
With all TCU sports moving to the Big East, it will create a 17-team basketball league.
The pending departure of TCU continues a big shuffle for the Mountain West, which next season is losing Utah to the expanded Pac-12 and BYU, which is going independent in football. Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada are moving from the WAC to the Mountain West.
The Big East will be the fourth conference for TCU since the Southwest Conference broke apart after the 1995 season and the Frogs weren't among the Texas schools that became part of the Big 12.
TCU was in the WAC from 1996-2000 before going to Conference USA for four seasons and then joining the Mountain West in 2005.
When Nebraska announced it was leaving the Big 12 for the Big 10 and Colorado declared its move to the Pac-10, the Big 12 opted against adding TCU or anybody else and plans to move forward as a 10-team league for now.

Texas A&M rules Big 12 roost in Texas - BostonHerald.com

2010-11-26T08:40:00.000-06:00
Texas A&M rules Big 12 roost in Texas - BostonHerald.com

What Are You Thankful For?

2010-11-24T17:04:00.001-06:00

Russia to Return Church Property

2010-11-24T16:52:00.001-06:00

From The New York Times:
Despite criticism that it will revisit yet more thorny tangles from Russia’s past, Parliament has passed a law to restore to religious organizations property seized by the state in Soviet times.
To leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, the State Duma’s passage of the law last Friday was a major step toward justice. To critics, the law that was passed by 345 votes to 42 and is due to be signed by President Dmitri A. Medvedev, is a recipe for social unrest and a threat to cultural monuments.
Under the law, the federal, regional and municipal authorities have two years to hand over property after a decision is made on a claim by the church, either for rent-free use or in a full transfer of ownership. Previously, said Ksenia Chernega, a nun who is the Moscow Patriarchate’s legal counsel, restoration of church property, which started in the 1990s after the fall of Communism, was regulated only at the federal level.
While the law addresses religious property generally, it is seen as broadly favoring the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest religious organization in the nation, though all groups had property taken by the Communists.
Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin had promised Patriarch Kirill, head of the Orthodox Church, in January “to return to religious organizations that which by rights belongs to them.”

Read the full story here.

U.S. is feeling charitable, just not through churches | The Christian Century

2010-11-24T14:12:00.000-06:00
U.S. is feeling charitable, just not through churches | The Christian Century

Dallas Morning News Editorial: How to get parents more engaged

2010-11-24T13:26:00.001-06:00

This comes from a series run by the Dallas Morning News on how to bridge the North-South gap in Dallas.
The link to the overall series can be found here.

In last Sunday's edition, attention was turned to parental involvement in schools.
While the article was dealing specifically with poor performance in the Dallas schools, the application is great for any school system (no matter the economic factors).

Here were the suggestions:
Expand parent training
Deploy community liaisons to each campus
Borrow from successful charter schools
Enlist the help of nonprofits and churches
You can read the entire article here.

D.A. Carson: Teachers and Preserving a Passion for the Gospel

2010-11-23T17:36:00.001-06:00

Great quote for all teachers from D.A. Carson, as quoted on C.J. Mahaney's blog:
If I have learned anything in 35 or 40 years of teaching, it is that students don’t learn everything I teach them. What they learn is what I am excited about, the kinds of things I emphasize again and again and again and again. That had better be the gospel.

If the gospel—even when you are orthodox—becomes something which you primarily assume, but what you are excited about is what you are doing in some sort of social reconstruction, you will be teaching the people that you influence that the gospel really isn’t all that important. You won’t be saying that—you won’t even mean that—but that’s what you will be teaching. And then you are only half a generation away from losing the gospel.

Make sure that in your own practice and excitement, what you talk about, what you think about, what you pray over, what you exude confidence over, joy over, what you are enthusiastic about is Jesus, the gospel, the cross. And out of that framework, by all means, let the transformed life flow.
You can read the whole post from Mahaney here.

Using Social Media to Evangelize During the Holidays

2010-11-21T18:17:00.000-06:00
From Stephanie Harrison and A.J. Rinaldi at EvanTell:
If you are planning to try using Social Media to evangelize during the holidays, here are a few key principles to get you started:
Be Consistent -- Make sure your on-line persona reflects Christian character in all your blogging, tweeting, posting, etc. . . .
Be Personal -- Write as if you're talking one on one. . . .
Be Creative -- Many people may have already heard the gospel several times. Communicate by connecting through pictures, video, music, etc.
Be Selective -- Get your network to anticipate something fresh and unique by carefully discerning what you choose to pass on.

The Updated NIV: Some Initial Thoughts

2010-11-21T18:09:00.000-06:00
The Updated NIV: Some Initial Thoughts

Dallas-area churches are tending to their flocks the new-media way

2010-11-14T21:30:00.001-06:00
From Marc Ramirez in the Dallas Morning News:

Welcome to ministry in the age of social media, as religious leaders nationwide realize that in order to reach their flocks – and to thrive, if not merely survive – they have to go where the people are. . . .
According to a recent Nielsen Co. study, Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time on social-media sites such as Facebook and Twitter – a 43 percent increase over the year before.
Gradually, churches, synagogues and mosques have planted their flags in cyberspace, with profile pages teasing upcoming or past sermons, noting meetings and special events, culling for volunteers or posting a verse of the day. . . .

The shift – often driven by younger church staff and supported by tech leaders who sometimes have no idea what their social-media specialists are talking about – is especially meaningful in Texas. According to a survey released in September, the state is home to 17 of the country's 100 largest churches, nearly half of them in the Dallas area.

Such strategies are espoused by even Pope Benedict XVI, whom digital news source Mashable dubbed "the social media pontiff" for urging priests to use new technologies to bring people to the church.
"If St. Paul were alive today, he would have a BlackBerry, a laptop and a blog," wrote Bishop Kevin Farrell of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas in the introduction to the blog he began writing last year for parishioners.

And social media's casual and interactive nature is especially well suited to purposes such as establishing community and conducting outreach, especially in bigger congregations where one can be lost amid the crowd. . . .
Read the full story here

Is New Calvinism Really New Fundamentalism? | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders

2010-11-11T08:38:00.000-06:00
Is New Calvinism Really New Fundamentalism? | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders

Why People Aren't Going to Seminary

2010-11-10T16:15:00.000-06:00
From James Emery White on Crosswalk.com:

It is increasingly common for individuals who are called to plant a church or join the staff of a church to do so without any formal theological education. The 2009-2010 Annual Data Tables from the Association of Theological Schools of FTE (full-time equivalent) students bears this out, barely bottoming out this year after a multi-year several thousand student decline.

See the full list here.

Sources: Wade Phillips fired

2010-11-08T14:51:00.001-06:00

Taylor: Cowboys are NFL's most pathetic team; time to fire Wade | Dallas Cowboys News | Sports News | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News

2010-11-07T23:08:00.000-06:00
Taylor: Cowboys are NFL's most pathetic team; time to fire Wade | Dallas Cowboys News | Sports News | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News

Solutions for America

2010-11-06T11:24:00.001-05:00

From The Heritage Foundation:
The Heritage Foundation welcomes the choice made by our country’s conservative majority. The voters decided to send to Congress men and women pledged to act upon the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values and a strong national defense.
Heritage has compiled this checklist of five overriding actions, representing the bare minimum required for Washington to fulfill its electoral mandate, meet its constitutional responsibilities and get America started on the right track. We must now hold our representatives, senators and President accountable and tell them: Get to Work!
Freeze and Cut Spending
Repeal Obamacare
Stop the Obama Tax Hikes
Protect America
Get Control of Government
You can read the full report here.

The Disconnect of the Connected: College students of the wired generation lack the empaty others exhibit

2010-11-06T11:05:00.001-05:00

From Keith O'Brien of The Boston Globe:
Young Americans live in a world of endless connections and up-to-the-minute information on one another, constantly updating friends, loved ones and total strangers – "Quiz tomorrow ... gotta study!" – about the minutiae of their young, wired lives. And there are signs that Generation Wi-Fi is also interested in connecting with people, like, face-to-face, in person. The percentage of high school seniors who volunteer has been rising for two decades.
But new research suggests that behind all this communication and connectedness, something is missing. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, found that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than they were in 1979, with the steepest decline coming in the last 10 years.

According to the findings, today's students are generally less likely to describe themselves as "soft-hearted" or to have "tender, concerned feelings" for others. They are more likely, meanwhile, to admit that "other people's misfortunes" usually don't disturb them. In other words, they might be constantly aware of their friends' whereabouts, but all that connectedness doesn't seem to be translating to genuine concern for the world and one another.
Read the full article here.

Hunt County dog defines the word 'loyalty'

2010-11-05T00:02:00.001-05:00

Brazos Valley Cardboard Testimonies

2010-11-04T09:31:00.001-05:00

Can Civilization Survive Without God?

2010-11-01T07:37:00.001-05:00

A conversation with The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life with Christopher and Peter Hitchens:
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life invited brothers Christopher and Peter Hitchens to address the question of whether civilization needs God.
Christopher is the author of more than 10 books, including his recent memoir Hitch-22 and the best-selling manifesto God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. He is a contributing editor to The Atlantic and a columnist for Vanity Fair. He has written prolifically for American and English periodicals, including The Nation, The London Review of Books, Granta, Harper’s, Los Angeles Times Book Review, New Left Review, Slate, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek International, The Times Literary Supplement and The Washington Post. In 2007, he received a National Magazine Award for his work for Vanity Fair.
Peter is the author of four books including The Abolition of Britain, a major seller in that country, and the recently published The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith, which he wrote to counter Christopher’s book, God Is Not Great. A British journalist, author and broadcaster, he currently writes for The Mail on Sunday, where he is a columnist and occasional foreign correspondent, and is a contributor to (among others) The Spectator, Prospect, Standpoint, The Guardian, The New Statesman and the American Conservative. Once an atheist, he attributes his return to faith largely to his experience of socialism in practice, which he witnessed during his many years reporting in Eastern Europe and his nearly three years as a resident correspondent in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union. This year, he won the Orwell prize for journalism for foreign reporting.
View the conversation here.

Share the Good News of Christmas

2010-10-29T13:07:00.001-05:00

I know, I know. . . Halloween has not even happened yet.
But this is a cool video about reaching out this Christmas.
Help reach 1 million homes with the gospel this Christmas.

Share the Good News of Christmas from Crossway on Vimeo.

Updated NIV Text Available for Online Viewing November 1

2010-10-28T18:06:00.001-05:00

From Biblica:
Today, at the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, Keith Danby, CEO of Biblica, and Moe Girkins, CEO of Zondervan, announced that they have received the new update to the NIV from the Committee on Bible Translation. Although the print form will not be ready for release until next year, they have decided to make the text available to view it online at www.BibleGateway.com and www.Biblica.com beginning November 1.
"The NIV has become part of our culture — part of the shared experience of millions of people," said Keith Danby, International CEO of Biblica. "This is the reason why we felt it was appropriate to make the update available online as soon as it was ready. We're responding to the desires of scholars, pastors and Christians across the globe who are eager to experience the updated text."

So You Want to Be a Professor?

2010-10-28T13:56:00.001-05:00

Lessons from the Lausanne Gathering | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders

2010-10-28T08:15:00.000-05:00
Lessons from the Lausanne Gathering | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders

Did Joe Biden Really Say This??

2010-10-26T20:44:00.001-05:00

Quote from Joe Biden, as cited in NY Daily News:
“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”
REALLY????

'Under God' Stands in Texas Pledge

2010-10-22T11:31:00.001-05:00

From Christine Dao:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled on October 13 that the words "under God" that appear in the Texas Pledge of Allegiance are constitutional.
The term was added to the state pledge in 2007. The same year, David Wallace Croft, along with a handful of other parents of school-age children, filed a lawsuit against Texas Governor Rick Perry to challenge the words' constitutionality and to have them banned.
The federal district court rejected the plaintiffs' claim in 2009. That decision was appealed and the case went to the Fifth Circuit.
The court wrote in its opinion:

The pledge is a patriotic exercise, and it is made no less so by the acknowledgment of Texas's religious heritage via the inclusion of the phrase "under God." A pledge can constitutionally acknowledge the existence of, and even value, a religious belief without impermissibly favoring that value or belief, without advancing belief over non-belief, and without coercing participation in a religious exercise. Texas's pledge is of this sort and consequently survives this challenge. Accordingly, the district court's judgment dismissing the complaint is affirmed.

Since 2007, the Texas state pledge has read:

Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.

The dismissal aligns with a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled earlier this year to uphold the inclusion of the words "under God" in the national pledge.
Read the full story here.

Can Football Finally Tackle Its Injury Problem?

2010-10-22T11:26:00.001-05:00

From Time:
Take the helmets out of football, some people claim, and players would be less likely to use their head as a weapon. Concussive episodes, and the long-term damage we're learning they cause, would decline. That argument, however, doesn't actually square with reality. Rugby, as it turns out, has plenty of problems with head injuries. According to one study, in South Africa about 14% of high school rugby players, and 23% of professional and club players, are diagnosed with concussions annually. Further, Michael Keating, the medical director for USA Rugby, says that a review of the scientific literature indicates that the incidence of concussions among rugby players and American-football players is similar. Some data suggests rugby incidence is 5% higher. . . .
Still, football can learn some valuable lessons from rugby. In that sport, hits above the head, and even those using the shoulder, are illegal. You essentially must tackle with your arms, and players are drilled on a technique in which defenders move their head to the side of an opponent's body to avoid head-on collisions. It's not such a stretch to think that an NFL player could adjust to these kinds of rules, and become a defensive stalwart by bear-hugging players to the ground, rather than launching themselves like heat-seeking missiles. It wouldn't make for such jarring highlights on Sportscenter each Sunday night, but it could save lives.
If playing without a helmet is, indeed, too risky, what about keeping the headgear, but losing the face mask? Some observers contend that if a football player's face were unprotected, it would make him less likely to use his head as a weapon. "The most realistic option is getting rid of the face mask, with players having eye protection, like goggles," says Nowinski. True, without the face mask, you might see more broken noses and face lacerations. But any player would take a broken nose over a broken brain. Further, such a change would eliminate that ghastly face-mask penalty, in which a defensive player clings onto an opponent's face mask and cranks his neck as if it were a rag doll's.
Read the full article here.

School system to get Muslim holiday

2010-10-10T22:03:00.001-05:00

From The Boston Globe:
In a move that school officials believe is the first of its kind in the state, Cambridge [public school system] will close schools for one Muslim holiday each year beginning in the 2011-2012 school year.
The school will either close for Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice, depending on which holiday falls within the school year. If both fall within the school calendar, the district will close for only one of the days.
The school district’s decision, announced last month, was made as the national discussion about Islam continues, fueled by a Mosque proposal two blocks from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Florida preacher Terry Jones’s threat to burn a Koran. The discussion has also touched local schools, as Wellesley school officials drew criticism recently for a video that showed sixth-grade students kneeling during a prayer service at a Boston mosque during a field trip in May.
But Cambridge School Committee member Marc McGovern, who pushed for the Muslim holiday in city schools, said he thinks people need to take a step back from what he called hysteria and the stereotypes of all Muslims as terrorists.
“At a time when I think the Muslim population is being characterized with a broad brush in a negative way, I think it’s important for us to say we’re not going to do that here,’’ McGovern said.
Cambridge schools already close for some Christian and Jewish holidays, and McGovern said he believes Muslims should be treated equally.
“The issue that sort of came up was should we celebrate any religious holidays, but there was not the will to take away Good Friday or one of the Jewish holidays,’’ he said. “So I said, if that is the case, I think we have an obligation to celebrate one of the Muslim holidays, as well.’’
Read the full story here.

Nearly One in Ten Americans Are Depressed

2010-10-01T22:40:00.000-05:00
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpps/news/nearly-one-in-10-americans-depressed-study-dpgonc-20101001-fc_9897171

Desiring Chick-fil-A more on Sunday than any other day of the week

2010-09-30T22:18:00.001-05:00

I got a good giggle from this post from the Stuff Christians Like blog:
I don’t know how they do it. Despite writing branding for Chick-fil-A for 3 years and working closely with President Dan Cathy, I never learned one really important secret about that company.
How do they make you want Chick-fil-A on Sunday when they’re closed more than any other day of the week?
I’ve written about Chick-fil-A before and their West Coast Rival, In-n-Out, before. (They’re like Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. of Christian food.) We’ve talked about them a few times, but never have we gotten to the bottom of this unexplainable phenomenon.
Today, I want to walk us through the five steps you go through on a Sunday when you think about Chick-fil-A.
Step 1: Excitement
You wake up and in your stomach does a little, “Chicken Biscuit” dance. I know McDonald’s is trying to pretend they’re all southern serving sweet tea and biscuits, but they’re just carpet bagging. We want Chick-fil-A!
Step 2: The Drive
You actually get in the car and head to Chick-fil-A. Today is the day! It’s going to be great. Maybe you missed breakfast but now you can get lunch. It’s all coming up Milhouse!
Step 3: The Thrill
Look how empty the parking lot is! Hooray, this is going to be the best trip to Chick-fil-A ever. Nobody is here, you’ve got the whole restaurant to yourself. That guy who refills your drink is going to be like a personal butler today. Awesome.
Step 4: The Disappointment
Wait, what? Why is the door locked? Why are the lights off? Oh no, it’s Sunday or “the Sabbath” if you will. The horrow, the horror. Popular comedian Aziz Ansari, from the drastically improved “Parks & Recreation” and “Flight of the Conchords,” recently said on the radio, “I’m always excited to get a Chick-fil-A on Sunday and then it’s like ‘nooooo they’re closed!’ It’s always heartbreaking.”
Step 5: The Idea
Could you buy some Chikc-fil-A on a Saturday and then eat it on a Sunday? Would that work or would that be like when the Israelites tried to gather up double portions of manna? Didn’t that work for them on Sunday? Are you really comparing Chick-fil-A to manna? Yes, yes you are and that feels about right.
Step 6: The Substitute
You’re still hungry. Even though you respect Chick-fil-A for being all Hobby Lobbied and closing on Sunday, you’re still hungry and you want to get a spicy chicken sandwich. So you begrudgingly go to Wendy’s and look at that sweaty heathen with her Pippy Longstocking braids. You may have lost today but tomorrow is Monday and you can fil-a all day long if you so desire.