An open letter to pastors {A non-mom speaks about Mother’s Day}
I know I might be an unusual one to be speaking about Mother’s Day; but maybe that’s why so many talk to me about mothering, I’ve got the parts, just not the goods. Thanks for listening and for continuing to mother us in a shepherding way. Even though I’m a bit nervous to come on Sunday, I will be here. But if you make us stand, I might just walk out =).
6 Ways Churches Should Be More Like Libraries
The church must acknowledge the challenge of mental illness and our responsibility to vulnerable people. We must provide not only spiritual solutions but also practical help. And we must show our theology is deep and wide enough to accommodate the reality of great psychological and emotional pain.
Revelation is a book that continues to be used as “trump card” against Christian nonviolence as it posits a future tribulation and war in which Christ comes back to lead people into a battle, one that apparently contradicts everything he taught during his earthly ministry. And of course there’s the baggage of the “Left Behind” series that imagines a rapture followed by the rise of an “anti-Christ” and a literal 7-year tribulation which fuels a mentality that the book is mostly about what will happen and how to escape that fate. I want to suggest that most of what you have been taught about Revelation, especially if you watched the cheesy Christian movies or grew up in conservative/fundamentalist expressions of evangelicalism, is wrong.
Jon Acuff has written a fine book entitled Start. At one point in the book as he discusses fear he writes, “Stories without dragons are boring” (p. 64). He says that in every story there is typically a villain of some sort.
For many of us the villain in our lives is the voice that often puts fear in our hearts.
Dissenters’ primary objection is that the Heritage report uses static, rather than dynamic, scoring. In other words, it estimates illegal immigrants will take in more than $9.4 trillion in government benefits and only contribute $3.1 trillion in taxes during their lifetimes, but it doesn’t assume any positive economic impact in gross domestic product (GDP).
Immigration and the Republican Party
If white evangelicals would like for there to be more pro-life voters, they should actually want Latino undocumented immigrants to be voting as soon as possible, not waiting thirteen years or more for the privilege: the longer they live in the U.S., the more likely Latinos are to become pro-choice (though still less likely than Caucasians as a whole).
WordPress for Churches: Themes & Plugins to Get Started
One of the best things about technology today is that it’s faster, it’s cheaper and it’s better than it’s ever been. All of these qualities are a boon for the small, medium and large church because we have nothing but opportunity now to engage with our congregation, reach our local communities and expand our message unlike we’ve ever done—and again, we can do it on the cheap.
That’s why I’ve been a fan of WordPress for the church for a long time. Did you know that WordPress now powers over 17% of the top 1 million sites in the world? The growth curve is unbelievable and your ministry has everything it needs to leverage a best-in-breed technology with an extremely low bar.
Ex-Con Who Hid Stolen iPhone Up His Butt Foiled When It Started Ringing
The iPhone 5 owner, a 27-year-old man, called the phone once he arrived at the station and heard his ringtone emanating from Mr. Patterson’s butt. The ex-con admitted to stealing the phone, although it’s unclear how long he had it stored up there. He was charged with criminal possession of stolen property.