I Was A Disney Princess, I Had An Abortion, And It Almost Ruined My Life

We do not need a Disney princess written by authors scripting a manipulated story that aims to glorify killing children. This kind of strategic propaganda contributed to my own personal tragedy. Abortion doesn’t empower. It is a tragic tale rarely told because the abortion architects would need to admit the damage it has caused women like myself (and obviously their children).

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When Hot-Button Issues Cry Out to Young Pastors

1. In the mix of hot-button social issues, we young pastors should avoid thinking that we have mastered these issues.
2. Amidst hot-button cultural issues, we ought to consider that, as younger pastors, we don’t have many great things to say.
3. When hot-button social issues rage, the best thing is to keep Bible exposition the main thing.
4. In the throes of hot-button issues, young pastors can care about hot-button issues more by devoting less time to them.
5. Amidst cultural hot-button issues, younger pastors can benefit from deepening in a biblical understanding of anthropology and hamartiology.
6. Amidst hot-button social issues, we ought to remind ourselves how greatly God desires our own personal sanctification.
7. Amidst hot-button cultural issues, young pastors do well to humble themselves under older, seasoned men.
8. Amidst hot-button social issues, young pastors should keep loving people.
9. In the mix of hot-button issues, young pastors do well to read the Bible more.

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It’s Time to End the Stupid about the End Times: Debunking Christian Numerology

Self-proclaimed Christian numerologist David Meade is at it again. This time, though, he’s saying that the world is going to end on April 23rd.
It’s on the front page of the USAToday and the Drudge Report right now.
Worse yet, he’s now brought international policy issues into the discussion (another subject area for which he has no academic credentials, like his “Christian numerology”). He’s now predicting that a nuclear conflict will also occur this month.
But before you panic and make an emergency trip to the grocery store or run to break out that apocalyptic survival gear, know that this isn’t Meade’s first rodeo. He’s predicted that the world would end not once, but twice already this year. Again, before getting into a tizzy and starting to think that maybe this could finally be the real deal, I want you to notice something: we’re all still here.

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“Remember Me:” Worship, Stuff, and the Communion of Saints

Suddenly I became aware of the fact that this hymnal, the one in my hand, had been held by others from my own congregation who had also fallen asleep in the Lord. I gently felt the cover and moved my fingers across its pages as I stretched out my mind to remember—who had sat in the pew in which I was sitting? Who had taken this hymnal from the rack and opened it? With whom was I connected at that moment in grasping this book, this artifact of the church?

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Two Doors Down, again

To my east two doors down is a family with a boat and a storm shelter. Two doors to my east is well I don’t know that we have met. Immediately to my east is the family who lost their father to cancer last year. He left behind two college age boys, an elementary daughter and his wife. Immediately to my west is a small family who father is a local police officer. Across the road from me lives another police officer with a different department.
At my house we celebrate that we have salvation through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are having a party – daily! What about my neighbors? Will I invite them to our party? Or will they think think of me like Dolly Pardon sang of her neighbors, ” . . . they’re not aware that I’m around!”

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Zuckerberg Just Proved Once Again That Congress Doesn’t Understand The Internet

It’s true that technology can feel less important to mainstream American life than it does to life inside the tech bubble, but that’s changing. The internet has already transformed society, and technologies like AI and autonomous driving will continue to have huge effects on our economy and the way we live. How can members of Congress hope to successfully regulate these technologies if it doesn’t understand them?

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Why You Should Always Have an Offline Version of Your Boarding Pass

You don’t necessarily want to put the fate of your entire trip in the hands of a potentially fickle smartphone. If you’re using a link to your mobile boarding pass that your airline has emailed you, take a screenshot of it, so you can still scan it when you get to security or your gate if you can’t load the page. Better yet, save an offline version to your Apple Wallet or PassWallet. When you save the ticket to your mobile passbook, you’ll get push notifications as the flight time draws near that give you easy access to the ticket from your notification screen.

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[Links from around the Internet… no agreement nor endoresement implied… Tim]

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Jerry Falwell responds to Shane Claiborne’s invitation to pray with threat of year in jail and $2,500 fine

In a letter to Falwell two weeks ago Claiborne invited him to pray with him and students on Liberty’s campus.
However in response Claiborne received a letter threatening him with up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine for trespassing if he entered Liberty University property.
‘I was very clear that what we have in mind is a prayer vigil not a protest – no signs, megaphones, banners or chants… just Bibles and candles. We had even hoped to do a communion service, inviting folks who disagree politically to come to the table together,’ Claiborne posted on Facebook.

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Jerry Falwell Jr. Personally Killed a Campus Newspaper Story About Shane Claiborne’s Prayer Rally

Now, Religion News Service is reporting that Falwell personally killed a story that was going to run in the campus newspaper, The Liberty Champion, about the event. Erin Covey, an assistant news editor and Liberty student got approval from the paper’s faculty advisor and fellow editors, but when she reached out to Falwell for a comment, he reportedly replied instructing her to kill the story. Covey shared a screenshot of an email that she says is from Falwell that read: “No let’s not run any articles about the event. That’s all these folks are here for—publicity. Best to ignore them.”

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Matt Chandler Says That When He Preaches About Race, White People Accuse Him of Being Liberal

He said, “If I preach the sermon out of the book of Isaiah on justice, my inbox would fill with their glee that I would broach the subject. But if I applied it to the subject of race, then all of a sudden I was a Marxist or I’ve been watching too much of the liberal media. If I spoke on abortion, I was applauded as courageous, as a ferocious man of God, and yet when I would tackle race I was being too political … If I quoted the great reformer Martin Luther … never did I get an email about his blatant anti-Semitism. But let me quote the great reformer Martin Luther King Jr., and watch my inbox fill with people asking me if I’m aware of his moral brokenness.”

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A Post-Evangelism Church?

The progressive impulse toward tolerance and inclusion, along with a post-modern stance on truth, leaves progressive Christians in an awkward position in regards to evangelism, sharing the gospel with non-believers. Evangelism smacks of judgementalism, I’m right and you are wrong. Worse, evangelism can tend toward colonialism, the history of white missionaries being sent to save dark pagan savages.

A related issue here is that progressive Christians are burdened by so many doubts that they lack the necessary conviction to feel passionate about sharing the gospel with others. If you’re not sure you believe any of this stuff, how can you be expected to convince others to believe in it?

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The Power of Our Criticism

1. Criticism masquerades as insight.
2. Criticism is contagious.
3. Criticism causes others to stumble.
4. Criticism slanders and kills.

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What Kind of Wine Did Jesus Make?

The primary reasons for interpreting the wine as grape juice in John 2 stems from a false presupposition that Jesus couldn’t have created alcoholic wine. For the aforementioned reasons, there is simply no good biblical reason to understand John 2 as anything other than Jesus turning water into real alcoholic wine. Such a conclusion does not contradict Jesus’ character or any other passages found in Scripture.

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What Is (and What Should Be) Expected of a Preacher’s Wife

All that said, one of the common struggles of these godly Christian women is that there are expectations placed upon them by a congregation that are simply not right. Sometimes, those expectations are spoken and overt, while at other times (I believe) people do not even realize what they are “saying” to the wife of the preacher simply by the way they interact with her.

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Did a Typo Help End World War II?

The exact details are lost to history, but it became clear that someone had mistaken his job of cryptogamist for a cryptogramist—a codebreaker, which is exactly what men like Alan Turing were doing at Bletchley. The mistake led to a moss specialist being deposited into one of the most intense covert operations of the war.

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Fort Blunder: The Fort That America Mistakenly Built in Canada

Construction of the fort began in 1816, and continued for two years when a survey conducted jointly by the United States and Great Britain discovered a problem—the fort was being built on the wrong side of the border. The actual border passed almost a mile south of the fort.

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Department Of Homeland Security Compiling Database Of Journalists And ‘Media Influencers’

The details of the attached Statement of Work, however, outline a plan to gather and monitor the public activities of media professionals and influencers and are enough to cause nightmares of constitutional proportions, particularly as the freedom of the press is under attack worldwide.

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Churches Rarely Reprimand Members, New Survey Shows

According to the phone survey of 1,000 Protestant senior pastors, 16 percent of pastors say their church has disciplined a member in the last year. That includes 3 percent in the last month, 5 percent in the last six months and 8 percent in the last year.
More than half (55 percent) say no member has been disciplined during their time as pastor or before their tenure. Twenty-one percent say a member was disciplined three or more years ago. Five percent say there was a case of discipline in the last two years.

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Three Steps to Better Doctrinal Disagreements

1. Care about the person; critique the idea.
2. Ask yourself: If understood charitably, does the person have a valid point?
3. Use a tactical approach.

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Words on slides

• Don’t read the words.
• But even better, remember that slides are free.
• Better still, don’t use words.
• Many organizations use decks as a fancy sort of memo, a leave-behind that provides proof that you actually said what you said.
• Reconsider the memo.

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The Divorce & Remarriage of Evangelism and Discipleship

Some churches and ministries have a laser focus on evangelism at the expense of discipleship, and the church ends up a mile wide and an inch deep. Other ministries have decided that they don’t want shallow Christians, so they spend all their time and energy emphasizing discipleship.
This, however, easily results in ‘coffee club’ or ‘Sunday school’ Christians (which one of these often depends on the generation!) who get together, drink coffee, study the Bible, and pray. While those are certainly important components of discipleship, this is only a partial picture.

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Christian women in the U.S. are more religious than their male counterparts

More than seven-in-ten U.S. Christian women (72%) say religion is “very important” in their lives, compared with 62% of the country’s Christian men, according to Pew Research Center’s 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study. Roughly eight-in-ten Christian women also say they are absolutely certain God exists and that the Bible is the word of God, compared with about seven-in-ten men who say this.

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The Absurdity of The Passion

So we sit in the darkness of these disturbing events, recognizing that the same cruelty that crucified Jesus continues to pollute our world. And as we do so, we look to Christ, who embodies the divine madness of love.

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In the midst of a teacher strike, Oklahoma teens deliver lunches to inner-city families

“We know that this walkout has affected a lot of people, including people who are less privileged,” said George Hartman, one of the teens. “so giving them lunches, which they usually would get at school, is a great way to help.”
The teens worship with the Memorial Road Church of Christ on the north side of town, just outside the affluent Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond.

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4 Ways Christians Should Share Their Faith That Are Actually Effective

As we strive to be the people of God living out the mission of God in our cynical, polarizing world, showing hospitality where we love the outsider, engage and welcome everyone we meet, and invite them to dinner, we will have opportunities to not only show the Gospel but to actually share the Gospel. Because at the end of the day, we can preach the Gospel with our lives, but words are ultimately necessary. There comes a point where, out of love, we must be bold and courageous to sit down with our neighbor and tell them about the good news of the Gospel.

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7 Small Changes Which Produce Huge Results

1. Read one chapter of a book each day.
2. Two glasses of water each morning.
3. Exercise as a part of your daily routine.
4. Spend 5 to 10 minutes in prayer and reflection each morning.
5. Take 5 minutes to plan the day.
6. Routine your week.
7. Make a list.

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On Tribes and Community: Part 6, Our Kids Are Liberals

But we are starting to lament how our kids are being sent out into the world without a tribe, without the deep sense of belonging we experienced as children. Our kids are beautiful people, but we worry they are sacrificing life-giving, face-to-face community in the tribe for likes on Instragram and Snapchat. Millenials are tolerant, but they are also anxious and adrift. And there’s more to Christianity than tolerance.

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In 1996, a dying boy found a little turtle. Their story is now a children’s book

The book, which doesn’t directly mention Jonathan’s cancer, tells of a boy who grows weaker and can no longer take care of his turtle. Children can process the part of the narrative about saying goodbye to a beloved pet. Adults understand that it is not about a turtle. All proceeds will go to pediatric cancer research.

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Coach Wright gives honor of cutting down championship net to team chaplain

Typically, the head coach of the national championship team is the last one to go up the ladder and cut down the net to commemorate a college basketball national championship. But this year’s Villanova Wildcats team did things a little differently. Coach Jay Wright passed that honor to the team chaplain, Father Rob Hagan OSA.

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Millennials destroyed the rules of written English – and created something better

That’s because millennials have created a new rulebook for a variant of written English unique to social media. A rulebook which states that deliberately misspelled words and misused grammar can convey tone, nuance, humour, and even annoyance.
Dr Lauren Fonteyn, English Linguistics lecturer at University of Manchester, told Mashable “something exciting” is happening with the way that millennials write, and it goes far, far beyond our proclivity to use acronyms and “like.”
Fonteyn says millennials are “breaking the constraints” of written English to “be as expressive as you can be in spoken language.” This new variant of written English strives to convey what body language, and tone and volume of voice can achieve in spoken English.

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Want to Remember Your Vacation? Take Fewer Photos

In another test, 238 participants took the same church tour, but did so in pairs instead of alone. Most didn’t know their partners before the study. The pairs weren’t allowed to talk to each other, and in each pair, the participants were part of different groups—in some, one participant was supposed to take photos for personal use while the other wasn’t supposed to take photos at all; in others, one participant was supposed to share photos to Facebook and one was in the no-photo condition; and in still others, both partners were in the no-photo group. Again, the researchers found that taking photos negatively affected people’s memories of the experience in a follow-up survey several days later.

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Florida woman thought her 37-week pregnancy was bad Chinese food: ‘I was in shock’

At 4 a.m. on March 25, 29-year-old Crystal Gail Amerson awoke with a searing pain in her abdomen. With her fiancé, Brian Westerfield, sleeping beside her, she thought about the Chinese food they’d eaten the night before. Perhaps she was having a reaction to the General Tso’s chicken?
But as minutes turned to hours and the pain got worse, it finally hit her: This wasn’t food poisoning, these were labor contractions. It’s a startling revelation for anyone, but especially a woman who has been unaware — until this moment — that she’s pregnant.

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Was Easter Borrowed from a Pagan Holiday?

But, in fact, in the case of Easter the evidence suggests otherwise: that neither the commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection nor its name are derived from paganism.

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What Christians Get Wrong About the Easter Story

Our Christian life is always full of the tension of death and resurrection together. We take communion and try to grasp the depth of Christ’s sacrifice for us even knowing in the back of our minds that Christ conquered death. And we take joy in the baptism of others into new life while at the same time knowing full well that the new life we experience in the Christian life was bought with the ultimate price, a perfect sacrifice and a harrowing journey into darkness.
Life and Death. Cross and Resurrection. To know full well the magnificence of Christ’s power, we must cling both to the Cross and to the resurrection. Only then will the story be complete.

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Sin, Sex, Love, and God

Sex with those of the same gender is sin. That is not always a popular position to affirm in our society. Yet I am convinced the Bible teaches this. And it does so emphatically. Some will argue that Scripture should be interpreted based on our feelings, experience, and culture. That the various verses addressing this issue were written for a culture then and there, not here and now. But when something is identified as against nature, then it seems to be much bigger than a cultural argument. So any discussion by Christians needs to be framed by what God’s will is.

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Doing Church Biblically Can Be Messy

But biblical living is not about doing things the easy way. It can be easy, but many times it isn’t. Instead of choosing either of these easy routes, the pastor chose the biblical route, the more messy, difficult, and uncomfortable route. He chose to uphold biblical standards of sexuality and do his best to show love and compassion. In this case, the lesbian couple did return, and the way this story will unfold is still to be determined (let’s pray for a positive outcome).

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51% of Churchgoers Don’t Know of the Great Commission

When asked if they had previously “heard of the Great Commission,” half of U.S. churchgoers (51%) say they do not know this term. It would be reassuring to assume that the other half who know the term are also actually familiar with the passage known by this name, but that proportion is low (17%). Meanwhile, “the Great Commission” does ring a bell for one in four (25%), though they can’t remember what it is. Six percent of churchgoers are simply not sure whether they have heard this term “the Great Commission” before.

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These Salad Vending Machines Have Become One Of Chicago’s Hot Lunch Spots

In 2013, he launched the first prototype of a solution: a vending machine that would serve fresh salads, restocked daily, with kale, spinach, quinoa, and other vegetables, grains, and fruit layered neatly in glass jars. The first location, next to Dunkin Donuts and McDonald’s in a food court in downtown Chicago, was soon getting five-star reviews on Yelp.

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Police officer helps clueless man break up with his girlfriend

A 34-year-old man took the motto “The police, your friend and helper” to heart when he walked into a police station in Ludwigshafen, a city on the Rhine River 50 miles south of Frankfurt, Germany, on Tuesday.
His problem was a personal one: He wanted to break up with his girlfriend but did not know how. He just did not understand her anymore, he said.

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