African United Methodists Won’t Trade Bible for Dollars

But with all due respect, a fixation on money seems more of an American problem than an African one. We get by on far less than most Americans do; we know how to do it. I’m not so sure you do. So if anyone is so naïve or condescending as to think we would sell our birth right in Jesus Christ for American dollars, then they simply do not know us.

How can we take a Biblical stance on cultural issues without appearing hateful or bigoted?

The bottom line is there is not much we can do to avoid being considered haters or bigots. No matter how tender, compassionate, and courteous we try to be, the world is in rebellion against the truth of God’s Word. The Bible clearly states that God has created us male and female, homosexual behavior is a sin, and it’s wrong for a man to dress like a woman. The world has come to believe Satan’s lie that homosexuality is a gender instead of a behavior. But we can’t alter God’s truth. No matter how tactful we try to express it, the truth goes against the grain of popular opinion.

An Agenda for Moderates

The problem with today’s left-wing and right-wing ideas is that they are both based on a scarcity mind-set. They are based upon us/them, friend/enemy, politics is war, life is conflict.
They are both based on the fantasy that the other half of America can be conquered, and when it disappears we can get everything we want. They are both based on the idea that if we can just concentrate enough power in the centralized authoritarian state, then we can ram through the changes we seek.

Seven Benefits to the Coming Opposition

So, how can the coming opposition be an advantage to the mission of Jesus Christ in North America? Here are seven ways that we can anticipate finding a kingdom blessing in the loss of our earthly status:

1. Opposition Reminds Us of What Matters
2. Opposition Weeds Out the Frauds
3. Opposition Raises Up Prophetic Voices
4. Opposition Moves People to the Margins
5. Opposition Enhances the Need for Genuine Discipleship
6. Opposition Unites Believers
7. Ultimately, Opposition Increases, not Diminishes, the number of Jesus’ Disciples

When God Doesn’t

What do we do when we feel as if God has forgotten us? And just as difficult, how do we deal with those in our lives who allow their brokenness to cause our own? It’s a difficult lesson when you’re an adult and nearly impossible for children but it’s happening all around us. Church, we have a responsibility to help those struggling.

Workism Is Making Americans Miserable

The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production. They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community. Call it workism.

The tech giant fighting anti-vaxxers isn’t Twitter or Facebook. It’s Pinterest

Even still, Pinterest seems to be the first social media company that is willing to take responsibility for the content on its pages–beyond industry mainstays like banning violent or pornographic images, perhaps–recognizing that the truth of content is as integral to a user’s experience as the interface that serves it.

Why Are Bots Unable to Check “I Am Not a Robot” Checkboxes?

So why is all this hard for a bot to beat? Because now you’ve got a ridiculous amount of messy human behaviors to simulate, and they’re almost unknowable, and they keep changing, and you can’t tell when. Your bot might have to sign up for a Google service and use it convincingly on a single computer, which should look different from the computers of other bots, in ways you don’t understand. It might need convincing delays and stumbles between key presses, scrolling and mouse movements. This is all incredibly difficult to crack and teach a computer, and complexity comes at a financial cost for the spammer. They might break it for a while, but if it costs them (say) $1 per successful attempt, it’s usually not worth them bothering.

Stranded Amtrak train heads north to Seattle

With the help of heat, power and food, a passenger said the mood on board had remained surprisingly upbeat.
“It’s just been like a giant kumbaya party,” Dodson said early Tuesday. “Strangers are playing cards. A teenager played his ukulele to kids to get them to sleep. Ladies who have never met before were dancing in aisles.”

2 American women sue U.S. claiming they were detained after speaking Spanish

“It has nothing to do with that,” he said. “It’s the fact that it has to do with you guys speaking Spanish in the store, in a state where it’s predominantly English-speaking.”
Suda said that the agent took their IDs and kept them in the parking lot for about 35 to 40 minutes.
Suda was born in El Paso, Texas, and Hernandez was born in El Centro, California, according to the lawsuit.

The Salvation of the World: Church vs. Babylon

In short, God’s plan is to save the world through the church, God’s covenantal, Messianic family.
What strikes me about this is how many Christians don’t share this imagination. For many Christians, the church is optional, it’s just not necessary or important. Our imaginations are political, we are students of the science of power. We will change the world by controlling Washington DC. We will save the world through Babylon and not the church.

We’ll Give Up Everything But Our Entitlement

We are so sure we would give up everything for Christ, even our very lives if we were called to, but we can’t even let go of our feeling that we deserve good things that we aren’t getting. Yes, we feel we deserve more, even in middle our pleasant, happy, comfortable, blessed lives.

Missional Partnership: Reframing the Concept of “Placing Membership”

This conversation would be about missional brainstorming to help the new person find their place as a missional partner. Such questions that could be discussed are: How could your family partner in God’s mission at Southside? What do you want to see God do within your family over the next year? What is God currently doing within your life? What are you passionate about and how could that be channeled towards God’s redemptive mission?

Elders, Anointing, and Healing

But without fail, every person we have ever anointed expressed a deeper faith in God, a willingness for his will to be done, and a peace for what was to come in the days ahead. I do believe some of that may be connected to whole forgiveness of sins mentioned in that passage.

Navigating Life With Your Desires

As a Jesus follower, I am called to put these decisions in the context of Lordship faith. Is this a decision that pleases the Lord Jesus? Does this decision reflect my surrender to him as Lord?

How Big is Your Church?

My main issue is this – when we “draw our circle” smaller and smaller we are acting in the role of God – whether we want to admit to that or not. When we say that someone is “saved” or “lost,” “faithful” or “erring,” based upon tendentious interpretations of disputed texts, we are making ourselves to be divine arbiters of heaven and hell, and that is a VERY dangerous place to be. As one of my favorite professors once said regarding his own journey of faith, “I came to realize that being God was above my pay grade.”

Is Email Making Professors Stupid?

We must also acknowledge that the real costs of administrative work are currently hidden in ways that don’t immediately show up on a university’s balance sheet. Distracted and interrupted professors produce less research and spend less time innovating in the classroom. That reality doesn’t directly impact revenue and is hard to measure as a concrete cost and therefore easy to ignore.

Alexa responds to minister’s call, orders toilet paper

In addition to the audience of more than 1,000 worshipers gathered for the congregation’s early service, numerous believers watched the sermon online through the church’s video streaming service.
One of them, Bethany Becknell, was at home with a sick child, Eli.
Her husband, Wes, attended Memorial Road’s first service with their other son, Cam.
Brookman preached about how easy it is in the 21st Century for Christians to live separate lives — and to fail to see the need for the kind of unity Paul advocates.
Even shopping has become depersonalized, Brookman said. Instead of going to Wal-Mart and interacting with other humans, one need only say, “Alexa, order toilet paper.”
From the master bathroom in her house, Bethany Becknell heard a polite female voice respond, “OK. I’ve added it to your cart.”

Pick Up Your Cross, Not Your Political Pitchfork: How to be friends with different viewpoints

Humility allowed us to thrive in political conversations, not simply survive, because we were more committed to growing closer to Christ and his heart than we were about winning a debate. Indeed, we spoke truth and disagreed at times, but the truth we spoke sought to be in service to one another and to God, not just from a desire to be “right.” God clothed us in compassion, because of the call, “In humility, count others more significant than yourselves” (Phil 2:3). We’ve left our conversations closer, not more divided. And while some of our viewpoints are more aligned than they ever have been, many still remain far apart.

Pastors Optimistic About Church’s Future, Regardless of Past Struggles

The survey found 79 percent of pastors say weekly worship attendance at their church will increase in the next five years. But looking at the last five years, only 36 percent of pastors say worship attendance growth increased, while two-thirds say attendance stayed the same or declined (27 percent decreased, 37 percent stayed the same).

Once a majority, Protestants now account for fewer than a third of Germans

Protestants represented a majority (59%) of Germany’s population in 1950, with Catholics as a sizable minority (37%), according to research by Detlef Pollack and Olaf Müller, scholars of religion and sociology at the University of Münster in Germany. These shares are largely based on church membership rolls that include both children and adults. Over the next 60 years, the share of Protestants fell 30 percentage points, while the share of Catholics dropped 7 points. Each group now includes roughly three-in-ten Germans, based on 2010 membership data.

How Africa is converting China

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens have gone to work in Africa, where they have encountered foreign cultures that leave many of them feeling alienated. For some of these disaffected Chinese workers, a source of comfort has come from religion, most notably the Evangelical Christianity that pervades much of sub-Saharan Africa. Evangelicalism prioritises conversion of non-believers, and the Chinese, heavily discouraged from practicing religion at home, are attractive potential converts.

I Miss Talking To Strangers

Even if it was just about burgers or bank notes or the weather (it was always about the weather), there’s a warmth and goodness in the simple act of conversation that I never noticed until it was gone. The machines are efficient, yes, but they’re cold. You can’t look them in the eye, or commiserate together about the rain, or wish them a good weekend. You can’t get to know them over months and weeks and years, and end up friends like I did with the bank tellers. I miss the bank tellers. I miss talking with them about holidays and how shocking the weather is. For that matter, I just miss talking. I miss being forced to communicate with other humans. If you don’t have to talk, it becomes impolite to break the silence. So we sit on the train, stand in the queue at the bank, wait for our orders at McD’s, and look at our personal communication devices instead of communicating with the living, breathing humans all around us.

The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

A 2016 study found that 63 percent of respondents valued money over time, while the smaller percentage of people who valued time over money reported greater well-being than the larger group. This correlation was consistent even after researchers controlled for factors like income — which complicates the assumption that prioritizing time over money is a luxury that only rich people can afford.

These Are the Life Tips People Actually Use, According to Reddit

You may not be familiar with the subreddit /r/LifeProTips, but it’s where people go to drop helpful hints for how to negotiate matters both urgent and trivial. You could just search for the top-rated or most commented upon posts, but sometimes that rating system correlates to how intensely the Redditor’s suggestion is being mocked. Luckily, on /r/AskReddit, Redditor u/Zach_the_muffin asked, “What ‘Life Pro Tip’ have you learned from Reddit that you still use every time the situation presents itself?”
Here are the most useful and used tips out there (for now).

Cleveland’s National Weather Service Issued an Unofficial ‘Small Dog Advisory’ Due to High Winds

The National Weather Service in Cleveland is reminding people with mini dachshunds, Yorkshire terriers, and other little dog breeds to keep an eye on their pooches this windy winter. According to WTOL 11 News, an unofficial “small dog warning” was in effect in several parts of Ohio and Northwest Pennsylvania Wednesday, as two-legged and four-legged locals alike braced for gusts of up to 50 mph.

Infanticide Becomes Justifiable

Is human life sacred, or does our moral worth depend on relevant personhood characteristics? Is society’s ultimate purpose to protect all innocent human life or to eliminate suffering—a category which both includes eliminating the sufferer, and, as with an unwanted fetus or newborn, the perceived cause of suffering? The answers we ultimately give to these questions will determine whether infanticide is finally established as unexceptional.

We Are Exiles

We’ve got to stop the Israel thinking, which is, This is our place, our home. Instead, we must consider that we are foreigners and strangers in exile. It’s someone else’s home. We’re not Israel. We’re Israel in exile.
Jeremiah 29:5 speaks to those like us in exile. Sure, plant gardens and grow, and flourish, and more. But always remember you’re in Babylon.
This makes all the difference. Why? Because only then will we have exile thinking and gospel focus. We begin to think about our mission to engage a culture that God loves and wants to redeem and restore to himself.

Almost Half of Practicing Christian Millennials Say Evangelism Is Wrong

As Barna found in research published in Spiritual Conversations in the Digital Age, three out of five Christian Millennials believe that people today are more likely than in the past to take offense if they share their faith (65%)—that’s far higher than among Boomer Christians (28%). Millennials are also either two (Gen X) or three times more likely (Boomers and Elders) than any other generational group to believe that disagreement means judgment.

The Doctrine of Personal Infallibility

But that only works because, despite all the praise heaped on the Bible and its importance, the average conservative Christian does not know the Bible well enough to appreciate its diversity, reads it in a translation that hides discrepancies and differences from them, and knows only (or at least knows best) those parts that can be interpreted as supporting their stance.

For the fifth time in a row, the new Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse ever

In the House of Representatives, however, some racial and ethnic groups are now on par with their share of the total population. For example, 12% of House members are black, about equal to the share of Americans who are black. And Native Americans now make up 1% of the House, equal to their 1% of the population.
Other nonwhite groups in the House are somewhat less represented relative to their share of the population. The share of Hispanics in the U.S. population (18%) is twice as high as it is in the House (9%). Asians account for 6% of the national population but 3% of House members.

No thank you, Mr. Pecker

These communications cement AMI’s long-earned reputation for weaponizing journalistic privileges, hiding behind important protections, and ignoring the tenets and purpose of true journalism. Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out.

Digital Exile: How I Got Banned for Life from AirBnB

The part that’s especially poetic to me is that AirBnB touts a firm brand message of community and connectedness with their “Belong Anywhere” campaigns but the frightening reality is that any individual user is completely disposable, without a shred of appeal to due process. I’m really thankful that I wasn’t reliant on AirBnB income like so many of my friends.

A New Study Says There Are Actually Health Benefits to Thinking Kind Thoughts

New research from Oxford indicates that thinking kind thoughts about yourself and others can be beneficial to your immune system and overall physiological state.

This new study challenges what we know about color and type

In other words, feel free to use any hyperlink color you like. But make sure it’s high contrast, realize that it may draw more attention on the page, and know that blue is still probably the best.

Seven Warning Signs of Inward Focus in a Church

1. There are very few attempts to minister to those in the community.
2. Church business meetings become arguments over preferences and desires.
3. Members in the congregation are openly critical of the pastor, other church leaders in the church.
4. Any change necessary to become a Great Commission church is met with anger and resistance.
5. The past becomes the hero.
6. Culture is seen as the enemy instead of an opportunity for believers to become salt and light.
7. Pastors and other leaders in the church become discouraged and withdraw from effective leadership.

Who Worries About Hell the Most

The results are consistent with a much larger body of research showing much more positive health outcomes for those who believe in a loving God who personally cares for them than those who believe in a distant, judgmental deity.

How highly religious Americans view evolution depends on how they’re asked about it

Indeed, groups who respond differently to the two approaches are those who primarily believe that God or a higher power had a role in human evolution. For example, nearly all white evangelical Protestants who say humans have evolved – whether in a branched-choice or single-question format – believe God had a role in human evolution.
Differences in response to these two approaches occur among highly religious groups, but not among religiously unaffiliated Americans (those who describe their religion as nothing in particular, agnostic or atheist).

Cliff Sims, the ‘Team of Vipers,’ and His Views of the President’s Faith Advisors (Part 2)

Unfortunately, I think these dynamics were a kind of social rule among the group. I don’t want to paint them all with a broad brush—I think there are people with good hearts and with good intentions who are trying to be a picture of the gospel in a place that can be totally devoid of it. They deserve credit and don’t deserve to be smeared. But, I did see a lot of things that made me very uncomfortable.
It’s sad to me that faith leaders were not immune to the side effects that proximity to power had on me and other people in the White House.

How to pray for lost people

Some worry that it seems as if all I do is look for openings and opportunities to speak about Jesus. Correct. After all, if I make a friend and never talk about Jesus — then either I am not really their friend. Or I am not really a friend of Jesus.

Are you being manipulated?

Some simple questions worth asking:

1. How does this announcement/offer/news/pressure make you feel?
2. Is there something about this news that touches a hot button issue or fear? Is the story being told designed to trigger you?
3. Are you surrounded by people who are also engaged with this news? Is it becoming a mob?
4. Is the presenter of the news using external pressure to push you into acting in ways that contradict your self-interest or self-esteem?
5. How would you feel if you discovered that the story you just heard wasn’t actually true?

It’s not just Google or Facebook: The freezer aisle is ad targeting you now

That’s a problematic lack of transparency. There’s no disclosure that users are being watched and their behavior analyzed. When I was looking at the doors, I couldn’t find any sign of the cameras at all, although I knew they were watching me. When I asked Koval about how he designed the doors so that people wouldn’t find it creepy, he pointed again to the fact that the data is anonymized as enough reason for consumers to accept the technology. But these are serious privacy considerations as retail stores bring some of the tracking that already occurs online into the real world. Most of us are aware that Facebook is tracking what we “like” on its website, but few would expect to have their emotions monitored at the local pharmacy.

El Paso Zoo will name a cockroach after your ex and feed it to their meerkats

Not only can you name a cockroach after your ex at the El Paso Zoo, but on Valentine’s Day the zoo will be feeding those cockroaches to the meerkats for their “Quit Bugging Me” event at 2:15 p.m. Feb. 14.