My reading schedule has been inconsistent this week. Here’s a few interesting things I ran across; feel free to point me to others!
What Really Happened The Night Kitty Genovese Was Murdered?
(I’ve got to explain this one to our younger crowd. I grew up hearing the Kitty Genovese story used by preacher after preacher to show our lack of compassion for others. It’s interesting to read the facts… Tim)
Thirty-eight witnesses — that was the story that came from the police. And it really is what made the story stick. Over the course of many months of research, I wound up finding a document that was a collection of the first interviews. Oddly enough, there were 49 witnesses. I was puzzled by that until I added up the entries themselves. Some of them were interviews with two or three people [who] lived in the same apartment. I believe that some harried civil servant gave that number to the police commissioner who gave it to Rosenthal, and it entered the modern history of America after that.
The Truth About Church No One is Talking About
This is the truth no one is talking about. Obedience transforms the church from a meeting place to a moving body with flexible parts so that together we can reach a broken world.
10 years of GetReligion: State of the Godbeat 2014
Journalism has seen a sea change in the past decade-plus due to the Internet taking over how news is produced, distributed and funded. Every beat is feeling the pain, as reporters in all specialties — and above a certain age — are losing their jobs. Whole newspapers have gone online only, or cut back to only a few days a week. Not only have religion beat reporters been shed like autumn leaves, all sections of the typical newsroom have been hit with layoffs and buyouts, including one Chicago newspaper that ditched its entire photo staff in one swoop.
That seems to me like the great contradiction of attempting to make a movie about Jesus: Make him too godlike, and he becomes distant and unknowable. Make him too much a man, and he starts to seem too earthly to be divine. And make him kind of annoying—as Son Of God does—and he doesn’t seem like someone anyone would want to follow.
Noah: Five Negative Features about this Film
So Noah gets Noah wrong, gets the environment wrong, gets evolution wrong, gets angelology wrong, and gets some biblical details wrong. Compounding these problems, add the fact that none of these negatives can be deduced from watching the previews that have been released.
Given these facts, and facts they are, the movie trailer may feel like a “bait and switch” to Jews and Christians. For instance, in the trailer where Noah says, “I am not alone,” he is not talking about God. You’ll see.
PC Ministry: Hurt with the Hurting
Too often as a millennial Christian, I feel the temptation to invert the prayers of the Pharisee and the Publican, “Thank God I’m not like one of these: religious sinners, hypocrites, dogmatics.” But this attitude makes me incapable of asking the Daves and the Bens in my life to have mercy on me, a sinner and a brother to their abusers. To distance myself from the church inhibits me in facilitating reconciliation with the Christ’s bride. How do we stand with and support the church as a people who God is and will work with to reconcile the world while still seeking to minister to those who have been wounded and abused by that same people?
10 Surefire Ways to Make Your Kids Hate Family Devotions
Have you ever expected your unregenerate children to act like believing adults? Have you ever been so rigid in your family devotional time that you made it drudgery instead of a joy to talk about Jesus together?
The gospel is supposed to be good news.
Oscar Mayer says it has developed app to wake you up to the sound – and smell – of bacon
Oscar Mayer says it has created a bacon-scented app for the iPhone, developed by the Madison-based company’s Institute for the Advancement of Bacon.
The company says that to emit a small puff reminiscent of bacon, the user needs an external device that plugs into the headphone jack. The app itself produces the sound of bacon sizzling in a pan.