7 Questions About Suicide and Christians

From all that I can gather of the circumstances surrounding this tragic situation, I believe that Rick, Kay, the church, and the caring professions did all that they could to prevent this happening, and should not blame themselves. As many of us have also experienced, when someone’s mind has gone so far and their emotions have sunk so deep, and they are determined to end their life, it’s virtually impossible to stop.

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How Can the Church Help People Struggling with Depression?

These are just a few of the essays and posts tackling this important issue. As you read through these and other discussions taking place about depression and the church, we hope you’ll join us in praying for the Warren family, and for everyone in your church community who, perhaps unknown to anyone else, is suffering from depression. And we encourage you to spend extra time this week in reflection and prayer as you consider the question: how can I extend Christ-like grace to someone struggling under the weight of depression?

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Rick Warren Responds To ‘Haters’ After Son Matthew Warren’s Suicide

But Warren, who has been praised by mental illness experts and pastors for being remarkably public about his grieving, at the same time has been attacked by those who disagree with his faith. Now, he’s taking to social media not only to grieve, but to address his “haters.”

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Being gay at Jerry Falwell’s university

The real import of the story is how the Christians at Liberty University responded to the revelation of his sexuality. He had feared that they would want to stone him. But instead, he found out that quite the opposite happened. Even though professors and administrators believed homosexuality to be a sin, they loved him and embraced him with open arms. His expectations were so off that he realized he had been suffering from “homophobiaphobia.” These fundamentalist Christians didn’t turn out to be the nasty caricatures that they are often made out to be.

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A Radical Sermon – Dogs, Pigs and the Kingdom (Matthew 7:6-12)

We gave everything we considered to be high and holy to the government, and it return it trampled those offerings under foot and now has turned and started to attack those who surrendered those gifts.
Just like Jesus said it would happen.

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What we can learn from African Christians

Of course, from my humble observations, Christianity in Africa, like Christianity in Australia, is far from perfect. There are the particular dangers of false teaching and sexual immorality. One prominent African Christian described Christianity in Kenya as being a mile wide and an inch deep. It also has to be said that we Western Christians, thanks to God, have our strengths. However, it seems to me that we have a lot to learn from African Christians in a few areas. What follows is not a comprehensive study; rather, it is a collection of reflections and generalizations based on my own experience and those of people to whom I have spoken.

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10 Things I’ve Learned About Being A Preacher’s Wife

I don’t think preacher’s wives are understood by most people. Before knowing anything about her, people will always have expectations, sometimes unrealistic ones, of her. Some people will judge her unfairly if she doesn’t turn out to be exactly what they were expecting. Some people will be shocked when they discover that she, just like everyone else, is very much human—full of flaws, quirks, and antics…but also talents, skills, and most of all, feelings—as vulnerable as the next girl.

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Roger Ebert’s 20 Most Epic Movie Pans

If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

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How not to say the wrong thing

Susan has since developed a simple technique to help people avoid this mistake. It works for all kinds of crises: medical, legal, financial, romantic, even existential. She calls it the Ring Theory.

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Mad Men and the Judgment of God

We can’t see the script of our lives ahead of time. We can’t see which consequences come with which actions. It is hard enough to see the consequences in this life for our actions, much less those in eternity. But we see the gospel. We see that Jesus has indeed been raised from the dead, and, therefore, our inheritance is sure. We see that judgment has fallen on him, and, therefore, God’s justice is sure.

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Visual storytelling lessons from Citizen Kane

The takeaways

• Lead the viewer’s eye by establishing clear focal points in your visuals.
• Use size contrast (and other contrasts) to create depth.
• Use movement (animation) with discretion and clear intent.
• Create good variety visually (and in terms of pace), but have a clear visual theme as well.
• If you use multimedia, be bold and make it part of the narrative rather than a sideshow.
• Have a clear and simple structure. Whether your narrative is linear or nonlinear depends on your approach and planning, not on which software you use.
• Experiment, take a risk, try something new. There is no one best way (or best app) when it comes to creating & delivery powerful presentations.

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Visual Story Lab

Seeing is Believing, Resource Media’s new best practices guide on visual storytelling, gives you the latest research and tools to address this communications blind spot. Download the guide to learn how you can put pictures to work for your organization or your cause.

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300 taxis combine headlights to illuminate airstrip for emergency flight

A fleet of hundreds of taxis came to the rescue at an airstrip in Peru by forming a chain so that their headlights lit a local airstrip for a rescue plane’s emergency takeoff.

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Victims take gun from suspects during home invasion, suspects come back asking for their gun

Police said during the robbery the victims were able to get the gun from the suspects; both fled the scene.
The victims called 911 and turned the gun over to police.
A few hours later the victims said the suspects came back and asked for their gun back—that is when the victims called police again.

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Man buys toy poodles, discovers they’re actually ferrets on steroids

An Argentine man who thought he bought a pair of poodles at an outdoor market in Buenos Aires brought them home to the vet only to be told they were actually ferrets on steroids

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The Outside View of a Former Church Insider :: 10 Honest Observations

In the nearly 2 years since then I’ve visited a lot of churches with my family. We’ve visited churches we’ve heard about for years, places we just learned about on the fly, we’ve sat in the balcony and down front, we’ve been to churches of all cultures and backgrounds, we’ve tried out all of the children’s ministries, we’ve seen church every way you can make it in America.
We’ve lived in California, Kentucky, and New York these past 2 years and have pretty much seen it all. All of that considered, I have 10 observations that I’d love to share. I like to always give this stipulation when I offer what may sound like a self-righteous critique of church. I love the Church. I love God. I am flawed. This is not me saying I’m perfect and that the church sucks.

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The Highlights are not Enough

Unfortunately, there are those who apply this “just give me the highlights” philosophy to the Christian education of children. According to researcher George Barna, most children’s Sunday School curricula only cover 40-60 of the “major” stories of Scripture. The “minor” stories (which one are those, exactly?) are totally missed, and even the major ones tend to be summarized at the lower grades. In other words, the Bible is taught to children as a collection of stories rather than ONE story, hopping and skipping through the Bible to just give the highlights.

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Stand or Kneel: Does it Matter?

Our comfort zone (familiarity zone, conditioning, practice) has allowed for – even encouraged – standing as THE appropriate expression. Bending and raising are just as plain linguistically, but our social norms have conditioned us to put a premium on standing. Why do we defer to one action and exclude the others? Plainly, we are more comfortable with the one action than we are with the other two. I suppose at stake here is what we are actually doing in song. Are we singing out of nostalgia and a herd mentality or have we truly chosen to give physical expression to what is in our hearts? Bending and raising can be dismissed as strange and perhaps “showy.”

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Holy Spirit Activity Among Us

The church has tried to build itself rather than being built by Jesus in Spirit form. When we break from our own self-imposed church standards and begin to venture into the uncharted waters of the Spirit, new life happens. It is supposed to.
So why does the Spirit not get a better shot among us? One word. Fear.

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7 Directives for Meditating on Scripture

In meditation you may choose to focus on one verse of God’s Word or a key word in a verse….Bible study should be mingled with meditation and prayer.

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“Whoever has done it unto the least of these….”

We should see every poor person as an icon of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, because what we do to the least of these we do unto HIM.

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Juan Williams: Race and the Gun Debate

The shame and silence is enforced by civil-rights leaders who speak in support of gun control but never about a dysfunctional gangster-rap culture that glorifies promiscuity, drug dealers and the power of the gun.
“Loving, supporting parents . . . [are] the single most important thing,” the president told his audience of young, mostly minority children at Hyde Park Academy High School in Chicago. He made the case for parents as the key to giving children a sense of self-esteem beyond the barrel of a gun.

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Homeless man wins lottery but wants to stay in his tent

Dennis Mahurin has been homeless since around 1978, living in his tent. And he plans to stay there despite having won a $50,000 lottery off a scratch card ticket.
“I scratched it off right here in my tent,” Mahurin told CINewsNow.

What About Gay Marriage?

We even allowed the government to step in and define, license, regulate, and control marriage – a sacred covenant union between a man and a woman and God. It didn’t happen all at once, but it happened. When I bring this up, it is amazing – and a bit sad – to me how quickly people rise to defend government’s place in controlling and licensing marriage. They claim that without government help marriage would be chaos, cousins would marry, there would be no protection for the children should the marriage break, etc. I disagree on every point and at every level.

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Vacant pews becoming a trend

While Easter Sunday leads as the most attended church service, only about half of all professing Christians attended church on Easter. And we are getting younger when we do drop out of church. New church studies show that a large proportion of church-going people totally drop out of church between the ages of 18 and 24, right at the age when we begin to make our first independent decisions, which will influence much of our adult lives. What does this mean for our future if this trend of vacant pews continues in America?

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Immigration Reform Pitfalls II: The Question of Family Reunification

Both these concerns are based on the idea that our economy’s ability to absorb immigrants is zero-sum: that there is a set number of jobs available for both immigrants and U.S. citizens, so that if we let an immigrant in through one door, we ought to let one fewer in through another in order to keep the overall number stable. But almost all economists find this logic flawed, because they know that most immigrants—including those who come in through family-sponsored visas, not just those admitted on employer-sponsored visas—are workers, and they tend to do jobs that complement the work of U.S. citizens. They are also consumers, and their purchasing power within the U.S. helps to add to the economy as a whole, creating a larger pie to divide. When an immigrant arrives (sometimes after decades of waiting) through a petition from her sibling, she will almost certainly get a job, contributing to the U.S. economy as a worker, as a consumer, and as a taxpayer.

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A Working Class Manual On How To Reach The Middle Classes With The Gospel Of Jesus

Congratulations. You have been saved from a housing scheme background and you have taken the step to enter into cross cultural ministry. Ministering to the middle class is fraught with many pitfalls and dangers and is something not to be entered into lightly. Please take time to read the following.

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TMI – How Bible Reading can be Bad for your Spiritual Health

They’ll wonder how a religion who’s founder said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” became obsessed with gun ownership, or worse, slave ownership. They’ll wonder how a religion whose found said “freely you have received, freely give” would have African natives saying to missionaries, “you told us to close our eyes and pray, and when we opened them you took our land”; or how it’s possible for an entire movement to obsess so much about virginity and have so many of its main leaders indicted for sexual abuse and scandals.

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What’s In a Name? Church Names and Public Perception

On one hand, when people see a church with a denominational reference in its name, they are over four times more likely to perceive that church as formal than if it has no such reference. Denominational references are also three times more likely to make people see that church as old-fashioned, and almost three times more likely to make them feel it is structured and rigid, than if there is no denominational reference in the name. The lack of a denominational reference is also three times more likely to lead people to feel that the church is open-minded.
On the other hand, including a denominational reference is more than twice as likely to help people feel the church is honest. Excluding a denominational reference is more than twice as likely to give people feelings of uncertainty, and almost five times more likely to lead to thoughts that the church may be trying to hide what they believe.

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Ideal or Idol: Avoiding the Family Cult in Church

Perhaps this is why most marriage and family material promoted in churches today comes from the social sciences not scripture. Proponents seek to align their teaching with scripture, but most of it does not originate there. Much of it is helpful and we can use it to strengthen our families. That’s great. But the purpose of this material is not advancing the Kingdom of God and often has little to do with being disciples. In our understandable anxiety about family, we can easily over-emphasizing family in church and get our families out of place. If that happens, it will not be good for our families or for the church.

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In the Crosshairs of the Discernment Bloggers

The second lesson is one I am surprised I did not see before: Discernment bloggers often operate by fear. They are intimidating because of their willingness to release information and misinformation, to speculate and fabricate, to share personal details and confidential correspondence and to stretch what doesn’t quite fit. They have the power to destroy a reputation and a history that proves they are willing to do so. Though they immediately discredit any response, they at the same time imply that a non-response is an admission of guilt.

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How Many Americans are Evangelical Christians? Born-Again Christians?

As shown in this figure, the percentage of Americans fitting this description rose in the 1970s and 1980s and has somewhat declined since then. Currently Evangelical Christianity in the US is at about its 40-year average, with 23%-24% of Americans affiliating with an Evangelical church or denomination.

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Why you hate the sound of your own voice

We grow up getting used to all of our asymmetries as reflected in the mirror—parting our hair to the left, the little mole on our right cheek, that chip in our left incisor. When we see a photo of ourselves, all of these tiny differences don’t match up with what our brain expects to see, so we dislike it.
Likewise, we live our lives hearing and perfecting our bone-conducted, but not air-conducted, voices.

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Saudi court said to order criminal to be surgically paralyzed

The Saudi Gazette newspaper reported last week that Khawaher had stabbed a childhood friend in the spine during a dispute a decade ago, paralyzing him from the waist down.
Saudi Arabia applies Islamic sharia law, which allows eye-for-an-eye punishment for crimes but allows victims to pardon convicts in exchange for so-called blood money.

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Bracketing Morality — The Marginalization of Moral Argument in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate

And yet, what makes this moral revolution so vast in consequences and importance is this: the moral dimension has virtually disappeared from the cultural conversation. This is true, we must note, even among the defenders of heterosexual marriage.

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The Value of Strong Marriages

Let me offer a reason that I have not seen discussed much: people in Western culture instinctively yearn to see marriage succeed. People intuitively understand that the preservation of marriage offers society stability and hope. Unfortunately, the unofficial consensus is heterosexual marriage has failed and will never succeed; therefore, gay marriage should be given its chance.

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A Different Kind of Easter Morning

This Easter, before assembling with other believers, I did something that I had never done before.
I visited Joshua’s grave.

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The Haddon Robinson Principle: How to Burn your Sermon into the Brains of Your Audience

This is where our friend Haddon Robinson comes in, most famous for his emphasis on “Big Idea” preaching. Here’s what he says: “Ideally, each sermon is the explanation, interpretation, or application of a single dominant idea supported by other ideas, all drawn from one passage or several passages of Scripture.” How many points was that? Three? Five? No. One point. One single point. So here’s our principle: Preach with a pin, not with a hammer. A pin is a narrow, focused point designed to penetrate through surfaces. A hammer has a wide, flat surface, and its designed to bat around and flatten the outer layers. If we want preaching that penetrates the heart, we must preach with a pin.

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Rest

God rested from his work (Gen. 2:2), setting both an example and precedent that it is appropriate for us to do the same. The person in relationship with God can pray with expectation the words of Psalm 62:5, “Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.”

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Why Most Twenty Somethings are Delusional

And yet, they are also delusional. And here’s why:

1. They believe they are special.
2. They believe the work their parents did is the work they did.
3. They believe passion displaces work.

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Honoring Christ Online

All of the wisdom in Proverbs, in James, in the Gospels, and in the Epistles is equally applicable to words typed into Twitter as to words spoken verbally. One of the issues we face is that online interactions are mediated interactions, and in the mediation—in the screen that separates one person from another—we are prone to lose some of our humanity. We do well to remind ourselves continually that “pixels are people,” which is to say that the rules that govern offline communication also need to govern what we say through our mobile phones or across the Internet.

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Poll: 13 percent of American voters think President Obama is the Antichrist

Seven percent of American voters believe the moon landing was faked, 6 percent say Osama bin Laden is still alive, and 13 percent think President Barack Obama is the Antichrist.

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Easter Egg Hunt At Seattle Zoo Turns Violent

A statement on the Seattle Police Department blotter Monday says the “hard-boiled tale” began Sunday afternoon, “when one woman reportedly pushed a child aside as her own child was scrambling toward some brightly colored eggs.”

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The kind of basketball team you can bring home to mom

ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap recently caught up with the Spurs and did a feature on the team’s continued success over the years and why they aren’t talked about more. There are a lot of things we’ve heard over the years about how they like it that way, they just go to work and then go home, and how small of a market San Antonio is.
Nonetheless, it’s the type of piece that confirms a lot of the reasons you’re already rooting for this team.

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