on tagging & stereotyping

And so I say, let’s each make an extra effort to not label or pigeon-hole people whenever we speak of groups of people. We best respect groups of people when we respect the individuals who compose those groups. After all, our salvation is not of the NRA, Churches of Christ, or any other group of people. Rather, we all stand or fall before the one God and Father of us all, through the one Savior and Lord he has provided for each of us, Jesus Christ.

Worship Service – The Power of Upsetting the Routine

Sometimes upsetting the routine is unplanned. But we can plan to do this and when we do, it will get people’s attention because you are no longer going through the motions…instead of knowing where the service is going, you are engaged because you are wondering what is going to happen next. It is powerful to highlight different areas of the worship at different times. Have a communion Sunday where you spend more time on it with less sermon time. Or have a Sunday worship where you do more singing or more praying or more scripture reading. Have the worship in another location. Involve different people (the kids, teens, etc).

How generous are you?

Four suggestions:

1. Be generous with your friends
2. Be generous with your resources
3. Be generous with your praise and affirmation
4. Be generous with your attention

Ideal, average and outlier

When we look at an audience–customers, prospects, constituents–we make decisions on the whole based on our assumptions about the individuals within the group.
But are we basing those generalizations on our vision of the ideal member of the tribe, the average member or the outlier who got our attention?

Pentagon’s Lifting of Combat Ban Comes as Role of Military Women Grows

In December 2011, the Pew Research Center examined the roles and attitudes of female military veterans and found that, while many combat roles were withheld from female veterans, women in the military did report experiencing combat and had many of the same issues as men during their transition back into civilian life.

Is Facebook envy making you miserable?

The researchers found that one in three people felt worse after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives, while people who browsed without contributing were affected the most.

German court rules internet “essential”

“The Internet plays a very important role today and affects the private life of an individual in very decisive ways. Therefore loss of use of the Internet is comparable to the loss of use of a car,” a court spokeswoman told Germany’s ARD television.

[Tim’s note: While all my links should probably carry a disclaimer stating that I don’t necessarily agree, I want to note that I’m including the following article because it shocks and appalls me]

So what if abortion ends life?

All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

How to do better at not sinning

Many of my sins aren’t really my fault, it seems to me. Most of them happen because of the people around me, or the situations I face. If any normal person lived my life, he’d probably fare worse than I do.
If Satan gets us thinking like that, he’s already won half the battle.

Don’t be the Taylor Swift of preachers…

May I offer two warnings: One, don’t become an open sore. That guy who is Eeyore’ish and always unhappy about someone or something. And two, move on quickly from a hurt. OK, I said two but I’m giving you three (hey, everyone loves a bonus) – the person you need to tell the most is God! Talk it out in prayer with Him. He knows, He understands, He loves you more than anyone and He will not forget His own.

Does God Have Faith In Me?

So ultimately the question that must be asked is: Does God have faith in me as He did in Job? And in spite of my incalculable shortcomings and failures, the answer must be yes!

Heavy Multitaskers Are the Worst At Multitasking

The findings, based on performances and self-evaluations by about 275 undergraduate students, suggest many people multitask not out of a desire to boost productivity, but because they are easily distracted and can’t focus on one activity. And those people turn out to be the worst at juggling different things, the researchers said.

Hold, please — for 43 days

Having to wait 40 days and 40 nights sounds like a torture of biblical proportions, but the average American suffers just that long over the course of a lifetime — on hold.

Dolphin Caught in Fishing Line Approaches Divers for Help

The amazing part of the video is how cooperative and gentle the dolphin is as the divers help him. Laros was able to get the hook out and snip the fishing line near the dolphin’s mouth.
“The way he came right up and pushed himself into me, there was no question this dolphin was there for help,” Laros said.

Are Short-Term Missions For Us or Them?

So, here are my broad, sweeping suggestions for what the future of STMs:

• Spend far fewer resources on STMs. Spend more on long-term development.
• STMs should have two primary purposes:
  • The building of relationships across cultures
  • The education and formation of those going
• Short-term missions should not be geared around service, doing good works, evangelism, and the like.
• Whenever there is a sense in which the group is being exposed to the poverty and suffering in the local community, be sure to leave cameras tucked away in a bag.
• Local church leaders (i. e., not missionaries nor the sending church leaders) should be the primary catalysts for inviting and organizing the trip.
• Local church leaders should be the ones the group hears from the most as the group seeks to understand the local culture.
• Those going on these trips should use their own money to cover at least half, if not all, the cost of the trip.

Technology Allows Multiple Ways of Communicating to the Masses…Does that Do Anything to Us?

Social media gives us a platform to toss our ideas out into an ocean of data, updates, and information and allow a wide variety of people to receive that information. What effects does that have on us?

How to Stay Connected With the Unchurched

I felt a little awkward because I knew he still had a big list of questions, but I looked at him and asked, “How much time do you spend in a normal week with people who are not yet followers of Jesus?” He looked at me, and then looked down at his food for an uncomfortable amount of time, saying nothing. Finally he looked up and locked eyes with me with a very sober look on his face. He did not speak, but simply lifted his right hand; placing the tip of his thumb against his pointer finger, he made a circle. He swallowed and said, “None! I am so busy doing ministry, I don’t have time to invest in nonbelievers.”

A Roomful of Yearning and Regret

When you have an affair you already know you will have passionate sex — the urgency, newness and illicit nature of the affair practically guarantee that.
What you don’t know, or perhaps what you don’t allow yourself to think about, is that your life will become an unbearable mix of yearning and regret because of it. It will be difficult if not impossible to be in any one place with contentment.

Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley’s New Film Exposes Hidden Truths of Covert U.S. Warfare

You know, we’re looking right now at a reality that President Obama has essentially extended the very policies that many of his supporters once opposed under President Bush. And I think it says something about the bankrupt nature of partisan politics in this country that the way we feel about life-or-death policies around the world is determined by who happens to be in office. I mean, that’s—that, to me, is a very sobering reality.

A legend in my own mind

The more important a memory is to the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, the more often we rehearse the memory. And the more often we relive those memories, the less likely it is that they are true.

Orangutans At The The Smithsonian National Zoo Use iPads And Love Them

When Steve Jobs debuted the iPad back in 2010, he probably didn’t realized that the tablet would one day be used by Orangutan Outreach in zoos around the world. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo has adopted the “Apps for Apes” program, a totally nonfictional initiative that hooks monkeys up with shiny iPads.

Getaway donkey ruins robbery

They planned to load the goods onto 10-year-old Xavi, who they had stolen some 12 hours before, and make their escape.
But the animal let out a series of ‘hee-haws’ and unfortunately for the trio alerted nearby police.

How To Become An Acronym

Here is what you have to do to be a national acronym:

1. Do something impossible.
2. Advocate something so important that you are willing to die for it.
3. Assume that you will spend your whole life working from a minority position.
4. Visit and get comfortable with the fringe!
5. In spite of the previous four conditions, you have to be a person that others will listen to and work with because you cannot accomplish anything alone!

Do You Want To Be Free?

Read the book of Exodus as I am and you will find an amazing story of God trying to give an entire nation freedom but eventually they rejected it. There are so many lessons in this amazing book. I can understand why Mr. King drew on its imagery in that speech.
God still wants to lead people to freedom but not everyone is willing to pay the price. Mr. King was.

The U.S. Warfare State and Evangelical Peacemaking

Retired U.S. Army Col. Andrew Bacevich argues in several important recent books that the direction of U.S. foreign and military policy is slipping from democratic control. It is instead dominated by a cohort of active and retired military, intelligence, law enforcement, corporate, lobbyist, academic, and political elites whose power in Washington is sufficiently impressive as to foreclose serious reconsideration of what Bacevich calls the “Washington rules.” The elites enforcing these rules consistently drive us to policies of permanent war, a staggeringly large global military presence, and regular global interventionism. This analysis stands in striking continuity with the warnings offered 50 years ago by President Eisenhower about the “military-industrial complex.”

First Impressions By Your Church

Here are some things I learned from my last church visit.

1. Create a culture of hospitality
2. Train your greeters
3. Design a logical flow of traffic
4. Spell-check everything
5. Mark your entrances
6. Avoid awkward greeting times
7. Prepare a concise explanation of the child care system
8. Be careful how you gather information
9. Train members to assume they’re the only point of contact
10. Treat visitors like VIPs

The Road Ahead

Overchurched people know a lot of information about God, Jesus, and the Bible. They have simply chosen to not allow it to impact their lives. Overchurched people, for various reasons, have been vaccinated against Christianity. It is as if they have received a tiny injection of Christianity, and they have built within themselves a spiritual immunity to Jesus and his church.

The Main Reason People Leave A Church

Certainly we recognize there are many legitimate claims by church members of unfulfilled expectations. It can undoubtedly be the fault of the local congregation and its leaders.
But many times, probably more than we would like to believe, a church member leaves a local body because he or she has a sense of entitlement. I would therefore suggest that the main reason people leave a church is because they have an entitlement mentality rather than a servant mentality.

How Far Ahead Should You Book To Get Low Airfares?

The short answer: seven weeks before takeoff. On average, fares bottomed out 49 days before the flight, then increased slightly, but remained steady until about a month out. After that, prices climbed as the travel date approached.
But too much advance planning isn’t good for the bottom line, either. Though, not surprisingly, the highest fares, came with bookings made 11 or fewer days in advance, the next worst timing was 208, 209, and 210 days out, according to the analysis.

Has Roe Been Good For Women?

On January 22, men and women around the country will be celebrating or mourning the passage of Roe. Unless there is a united front to put pregnant women first, Roe will continue to provide a wedge issue, an excuse to raise money, or a reason to March on Washington. Women deserve better. Children deserve better. America deserves common-sense solutions that empower women to choose life.

MLK and His Guns

As I found researching my new book, Gunfight, in 1956, after King’s house was bombed, King applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama. The local police had discretion to determine who was a suitable person to carry firearms. King, a clergyman whose life was threatened daily, surely met the requirements of the law, but he was rejected nevertheless. At the time, the police used any wiggle room in the law to discriminate against African Americans.

Ironically, the concealed carry permit law in Alabama was promoted by the National Rifle Association thirty years earlier. Today, the gun rights hardliners fight to eliminate permits for concealed carry, as Arizona has done.

Eventually, King gave up any hope of armed self-defense and embraced nonviolence more completely. Others in the civil rights movement, however, embraced the gun.

How Do We Pray For The Troops?

So when I stand to pray in worship I never pray that God protect our troops for the simple fact that we don’t have any troops. We do not gather as Americans who plead on behalf of national interests or partisan favor before either God or the world. We are the church. Who we are has been determined by whose we are. We are people of God. We gather as the body of Christ united with Christ’s body throughout the world. Yet I do pray for the protection of soldiers and civilians alike. I pray indiscriminately, without regard to borders because all people are creatures made by the hand of God and are so loved by God that God sent God’s only begotten Son on their behalf.

Everyday Idolatry: Bleeding For Bieber

So back to Justin Bieber. Whenever the word started getting out about Bieber’s new smoking habit, someone started a site about “Cutting for Bieber” and the idea was to get all of Justin Bieber’s fans to cut themselves and put pictures up the web to get him to stop smoking. It sounds crazy.
But the fans did it.
Thousands of pictures of teens cutting themselves started to roll in, along with comments begging Justin to change.

My Struggle With Believing

The more I read scripture, try to follow of Jesus, the more my life keeps getting messed up. Messed up in a good way though. I don’t see where Jesus or his earliest followers, the church, were concerned with all things patriotic, engaging in violence, smitten with national politics and political parties, desiring to attain wealth and prosperity, eager to sing their version of God Bless Rome and cast a scornful eye on anyone who doesn’t sing along with them, etc… In fact, quite the opposite, the church was concerned with loving God by loving their neighbors, even their enemies rather than doing them harm. They refused to patronize Caesar and the Roman Empire but instead practiced charity to one another and towards the poor with whatever they had, and they boldly proclaimed Jesus crucified as the only hope of salvation.

Four Things Christians Can Learn From The Lance Armstrong Debacle

I offer four biblical considerations we might ponder after one of the greatest cheating scandals in sports history.
1. Internal desires are the root of our external sins.
2. To fulfill our selfish desires, we often look for shortcuts.
3. The threat of being uncovered often causes us to dig a deeper hole.
4. Exposure is inevitable– now or in eternity.

Ivan Fernandez Anaya, Spanish Runner, Intentionally Loses Race So Opponent Can Win

In second place to Abel Mutai, the Kenyan athlete who won a bronze medal in the London Olympics, Anaya suddenly had a chance to surge ahead. According to El Pais, Mutai mistakenly thought the end of the race came about 10 meters sooner than it did, and stopped running.
Then, he “looked back and saw the people telling him to keep going,” Anaya told CNA. “But since he doesn’t speak Spanish he didn’t realize it.”
So Anaya slowed, guiding Mutai to the actual finish line.