As you might guess from the scarcity of blog entries here lately, I’m a net consumer (not a net producer) of internet content. Here are some links to things I’ve read this last while.
Hero boy, 4, dies after saving 3-year old girl in pool. Heart-breaking.
Card swipes in church make giving easier. Why yes, I’d imagine they do. The story is sort of unfocused, but worth a few minutes to read.
One big player is a service called ParishPay, which works with many Catholic churches and a few synagogues to help sign up worshipers to pay via credit or debit card or automatic payment from their bank accounts. Nearly 1,000 institutions have joined the service, and it claims a 20 to 30 percent increase in giving by individuals who enroll.
Miss. church blocks black couple’s wedding. Appalling.
Wilson said he had been attending the church for about a month and his now wife had been attending for more than a year. His wife’s father also attended the church, and her uncle was custodian at the church.
Are Lavalier Microphones Dead? No. Watch late-night TV. Well, okay, but what about in church?
I wish every church said what this church says in their bulletin.
This is a little old, but worth reading.
Giving Vacation Bible School an update for the 21st Century.
This month, his brainchild drew nearly 10,500 children between kindergarten and fifth grade, and every one attended free of charge. Two-thirds of them do not even belong to Second Baptist, and somewhere between one-third and half come from single-parent homes, a particular target of Mr. Young’s ministry. After the Bible school session ended, each child’s parent received a hand-delivered thank-you letter, homemade cookie and invitation to church.
Defining Religious Liberty Down. Ross Douthat sees a troubling trend exactly where I did … maybe he’s smarter than I sometimes think he is.
You can see this confusion at work in the Obama White House’s own Department of Health and Human Services, which created a religious exemption to its mandate requiring employers to pay for contraception, sterilization and the days-after pill that covers only churches, and treats religious hospitals, schools and charities as purely secular operations.
Haunted demographics: Cells and church towers. As is typical of Get Religion, this article points out all the things that would have made an interesting story better.
These churches are earning, readers are told, about $1,000 a month — per carrier. That’s not a lot of money, but, if you read carefully, it’s clear that these churches — the ones with the prime locations — tend to need the money. … The story never addresses the membership trends in these flocks.
What kind of disciples are we making/ Stay PC(USA).
We don’t want to make disciples like the prodigal younger brother, nor the unloving older brother. So if you are staying in the PC(USA), you have to clearly explain to your people that we are not staying to tolerate heresy, but in love for our siblings who seem to be wandering astray—and to make disciples who stand in community even through disagreement.
A Hungry World Population? Oh Well, Let Them Eat Ethanol! The problem with “think globally, act locally” is that it’s hard to do the first part but really easy to do the second part.
Despite the wailings of Paul Ehrlich and his tiresome compatriots, there were no great famines because of some fantasy “limits to growth” that were forecast to soon to be breached. Instead, corn yields continued their steady climb. A good year now yields around 160 bushels.
In defense of eating at Chick-Fil-A.
Where’s the beef? What the Chick-fil-A boss really said.
A Formula for Cutting Health Costs? Alaska’s native-owned Southcentral Foundation in a New York Times editorial.
In the Aftermath of a Massacre: the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program responds to gun violence. Sigh.
This attack, along with the mass shooting earlier this week in Tuscaloosa, AL in which a military style assault weapon was used, reawakens us as a church, a nation, and as people of faith to the immense and ongoing epidemic of gun violence in our country.
Methodists in Northeast Approve Pro-Gay Resolution.
A Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church has approved a pro-gay resolution denouncing the denomination’s Book of Discipline’s opposition to homosexuality.
