This could sub­sti­tute for RA train­ing on a lot of cam­pus­es…

Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis, Novem­ber 27, 2012 Via @GoComics

At its heart, Pearls Before Swine is the com­ic strip tale of two friends: an arro­gant Rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-wit­ted Pig who does­n’t know any bet­ter. Togeth­er, this pair offers caust…

I some­times teach as an adjunct for the Assem­blies of God The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, and I must con­fess that I hate assign­ing grades. This essay is a help­ful reflec­tion on the noble task of eval­u­a­tion.

Grad­ing as Truth-Telling | John G. Stack­house, Jr.

A false bal­ance is an abom­i­na­tion to Yhwh, but an accu­rate weight is his delight. (Proverbs 11:1). Grad­ing papers is among the most dif­fi­cult parts, and is cer­tain­ly the least plea­sur­able part, of my …

Some news sto­ries catch you off-guard. This one def­i­nite­ly sur­prised me.

Defin­ing deprav­i­ty down­wards in Deutsch­land

YouTube Pre­view Image. Der Spiegel’s Eng­lish-lan­guage bul­letin reports that con­ser­v­a­tive deputies on the Agri­cul­tur­al Affairs com­mit­tee of the Bun­destag have intro­duced leg­is­la­tion ban­ning sex with an…

My ques­tion is the first one. That’s right — I’m an inter­net big shot now. Feel free to tell peo­ple you knew me when.

Freako­nom­ics » How to Get the Best out of Col­lege? Your Ques­tions Answered

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This is real­ly quite star­tling to think about.

All in One Lit­tle Life­time: All Gone with the Wind

A reflec­tion by a great 20th cen­tu­ry jour­nal­ist on the var­i­ous empires and rulers he has seen rise and fall in his lifetime—and who remains stand­ing at the end.A reflec­tion by a great 20th cen­tu­ry j…

What The Bible Teaches About Baptism

African American citizens attend a baptism

I just added an arti­cle about bap­tism to my repos­i­to­ry of essays and Bible stud­ies. It’s a pdf called What The Bible Teach­es About Bap­tism.

Here’s an excerpt:

Why Should I Be Baptized?

“Why should I be bap­tized?” is a rea­son­able ques­tion, but I pre­fer the ques­tion asked by the Ethiopi­an eunuch: “Look, here is water. Why should­n’t I be bap­tized?’” (Acts 8:36). Get­ting bap­tized is some­thing that Chris­tians do – it should be your default deci­sion for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

1) I Should Be Baptized To Obey Jesus

Jesus com­mand­ed his apos­tles to bap­tize peo­ple as they pro­claimed the gospel (Matthew 28:18–20), and so we see that he expects new believ­ers to be bap­tized as part of the process of becom­ing his dis­ci­ples.

2) I Should Be Baptized To Identify With Jesus

Being bap­tized is a procla­ma­tion of our spir­i­tu­al union with Christ. Colos­sians 2:12 says that Chris­tians are “buried with [Jesus] in bap­tism” and that we are then “raised with him through our faith in the work­ing of God, who raised [Jesus] from the dead.” Anoth­er way to approach this point is to rec­og­nize that Jesus, though with­out sin, was bap­tized and there­by iden­ti­fied with us, and we com­plete the cycle when we are bap­tized and like­wise iden­ti­fy with him.

3) I Should Be Baptized To Proclaim My Devotion To Jesus

In 1 Peter 3:21, bap­tism is described as “the pledge of a clear con­science toward God” (that’s the NIV: some oth­er trans­la­tions phrase it as “an appeal to God for a good con­science”). Whichev­er is the bet­ter ren­der­ing in Eng­lish, it is clear that bap­tism is an act of for­mal­ly giv­ing our­selves to God.

And so if you name Christ as your Lord and have not been bap­tized, then seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty and be bap­tized.

Read the rest of the pdf.

Hymns To Remember

hymns & psalmsI was chat­ting with a new wor­ship leader recent­ly who did­n’t know any hymns, so I decid­ed to make a quick list of some of my favorites (in alpha­bet­i­cal order, not order of favorite­ness). There are mul­ti­ple ver­sions of each hymn on youtube; I picked the par­tic­u­lar videos I linked to some­what at ran­dom.

If you’re a wor­ship leader and don’t know any of these, you should add them to your reper­toire. You’ll be amazed at how use­ful they can be. And if you search for “con­tem­po­rary arrange­ment of [name of hymn]” you’ll find good resources for mak­ing them sound fresh.

You can find chord charts for most of these at Indeli­ble Grace Music’s online hymn book.

For an inter­est­ing list of the most pop­u­lar hymns of all time, check out The Hymns That Keep On Going.

We host­ed Anne Cross­man, one of the authors of this book, on cam­pus for a talk on max­i­miz­ing the col­lege expe­ri­ence. She did a great job. This should be a good Q & A.

Freako­nom­ics » How to Get the Best out of Col­lege? Bring Your Ques­tions

“Our argu­ment is that most stu­dents focus on get­ting into col­lege, but do not focus ade­quate­ly on get­ting out of col­lege. They coast, or make bad deci­sions, or sim­ply fail to take full advan­tage of wh…

Heh: “the case for epis­temic humil­i­ty remains wor­thy of your atten­tion.”

The world we live in

Both of these arti­cles are from this evening’s New York Times: U.S. to Be World’s Top Oil Pro­duc­er in 5 Years, Report Says and: Text Mes­sag­ing Declines in U.S. for First Time, Report Says Fur…

Lin­coln once said, “I don’t like to hear cut-and-dried ser­mons. No–when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fight­ing bees.” Love the image. 

Book Explores Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s ‘Bat­tle With God’

– “Lin­col­n’s Bat­tle with God: A Pres­i­den­t’s Strug­gle with Faith and What it Meant for Amer­i­ca” (Thomas Nel­son), by Stephen Mans­field He has pre­vi­ous­ly explored the faith of Barack Oba­ma and George W…