Category: Asides

“First, you need to preach the text in its scrip­tur­al con­text; sec­ond, you need to preach Christ and the gospel every time; and final­ly, you need to preach to the heart. Put anoth­er way, you should preach the truth, not just your opin­ion; you should preach the good news, not just good advice; and you should preach to make the truth real to the heart, not just clear to the mind.”

Preach­ing that Cuts to the Heart

I can eas­i­ly imag­ine some (espe­cial­ly younger) preach­ers will aspire to imi­tate my method and miss the under­ly­ing principle.I can eas­i­ly imag­ine some (espe­cial­ly younger) preach­ers will aspire to imit…

This was quite inter­est­ing: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/the-epic-surprisingly-sexist-fight-that-brought-the-minimum-wage-to-america/273161/?google_editors_picks=true

The Epic, Sur­pris­ing­ly Sex­ist Fight That Brought the Min­i­mum Wage to Amer­i­ca

Guar­an­tee­ing work­ers 25 cents an hour two decades, a pub­lic scan­dal­ized by pros­ti­tu­tion, a states’-rights rebel­lion, a Great Depres­sion, a Supreme Court bat­tle, and a lot of patri­archy.

I have not looked in the method­ol­o­gy they used to con­duct their research, but their con­clu­sions res­onate with my instincts. If I ever name a church, there is a rea­son­able chance I will work “Assem­bly” into its name.

Should Your Church’s Name Include Its Denom­i­na­tion?

(UPDATED) New research says both church­go­ers and the unchurched agree deci­sion is a ‘two-edged sword.’

I am pleased by this find­ing, although I would not have pre­dict­ed it.

Amer­i­cans Far More Con­nect­ed to Local Church than Any Oth­er Insti­tu­tion

Ras­mussen finds local reli­gious insti­tu­tions rank first (54%), mak­ing local char­i­ties and recre­ation­al groups (12%) a dis­tant sec­ond.

This is crazy awe­some rambling/musing. I could read Scott Adams all day.

Scott Adams Blog: Mar­ket Manip­u­la­tors — Clar­i­fi­ca­tion 03/04/2013

The Offi­cial Dil­bert Web­site fea­tur­ing Scott Adams Dil­bert strips, ani­ma­tion, mashups and more star­ring Dil­bert, Dog­bert, Wal­ly, The Pointy Haired Boss, Alice, Asok, Dog­bert’s New Rul­ing Class and mor…

Unex­pect­ed (at least by me).

Sen­tences to pon­der

Loca­tion mat­ters for online edu­ca­tion: most stu­dents enroll in insti­tu­tions with­in 100 miles from home. The link is here, the source is here.

How have I not heard of this? This seems like a basic fact to know.

Jef­frey Sachs on Oba­ma and dis­cre­tionary spend­ing

…the sur­pris­ing truth is that from the start of his pres­i­den­cy Mr Oba­ma has planned a steep decrease in dis­cre­tionary spend­ing as a share of nation­al income. Each year he has put a bud­get on the table…

The lev­el to which oppo­nents of same-sex mar­riage are mis­un­der­stood (and there­by mis­rep­re­sent­ed) on this issue (and a host of oth­ers) is stag­ger­ing. 

WPost: Yes, we fear and loathe reli­gious tra­di­tion­al­istsW­Post: Yes, we fear and loathe reli­gious tra­di­tion­al­ists

mol­lie | Catholi­cism, Evan­gel­i­cals, Mar­riage & fam­i­ly, Pol­i­tics, Reli­gion, Same-sex mar­riage, Social Issues, Uncat­e­go­rized

I love Brust’s nov­els, but I usu­al­ly find his phi­los­o­phiz­ing to be unper­sua­sive. Every once in a while, though, he drops a gem. I think his point here is indeed dis­putable (there is a dif­fer­ence between fal­si­fi­able in prin­ci­ple and fal­si­fi­able at the moment), but I also think that there is more phi­los­o­phy in sci­ence than some would like to think. We still call them Ph.D.s for a rea­son.

So, What IS Sci­ence, Any­way?

I know science–both the dis­cov­er­ies and method of–are impor­tant to me. I know that I believe we ought to deduce nat­ur­al laws from the facts, as opposed to impos­ing them on the facts. I know tha.…..

Huh. Neat obser­va­tion.

Jesus did what he taught his dis­ci­ples to do.

Here is a great post by Steve Addi­sion, the author of a great new book “What Jesus Start­ed”. Check out his blog, It is awe­some! Find­ing “per­sons of peace” is an impor­tant ele­ment in most dis­ci­ple m.…..