May 2013
33 posts
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The Non-Pauline Epistles
A friend made this as a study guide for an exam, but if you’re curious to know a bit more about the Non-Pauline Epistles (letters in the New Testament of the Bible, not written by Paul, like Ephesians, Collossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2, & 3 John, and Jude) take a look at this ‘Prezi.’
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The Secret Pain of Pastors →
Philip Wagner offers insight into the six major struggles pastors face in the ministry and how to overcome them.
Recommended by my bishop. Now I pass it on to my seminary classmates as we prepare to graduate next week and go out into the “real world.”
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6 Secrets To Kicking Butt At Fundraising →
3) Prove That Your Organization Is Effective In The Cause: Many times an organization will engage people on a cause and do a great job communicating urgency, but they fail to demonstrate how the organization specifically is being effective in serving the cause. It is not uncommon for an organization to engage an individual on a issue who then goes and donates to a different organization serving...
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Relationships Are More Important Than Ambition →
In another study, Putnam and a colleague found that people who attend religious services regularly are, thanks to the community element, more satisfied with their lives than those who do not. Their well-being was not linked to their religious beliefs or worshipping practices, but to the number of friends they had at church. People with ten or more friends at their religious services were about...
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Why Going to Church Is Good for You →
Going to church is good for your health. The exact reasons are unclear, but there are several likely explanations.
Eventually, this may teach us how to harness the “placebo” effect — a terrible word, because it suggests an absence of intervention rather than the presence of a healing mechanism that depends neither on pharmaceuticals nor on surgery. We do not understand the placebo effect, but we...
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WatchApartheid Regime Bomb Victim Father Michael Lapsley on Using Forgiveness to Heal From Tragedy
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New Yorker writes King James Bible →
A New York state man is finishing up his handwritten copy of the King James Bible after four years and 2,400 pages.
Phillip Patterson, 63, began the project after his long-time partner, Mohammed, told him there is a tradition in Islam of writing out the Koran.
“The next day I started researching pens and pencils and paper,” he said.
Despite health issues that have sent him to...
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Why I Made My Teenager Go to Church →
When I opened the bulletin, I realized that Sunday was the “Senior High Service,” that day when a high school senior from the church gives the sermon. With her long brown hair and sincere gaze, Miranda Nolin walked to the pulpit after the Gospel reading and told us that when she reads the Nicene Creed, our profession of faith, she often doesn’t believe any of the words she says. (Well, she got...
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Open to all religions? It's wiser to delve deeply... →
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My Racist Encounter at the White House... →
When I asked why the security representatives offered to personally escort white women without tickets downstairs while they watched me flounder, why they threatened to call the Secret Service on me, I was told, “We have to be extra careful with you all after the Boston bombings.”
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Not Left Behind
My dear grandmother Lily, when she was alive, used to tell us grandchildren with great amusement about her childhood. One of her favorite stories was of when she believed that if she went to sleep or stayed in the bathroom too long, Christ would return and take everyone else up to heaven.
Her belief as a child is not as unique as many of us might guess. Of American Christians,
80% believe in the...
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WatchWe’re engaged!
This morning when Antonio set off to do an engagement photo shoot with John and Karen, he had no idea what awaited him.
In Founder’s Park, near Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, I was waiting on a park bench (spying on them doing the photo shoot from a distance—with a newspaper to cover my face).
When they got close enough, I signaled for Karen to play the song...
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Dreaming is Believing
Easter 5C
I have had a lot of strange dreams—zombies attacking my house that wasn’t really my house, my babysitter turning into a werewolf, all of my family members waking up with pig snouts…weird stuff. Never has one of my dreams elucidated for me such truths about God’s work in our world as Peter’s dream did for him in Acts.
His dream of unclean animals lowering from heaven on a sheet and a...
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How not to say the wrong thing →
When Susan had breast cancer , we heard a lot of lame remarks, but our favorite came from one of Susan’s colleagues. She wanted, she needed, to visit Susan after the surgery, but Susan didn’t feel like having visitors, and she said so. Her colleague’s response? “This isn’t just about you.”
Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she...
April 2013
53 posts
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Why traditional churches should stick with... →
If your church is big enough to offer two services, it might make sense to designate one a “traditional service” and the other a “contemporary one.” But if you offer just one service, stick with what you do best.
What has this got to do with men? Guys appreciate a quality worship service — but they are not very forgiving of anything hokey or half-baked. If guys want contemporary worship,...
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Nathaniel Frank: After Boston: Can You Have Faith... →
Can you have faith without believing in God?
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Why are you choosing your partner? | Stephen... →
Why are you choosing your partner? is a question I sometimes ask clients, but I try to explain as clearly as I can what this question is all about…
…Here’s the theory: you are unconsciously—note, unconsciously—choosing your partner in order to take the next step in your development as a human being.
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How Skeptics and Believers Can Connect →
When religion comes up, Americans dig in their heels instead of talking…
…Anthropologists have a term for this racheting-up of opposition: schismogenesis…
…These days we Americans live not only with political schismogenesis, but also religious schismogenesis. The political scientists Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, in their book “American Grace,” found that...
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A Father's Unexpected Response To His Gay Son's... →
When my dad left to pick up some dinner, my mom, whom I’ve been out to for almost two years, said, “Your father saw your Facebook status when I left my Facebook up. The cat’s out of the bag.” You see, I hadn’t told him. I was afraid that he’d disown me or be ashamed of who I am.
Yes my friends, love exists. Read the whole (brief) post to hear this story.
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Dear Dzhokhar | America Magazine →
You don’t know me, but you tried to kill my family.
Read the rest of this open letter.
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Satan in The Bible | The Christian Century →
Americans have always believed that the devil likes to play politics. Colonial leader Henry Hugh Brackenridge claimed in 1778 that Satan inspired George IIIâs allegedly ruthless policy toward the colonies. Two decades later, Federalists claimed that the nascent Democratic Party had put forward the antichrist as a presidential candidate in the form of Thomas Jefferson. Later Jedidiah Morse,...
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Engaging doubt with youth →
“Young people didn’t invent doubt,” Richardson says, “but we know that as they reach adolescence they’re more highly motivated than others to look for ways to be in trusting communities where people can explore their faith in spite of their doubt.”
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Is It Time for Christians to Celebrate Pre-Marital... →
To pretend that those are two virgins walking down the aisle, approaching the coital bed for the first time is uncommonly naive And it seems to me that Jesus was lots of things, but he wasn’t naive to the world in which he lived. He did, however, both preach and live prophetically within that culture. He didn’t take it as it was, without pushing back against it. In his day, it was that tax...
