Random

~ Twenty new words in the dictionary. I only knew six. No great loss this year.

~ Church Planting in a Post-Christian US (via) -- echoes of Shift Happens

~ We ain't seen nothin', yet. The population of California is expected to grow by 75% over the next 50 years -- 60 million Californians by 2050. You think real estate is expensive now!

~ Quotable from Shane Hipps' Out of Ur interview -- The messages that are best conveyed by video or multimedia are almost exclusively emotional and entertaining. The bias of these media is that they exercise the right hemisphere of the brain, which evokes emotions, impressions, and intuitions. Regardless of what you're conveying, these are the things that your brain uses to engage, perceive and understand the content of images. At the same time, when overextended, images erode our capacity for logic, abstract thinking, and complex discernment. Perhaps the most unintended consequence is that images too often become a form of manipulation.

~ We met Fred and Naomi Agtarap this afternoon. They arrived on Guam early this morning and didn't look at all beat up after their trans-Pacific flight. Fred is the new pastor of the Guam United Methodist Church.

~ Evangelical-Mormon dialog -- upcoming in Salt Lake City, October 19-20. I participated in one of these sessions at Fuller Seminary in 2003 -- quite engaging. (I blogged about it.) If I were not so far away I'd jump at the opportunity to go again.