Random

✽ Globish is the world's most widely spoken language. ~ link (via)

✽ Jason Powell (New Hope Covenant Church, Peoria Arizona) is really fine preacher -- somebody you ought to know. Here is the link to last Sunday's sermon ~ link

✽ Just how many foreign-born residents live in the US? ~ link (.pdf)

✽ Brushstrokes, our MasterPiece Church e-letter for this week is now online. ~ link

✽ There is no doubt that immigration reform is an absolute necessity. Unfortunately, Arizona has a one track unilateral approach to the problem -- intimidation! "State senators voted Monday to force schools to ask parents whether their children are in this country legally." ~ link

Film tour of old Havana

The Mission

✽ A Swedish church has received an anonymous gift equivalent of $13,811 (USD). It's sad that such an occurrence is so irregular that this is considered to be a big deal. ~ link

✽ As our country grows less homogeneous churches are struggling to figure out the best way to integrate multiple cultures in worship. ~ link

✽ "Believers in North America need to stop waiting for a 'melting pot' to impact immigrants and instead make personal efforts to engage the first-generation immigrants around them with the Gospel." ~ Ed Stetzer

✽ Centro Hispano de Estudios Teológicos (CHET) has acquired a permanent home in Compton, California. They're now up to over 500 students. ~ link

Random

✽ "Almost all entrepreneurs, business and social, founded something as a teen." ~ Harvard Business Review

✽ I think they're going to start rolling up the sidewalks at night because of budget cuts. ~ link

✽ "More students are majoring in computer science for the second year in a row, increases that counter the steep decline the field saw during the latter half of the last decade." ~ link

✽ Wales is turning off analog TV and going totally digital. Welcome to the world of crisp and bright. ~ link

✽ Train robbers? Some people here think they're living in old Westerns. ~ link

✽ I ♥ lemon grass ~ link

✽ "Undersea volcano could destroy Italy 'as soon as tomorrow', expert warns" ~ link

Random

✽ It appears that the HANTRU1 fiber optic submarine cable has now connected the Marshall Islands to the internet. Since Pohnpei connects off an extension from the Marshalls they will benefit, too. It's a start! The rest of Micronesia waits. ~ link

✽ Even if the Pope was out of the loop on the sexual abuse cases, and not culpable, it really does not set well when he describes the accusations as "petty gossip." At the very least he is out of touch, which is understandable given the extremely hierarchical and parochial nature of the papal office. ~ link

✽ "Christian warrior" militia? I don't think so. Yesterday we talked about Jesus riding on a donkey colt when he made his royal entrance -- symbol of peaceful intentions. This was in contrast to the warrior kings who would ride into conquered cities on their mighty steeds.

✽ "Giving away $1m+ in prizes as a way of getting people into church, is like attracting fat people to a gym with donuts. Donuts r the problem." ~ JR Vassar

✽ "The New Global Middle Class: A Cross-Over from West to East" ~ link

✽ The people in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania have a warped sense of humor. (Melissa Heck sent me the link.) ~ link

✽ Arizona students may soon be able to test-out of high school. ~ link

✽ No shortage of hate! Jews in the southern Swedish city of Malmo have experienced more hate crimes. They say that they're rising out of the Muslim community. (Jim Stanley-Erickson sent me the link.) ~ link

✽ Monkey see, monkey do... Guam takes a lot of legal cues from California. Now they're looking at the legalization of pot, too. ~ link

Pay to read?

The Times and Sunday Times are going to start charging for access to their websites -- £1 for a day's access and £2 for a week's subscription.

In my opinion they're still locked into a paradigm that belonged to a bygone era. We don't want to pay for total access. But we will pay for articles if they are reasonably priced. IOW, I'm not willing to pay for access to a lot of stuff I'm uninterested in but I would be willing to pay for individual stories. However, the news people would all have to work together and come up with some kind of common micro-payment system.

It's not that we're unwilling to pay for journalism -- just that we're unwilling to pay for a whole bundle of information when we only have time for a small amount of it. À la carte please. ~ link

Random

✽ Tomorrow (Saturday) is US Passport Day. No appointment needed to apply for a passport at regional passport agencies. "Passport-themed events for adults and children will take place at regional passport agencies and thousands of passport acceptance facilities around the country." ~ link

✽ "For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island's gone." ~ link

✽ Globally speaking, the winter we just finished was the fifth warmest on record. Yeah, yeah, we know YOU had the coldest winter imaginable but you're only living on a small speck of the planet. ~ link

✽ States are coming up with new ways to collect sales taxes on goods bought out of state, including those from online retailers. Good luck. ~ link

✽ Big government undermines discipleship:

The main reason for the decline of the church in the West is Christian support for large government, which undermines the very integrity of the church itself as the counter-story that interprets the world's politics. The reason it is so difficult to get Christians to attend to all the practices of discipleship is because they frankly see no need in a society where the government is the major player in the lives of people in the way that makes the church irrelevant... ~ Allan Bevere (via)

Does that mean that if a government wants to use its power for doing good rather than for aggression, that we should oppose it? Is there really a shortage of opportunity for Christians to excel at doing good in ways that exceed anything the government might possibly do?

✽ It looks like it will be a great afternoon for our MasterPiece Church Palm Sunday gathering in the park -- lighter winds and 80°. Join us! ~ link

✽ "Over 1.1 million Christians live in Saudi Arabia in 2010, whereas only about 50 lived there in 1910." ~ link

✽ The uke, one of the most versatile of the stringed instruments, is played in different ways around the world. Ukulele & Languages is a website exploring how various cultures and languages influence the way the uke is played. ~ link (via)

✽ "The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has come up with an unusual way of saving money: changing their email font. The school expects to use 30% less ink by switching from Arial to Century Gothic." ~ link

Random

✽ The Messianic Jewish Theological Institute and their online School of Jewish Studies looks like an unaccredited but serious player. ~ link

✽ Resources for seminarians at GoingToSeminary.com

✽ 57% of Republicans believe that President Obama is secretly a Muslim. Since by definition being a Muslim involves a public declaration how can he be a secret Muslim? That's as silly as saying that someone is a secret Christian. Of course, a quarter of the Republicans surveyed also said that he is the Antichrist -- which is interesting since I'm guessing that fewer than 25% of the Republicans are Christians and thus don't actually have any sort of theology with an Antichrist. ~ link

✽ The Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman (Justitieombudsman - JO) is investigating complaints that several Swedish universities are requiring employment applications be submitted in English. ~ link

✽ Let's suppose that Jim Wallis is a socialist, as accused, would that actually be unAmerican or unChristian? If Americans democratically voted in a socialist system would we cease to be Americans? Why or why not? (Turn your test upside down and leave it on the desk when you're done.) ~ link

✽ Researcher George Barna is scratching his head trying to fill out the census form. ~ link

✽ Three ways to use improv to improve your public speaking ~ link

✽ "...Why doesn’t the Pope get this? He is surely a man of depth and character. Why can’t he understand that grudging and calculated penitence is no penitence at all?" ~ Tim Stafford

✽ "Today, some very sad news has been made public. Clark Pinnock has permitted friends to share that he is suffering from middle stage Alzheimer’s disease." ~ T.C. Moore

Random

✽ It sounds like the only people who really dislike the new Ohio license plates are design professionals. ~ link

✽ How the Last Supper was super-sized and became a banquet over 1,000 years ~ link

✽ Go Daddy says it will stop registering new .cn domain names. The "Chinese government has begun demanding pictures and other identification documents from its customers." ~ link

✽ .com deja vu -- "Dozens of tiny companies have gotten big stock-market boosts simply by adding the word 'China' to their names..." ~ link

Random

✽ And that's another thing that has changed in the 30 years since I last lived in Arizona -- the whole gun fixation. We act as though carrying a gun around is a silver bullet to all of life's problems. On the positive side, I suppose all these guns add to the Old West mystic and help attract tourists. ~ link

✽ In spite of the economy, unemployment, major government cut-backs, and being a foreclosure hub, the population of Arizona continues to grow. ~ link

✽ This is an opportunity to hit the reset button. See Dave Mark's wisdom on doing relief right and helping Haiti over the long-term. ~ link

✽ Americans buy creams to make their skin look darker. Indians buy creams to make their skin look whiter. One thing which we all have in common is that we want to become what we aren't. ~ link

✽ Home Bible studies no longer illegal in Gilbert, Arizona. It sounds like the original problem was that the city didn't have adequate definitions of regulated "assembly" in the code. Most communities seem to create definitions around size and scheduling. That is, a regularly scheduled meeting of any sort over 50 people requires a zoning permit. ~ link

✽ Does your congregation have a giving kiosk? ~ link

✽ I don't suppose that your fire department issues warnings like this: "Scorpions are out & about this Spring. They can be deadly to children. Check your shoes before you put them on. Be safe." ~ link

✽ "The problem with God is that God is so good at what God does that we take God for granted." ~ Mark Batterson

✽ Bacon-flavored toothpicks ~ link

✽ Biden -- a real class act! ~ link

✽ "I'm mad at everyone. No, not you. Not anyone in particular, actually. I'm angry at the idea of 'everyone' and what they want and what they say..." ~ Seth Godin

Random

✽ On a whole pastors still think that seminary education is valuable. ~ link

✽ The Japanese are losing their taste for fish. ~ link

✽ More fishy news -- "A Gilbert salon and spa owner wants to bring back the feel of fish on customers' feet as they nibble off dead skin during treatments. But a Maricopa County Superior Court judge will begin deciding on Monday whether the Arizona Board of Cosmetology's order to ban the practice holds water...." ~ link

✽ Church related traffic not good news for neighbors in San Diego. ~ link

✽ "An amateur astronomer has made a 'major astronomical discovery' while accessing a telescope in Hawaii over the internet while at work in the UK." ~ link

✽ Hong Kong has MAJOR smog alert ~ link

✽ World Water Day -- "More people die from polluted water every year than from all forms of violence, including war, the UN said in a report Monday that highlights the need for clean drinking water..." ~ link

✽ Virtually happy cows? ~ link

✽ Vog from Iceland's volcanoes could lead to global cooling. ~ link

✽ "Twitterers mostly consume news, MySpace users want games and entertainment, Facebookers are into both news and community and Digg’s audience has a mixed bag of interests." ~ link

✽ It seems that every week or so someone in Arizona is attacked by Africanized honey bees. (We didn't have this problem when I lived here 30 years ago.) So, I should probably learn the safety protocols. I guess jumping in a pool doesn't work too well. ~ link

✽ Google has done an end-run around the Chinese government. As Mike Elgan writes,

Despite spectacular economic growth, the Chinese government is in fact a backward authoritarian one-party regime, more akin to Cuba, Burma or pre-invasion Iraq than to the group of leading democracies it pretends equality with or superiority to. Google's redirect move lays that truth bare for all to see, especially inside China.~ link

I think Mike can kiss his China travel visa good-bye.

Why I don't go to church

The following incident surfaced from the recesses of my mind this morning as I read David Fitch's post on "6 Reasons Not To Go To Church."

In the early 80's I had a very strange teacher for a class in scripture reading at Fuller Theological Seminary. He was an actor and the class involved coaching students in the public reading of the Bible. (He shall remain nameless but I'm guessing that there are a lot of Fuller alum from that era who know of whom I speak.)

This professor had a bit of a secondary not-so-hidden agenda. He thought that God had providentially placed him at Fuller Theological Seminary to shake-up lazy students (and some of the faculty) -- to get them on what he thought was the right path spiritually.

He was quite opinionated.

On the second day of class, from the very beginning, the teacher was in a mood -- ranting on and on about how seminarians failed to measure up. And he said, "I bet many of you don't even go to church!"

Then he asked, "How many of you go to church?"

Everyone in the class raised a hand -- except me.

I had misread the whole situation. I thought that the ranting was all a part of a pedagogical act -- a play that he was putting on to try and make some kind of theological point. And I certainly wasn't going to be duped by his trick question.

When I didn't raise my hand he got redder and redder, and started making outrageous and not very pastoral statements about spiritual immaturity -- obviously directed toward me. Then he blurted out, "Well, at least you're honest!"

There was a dramatic pause as he stared through me. Then he asked, "So, why don't you go to church?"

He, of course, knew the answer. In his mind I was an immature jerk wasting the time of all the seminary faculty. But I didn't realize what was going on in his head until later because I still thought he was acting. (It took me awhile to figure out his idiosyncrasies.)

At that point I confidently replied, "Well, none of us go to church because from a biblical and theological standpoint church isn't someplace we go. It is who we are."

There was a long pause, and he said in his manicured actor's voice, "That is the strangest thing I've ever heard."

The professor quickly changed the subject and the class went on.

It dawned on me at that point that while he had been trained as an actor, he probably hadn't ever taken a class in Bible or theology. He had no idea as to what I was saying.

I did eventually get an A- in that class. However, in his final comments he told me that I was "different" (read "weird") but that my reading skills had improved.

I know that I'm different but I still don't go to church.

Random

✽ Bike sheds covered with solar panels ~ link

✽ For people who got hit by the crazy winter weather it is time to evaluate the damage to palm and citrus trees. ~ link

✽ Colbert (with help from Fr James Martin) on Glenn Beck's outrageous claims ~ link

✽ Apparently the four million Americans living in US territories were not included in the health care bill. They should be happy to let the States work out the inevitable kinks in the new system. After it gets rolling and if they still think it is valuable they can pressure Congress to be added. If the plan turns out to be a lemon, the territories can expect an influx of wealthy but unhappy mainlanders trying to escape. ~ link

Random

✽ "The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn't Prove Influence on Twitter" -- I would suggest that this is also generally true in all of life. ~ link

✽ I rode over to Caesar Chavez Park this afternoon to do some contact work. On the way home a major nail somehow angled through both sides of my back tire (I've never had a flat quite like that before -- and it was too much for the Slime). A nice guy named Sel stopped his truck and gave me and my bike a lift home. He spared me a mile plus of pushing the bike. There are some thoughtful people around here.

✽ Don Johnson on "Gnosticism Today!" ~ link

✽ "Everyone in the country is to be given a personalised webpage for accessing Government services within a year as part of a plan to save billions of pounds by putting all public services online, Gordon Brown is to announce." ~ link If it weren't for that silly tea party all Americans would get their own government-sponsored webpages, too. (And we'd all be spelling personalized as personalised.)

✽ Nothing new under the Sun -- "We Are On the Verge of a Shift to Biosphere Consciousness." Is this perhaps just a 2010 rendition of "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius..."

Random

✽ The Indian army has developed a non-lethal chili grenade. I like the non-lethal part but the temptation will be to use it in non-life-threatening situations -- similar to the way that the tasers are being used. ~ link

✽ PrintPlace, which did a good job for me, is trying to build their customer base. They're giving away 250 free business cards to people who sign-up for their email list. ~ link

✽ One difference between the therapeutic gospel and the liberating gospel by Mark Galli~ link

✽ In megachurches 92% of the people are just hanging around. Only 8% do more than show up, according to a now-slightly-dated Hartford Institute of Religious Research study. Have we created a dysfunctional monster? Or is someone misinterpreting the data? I'd like to suggest that the number of volunteer hours inside the church-system is not necessarily a solid measure of ministry impact in the community nor of healthy discipleship. ~ link

✽ Ed Stetzer on creating a church multiplication movement in the US:

One of the first things we need to do is give more people permission to plant churches. There are marks of the biblical church and those always need to be central to what we do, but we have “clergified” church planting. In other words, we have made it necessary to be a certain class of person in order to plant a church -- and I don’t think we see that in the New Testament. We see laypeople planting churches, we see pastors going out and planting churches and we see bivocational people doing it.

It’s amazing to me how many church planters think God’s will is determined by whether or not they can get enough funding to underwrite them in a full-time ministry -- this attitude is unhelpful. We must learn to give people permission to plant biblically-driven churches without a false class system. ~ link

✽ Roosevelt Lake, to the east of Phoenix is at its highest level ever, 101% capacity. The Salt River will continue to flow! ~ link

✽ There are a lot of people who oppose the proposed health care plan not because they are Scrooges but because they believe that ultimately, over the long-run, more people will get a lot better care through a different kind of system than the one proposed. It is important that those advocating the program currently on the table do not demonize the opponents and assume that their interests are self-serving. Likewise, it is not helpful to suggest that the president has anything but the best interests of people in mind in what he has proposed.

I am neither for nor against the proposed program. Even after listening to all the hot-air rhetoric from both sides I really do not understand the system nor the funding streams. Failure to clearly articulate the flow and the details suggests to me that it is still half-baked and not ready for a decision. Anyone have a suggestion for some level-headed impartial analysis? Or does that not exist in this debate?

Key Lime tree

Mei sent me this picture of a Key Lime tree that I planted on the Pacific Islands University campus on Guam. I'm pleased at how well it is doing.

I started it from seed less than three years ago and then put it into the ground. Because it hasn't been pruned it takes the shape of a bush -- and that's okay.

It will still be a few years before it bears fruit. It just takes longer when you start them from seeds rather than grafting onto existing rootstock. I went the seed route because there aren't any grafted Key Lime trees available on Guam and also because of the storm potential. If a typhoon comes through and wipes out the top of the tree it will come back up true from the roots.

Random

✽ The Anglican School of Ministry is now partnering with the London School of Theology and their MA program. They also partner with South African Theological Seminary to offer the MTh.

✽ Guam is the world’s leading consumer per capita of Spam. ~ link

✽ The City of Rancho Cucamonga, California has ordered a home Bible study group of 15 people to stop meeting unless they get a conditional use permit from them. ~ link

✽ "Millions of Facebook users say they avoid uploading photos and remove their name from all pictures of them on the site because they feel too fat, old or ugly." -- Frankly, I don't care if anyone thinks I'm old, fat, and ugly. But I just get tired of seeing my face every time I load up Facebook or Twitter. ~ link

✽ So, you want to learn to speak Chamorro. ~ link

✽ Davy Crockett has died. Fess Parker was a TV legend. ~ link

✽ The Chinese Union Version of the Bible has been updated for the first time since 1919. The Revised Chinese Union Version (RCUV) is the result. The revision was necessary not just because of changes in the language but also modern Chinese characters are now fewer and simpler than they were in 1919. ~ link

Random

✽ Apparently, there is just not enough money to buy the kind of security that we crave. ~ link

✽ High price for poor economic policy and making the top dog look bad -- "North Korea executed a former top finance official last week, holding him responsible for the country's currency reform fiasco that has caused massive inflation, worsened food shortages and dented leader Kim Jong-il's efforts to transfer power to a son, sources said Thursday." ~ link

✽ "Nearly a quarter of a billion people escaped life in the slums over the past decade, the United Nations says." ~ link

✽ Benny Hinn says he wants to "punch out" Joel Osteen -- serious... I think. ~ link

Random

✽ Chart on the state of global Christianity ~ link (.pdf)

✽ The DTh program at South Africa Theological Seminary has morphed into a PhD in theology program. I understand the marketing impulse but I like the straightforwardness of the DTh nomenclature. There are too many PhDs out there and not enough true DThs. ~ link

✽ How to deal with snake and Gila Monster bites, spider bites, Africanized honey bee and scorpion stings ~ link

✽ Boycotts send out the wrong message to all the wrong people. ~ link

✽ Seth Godin: "Driveby culture and the endless search for wow" ~ link

✽ Mass exit of Latinos from Roman Catholicism ~ link

✽ "Want a real stimulus? Give Americans who pay taxes a tax exemption for every dollar they pay toward their personal debt!" ~ link

✽ Micronesia is experiencing drought. Guam has great ground water but many of the other islands are rain dependent. ~ link

Random

✽ 67% of Americans consider Easter to be a religious holiday only 42% understand that it is related to the resurrection of Jesus. ~ link

✽ Lectures vs laptops:

Lecturing professors nowadays face a room full of students paying full attention -- to their laptops. A lecture, by definition, is a method of teaching whereby a person talks and an audience pays attention. But a laptop is an interruption machine that fragments attention. Lectures and laptops are incompatible activities. Some professors have addressed the fundamental incompatibility of lectures and laptops by banning the laptops. But maybe it would be better to keep the laptops and ban the lectures. ~ Mike Elgan

✽ More starvation in the forecast for North Korea ~ link

✽ Basically, the court's logic has been that the phrases "In God we trust" and "under God" have no real impact anyway so you can't argue that it is a matter of establishing religion. That should tell us something about which hills to die on. ~ link

✽ It's hard to believe that Jerry Falwell, Jr has a BA in religious studies. Apparently his degree from Liberty University did not require course work in biblical studies, hermeneutics, or theology. Okay, maybe I'm too snarky but the stuff he is saying and the logic he is using really seems to be out there. ~ link

✽ Phonebooth is an impressive alternative to Google Voice. ~ link

✽ The fine people of Somerton, Arizona buried a time capsule capsule 25 years ago. When they dug it up on Saturday the bottle of brandy was missing. (Cue up Twilight Zone music) ~ link

✽ "The Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies (IWS) here has been granted Accredited Status by the Commission on Accreditation of the Association for Biblical Higher Education (ABHE)." ~ link

✽ Presbyterians are different. ~ link

✽ Of course, the search engine companies are going to support "A broadband catapult for America." I suspect that it will be the Internet Service Providers who are going to feel cheated if the government pulls the rug out from under them. Those are the guys the FCC will have to get on board or their great low-cost high-bandwidth idea will become an entangled court case. We already knew what Google thought.

Random

✽ Globally speaking, total membership in Lutheran churches increased last year by 2.5% to just under 73.8 million. That's about 1.5 million new Christians -- mostly in Africa and Asia. ~ link

✽ Make up a domain or corporate name with the help of wordoid.com (via)

✽ Of course, an interesting sounding name won't save you from weird associations. I cringe every time I drive by the REXAM facility or see their name on a can or box.

✽ "How helping hands could hurt Haiti" is a thoughtful CNN piece that urges wisdom and a measured response. "...Yet the same groups that have lined up to help Haitians the past two months -- foreign governments, relief groups and companies pledging to rebuild -- could hobble Haiti's long-term survival, some say..." ~ link

✽ Local story on the church that my bud Brad Kindall is starting in St Paul ~ link

✽ An Arizona church has been told by the city of Gilbert that they cannot meet in the pastor's home. ~ link

✽ What would happen if everyone just ignored the whole daylight savings routine? Having lived both in places where they do and where they don't use DST, I really don't see any advantage to running so many people through a time shift twice a year. Perhaps it was helpful in a bygone era.

✽ The developer of the PSA test, the most commonly used tool for detecting prostate cancer, is now saying that it's no more effective than a coin toss. ~ link

✽ I like watching CSI Miami re-runs. The story lines are weak, the gore is too matter-of-fact, and the acting is way overdone -- but the bright vibrant outdoor photography grabs me every time. I suppose it helps that south Florida is one of those places which had already captured my imagination. So colorful -- lots of greens, blues, yellows...

Random

✽ Google has released Street View for Hong Kong. Do the tour without the humidity or crowds. ~ link

✽ Fewer and fewer Americans see global warming as a serious threat, according to a Gallup poll. "...the percentage of Americans who now say reports of global warming are generally exaggerated is by a significant margin the highest such reading in the 13-year history of asking the question. In 1997, 31% said global warming's effects had been exaggerated; last year, 41% said the same, and this year the number is 48%." ~ link

✽ Craig Groeschel and I have sidebar responses to Linda Cannell's article on the future of theological education. ~ link

✽ Cheryl and I are enjoying the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which we got on DVD from the library. The stories, set in Botswana, are delightful and engaging. I am also pleased with the depiction of upwardly mobile Africans. The stories don't gloss over the problems of poverty, AIDS, and tribalism but they are not center stage.

Random

✽ Mike Elgan: "If the percentage of whites in America dips below 50%, does that mean everyone is a minority?" ~ link

✽ Blogger is rolling out a whole new batch of template designs and a template designer. ~ link

✽ 15-minute mass is a big hit this Lent. ~ link

✽ The Guardian (Manchester, England) calls Joel Osteen "the new face of Christianity" -- sigh. Joel is a nice guy and he has a nice smile but I sure hope he's not the new face. ~ link

✽ The Arizona auditor is concerned about low lottery ticket sales. "Of 28 states included in the audit, Arizona ranked 24th in per-capita revenue, with sales of $73 per person. By comparison, nearby Colorado earned $102 per person." Maybe Arizonians are so cash strapped because of the housing crash that they aren't buying. Or maybe they're are just better at basic math. ~ link

✽ George Barna:

Some of the best leaders I’ve observed are those who remember that the challenges introduced by change are just another opportunity to empower people to apply their gifts toward pursuing a shared vision. Fulfilled vision changes everything anyway; leaders are all about creating positive change. Helping people to put change into proper perspective, and make sense of the new reality created by change is a difficult but continual task of leaders. ~ link

Random

✽ "This is also the first time a mainstream Study Bible—The HarperCollins Study Bible—will be available in digital format." -- I like the HarperCollins Study Bible and the NRSV translation is decent. However, I'm not so sure what makes it "mainstream" -- unless you consider that it is popular with people from what used to be the mainline denominations. They were mainstream Protestants 60 years ago. There is no mainstream in 2010. ~ link

✽ Google maps now show bike routes. ~ link

✽ Frederica Mathewes-Green reviews Avatar, and suggests that it's not so much the pantheism but the "dumb transparent despicable plot" with "inane dialog" that should bother us. Yep, she's right. It's all pretty much eye-candy. ~ link

✽ Seth Godin: "When the platform changes, the deck gets shuffled... Insiders become outsiders and new opportunities abound." ~ more

✽ "Two cars in every garage, a chicken in every pot, and free wireless internet for every American!" Sure, call me jaded, but FCC chair Julius Genachowski's hint of things to come seems unrealistic. Does he think that all of those phone companies and ISPs which spent billions developing the online market are just going to let the government roll in and pull the rug out from under them? If the government had stepped up to the plate 15, or even 10 years ago, it might have been possible.

✽ More good news from the FCC:

A recent decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will require that churches and other organizations stop using wireless microphones in the 700 MHz band (698-806 MHz) by June 12 or face the possibility of heavy fines.

The FCC estimates that 25 percent of wireless microphones operate in this particular spectrum (band), meaning thousands of churches likely are affected... ~ link

Random

✽ Arizona is an interesting place in that the people here seem to gravitate to the extreme ends of the poles -- and very few work the middle. Today's case in point, City of Chandler officials are trying to decide the future of the traffic photo-enforcement program. They're either going to double its size or scrap it altogether. There are vocal advocates for both. ~ link

✽ Someone shared a link to a Lori Sealy song on Twitter, which led me to her website. She's writes music for worship. And it's definitely worth passing the links along. ~ website | YouTube Channel

✽ Those in the know are saying that El Niño will continue to bless Arizona with another month of wet weather. This is so weird. It may be a jungle April. And it will certainly be a lively fire season once all this new vegetation dries out in July. ~ link

✽ In related news, the two baby Pakistan Mulberry trees that I'm tending for the Arizona Rare Fruit Growers, are starting to bud. They were rootless sticks when I stuck them in pots a few months ago.

✽ Hans Küng: "Compulsory celibacy is the principal reason for today’s catastrophic shortage of priests, for the fatal neglect of eucharistic celebration, and for the tragic breakdown of personal pastoral ministry in many places." (i.e. clerical child abuse) ~ link

✽ "A small but growing number of school districts across the country are moving to a four-day week, in a shift they hope will help close gaping budget holes and stave off teacher layoffs..." ~ link

✽ "How a Secretary Made and Gave Away $7 Million" ~ link

Random

✽ Jim Hoisington, a friend from our life in Texas, suggested that this clip might be helpful for church planters. He's quite right. And I'd add that anyone wanting to connect with people, including most pastors, might find it a nudge in the right direction. Of course, by sending this message via YouTube through a blog I'm more or less preaching to the choir.


✽ There is a new Twitter feed for Evangelical Covenant Church news. ~ link

✽ No, you were not supposed to reset your clock last night. That happens to many people early next Sunday morning -- when California changes to Arizona time. Like Guam, Arizona does not participate in daylight savings time.

✽ $11.4 million wedding ~ link

✽ Arizona CityFest is starting to take shape with some online presence -- Website | Twitter | Facebook | MySpace | YouTube | Vimeo | flickr. Wow, just keeping all those connections going will be a full-time job for a few dozen people.

Random

✽ I'd like to go on a YikeBike.


✽ We're fooling ourselves if we think that we're actually changing the world because we've joined a Facebook cause.

✽ "The black church is dead" -- Perhaps the white church will soon become history, too. We can hope. ~ link (via)

✽ There are still 5 million people paying AOL for dial-up. ~ link

✽ "A nationwide referendum is taking place in Switzerland on a proposal to give animals the constitutional right to be represented in court." ~ link

✽ The latest e-letter from MasterPiece Church is online. ~ link

✽ Also, check out the tattoo on the MasterPiece website. A college student had one of the circles from James Choung's gospel presentation inked into her foot.

✽ 2 million people are homeless in Chile after the earthquake. Winter is quickly approaching. ~ link

✽ "Only 0.3% of total Christian expenditure is actually directed towards unevangelized non-Christians." ~ link

✽ So, why would anyone stand in line on April 3rd to pay full-price for an iPad, when in a few months the same machine, with the inevitable initial kinks fixed, will be selling for less? Be practical. It looks great but it's still just a machine. ~ link

✽ Fr Ernesto Obregon, the Cuban-born Orthodox priest, speaking through his online alter-ego, Fr Orthoduck, has some keen insight into how to make peace in the Middle-East. ~ link

✽ Richard Mouw on "staying faithful to Genesis 1" -- Exactly, except that many misunderstand when they hear someone say that we shouldn't take Genesis 1 literally. They think that they're saying people shouldn't take it authoritatively or that the credibility of the message is somehow in question. To the contrary, when we read our own cultural assumptions (in our case modernism) into the text without first hearing what was originally being said we're not taking the Bible or its message seriously enough.

✽ Overhauling Detroit for a positive future -- shrink it, raze lots of it, re-farm much of it. ~ link

Missional church

✽ Jeff Maguire's two minute explanation of the missional church. As JR Woodward says, "Pretty good for two minutes."

✽ More fodder for the discussion:

...Church is not a part of life for the missional Jesus follower; it is a way of life with others who are on a similar journey.

The missional life shows up in every endeavor, because the church has been sent by God into the world to reflect his heart for the world. This is what it means to be on a mission with God, partnering with God. It is not a mission that is pursued as something added to daily life, something outside the normal range of activity, a quest to do something beyond life's assignments. It is a way of seeing oneself as partnering with God in daily life, executing the mundane as well as pursuing the sublime, with an intentionality of blessing people and sharing the life of God with them. ~ Reggie McNeal in Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church

Random

★ JD Payne is doing a tweet-a-thon to highlight the influence of missiologist Roland Allen (.pdf).

★ Send some of those "curry people" our way! There are lots of vacancies in Phoenix and I definitely miss the smell of cooking curry wafting through the neighborhood, as it did on our street in Turlock. ~ link

★ Wooo... Betel nut has been banned in the Marshall Islands. That is a gutsy move. ~ link

★ The late North Korean dictator, Kim Il Sung, "while publicly denouncing 'Western decadence and imperialism' -- had an extensive luxury car collection that included Mercedes, Lincolns, Fords, Cadillacs and Citroens," according to a tell-all book by Col Kim Jong Ryul. The former North Korean military aid spent 16 years under cover in Austria buying stuff for the dictator and his family. ~ link

★ ECHO is fantastic -- creative micro scale (think tires) sustainable farming en route to refugees in Haiti ~ News Video | ECHO Website

★ In Great Britain they're using classical music as a tool for social control and a deterrent to bad behavior. No wonder young people loathe it! ~ link (via)

Random

• Haiti housing options and dilemmas. Time is running out. ~ link

• Cheryl made a key lime pie and then gave me Jake Shimabukuro's latest, Live, for my birthday. (There are some advantages to aging.) Jake is definitely at his finest when he is in concert, absorbing and rebroadcasting audience energy. Live feels like you're there in the room.

• Capt Sully, America's favorite pilot, is retiring. I am guessing that there will be more than a fleet of water spraying fire trucks out for that one. ~ link

• "Holy Holograms!" -- And the Word became a hologram and projected his image into our midst. ~ link

• More natural disasters: 2 killed, 6 injured as giant waves slam cruise ship in the Mediterranean | 6.4-magnitude earthquake damages buildings and major bridges in Taiwan.

• Pirate season has begun. ~ link

• There is a shortage of tomatoes and some restaurants in the US are eliminating them from burgers. I'm guessing that the Aussie readers are saying, "No worries! Just stick a beet and an egg on it!" ~ link

• There are 100,000 abandoned mines in Arizona. There is also a move afoot to fill some of them with used car tires. Sounds like an environmental disaster waiting to happen. ~ link

• Another use of the Moravian Daily Text and TRIP method ~ link

Random

• The internet is changing shape again: "...What is clear is that today a significant portion of Internet traffic does not flow through the backbone networks of giant Internet companies like AT&T and Level 3. Instead, it has begun to cascade in torrents of data on the edges of the network, as if a river in flood were carving new channels..." ~ link

• Proposed legislation would "make Arizona the only state to criminalize the presence of illegal immigrants through an expansion of its trespassing law. It also would require police to try to determine people's immigration status when there's reasonable suspicion they are in the country illegally." ~ link

• Facebookers prefer broadcast news -- Googlers prefer print media ~ link

Eliminate Saturday mail?

The US Postal Service wants to eliminate Saturday mail delivery. ~ link

Because of electronic communication I'm now more open to that than before. I wonder, though,

• if perhaps it would make more sense to cut Wednesday service so that there are fewer days in a row without delivery.
  
  
• if in addition to eliminating a day of regular delivery another option would be to do PO box deliveries seven days a week and charge slightly more for those boxes (and that specialized service).
  
  
• if merely eliminating a day of service will make enough of a difference. One of the greatest challenges for the USPS is that Congress mandates a level of service that is economically unsustainable without subsidies.
  
  For example, I'm not against subsidies for rural service to Alaska or Guam. We currently pay the same price for mail service to remote locations as we pay for urban service in the lower-48 states. That doesn't make business sense. But it makes sense for national unity. Such services, which are in the national-interest, should be subsidized. Just as some highways which are critical to the greater good of the country (e.g. the Interstate system) are subsidized so should some services of the Post Office receive national-interest subsidies.
  

I realize that in some ways this last suggestion will be seen as a step backward. Many see the best way forward as complete privatization of the Post Office. I'm not against the concept. However, the only way that privatization would actually work is if the mandates were totally eliminated -- or at least reduced. But if that happened the expense of privatization wouldn't be necessary. With fewer economically unfeasible mandates and some limited subsidies tied to certain national-interest services the current quasi-governmental agency would be sustainable.

We Americans like to rag on our post office. But the fact is that we've created a lot of unrealistic expectations for them and then we're unhappy when they can't meet them. We set them up for failure and then laugh about how they've failed us. That's not fair.

Disclosure: Neither I nor anyone in my family has ever worked for the USPS. However, I am a postal customer who uses PO boxes and I am used to standing in Post Office lines on a fairly regular basis. I've had a lot of time to observe and ponder why things are the way they are.

Random

• PEW RESEARCH: "Overall, about a quarter of Americans (27%) see President Barack Obama as black; a 52% majority see him as of mixed race." I think he is both and that regardless of the politics we all win on this particular issue. ~ link

• ASU IS IN THE TOP TIER OF UNIVERSITIES -- #94 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities. We're even higher than the University of Arizona which is ONLY #77. ☺ ~ link

• HOW MUCH DO WE REALLY NEED? "A new survey suggests the wealthy still feel an obligation to give to charity. Those feelings, however, aren’t translating into dollars." ~ more

• WEALTHY PEOPLE seem to enjoy it more when others make money than when they add to their own stash. ~ link

• BRIEFLY, the reasons that the Chile earthquake, though significantly more powerful than the recent Haiti earthquake, inflicted less damage: (1) Chile, which is more affluent and has a more functional government, has building codes which it enforces. (2) The epicenter of the Chile quake was further from the population centers, and (3) was three times deeper into the earth than the quake in Haiti. Magnitude is not necessarily the most critical issue when it comes to earthquakes. ~ link

• A LOOK at the "Strong Clergy Leadership and Strong Lay Leadership" polarity ~ link

• I USE PICNIK for quick and simple photo editing jobs, especially when I'm working from my light and lean Acer One netbook. Picnik is now a part of Google. ~ link

• THE REASON THAT you didn't know there was a tsunami warning for Guam is that the warning sirens, purchased with a $2 million US federal grant, are still sitting in a warehouse. Apparently they've been there for about three years. (I wouldn't be surprised if the equipment is all piled up on the back of the Guam Fire Department's only high rise ladder truck which has been out of commission and in storage for about 12 years -- waiting for parts and someone to install them.) While I really miss Guam I do not miss the daily annoyances related to the extreme misfeasance of the island. ~ link

• ONE OF MY SPIRITUAL FORMATION students on Palau, with whom I've been having an email discussion about baptism, was baptized yesterday. To say that I'm pleased with him and the process is an understatement.