Micah Fries has a great little article with some practical reflections about how to manage social media. His advice breaks down under four headings: 1. Get rid of notifications.2. Get away, while not getting away.3. Real people come first.4. Embrace the dichotomy. All of these are helpful, but I found number one to be a new idea that I had not seriously considered before. I think I will be implementing it very soon. Read the rest here.
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The End of R.E.M., and They Feel Fine
The band R.E.M. began playing together in Athens, Georgia in 1980. Over the last thirty-one years they have released 15 albums. They were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. I was a big fan, so I took note when I saw the announcement today on their website that they are calling it quits as a band. They write: “To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever…
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An Excerpt from John Piper’s New Book
Christianity Today has posted an excerpt from John Piper’s new book Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian. Here’s a snippet: Over four years later, on April 9, 1865, the war ended with the surrender of Southern general Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House. Ninety years later, when I was nine years old in Greenville, the enforced segregation was almost absolute: drinking fountains, public restrooms, public schools, public swimming pools, bus seating, housing, restaurants, hospital waiting rooms, dentist waiting rooms, bus station waiting rooms, and—with their own kind of enforcement—churches, including mine. I can tell you from the inside that, for all the rationalized glosses, it was not “separate but…
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SBC President Bryant Wright Explains Effort To Change the Name of the Southern Baptist Convention
SBC President Bryant Wright explains his rationale for appointing a task force to consider changing the name of the Southern Baptist Convention. He also invites Southern Baptists to suggest names. If you are interested in submitting a name, you can do so here.
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Southern Baptist Convention Considers Name Change
Twitter exploded last night with the news that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) might be considering a name change. At the meeting of the SBC’s Executive Committee, SBC President Bryant Wright appointed a task force to study the issue. Jimmy Draper will be leading the task force. Other members include Al Mohler, Paige Patterson, David Dockery, Tom Elliff, Kevin Ezell, Ken Fentress, Micah Fries, Susie Hawkins, Roger Spradlin, Michael Allen, Marshall Blaylock, Aaron Harvie, Fred Hewitt, Cathy Horner, Benjamin Jo, Bob Sena, John Sullivan, and Jay Wolf.
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Russell Moore Interview on CNN about Pat Robertson
Russell Moore appeared on CNN this afternoon to set the record straight about the Christian view of marriage. He did a fantastic job. If you missed it, the video is above. If you haven’t read his must-read article yet, you can do so here.
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Pat Robertson Would Make a Man Worse Than an Unbeliever
Pat Robertson has said many unhelpful things over the years (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here), but this has to be the absolute worst. On yesterday’s edition of “The 700 Club,” he told a viewer that it would be okay for the viewer to divorce his spouse who has Alzheimer’s because Alzheimer’s is a “kind of death.”
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Richard Land Argues That Perry Is No Bush
Richard Land has an article in USA Today telling why he thinks people are mistaken to think of Rick Perry as George W. Bush redux. He writes: Many people assume Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a carbon copy of George W. Bush. Well, he isn’t. Those who either love or despise former president Bush need to understand that Perry should be neither accepted nor rejected based on their opinion of Bush. Indeed, as the nation heads with full force into the 2012 election cycle, many of Perry’s opponents in and out of the news media will try to tear down the Texas governor as “Bush, continued.” To do so would…
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John Piper Takes On Jim Crow
I have been listening to John Piper’s annual Martin Luther King Day sermons for about thirteen years now. What I have found most compelling about these messages are the moments in which Piper delves into his own background as a boy raised in Greenville, South Carolina during the Jim Crow era. He has told about his home church’s vote to bar blacks from their worship services, about his mother’s heroic actions to escort black guests at his sister’s wedding when the white ushers refused to seat them, about growing up across the tracks from Jesse Jackson, who is roughly the same age as Piper and who also grew up in…
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The Failure of the Megachurch
Tim Suttle has an interesting article at the Huffington Post about “The Failure of the Megachurch.” I don’t agree with the entire analysis here, but this one line is worth highlighting the whole article: If the church is the body of Christ, then the mega-church is a body on steroids.