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Archive for the 'Practical' Category

• Two Week Recap: Four Mini-reviews

So I’m back, I had a nice time of relaxation and refocusing during my hiatus. If your box office news is dependent upon me (in which case you would be severely under/mis-informed) then you didn’t miss much. The past two weeks have given us two huge bombs and two lackluster “remakes.”
The Happening - a [...]

• Dear God

Ever feel like praying to some vague notion of a higher spiritual force? Yeah, me either. But that is what many people are doing. In fact there is a new website called Dear God where you can publicly submit prayers to the divinity of your choosing. And while no real answers are found, community is [...]

• UPS Philosophy: Test Drive

As most of you know, aside from blogging for a living (haha), I work at UPS here in Louisville. Well I am amazed at some of the discussions that we share while out on the ramp loading planes full of packages. Some of them are just crude and not fit to publish, however others are [...]

• Expelled: Overview

I was was very impressed with, Expelled, the new documentary by Ben Stein on the debate between Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design. The quality and humor of the film reminded me of a Michael Moore Documentary, except instead of only presenting one side of the argument, Stein gave equal time for the opposing group to [...]

• Why Strike?

As we near the two month mark for the Writers Guild of America strike, I thought it was important to let my ten readers (ok… ok… I’m exaggerating) know why the writers are on strike in the first place.
First of all the writers do not want to be on strike. They have been forced [...]

• Tornadoes

I love how the weather changes. We’ve had hot and dry conditions until last week when we snapped into the 40’s. Now we have a cold front moving through with severe wind sheer. There is a great chance for tornadoes. One storm cell has already past us and according to radar went right over our [...]

• Shaq’s Big Challenge

In case you didn’t know, last night was the premiere of an ABC special series called “Shaq’s Big Challenge.” We all know Shaq is big, but what is so big about the challenge?
Childhood obesity is a fast-growing epidemic in the U.S. And Shaquille O’Neal is trying to take 6 Florida kids from fat to [...]

• Essential Piper Library

My introduction to Dr. John Piper was in college, through a free cassette tape of one of his sermons which I picked up at a church in Dothan, Alabama while doing some drama for a JAM team there. My car at the time had no CD player and if you’ve ever tried to listen to [...]

• Hebrew Introduction 2

Some quick information about Hebrew. Biblical Hebrew is a simple but complex language. It is simple because biblical Hebrew has a very small vocabulary (about a quarter of the size of that used by Shakespeare and approximately 1% of the 660,000+ words contained in the Oxford English Dictionary). Of these, many only occur once or [...]

• A Special Birthday Interview

Engaging Culture (EC): So, Logan, how is everything going?
Logan Mauldin: You know, despite some recent worries and difficulties, I’m particularly pleased.
EC: Are you referring to your recent and ongoing financial difficulties?
Logan: Yeah, those are the ones. You know you take money for granted when you have it, but when it comes time to pay bills [...]

• Where I’m At Right Now

Hey everybody, sorry it’s a little slow around here these days, but since I resigned from FBC Archer, I’ve been working from home as a web designer. We needed to start making some money somehow so I’m supply preaching at a few different churches and looking for a short term interim position to fill the [...]

• Sanctity of Human Life

Yesterday in my church we observed Sanctity of Life Sunday and while the large focus was upon the atrocity of abortion we also looked at embryonic stem cell research. But as I thought about it the sanctity of life covers so many issues. When we realize that every person is created in the image and [...]

• Are We Just Yelling?

As a Christian, and especially as a pastor, sometimes I feel like I’m not reaching anyone, not impacting or engaging anyone. Most of the time I feel like I’m just yelling. I was reading some old articles from one of my favorite church marketing sites, BetaChurch.org, when I ran across this article.
Its focus is [...]

• The Desire for Fame

Last night on 20/20 one of the reports was on a rising trend among teens and college-age adults who would reportedly rather be an assistant to a celebrity than a CEO of a major corporation. They believe that the simple proximity to fame could be enough to tip the scales in their favor in their [...]

• Capital Punishment

If the reports are true, Saddam Hussein is now dead. That is how the death penalty should work. Found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, if the death penalty is chosen then it should be carried out swiftly, not buried in decades of appeals. While I don’t believe that this war will bring peace to the [...]

• James Brown and Gerald Ford

What do the recent deaths of the “Godfather of Soul” and America’s 38th president have in common?
Brown died at a relatively young age of 73, while Ford was the ripe old age of 93 when he passed. Brown was a trendsetter, Ford was following in the wake of Nixon. Brown was “the hardest working [...]

• News Update

As most of you know, I recently resigned my position at First Baptist Church of Archer to pursue my Masters Degree at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. We were planning to move to Kentucky around the first of the year. However, recent developments have made us reconsider. One reason is that I’ve personally never driven [...]

• What Position Should We Take?

Church history demonstrates that one of the constant struggles of Christianity, both individually and corporately, is with culture. Where should we stand? Inside the culture? Outside? Ignore it? Isolate ourselves from it? Should we try to transform it?
The theologian Richard Niebuhr provided a classic study concerning these questions in his book Christ and Culture. Even [...]

• Hard To Shop For

Some men are hard to shop for. Not me! Get me a good book and I’m happy. However, get me a bad book and there had better be a gift receipt included.
To facilitate your Christmas shopping, below is a smattering of some of the excellent books suggested by C.J. Mahaney on the GirlTalk Blog [...]

• The Effects of Pornography

I grew up in church, a fundamentalist church nonetheless. And I attended my youth group faithfully, and every February, around Valentine’s Day, our church would participate in “True Love Waits,” an abstinence before marriage campaign. But it couldn’t just stop with a simple urge towards chastity, these talks had to run the gamut; sex, abstinence, [...]

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