DISQUS

I think that Christians need to be much more careful in choosing their battles, and they need to think much more clearly about whether or not the battle they are fighting will damage the effectiveness of the gospel message they preach when they are not protesting.

There was a minister in Scotland who got heavily involved in a protest against a education policy that would allow (among other things) the teaching of homosexual partnerships as being an equally valid home and family environment as a hetereosexual environment. (You can read about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28 )

We're now a few years on, and the minister who was so heavily involved has said that he wished he hadn't got involved, not because he has changed his opinion, but because it completely removed his ability to share the gospel effectively for a number of years, because people knew him from that campaign.

Now, I'm not saying that it wasn't the right battle to fight, but I think we have to think much more carefully and strategically before we wade in with 2 left feet.

I see what you're saying, but logically my statement is true. Leaving out for the moment the "not single, but not married" group, married people have to dedicate a portion of their time each week to each other for the relationship to succeed. Plus there are twice as many relatives to connect with.
Financially, married people, for the most part, do not share accommodation with others, and usually look to buy rather than rent anyway. (I realise that this is a generalisation). I believe statistically single people do have more disposable income, plus they do not have to seek the agreement/approval of their partner before spending money. Money is one of the key things that married couples fight over.

I'm not saying that being single is easy, nor that all singles are magically rich and have hours of spare time. What I am saying is that the statistics point towards single people having more time and money, on average, than married people. And, as someone who has been single, married without children, and now married with children, I agree with the stats.

One big problem is that the church is struggling to cope with the 2 main "types" of singles - those that are single but clearly unhappy with being single, and those that are single and are happy with it.

I've been interested to hear how Mars Hill in Seattle encourage their young singles (of both types) to "embrace" their singleness, and recognise that they have more time and money at that time in their life, and to focus their resources into ministry, rather than purely "selfish" pursuits. They also encourage singles of the first type to spend time with couples, learning about the realities of marriage and parenthood, rather than relying on the false images in the secular media.

For me, tithe is a portion of the first fruits - it comes out before anything else, including tax, mortgage, food, electricity, etc, etc.

OK - you're mixing up a bundle of different things here.

Firstly Intellectual Property and Copyright are 2 different things (although copyright is part of intellectual property).

Secondly, illegal filesharing and plagiarism are different things.

Thirdly, creative commons licensing is a copyright license - it in no way removes your right to be identified as the author, and it does continue to place limitations on the use and distribution of your work, so your logo/book scenarios would be null and void.

Fourthly, the main objection that filesharers have is not against the rights of artists to retain their ownership of a property, but against the organisations and corporations who insist on infringing _our_ rights on the assumption that we will abuse any freedoms we have, and who are gradually eroding any concept of ownership in our culture.

I should underline here that I am fervently against illegal filesharing, because it is illegal. But I have a great deal of sympathy for some of the major causes behind it.

Wow - so many points I could pick up on. Here are a few selected highlights:

1. Filesharing is not 'stealing' - stealing is where you take someone else's property, thus depriving them of said property. When you share a file, you are not depriving someone else of their copy. However, you are infringing the copyright of the author (depending on the license agreement).

2. Not all filesharing is illegal. This will depend on the license agreement.

3. There is an increasing number of musicians who are releasing their music under license agreements that allow you to share the music. The Creative Commons licenses are becoming popular for this. See www.jamendo.com for a load of freely available music, and www.creativecommons.org for information on the creative commons.

4. Copying a file and then sending money to the band does nothing to change the system that is causing the problem.

I like the idea, but (like other commenters, it seems) I have no idea what he's supposed to be doing. His pose is a cross between something classical (his feet, for example) and modern (his upper body). And the halo is a bit weird too.

False. It's not a question of how much people earn, but about their stewardship (as many have commented). There are many people who earn much less than $100k who are bad stewards and lovers of money, and likewise there are people who earn more than $100k who are good stewards.

I think that there are different responses, which will probably vary depending on the person involved, and your particular theology around paedo-baptism.

If the person involved was baptised as a child, then there is a school of thought that the baptism is actually an act of dedication and promise by the parents, and that being "de-baptised" should really be a decision by their parents, not them. Being officially de-baptised is, no doubt, a really hurtful thing for the parents.

If the person involved was baptised as an adult, then this is a very sad thing, but I don't think trying to prevent them making this statement is likely to bear any fruit.

Interestingly, the Church of England now has an official service of "re-dedication by immersion" to allow for people that were baptised as infants to confirm their faith through an official service of immersion. It's not all bad news ;)

A fascinating and well argued video - really enjoyed, although I wish he'd included something about philosophical evidence, rather than just logical evidence, because I'm not sure that people are quite as straightforward as that. Our ability to critically evaluate in a subjective manner is difficult when it comes to matters that contradict our personal philosophy, be it religion, politics, economics or other.

Does it count as a shibboleth if you cannot actually distinguish between the groups by the word, only by their understanding of it's meaning?

Interesting, all the same. :)

That's....... weird

From a limited bit of reading the links, I think that he's trying to distance himself from the actions of Head, rather than denying that anything has changed. From the sounds of it, Head simply cut ties completely with everything, and I'm guessing that was a painful experience for the rest of the band. Fieldy seems to want to avoid that kind of breakage. If you read the full interview from where he says that, he also talks about Christ being his rehab - pretty full on! My guess is that he's trying to say to his friends that becoming a Christian hasn't made him some weird, different person.

Does look nice, although heavily in development, and details are sparse as to what languages it supports....

For Lent this year, our church is having a "negativity fast" :
What a Negativity Fast is Not:
1. It is not denying that problems exist
2. It is not ignoring things that are wrong
3. It is not critical of others who may be struggling – it does not give us the right to feel or act superior
4. It is not irresponsible concerning things that need to be done
What a Negativity Fast Is:
1. It is determining to focus more on God’s promises than on problems
2. It is learning to speak with hope about even the toughest of issues
3. It is becoming “solution focused” rather than “problem focused”
4. It is refraining from reactions which gives voice to pessimism, criticism of others, self-criticism and other forms of unbelief.
5. It is speaking about problems to the right people in the right way
6. It is replacing negative words & thoughts with positive words & thoughts based on the promises of God
7. It is about speaking life over people
8. It is about learning to live as an encourager of others
9. It gives priority to the place of testimony which builds us up as well as others

Additionally, I instituted (via my blog and on facebook) the "Great Lent Challenge" within which I am challenging everybody (believers and non-believers alike) to pray consistently for one thing every day of Lent. I'll be collating the results at the end. (You can find details on my blog linked above, or on facebook by searching for the Great Lent Challenge group)

Christians have been called Christians for nigh on 2000 years. Yes, there are other terms that are bandied about - "born-again", "red-letter Christian", "Christ follower", etc, etc - but they either fall out of usage, or end up being as misinterpreted as we accuse Christian of being.

I would rather redeem the original term than coin a new term that will either a) be too twee to be useful, b) be too meaningless to be useful, c) fall out of "fashion" in 12 months or d) become completely misinterpreted.

While I appreciate your concern about the demise of the local newspaper, I'm not convinced by your reasoning.

Yes, there is a lengthy tradition of both oral and written word within the church. But that tradition has covered many different media - initially through handwritten letters that were copied over and over, through monks producing elaborate, illuminated texts, through to the traditional printing press. Reading and writing isn't going away, it's just shifting medium again, to a digital form.

Likewise, the local newspaper is able to sustain itself through digital form too. Yes, it needs to work out how to redefine itself, but this is by no means impossible. Check out the work of the Lawrence Journal World. However, many local newspapers seem unwilling to try and make this shift, and I'm not convinced that there is a moral obligation for me to support a business that is unwilling to make itself profitable in the new economy.

It would be interesting to know how they defined their "Protestants" - was it just people who tick "Protestant" on the survey because they know they're not "Catholic".

Having said that, I think for the majority of Christians the denomination is only a contributory factor, rather than a deciding factor, in whether or not to attend a particular church.

I agree with most of the previous commentators here - I don't think worship should be closed. I think that we often underestimated the "non-Christian", and also the power of the Word of God being preached. As mentioned above also, there are some meetings that are specifically for church members, but common worship should not be one of them.

I think, for me at least, dressing modestly doesn't mean wearing a sack. It means wearing clothes that cover your body appropriately. In this day and age, that means going against some of the current trends - no low-cut trousers combined with high-rise g-string; no tops that show off half your belly (and often lower with the aforementioned low-rise trousers); avoid tops that are so loose that bending over means that men can see all the way from your neck to your navel. It doesn't mean you can't look attractive, or that you have to look somehow androgynous. Nor does it mean that you can't wear clothes that outline your figure. But there's a big difference between outlining your figure and being half-naked.

It's difficult to know where to start with this one. I'll try and make my points as clearly as possible:

1. In a community of faith, we are called to be responsible in the way that we act, in order to not lead another to sin. If I told you that I didn't want you to, say, open a bottle of wine at a meal with an alcoholic present, I don't think you'd object too strongly. Lust, pornographic and masturbation are _massive_ issues within the church today, even before we hit the issue of sex itself. Dressing modestly (and I'm not talking burkhas here - making sure that you're not showing your underwear would be a start) is a way of helping.

2. Women and men are physiologically different when it comes to sex (big surprise!) Men's base level of sexual attraction is sight, women's is touch. (That's not to say that men don't get turned on by touch or women by sight, just that these are the basics) A lot of women I have talked to just don't understand the effect that they have on men with the way that they dress. That's not apportioning blame - just a fact that needs to be recognised.

3. The Bible has a fair bit to say on dressing modestly, and surely that should be our yardstick?

4. There are a number of cases of men who attend churches because they are sexual predators, and know that they will, in many cases, find women who are a) single, b) naive. Again - this is not the fault of the woman, but it doesn't hurt to be wise - we don't walk down the street with money paper-clipped to the outside of our clothes....

OK - I'm braced for the impact - let the flames begin :)

FWIW the support guys at IBM usually refer to that particular part as the "planar", although that may be equally incorrect.

Given what your friend said, I suspect that the fault is something on their "known faults" list, although it would probably still require Customer Relations to authorise a repair out of warranty.

I applaud your self control and maturity. Now I feel guilty....

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