Why are people now so intent on denigrating the idea of interracial families? Insistence on some sort of racial purity, or on the inherent inability for parents of one race to race children of another is, by definition, racism. David French and his wife have been pilloried by both the left and the right for adopting a child of another race.
David French is one of a diminishing number of good and sane people in the world.
Ashley Cleveland (with a somewhat famous friend) belts out an old school hymn…
A collection of folks at church has been going through a video series called ‘Basic’ after the post-worship fellowship time on Sunday mornings as the summer is winding down. The series features pastor and speaker Francis Chan, and interspersed with Chan speaking are snippets of a visual story that unfolds throughout the series. I’d had the DVDs for several years, but admittedly I’d never watched them all the way through until a couple of weeks ago as I was preparing to share them and help lead the discussions.
Chan’s messages are thought-provoking, challenging, and, at times, uncomfortably convicting. He calls those of us in the church examine what we’re doing, and why, and encourages us towards taking steps to drill down to the core of the gospel:
In short, being the church as Jesus preached, and practiced.
The underlying video montages – all without dialogue – depict a story of discovery, and journey, and calling. At certain points along the way the viewer isn’t quite sure what’s going on (much like life), but at the end, the elements of the visual story tie together in a way that’s pretty compelling.
Chan’s message in the series would almost certainly sound harsh and out-of-step to those outside the church, but my guess is that it would also be a hard sell for a growing number of churches. I mean, heck, there are parts of me that respond with “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (John 6:60).
But I think what he’s suggesting is worth pursuing. Intentionally. Deliberately. Doggedly, even. The church, and Christians, really don’t look all that different from the culture at large. And that’s not the church that Jesus intended. Unpopular though it may very well end up being, it’s time to get back to basics.
I’m not sure what the official product life is of this guitar polish, but I bought it at the (long gone) downtown Lincoln location of Dietze Music probably 20 years ago, and it’s still going strong. (One can extrapolate from this that I haven’t cleaned my guitar nearly as often as I should have over the years).
As most who have been following me on Facebook know, I made the decision to ditch my smartphone for a dumb phone, primarily because of unhealthy behaviors I was noticing in myself. I initially made this switch in the spring of 2017, moving to an old-school flip phone. Though I don’t do a ton of texting, after a while I got frustrated with the flip phone’s T9 input, so I picked up a used “feature phone” (from a seller on eBay) with a slide out keyboard. For texting it was great, but it had a “touch screen” that was really unresponsive and unpredictable (for example, dialing people when I was just trying to scroll through my contacts list). By the end of last year I had finally become frustrated enough with it that I temporarily switched back to my smartphone from December through late February of this year.
But I found myself starting to once again habitually reach for my smartphone dozens of times a day, and vowed once again to wean myself from it. This time I perused eBay and found a texting phone with a keyboard but without a touch screen (the LG Env3), and it’s been working just fine for talking and texting. Don’t get me wrong – there are still times I definitely miss my smartphone. But overall, the decision has been a net positive for me, at least spiritually.
I’ve mentioned before how stark it is to notice everyone’s smartphone addiction, and that the reason I didn’t notice it before is that I was so often engrossed with mine. I’ve relayed to a few people the experience of being at a Royals game at the end of last season (we snagged box seats for cheap since the Royals weren’t in contention), and seeing everyone in my section staring down at their smartphones for 70%-80% of the game. And if I’m honest with myself, I know I probably would have been preoccupied with mine, too, if I had one. It was a perfect evening, weather-wise, and a great opportunity to enjoy the company of friends and to see that classic roster line-up before the inevitable off-season trades. Yet almost no one was taking in the moment.
It seems I’m not the only one struggling with the spiritual ramifications of our smartphone and social media addictions. A few months ago, author Tim Challies made a similar move:
And earlier this week, singer/songwriter/author Andrew Peterson told about his experience of deleting social media apps from his phone:
I continue to believe that these technologies are affecting us in ways that we may not even be aware. I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to follow suit, but I think we could all stand to bring a great deal more self-reflection and wisdom to our usage of them. (When it comes to social media, I know I could).
I think this is especially true with regard to their usage in and by the church. But I’ll save that for another time. 😉
I picked up a CD by a band called ‘The Rest’, on a whim, in 1998 while at the Cornerstone music festival. The CD was clearly burned on a home computer, and the CD label and insert clearly printed on a home printer.
There were no liner notes, but ‘The Rest’, I figured out later, was fronted by singer-songwriter Julie Lee. As far as I can tell this was a one-off project for the festival (sold at Sarah Masen’s merch table) and never saw the light of day as a commercial release, which is a pity, because there are 5 songs with fantastic vocal harmonies, some of those harmonies featuring complex, jazz-like intervals.
Here’s the 2nd song from that CD.
Hi. My name’s Kyle and, really, I’m nobody special. For a while now I’ve had a growing concern about the effects that social media was having on me, and my soul. The compulsion to check my feed constantly. The quest for “likes”. The ways in which it can so easily serve as a hair trigger for outrage.
I also was becoming increasingly bothered by the idea of Facebook’s complete ownership and intrusive mining of the content I was posting, along with their recently stated intent to partner with banks in order to gain access to Facebook users’ financial and spending data. Many years ago I kept my own weblog, but abandoned it for the convenience of simply using Facebook’s platform, since 99% of the people I know are there. I think it’s time to go retro.
So this site is a first step in disengaging from the hive mind. If my current thinking holds, I’ll be moving completely away from Facebook and deleting my account at some point in the coming months. I realize that doing so would make me a bit of a digital hermit. But that’s OK. In fact, I think it may even be good.
In the interim, I’ll be doing my posting here, and creating links for at least some of those posts over at Facebook.
Welcome to the blog!
