Why are global warming advocates more vocal in the summer when Arctic ice is melting and global cooling advocates more vocal in the winter when Arctic ice is forming?

Hey, I think I know the answer to this one!

Related posts:

• Click here for more Random Thoughts.
• Click here for more posts on the Environment.

From Christianity Today:

In the larger REVEAL survey taken by 200 churches, people were asked what they want most from their church. Three of the top four responses were:

1. Help me understand the Bible in greater depth.
2. Help me develop a closer personal relationship with Christ.
3. Challenge me to grow and take the next step in my faith.

What do you want most from church?

Related posts:

• Willow Creek Shifts Model Based on Reveal
• A Sociologist Reviews Willow Creek’s Reveal Study
• Quick Takes – 11/17/2007

Willow Creek Community Church basically wrote the book when it comes to seeker-sensitive churches in the United States. But now Willow Creek has announced a major shift in their model of ministry, based on the results of their Reveal Study published last fall.

Greg Hawkins, executive pastor at Willow … said they’re making the biggest changes to the church in over 30 years. For three decades Willow has been focused on making the church appealing to seekers. But the research shows that it’s the mature believers that drive everything in the church—including evangelism … Hawkins says, “Our strategy to reach seekers is now about focusing on the mature believers. This is a huge shift for Willow.”

In June Willow will end their mid-week worship service geared towards believers. Instead the church will offer classes for people at different stages of growth. Willow’s weekend seeker services are also being re-tooled.

In the past Willow believed that seekers didn’t want large doses of the Bible or deep worship music. They didn’t want to be challenged. Now their seeker-sensitive services are loaded with worship music, prayer, Scripture readings, and more challenging teaching from the Bible.

So, what are your thoughts?

Related posts:

• What Do People Want Most from Church?
• A Sociologist Reviews Willow Creek’s Reveal Study
• Quick Takes – 11/17/2007

Yesterday’s message in the Church on Purpose series was called Communication – Sharing the Gospel. The main idea of the message was that sharing the gospel is one of God’s primary purposes for the church. Here is a brief outline of the message:

    1) Communicating the good news (Matthew 28:18-20)
    2) Telling about Christ’s death and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)
    3) Sharing with our local community and the whole world (Acts 1:8)

Click on the Sermons tab at the top of the blog for this and other messages.

Marc Heinrich at Purgatorio posts classic Christian comic book covers from the past. Incidentally, my Sunday School teacher was the son of Al Hartley who drew these comics. (Click on the covers for larger versions.)

Bill Gates in an exit interview: “I’m never fully satisfied with any Microsoft product.” Don Surber replies: “Neither are we!”

Bill Buckner finds grace 22 years later. This is the definite “feel good” story of the week. Check it out even if you are not a Boston Red Sox fan.

Doug Groothius updates his lessons learned from Francis Schaeffer (that I first blogged about here: Quick Takes – 7/21/2007). “Having recently reread many of the works of Francis A. Schaeffer, I am compelled to list several lessons he can teach Bible-believing Christians (and others) today.”

Christianity Today interviews Douglas Gresham on the upcoming Prince Caspian movie. “It’s a fabulous film. I’m very, very pleased. It’s a film that portrays probably even more strongly than the book the essential message of Prince Caspian, which is a return to truth and faith and honor and justice after a millennium of corruption in Narnia.”

Tim Keller describes some over-zealous Christians as not Christian enough. “Think of [those Christian] people you consider to be fanatical. They’re overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive and harsh. Why? It’s not because they are too Christian but because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic, forgiving, or understanding—as Christ was.” (HT: On Earth as it is in Heaven)

John Percival reviews Tim Keller’s new book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. “If you have longed for a book to give a sceptical friend or to help you think about your faith in a deeper and more culturally engaged way then this is the book you’ve been waiting for … Keller starts with the concept of doubt and invites both believers and sceptics to examine and confront their doubts: for the believer, being honest about personal and cultural objections to faith; for the sceptic, being willing to question deeply cherished beliefs.”

Molly Piper offers her thoughts on How to Help Your Grieving Friend. “Not surprisingly, I’ve had lots of conversations with other families who have grieved a tragedy like ours and reflected on my own experience in the past few months … I thought I would try to relay some of the helpful things you can do to understand and help your friends who are grieving. Of course this is all from my own experience, and I certainly am not a grief expert in any authoritative way, I just know what I’ve gone through.”

Taming Technology in the Home series:
    ● Taming Television in the Home
    ● Taming Video Games in the Home
    ● Taming the Internet in the Home

Today’s is the last post in the Taming Technology series. We have looked at television and video games. Now it is time to look at the internet. The internet poses more dangers for children than television and video games combined. A short list of dangers would include inappropriate content, online predators and internet addiction. Just about everything good or bad you can find in the world, you can also find online. Sometimes it finds you — even when you are not looking for it! I would no sooner turn my child loose on the internet unprotected or unsupervised than I would drop him off in the back streets of the city at night. How do you protect your child from the dangers of the internet? Here are some pointers.

• Educate yourself: First, educate yourself on the dangers of the internet. If you don’t know what’s out there, how can you protect your child? The FBI Parent’s Guide is a good place to start. Then educate yourself on basic internet safety. Children’s Partnership has a great guide that you can access here: Internet Safety Guide.
• Talk with your children: Talk with your children about potential dangers on the internet. Don’t just warn them about the dangers. Share real life examples when you hear about them on the news. Sharing about an actual teen who had an online predator show up at her home is far more effective than just warning about things that might happen.
• Keep it public: As with the TV, keep the computer in a public place in the home. The screen should be visible to anyone who happens to enter the room. Visibility adds accountability and is a great protective measure.
• Monitor activity: Monitor your children’s online activities. You don’t have to snoop. Just let your children know that for their safety you will monitor all activity online. Share your child’s email account and password. Check history reports from time to time. Approve any chat rooms in advance. Find safe places and forums where your child may interact online.
• No personal information: This cannot be emphasized enough. Your child should never give out their personal information to strangers or in a public forum. This would especially include name, address, phone number or school name.

And then, in keeping with our fighting technology with technology theme:

• Use filtering software: Filtering software will not only protect your children from going to bad sites. It will also protect them from accidentally accessing or being exposed to inappropriate materials. There is some horrific stuff out there, and you cannot simply erase a shocking image from your child’s memory. There are a number of good filtering programs available. This site compares ten of the top programs on one page: Internet Filter Software Review 2008.

  We used Safe Eyes (#7 on the list) for awhile but recently switched to Net Nanny from Content Watch (#1 on the list). I like Net Nanny much better. It is only $30 and features multiple user accounts, editable filter lists, time controls, history reports, notification alerts, plus monitoring tools for web browsing, email and chat rooms. I also found it very easy to set up and configure.

So, what things have you done to help tame the internet in your home? Please feel free to share in the comments below.

I hope you have enjoyed this series! Please pass the links on to any families you know who would benefit from the information.

I just got the Westminster Bookstore April eNewsletter, and they have some great books on sale. Here are four titles worth checking out. (And no, I am not sharing this list just because my birthday is in two weeks.)

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (Hardcover), by Tim Keller; List Price: $24.95; Westminster Bookstore: $13.72 – 45% Off

Why is there suffering in the world? How could a loving God send people to Hell? Why isn’t Christianity more inclusive? Shouldn’t the Christian God be a god of love? How can one religion be “right” and the rest “wrong”? Why have so many wars been fought in the name of God? These are just a few of the questions even ardent believers wrestle with today. In this book, Tim Keller uses literature, philosophy, real-life conversations and reasoning, and even pop culture to explain how faith in a Christian God is a soundly rational belief, held by thoughtful people of intellectual integrity with a deep compassion for those who truly want to know the truth.

The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Hardcover), by David F. Wells; List Price: $25.00; Westminster Bookstore: $16.00 – 36% Off

Wells argues that the historic, classical evangelicalism is one marked by doctrinal seriousness, as opposed to the new movements of the marketing church and the emergent church. He energetically confronts the marketing communities and what he terms their “sermons-from-a-barstool and parking lots and apres-worship Starbucks stands.” He also takes issue with the most popular evangelical movement in recent years – the emergent church. Emergents are postmodern and postconservative and postfoundational, embracing a less absolute, understanding of the authority of Scripture than Wells maintains is required.

Christ and Culture Revisited (Hardcover), by D. A. Carson; List Price: $24.00; Westminster Bookstore: $15.84 – 34% Off

Called to live in the world, but not to be of it, Christians must maintain a balancing act that becomes more precarious the further our culture departs from its Judeo-Christian roots. How should members of the church interact with such a culture, especially as deeply enmeshed as most of us have become?

D. A. Carson applies his masterful touch to this problem. He begins by exploring the classic typology of H. Richard Niebuhr and his five options for understanding culture. Carson proposes that these disparate options are in reality one still larger vision. Using the Bible’s own story line and the categories of biblical theology, he attempts to work out what that unifying vision is.

In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement (Paperback), by J. I. Packer and Mark Dever; List Price: $16.99; Westminster Bookstore: $11.21 – 34% Off

Combines three classic articles by Packer—””The Heart of the Gospel”; his Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture, “What Did the Cross Achieve”; and his introductory essay to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ—with Dever’s recent article, “Nothing but the Blood.” An important anthology that reaffirms the classic doctrine of substitutionary atonement and counters the ongoing attacks against it.

Taming Technology in the Home series:
    ● Taming Television in the Home
    ● Taming Video Games in the Home
    ● Taming the Internet in the Home

One of the dangers that comes along with TV, video games and the internet is the potential for wasted time. We have found this particularly true with video games. Video games can be incredibly addictive and time-consuming. If you are not careful, they can quickly turn into a giant sinkhole of wasted time for your child. How do you help your children manage their time with video games and other technology in the home? Here are some of the things we do.

• Set time limits: We allow our kids a set amount of time to play video games each week. We know if we did not set limits for them, video games could easily take over their lives. Most kids have not developed the willpower or self-control to make good choices in this area yet, so as parents we need to help them. Setting time limits for our children has allowed them to pursue other interests and to use their time more productively. (More on setting time limits below)
• Set alternate activities: Video games are not a priority in our home. School work, reading, musical instruments, activities and chores come first. When you require certain activities of your children, it automatically limits the time they have for other things. By setting up alternate activities, there is only so much time left over for video games.
• Kick them outside: We don’t do this one as often as we should, but there is nothing wrong with telling your kids to go outside and play for a couple hours. Kids are naturally creative, and they will find plenty of stuff to do.
• Know your kids’ games: Time isn’t the only problem with video games. Some games have inappropriate content. Be sure to read the ratings on your kids’ games and set the ground rules for what is and is not acceptable in your home. When your children get a new game, sit down and watch it with them to make sure you are comfortable with the content.

Now, I promised you I would tell you more about setting time limits. This was the biggest frustration at our home for the longest time. At first we just told our kids how much time they could spend. But then they would forget how long they had been playing. Next we tried sign-in sheets, but they would forget to sign in. Or they would sign in and forget to sign out, and then when they came back later to play they would have no idea how much time they had remaining. Sometimes it got so bad we thought about just getting rid of all the video games in the house. But we knew they enjoyed the games, and we didn’t mind them playing as long as they kept their time under control and were doing other things as well.

Then we discovered Bob. Bob solved all of our time problems when it came to video games overnight. Suddenly the kids knew how long they had been playing and when to stop. They began to monitor their own game time and budget it carefully through the week. We no longer had to get on their case or constantly police them. It was amazing. We like Bob! Bob is our friend.

You are probably wondering, who or what is Bob?

• Bob is an electronic time manager. It looks like a miniature ATM machine. You set the daily or weekly time limits, give your child a passcode, and Bob takes care of the rest. When your child exceeds their time limit, Bob shuts off the TV and will not turn it back on again. Bob can manage time for up to six different users. Bob set us back about $100, but it was worth it. We like Bob! Bob is our friend. We mostly use Bob for video games, but Bob can also be used to manage time spent watching TV.

So, what things have you done to help tame video games in your home? Feel free to share in the comments below.

Click here for next post in series: Taming the Internet in the Home

UPDATE: My wife pointed out to me that much of what I wrote in this post deals more with the past in our home than the present. There was a time when we really had to crack the whip with video games in the house, but it is no longer an issue. Our oldest son no longer has any time restrictions, and he does fine. And the younger two really don’t need the time restrictions anymore. They do plenty of other things on their own – including playing outside! So, sorry boys. I hope I didn’t make you look bad. It was not my intention, and it certainly does not reflect where you are at now.   - Dad

STUPID CRIME EDITION.

Dead giveaway. A man who broke into a funeral home tried to fool the police by playing dead. Unfortunately for him, two things gave him away. First of all, the corpses were dressed in suits while he was wearing street clothes. And secondly, he was breathing!

Big yellow taxi. A bank robber was arrested after using a taxi cab for his getaway car. The man had the cab pick him up at his apartment, take him to the bank for the robbery, and then take him home again. The cab driver gave the police the man’s address and identified him in the bank surveillance video.

Applying for jail. An armed robber in Georgia filled out a job application while waiting for customers to leave before robbing a convenience store. He put a fake address on the application, but police were still able to locate him because he used his real name and phone number.

Take my number, please. An armed robber entered a Chicago muffler shop wearing a mask and demanded they open the safe. When the workers told him only the boss had the combination, he gave them his phone number and told them to call him back when the boss got in. They did, and he came back to the shop still wearing his mask where the police promptly arrested him.

Taming Technology in the Home series:
    ● Taming Television in the Home
    ● Taming Video Games in the Home
    ● Taming the Internet in the Home

Although television can be a valuable source for news, information and entertainment, it can also bring a number of negatives into your home. The two main issues with television are time and content. I will address the time issue tomorrow (along with video games), but today I want to talk about content. How do you protect your children from inappropriate content on TV? Here are some of the things we do.

• Watch on DVD: One way we control content is by doing much of our TV watching on DVD. We collect movies and old favorites on DVD so that we can watch what we want when it is convenient and avoid commercials at the same time.
• Use a DVR: We use a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) to record current programs we would like to watch without being tied to the TV at a certain time of day. As an added plus, the DVR also lets us fast-forward through the commercials. (This is a great time-saver, especially when watching sporting events.)
• Keep it public: Our kids do not have TV’s in their bedrooms. When you are trying to control content in the home, it makes sense to limit the number of TV’s available and to keep them in the public areas of the home.
• Set appropriate boundaries: We set boundaries with our kids for both time and content on TV. (Again, more on the time issue tomorrow!) We direct them to good content, and we let them know when a certain movie or show is not acceptable. If something comes on that is inappropriate while watching together, we set the example by switching the channel or turning it off. It is important to know what movies or shows your kids are watching and to make sure they are appropriate for your children.
• Talk: We try to talk with our kids about what we watch. We want to teach them how to discern the various messages found in TV shows or movies. For example, we like Star Trek as a family. It has some great story lines and admirable characters. However, I don’t always agree with the worldview that is presented. So we talk about it and help our kids become active viewers of media rather than passive receptacles.
• Block: We use the settings on our DVD player and cable box to block certain programs or channels with inappropriate content. We have it set up so that anything with a PG-13 rating or higher requires a password for access.

And here are two additional gadgets we have found helpful. These have allowed us to watch a lot of great movies together as a family that we would have otherwise passed by, either because of the language or due to certain scenes we felt were inappropriate.

• TVGuardian: TVGuardian filters out inappropriate language from TV shows and movies. There are various settings depending on what you want to filter. You can purchase TVGuardian built-in on some DVD players or as a separate device. We have used it in our home for years, and it does a great job of filtering out curse words and religious exclamations we would rather not have in our home.
• ClearPlay: ClearPlay DVD Players filter out both language and visual elements from regular DVD movies. ClearPlay is customizable, and you can turn off or on fourteen different filter settings relating to inappropriate language, violent content or sexual content. ClearPlay has an extensive library of available filters, and they are always adding more. They offer several price options, including a monthly membership which gives you full access to all filters at all times.

So, what things have you done to help tame the television in your home? Feel free to share in the comments below.

Click here for next post in series: Taming Video Games in the Home

Well, I posted Obama’s tax returns two weeks ago, so in order to be fair, here is the summary chart for Hillary Clinton’s tax returns too.

Most of the income came from Bill’s book sales and speeches. Charitable contributions averaged 9.5% over the eight year period. What is interesting is that most of those contributions went to the Clinton Family Foundation. Here is a chart showing 92.8% of donations going to the Family Foundation in years 2002-2007 (100% in years 2003, 2005 and 2006).

Aren’t you glad you don’t have to release your tax returns to the public?

Related posts:

• All the Candidates’ Tax Returns
• Click here for Obama’s Tax Returns
• Click here for Britney Spears’ Budget.
• Click here for more posts on politics.

I saw this video clip over the weekend. You supply the title in the comments section. (There is no audio on the clip, but you should understand it just fine.)

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