4 Firefox Add-Ons to Ease Your Online Life
I’m adding away!
Preaching: This might hurt a little…
I wonder whether some personalities are more drawn to this … however, Willimon has some needed corrective wisdom here for those of us who lean to the other side of just helping without hurting.
"A person emerged from our church a few Sundays ago, saying to me at the door as she left, ‘I know you would not intentionally hurt anyone with what you say from the pulpit, but I was hurt by what you said today in your sermon.’
And I thought, ‘Where would you have gotten the notion that I would not want to hurt you? I’m a preacher. Some infliction of pain goes with the job!" -Will Willimon, Pastor
2 views here … from a USA context.
Charles Colson: I don’t think that you can simply forget the fact that we live in a kingdom and a state. Our job is to make the state as righteous and conformed to God’s standards as possible. But you can love the Lord your God with your heart, mind, and soul and also love your country as a way of loving your neighbor.
Gregory Boyd: This is the fundamental difference between us. In your book you speak a lot about our dual commitments, our dual allegiances to God and country. I just don’t know where in the New Testament you get that. I can’t imagine Jesus or Paul saying such a thing. God tells us to obey the laws of the land and to pray for peace. Those are our two engagements. But I don’t feel we have any kind of duty to love or defend our country.
The 10 Commandments of Web Design (via Church Marketing Sucks .. I love that name!)
Here’s a sampling …
- Thou shalt not abuse Flash. The technology can easily be abused–excessive, extemporaneous animations confuse usability and bog down users’ web browsers.
- Thou shalt not clutter. The web may be the greatest archive of all time, but sites that lack a coherent structure make it impossible to wade through information.
- Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections. Some experts say Apple’s habit of creating glassy reflections under photos of its products has been far too commonly copied, turning the style element into a cliché.
- Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography. Designers say that despite the increase in broadband penetration, plain text has gotten a second wind in cutting-edge web design.
After GAFCON: Reflections by the Bishop of Durham
Bishop N.T. Wright gives it a go …
Cutting your links with the past can be like cutting off the roots of a tree. Reconnecting with our roots – and, where necessary, refreshing and cleaning them – is always better than pretending we don’t need them. But what matters is of course the fruit. Here in my diocese, as in so many in England, we are refreshing our roots and seeing real fruit; but we don’t imagine we are self-sufficient. On the contrary, we know we have a great deal to learn from brothers and sisters in many other parts of the world, Africa included. I would have hoped, actually, that all this would now go without saying: that we have long moved beyond the sterile stand-off between ‘colonialism’ and ‘post-colonialism’. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s what matters.