this week’s round-up (august 11)

Paul Steinbrueck: What Church Members Want in an App.

Roger Olsen: Folk Religion and Life After Death (Part 2). Excellent article! One of my adult Sunday School teachers is going to be doing a study on “heaven” this fall, and (I think) will be addressing some of these “folk religion” aspects that Olsen mentions.

Fred Clark: You might be an evangelical…

Jen Lemen: 10 Things That Are True About You.

Dan Dick: Running Out of Options. Dan makes that case that the greatest threat to the future of the United Methodist Church is:

“… a self-centered, selfish, consumeristic, privileged entitlement mentality that puts the comfort of the individual ahead of the integrity of the community of faith and the will and vision of God. My-way-or-the-highway, take-my-ball-and-go-home immature coercion is becoming the norm rather than the exception. This, and this alone, has the power to kill us.”

make sure you follow the link to read the full article.

Wil Wheaton writes about the 25th anniversary of Stand By Me.


From Mike Slaughter’s blog: Why Methodist? (Good to be reminded that sometimes we do get it right).

From Christianity Today: Should We Still Give Out Tracts?

From ProBlogger: The 5 Must-read Books for Bloggers in 2011. Haven’t read any of these, but I was interested in the second one on the list: Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators – I didn’t realize that curation (basically what I’ve been doing each week) was really a “thing” – this was really about finding a way for me to catalog the stuff I found interesting as a personal study discipline, and to possibly bring some benefit to the handful of friends interested in similar subjects. I’ve always felt a little like I was cheating by pointing to other people’s blogs while not offering very much in terms of my own content, but maybe there really is value in just doing this.

Personal MBA: 7 Tools to Manage Social Media Overload.

My family got our picture in the Detroit Free Press this week (fortunately not for doing anything illegal).