Cheap TV Commercials

Hello Again,

Today in Rick Warren's e-mail update i found a link for an article about how advertising on TV isn't as expensive as many pastors assume. I don't know if our church is ready for it, but maybe yours is. Here's the article - Church TV Commercials for a Buck. No - it's not really just a buck, but it is pretty cheap and the article isn't trying to sell you a particular service.

My identity has been stolen (a little)

Well, it appears i am now officially a victim of identity theft. Yesterday i got one of those "returned mail" messages in my inbox, but i didn't recognize the address that the message had been sent to - and when i saw the subject line i knew i hadn't sent it. I e-mailed Yahoo about it (which by the way i've loved using yahoo mail for around 7 years now), and they said it looks like someone's managed to falsify the "from" or "reply-to" section of a spam e-mail that they sent. So now it looks like i sent the message. Worse, it appears that there's nothing Yahoo can do to find out who's doing this or to stop them. So all i can do is delete all the returned messages that come to me and pray that my legitimate messages don't start getting filtered out by spam blockers.

I guess it doesn't do you much good to know this, since i don't think there's a way to prevent it, but I just wanted everyone to know that the return address on the spam you get could be that of another innocent bystander.

Article at Leadership Journal about church security

Hello again,

I found an article today by a police lieutenant giving churches advice on how to respond in case of an attack by a gunman, and how to become a little more prepared for that event. It's worth taking a minute to read. I know my tendency is to almost take pride in a church with minimal security - it seems like churches should be safe places as well as places where we trust each other - instead of places where you have to go through a security checkpoint. But the question is worth asking - should we be doing more to protect our sheep?

Here's the article : Security Against Shooters

the stories behind tattoos

For some this may be an obvious concept, but many, if not most, tattoos actually have deep stories behind them, and are not the result of some short-sighted whim. Unfortunately, i think a lot of times in the church, or at least a lot of times in the past in the church, we've assumed it was always just that. There's an article about this at the Center for Parent-Youth Understanding by Paul Robertson, and i highly recommend it if you find yourself wondering why anyone would choose to put such a permanent mark on their bodies.

How to respond to racist jokes

I've let a whole month slip by without blogging :( Part of the problem is that i'd rather read the really good things other people are writing than write something halfway good and put it out there. So today i compromise and post a link to something really good that someone else wrote, hopefully furthering the world of good thought without watering it down.

Today i ran across an article at Race in the Workspace titled "How to respond to a racist joke." I'm passing it along because i'm sure a lot of other Christians and church workers besides me have a genuine desire to avoid participating in racism but aren't always sure what to do. I'm not convinced that this author's approach is going to work, but it might and it certainly seems worth a try, so check it out.