Tammy Faye Messner: March 7, 1942 – July 20, 2007

Assembly of God, Pentecostal, Religion

Tammy Faye Messner: March 7, 1942 - July 20, 2007
Tammy Faye Messner, the former wife of Jim Bakker of PTL fame, has passed away after struggling against colon and lung cancer for several years.

On July 17, just three days before her death, Messner’s last message on her website announced that she had gained 5 pounds: up from her recent low of 65. In that same message she extolled the virtues of a good hamburger:

I crave hamburgers and french fries with LOTS of ketchup! When I can eat that again, it will be a day of victory!

Friday, July 20, was a day of victory for Tammy Faye.

More…

[tags]bakker, blogrodent, colon-cancer, lung-cancer, obit, obituary, pentecostal, tammy-faye, tammy-faye-bakker, tammy-faye-messner[/tags]

Carlton Pearson: The closest to God you’ll probably ever get

Pentecostal, Rage and Rants, Random Miscellany, Religion

Bishop Carlton PearsonThe Carlton Pearson curiosity continues.

Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed the amount of search engine queries landing on this site have shot heavenward for Carlton Pearson. The searchers have typed:

  • carlton pearson goes bad
  • carlton pearson has cancer
  • carlton pearson has lost his mind
  • is carlton pearson gay?
  • did carlton pearson get a divorce?

photo: Scott Griessel

As far as I can tell, Carlton Pearson’s “badness” quotient has gotten no worse than when I wrote my semi-definitive exploration of his doctrine of inclusion back in early 2006: “Carlton D. Pearson: The Charismatic Bishop of Heresy.” I’ve read that around 2005 Pearson had been diagnosed with prostate cancer but, according to last night’s 20/20 program (read the segment: ‘Nobody Goes to Hell’: Minister Labeled a Heretic), it is now in remission and might avoid urology surgery. Pearson appears to enjoy full possession of his faculties, as far as the TV demonstrates (though he did once hear revelatory voices from God), he has not publicly admitted to any homosexual inclinations that I know of (or can find), and nobody anywhere has reported a divorce.

But Pearson did publish a book recently, and I figure that caused some of the alarm. God Is Not a Christian defends his views, answers his critics, and, according to the sole reviewer “he also throws in a lot of ideas about God, the divinity of man, and why he views Scripture as flawed in places. This will bother some of his conservative Christian readers.”

Indeed.

If there are any.

Pearson’s book currently ranks #829,524 on Amazon.com (as of Saturday, July 14, 2007). It’s no Mere Christianity-style instant classic to be sure (which ranks at #405), and Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology (ranked at #1,432) must have a marketing genius pushing the tome when compared to Pearson’s sales rate.

But the media love Pearson and I’m sure his sales will pick up well before Hell freezes over. Not that Pearson wants to profit off of Hell. No, he’s done getting paid for Heck-Fire:

“If I say everybody’s going to heaven, then I can’t raise money from you to get me to keep people out of hell.” (20/20, “‘Nobody Goes to Hell’: Minister Labeled a Heretic“)

Problem is, once you’ve done away with Hell, why stop there? Since, in Pearson’s view, the doctrine of Hell rests on man-made documents about a man-made myth, then the doctrine of Heaven itself is on shaky grounds.

The flipside of Pearson’s hell-doubting theology, however, is that he sounds awfully skeptical about the existence of heaven. “We don’t know what happens after this life,” he says. “But we presume something good happens. So we’ve come up with these thrones and gates and virgins … But the closest to God you’ll probably ever get is you.” (Reuters, “Checking in with Carlton Pearson – who doesn’t believe in hell – in Tulsa“)

Not a quote I’d want to enter Eternity with, for sure.

•  •  •

I watched Bill Weir’s 20/20 documentary on Hell last night, but after Tivoing the program, I must have run out of disk space. I only captured 33 minutes of the program. Sadly, the show cut off before the commercial break leading into Pearson’s segment. Otherwise, I would have shown you a clip. But if you hurry, you might be able to catch it streaming off of the ABC.com website.

Rich

(Pearson photo by Scott Griessel via Flickr.)

[tags]2020, abc, afterlife, bill-weir, bishop-carlton-d.-pearson, bishop-pearson, blogrodent, calrton-pearson, carlton, carlton-d-pearson, carlton-pearson, death, documentary, eternity, gehenna, gospel, gospel-of-inclusion, heaven, heaven-and-hell, hell, heresy, heretic, inclusion, pearson, rich-tatum, salvation, universalism[/tags]

Thomas E. Trask: resignation effective — almost immediately

Assembly of God, Pentecostal, Random Miscellany, Religion

photo: escapedtowisconsin

The Rev. E. Thomas Trask, General Superintendent of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, has announced his resignation. I will prepare a report with more details soon. Really. I will.

Note: As promised, my long rambling cogitation is now available here.

[tags]trask, tom-trask, thomas-trask, thomas-e-trask, general-superintendent, general-superintendant, general-council, general-council-of-the-assemblies-of-god, assembly-of-god, assemblies-of-god, rev-trask, reverend-trask, resignation, blogrodent, religion, christianity, pentecostal[/tags]

Making Art: photography, my gallery, and a rambling discourse

Photography, Random Miscellany

Rich's Photo GalleryHi. My name is Rich and I’m a tortured artist.

The Confession

Well, really, I’m more tortured, than artistic. And it may be argued that the artistic is more artifice than artful. But I try, nonetheless.

Folks who don’t know me well (meaning just about everybody) don’t realize I have this creative half that doesn’t wield its powers in the company of friends and coworkers until long after we meet. In fact, not knowing myself as well as I ought, even I remained largely unaware of this need to create until the beast was unleashed during my final year of high school. My more “public” facing personna tends to be bookish, I suppose — and there’s a good reason for that: I’m rarely without a book. Even in good company.

Not quite a misanthrope…

As long as I’m in the confessional mood I might as well admit that I’m also a functioning introvert. Again, this surprises my friends and coworkers for I can be quite garrulous. But I need time alone in order to survive the teeming hordes of happy extroverts. (In MBTI terms: I’m an INTP, for whatever that’s worth.) True to type: my exposure to whirling masses of people often leaves me drained and even melancholy.

But, my wife notes with irony: while I need and enjoy “cave time,” certain public situations get me wired like a happy cat — such as when I’m teaching, presenting, or preaching. Of course, this leaves me even more drained than just being the large, bookish guy with oddball observations at the dinner party. But it’s worth it.

Add water and lavish praise, then stir gently

Now, how about a trip down memory lane to help glue these apparently unrelated sidebars together (closet creativity plus homebody introversion): When I was 12 years old and merely bookish but not yet fully “creative,” I took an art class at school where the teacher enthusiastically assured me I had an aptitude for drawing. I warmed to his praise and eventually became the teacher’s assistant for the class. I enjoyed everything about the course: the drawing, the perspective exercises, the natural art, the hand-thrown clay and firing the pots. I found it relaxing and invigorating at the same time. Though I probably wouldn’t have said that then. I would have used more sedate terms like “Cool,” and “Neat.” (It was the early 80’s.)

So, when it came time to enter high school, I naturally sought to continue my interest in the arts, and selected Art I for my optional “elective” course. I did not know that all elective courses required parental approval, so when I presented the slip for the necessary signature, I hit a roadblock.

“Art? Art? You can’t make a living drawing pictures. Take something else!” (Here, my memory inserts the sound of a Jewish mother nagging. Strangely, my mother is not Jewish.)

Having learned by then what battles could be fought (none) and won (again, none), I meekly submitted, and filled my course roster with the usual: Math, English, Science, Spanish, Physical Ed., Government, and so on. For three years.

Then came the surprise: as an 18-year-old entering the 12th grade, I was legally entitled to choose electives on my own counsel. Even better: having neglected my electives for the preceding three years, I only had one required course left!

This held great promise. I could fill up the entire remainder of the day with any elective curiosity I desired.

“Wow,” doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt about this zephyr of parental emancipation. It’s not that I exulted from being out from under my parents’ collective thumbs (I did exult), but I anticipated with relish all the super-cool things I could do in my senior year. With. Out. Permission.

So, in addition to my final required math class, I added these electives:

  • Spanish – I’d completed the required two years, the third and fourth were elective
  • The Entertainers – a song-and-dance performance troupe (I know, really, really hard to believe if you know me.)
  • Piano I
  • Guitar I
  • Art I
  • Photography I
  • Photography II
  • Drama I

Yes. the number of courses exceeded the allotted hours in the school day. I was going in early for the Entertainers and leaving late after school hours and going straight to my after-school job. I made it work. And it helped that I was forced to drop the less-interesting all-singing-all-dancing performance club because I couldn’t afford the tux.

If there’d been a basket-weaving class, I think, I would have gladly enrolled.

For the whole of that year, I was drunk on the arts. And while I could recount the praise my instructors piled on me (and I actually did describe it, but you can just thank me for deleting it because, really, who cares? It was high school.), I’ll only say that this one year in school transformed my life and changed my self-perception for good more than any other experience before or since.

I went on to make photos for my college Public Relations department for scholarship money. Later, while working at the A/G headquarters, I shot news photos for the Office of Information department at the 1997 General Council. While I’ve never won any “art” contests, I’ve had my work published and I’ve been paid for it. When feeling my oats, and out of earshot of real pros, I therefore sometimes claim to be a “professional” photographer.

But what have you done for me lately?

Nowadays, my guitar lays neglected in a corner of my house, calling to me from time to time, and my Bride challenges me to take it up again. My son has a little electric piano now, which I dink on infrequently — but I never really had the discipline for the keyboard.

But photography has remained with me as a close companion through the years. I have boxes and boxes, bags, books and binders full of negatives, prints, reprints, and print-outs. Unfortunately, the cost has kept me from doing much with it. I won’t go into the woes of pricey equipment and expensive gear, but it’s enough to say that we who see life through the lens can fill ten rolls of film for every single roll destroyed by the causal snap-shooter.

It adds up.

So, in the end, even though I still have the photographer’s eye, the photog’s mindset and a tendency to see everything through a viewfinder, even my trusty Nikon FA has been languishing these past few years.

Enter the age of gadgets that pretend to be tools

A couple years ago I cunningly convinced my wife she needed a new camera, especially since we wanted to document our kids’ lives in full Technicolor detail. (I’m clever that way, with gadgets. Plus, my wife sees through my ploys, and allows me the illusion of influence because she loves me.) So, we bought her the best cheap camera we could afford: a little Nikon CoolPix 3200. It produces a 3-megapixel image, can do macro (close up) photography, and has a zoom lens built in. The selling point was that it has a more forgiving f-stop “film speed” than the other 3MP cameras I was looking at, and the macro lens worked very nicely.

Yes. It’s really and truly her camera. But she lets me borrow it whenever I want. As long as I buy new batteries.

Now, when I get a few moments, once in a while, I’ll feed my photo jones and go make some pictures. Still, there’s a part of me that holds back: while I love digital photography, the little camera I have still produces more digital noise than I like, the chip sensors are smaller and less sensitive than I need, the pixels are too few, and the lenses are seriously wanting. But, still, it’s photography, and I enjoy it.

The Reason for this Post

So, I told you all that to lead up to this: When I first started this blog back in 2005, I had a goal to create a “portfolio” site as a companion to, or as a part of this weblog. I searched around for WordPress gallery plugins, I tried out a few gallery scripts, and I’ve even posted a few items here on the blog. But I haven’t been satisfied with the solution. The photos in a blog require too much time to manage, they suck a lot of bandwidth, and then you have to struggle with bandwidth leechers who hotlink to your stuff. Plus, it’s hard to fit random abstract photos into my typical rants and raves. Ultimately, blogs emphasize textual communication. Visual stuff requires a different tool.

I’d set up a Flickr account, but just really wasn’t getting into it. I tried using the Yahoo! photos account, but uploading photos felt painful and tedious in either case.

Finally, a couple weeks ago, I realized that some of the hiring managers I hope to impress might be more convinced of my so-called creative abilities if I actually set up something to demonstrate it. So, I set up my “media” page elsewhere on this site, with links to video, MP3 files, and some photos. But I still wasn’t satisfied.

So, back to the drawing board, and back to Flickr. I found a couple desktop tools to make uploading much easier (such as jUploadr). I played with the sets and the tags a little, and I decided to start uploading some stuff. Then, almost immediately, I hit the monthly upload limit. Then I hit the limit for the number of “sets” (or galleries) I could create. I finally broke down last week and paid for a pro account, which means I have to do something about it now.

So just today I found a PHP script which I could upload here that would pull the images from my Flickr account so that I could host my gallery here while managing my images elsewhere. And, best of all, the bandwidth is Flickr’s, not mine. (See lumis Gallery.)

Sweet.

About my photography

everyday objectsI enjoy getting close to a subject. I like finding “art” in everyday objects that people walk right by or glance over without giving a second thought. I look for, crave, and savor the unexpected perspective, the new light cast on an old object.

Weathered NailI want texture, I want to see weathered things up close. I want to see decay and capture its inherent beauty, because, somehow, as things age and crack they reveal their true nature. And this is lovely.

It’s not that I applaud chaos: no, I look for the beauty that lies somewhere between pristine intention and sullied decay. I look for unintended beauty awaiting discovery — if one only looks closely enough.

Key and LockI regularly challenge myself to find something worth looking at closely near-at-hand. Thus: shots of key rings, fabric, and paper clips; the lunch-time picnic table, the kid’s playground, my back yard. Found objet-d’art.

Portrait of AJI also like capturing personality through portraiture, but I absolutely prefer portraits that are more candid. I don’t enjoy posed photos, and I try to avoid the subject looking into the camera and smiling. (Though this is difficult with my kids because we have a couple hams who love seeing themselves on the tiny digital screen.)

St. Francis Church in Muskegon, MichiganI like taking pictures of buildings, too, when I find something interesting. Landscapes are not as much my “thing,” but I envy the Ansel Adams of the world who can somehow take the big world and make it small without diminishing the subject’s grandeur or majesty. I come from the other direction though. I take small things and make them big — and possibly reveal a little grace in the process.

My stuff won’t interest most of you. I don’t expect it to, and I won’t be bothered if you go and take a look and say, “Bah! Boring!” (My wife regularly hears people say, “Your husband takes strange pictures.”) My photos don’t necessarily tell a story, and they don’t all feature people or faces. But for all that, there is a story there still. The weathered and torn and beaten stuff all got that way somehow and even though the story isn’t audible or plainly visible, it’s there, if you have the eyes and ears to see and listen. Or just plain make up.

Without further ado…

So, please visit my new photo gallery. Explore. If you want to leave a comment, you can click through to the Flickr page and leave notes to your heart’s content. If you like something, please do leave a comment.

It keeps my lens shiny.

Rich's Photo Gallery

Rich

[tags]ansel-adams, art, art-class, artwork, black-and-white, blogrodent, candid-photography, close-up, coolpix, coolpix-3200, creative, creativity, digital-photography, digital-photos, flickr, foto, fotografia, fotos, found-art, high-school, juploader, landscape, lumis Gallery, macro, macro-photography, muse, nikon, nikon-coolpix, nikon-fa, photo, photography, photos, portraiture, rich-tatum, wordpress, plugins, php, blogging, weblog, introvert, INTP, media[/tags]

One Beautiful Bug: My Dragonfly House-Guest

Photography, Random Miscellany

Dragonfly at NightHappiness is finding beauty in unexpected places.

I try not to post too many things close together, but I was too excited about this to let it slide without posting.

No, I didn’t get a job.

Tonight I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. At first I thought it was a reflection off the rim of my eye-wear. Then I thought, Wait, is that a spider dangling in mid-air? So I looked, and I saw what I at first thought was the hugest arachnid I’d ever seen clutching the wall of my house.

But, no, after I stopped screaming hysterically (at least, in my head), I looked more closely, adjusted my spectacles, and realized I was seeing a beautiful dragonfly.

I gently encouraged the little critter up on my finger and, cupping my hands together, I went to show the winged beast to my wife, before setting it free. She suggested a photo. I readily agreed.

And you get to enjoy the fruits of our now-emancipated find.

Eat as many mosquitoes as you can find, little friend.

(Click the thumbnail above to see a larger version of the image (800×600). If you want a wallpaper-sized version (1024×768), click here.)

[tags]blogrodent, bug, bugs, fly, dragon-fly, close-up, dragonfly, insect, macro, macro-photography, photo, photography[/tags]

The I Dig Jesus Meme: My Response

Blogging, Random Miscellany, Religion

I Dig Jesus!For the second time in my short life as a blogger, I’ve been meme-tagged by an evil blogging compatriot hoping to provoke me into playing a silly blog-tagging game, generating more content, and generally surrendering to mass hysteria.

Okay. I’m in! But only because I’m a sucker for attention. And because, like the “One Book Meme,” this question interests me, and I like it.

By the way, I was tagged by Carl Thomas over at the Revival Blog who, believe it or not, actually got a touch snarky with me in his post. This is a bit like playing touch football, only instead of being touched, or tagged, or merely pushed, you get a wedgie:

Rich — If he completes it, (remember that “imminent” post on Ted Haggard back in November of last year?) it will be in several months and contain thousands of words. Some pro-gay group will surely comment on it and tell how Carlton Pearson is the greatest man since Moses.

:: grin ::

Uh, thanks, Carl. I’ll get on that Ted Haggard post — eventually. And when I do, you’ll be amazed and disappointed simultaneously. Only I can pull off such a feat … and that’s why you read me.

Okay, so here are the rules, according to John Smulo, the originator of the meme:

  • Those tagged will share 5 Things They Dig About Jesus.
  • Those tagged will tag 5 people.
  • Those tagged will leave a link to their meme in the comments section of this post so everyone can keep track of what’s being posted.

With all that out of the way, here goes.

Five Things I Dig About Jesus

  • Jesus digs puns

    While G.K. Chesterton has noted, in Orthodoxy, that we never see Jesus laughing in the Gospels, much has been written on Jesus’ humor.

    Do you realize Jesus himself elevated the “low” art of the pun when he addressed the hypocrisy of Pharisees? In Matthew 23:24, Jesus imagined the Pharisees eating soup and criticized their foolishness, saying, “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

    Not a pun, you say? It’s not apparent in the English translation. It’s not apparent even in the Greek text. But when you consider that Jesus likely spoke in Aramaic, you see the essential irony in the pun: the word for gnat is galma. The word for camel is gamla.

    Or look at Matthew 16:18, where Jesus tells Peter: “[Y]ou are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” The pun is apparent in the Greek where petros is used for Peter and petra is used for Rock, but it’s also apparent when you consider the likely Aramaic term used: kepha is both the proper name and the term for “rock.” (For more, see: The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teachings by Robert H. Stein.)

    Jesus is a merry punster. I like that.

  • Jesus digs children
    Honestly, I didn’t have even the first inkling about this aspect of Jesus until I became a Daddy. Before having children of my own, I thought I loved kids but, really, I just liked the idea of kids, and nice well-behaved ones at that.

    Now that I’m a Dad I realize that nothing pushes your big, red hot-buttons faster than a little 3-foot tyke who defies a 6-foot, 300-pound daddy without an ounce of fear, and nothing melts a dad’s heart more completely than a little 3-foot tyke cuddling up close with a smile and a giggle. Fatherhood, I think, has taught me more about God than all my courses in Bible school and seminary combined. And now I read passages like Matthew 18:2-6, Matthew 19:13-14, Mark 10:15, and Luke 18:17 in a new light.

    It’s not that children are sinless and devoid of sneakiness — as every parent can attest. And I probably don’t fully understand what it means to be like a child in faith. But I do know that my children trust me and love me utterly in a way that I am still struggling to trust and love God. I know I must frustrate him in my rebellion like my own children frustrate me, but I’m so glad that Jesus loves kids, because it’s a promise of my Father’s own love for me.

  • Jesus digs stories
    I love the fact that while Jesus does teach pedagogically, almost all of his teaching involves the use of similes, metaphors, and stories. I don’t know why we don’t sit at the feet of the master teacher more often, but somewhere, somehow, we got off-track and started emulating Paul and his indicative/imperative style of teaching and correction. Not that there’s anything wrong with Paul, but whatever happened to balance? The overwhelming majority of Scripture is narrative. It’s story, poetry and parables.

    We should teach more like Jesus who not only told a lot of stories, but did a lot of his teaching one-on-one.

  • Jesus digs naps
    Hey, anyone who can sleep through a storm like a baby in a cradle on a flimsy boat on a roiling lake while waves break over the bow obviously is either seriously sleep-deprived (which I can identify with) or just takes seriously the afternoon imperative to siesta. (See Mark 4:37-39.) How can this not be cool? Every office worker, every pastor, every field-hand, and every truck driver needs to follow Jesus’ example here: Take a nap!

    And there’s nothing wrong with a comfortable nap, at that. Notice, in this passage, that Jesus was sleeping on a cushion. I don’t imagine many fishing-boats in those days had a lot of cushions on-board.

    Apparently, the Jesus I know and love came prepared to nap.

  • Jesus digs freaks and geeks
    In our antiseptically scrubbed and pathologically clean churches we still look down on folks who hang out with the “bad crowd.” In my own faith-sect, the Assemblies of God, many of our churches have membership bylaws forbidding members from attending places of “ill repute.” That, really, can mean any place another church member thinks is a bad place for you to be. Unfortunately, this can make our faith-walk more about reputation (image) not reality.

    When I worked at the A/G headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, my wife and I once invited a couple who worked with us out for a “date.” We caught dinner. After, the night was still young and we enjoyed each others’ company, so Jennifer and I suggested we go shoot some pool.

    While the husband was cool with it, his wife declined because she worked in the Human Resources department, and she had to be very careful to uphold the standards of the organization. She knew that the leadership would frown on her spending time in a place of “ill repute” where beer was quaffed, smoke inhaled, and unknown sin carried out in the dark corners of the billiards hall.

    But the Jesus I read about had dinner with collections agents. He spoke compassionately with divorcees, prostitutes, and adulteresses. He drank wine. He was accused of gluttony. Jesus hung out with people of ill repute in places of ill repute, and didn’t apologize for it. The men he called to be his disciples were from the working class, and from the reviled class. He hung out with hot-heads and traitors. He loved the meek and the powerless in society.

    If Jerusalem had been a high-school, Jesus probably would not have been at the popular kids’ table in the cafeteria. Unless, of course, he was criticizing their tendency to strain their soup for gnats while swallowing camels.

Meme Genealogy

I’m in the eighth generation of this meme. Each of my ancestors tagged five other people. So, at minimum, there are 48 others blogging about Jesus right now, with potentially hundreds more. Explore the following sites above or go directly to Smulo’s first post to see what others have written.

And now I tag…

  • Phil Gerbyshak – The “Make it Great!” Guy
    As our resident Tony the Tiger, Phil’s an eternal optimist and sure to come up with something encouraging and … uh  … grrreat!
  • Cynthia Ware – The Digital Sanctuary
    Cynthia’s forever blogging about the intersection of Church and technology. I think she should take a break and just tell us what she thinks about Jesus today. Have at it, Cynthia!
  • Jason Clark – Jason Clark
    Jason’s the newest member of the PneumaBlogs list of bloggers, and he seems to be a smart guy. Let’s see what his personal take on Jesus is.
  • John Laukkanen – ahavafriend
    Uncle John, as my son refers to him, isn’t really my uncle. But he is John, and unique. I am sure I will be enlightened by this maverick traveller’s perspective.
  • Christoph Fischer – my cup of coffee
    Christop is a smart and interesting blogger who seems to have fallen off the posting wagon lately. Perhaps this will prompt a little inspiration?

Have fun!

Your comments are welcome, and invited.

[tags]ahavafriend, alan-knox, blogrodent, bryan-riley, carl-thomas, christianity, children, children, christoph-fischer, cynthia-ware, dads, digital-sanctuary, evangelical, fatherhood, freaks, geeks, humor, humor, i-am-healed, ill-repute, jesus, jesus-christ, joel-brueseke, john-laukkanen, john-smulo, kathi-sharpe, love, make-it-great, mark-hadfield, meme, my-cup-of-coffee, nightwatch-blogger, phil-gerbyshak, puns, religion, vanessa[/tags]

Kevin Miller’s Top Ten Tips (a roast video)

Podcast/Media, Random Miscellany, Work

Laughter is the best medicineBack in May of 2006, while in the employ of Christianity Today International, I was asked to do a little something for my boss, Kevin Miller, a CTI vice president and leader of the Resources division.

Kevin’s a great guy, a good friend, and an excellent manager — a true joy to work with. When his 20th anniversary at CTI came due, we wanted to do something to poke a little fun at him while still honoring him for his 20 years of service.

CTI took a huge risk asking me to put anytng together, knowing my style of humor (many waited with bated breath and crossed fingers, dreading the final result, and eagerly looking forward to the entertaining train-wreck it was sure to be). Who’s great idea was this? I’ll never know. According to my logs, I started working on this around June 5. Fifteen days later, and probably 20-40 hours of editing and fiddling later, this video is what came out of it.

I share it here for those of you know know Kevin and want to relive the memory of my forcing him to do the Chicken Dance through the magic of video editing. For those of you who don’t know Kevin, maybe it will spark an idea or two for the next time you need to roast somebody via manipulated video?

I pulled together countless still photos, audio clips, a couple video clips, and combed through it all to find the best way to make Kevin look good and bad all at the same time. A friend, Jennifer Oxford went to Red Apple and shot some footage of the manager giving Kevin a hard time. I shot some footage of Kevin’s son pretending to be a slacker. And Cory Whitehead and I stole Kevin’s PDA for a few moments to get some footage of “Kevin” frantically checking email on his Palm V. The hand model is, of course, Cory.

For any who are curious, yes, Kevin actually was temporarily mistaken for a terrorist due to a silly attempt at irony when boarding a plane. Let this be a lesson to you: avoid being sarcastic, ironic or flippant in any way about terrorism when Homeland Security is nearby. You can read the lessons Kevin learned here: Eleven Stray Words.”

You can download the Windows Media version of the video here, watch it at YouTube here, or just enjoy it, above.

If you want to host the video on your own site, you can use this code here:

Read Kevin’s Book:

Surviving Information Overload, by Kevin A. MillerSurviving Information Overload: The Clear, Practical Guide to Help You Stay on Top of What You Need to Know


Fake websites

Lovingly and hilariously designed by Clay Anderson and Valerie Broucek. Click to see the full-meal deal.
Fake site: PatheticPreachers.com Fake Site: BuildingChurchLeadersMuscles.com
Fake Site: PimpMyChurch.com Fake Site: SurvivingChurchOverload.com

More pics:

Kevin Miller: Kevin bin Laden? Anglican Priesthood, Kevin Miller Laughter is the best medicine Karaoke, anyone? Queer Quotes Knock - Knock

[tags]anniversary, BlogRodent, Christianity-Today, Christianity-Today-International, ChristianityToday.com, Kevin-A-Miller, Kevin-Miller, Leadership-journal, mashup, mashup-video, remix, roast, roast-video, video, windows-media, windows-media-video, prank, fun[/tags]

Ruth Bell Graham, 1920 – 2007

Random Miscellany, Religion

Billy and Ruth GrahamThe light of the Church on Earth is a bit dimmer today, but the chorus in Heaven is that much more joyful.

Statement by the President Regarding the Death of Ruth Bell Graham
Contact: White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 202-456-2580

WASHINGTON, June 14 /Standard Newswire/ — the following is a statement by the President regarding the death of Ruth Bell Graham:

Laura and I are deeply saddened by the death of Ruth Bell Graham, a remarkable woman of faith whose life was defined by her belief in a personal, loving, and gracious God. She was an encouraging friend, accomplished poet, and devoted mother of five and grandmother of 19.

Ruth’s marriage to her husband Billy was a true and loving partnership. As the wife of the world’s most beloved evangelist, she inspired people around the world with her humor, intelligence, elegance, and kindness. Laura and I offer our prayers and condolences to Billy and the Graham family.

More on Ruth Graham Bell

[tags]Anne-Graham-Lotz, Billy-Graham, Billy-Graham-Evangelistic-Association, BlogRodent, christianity, Christianity-Today, ChristianityToday.com, death, evangelical, evangelicalism, Obituary, religion, Ruth-Bell-Graham, Ruth-Graham[/tags]

Involuntary Self-Denial and Relationship Breakdown

Bible and Theology, Random Miscellany, Religion

Why so many problems begin with frustrated desire

FrustrationEvery day, headlines assault us with troubling news. These recent titles from a local news website are just a small sampling:

  • Two Shotgunned to Death [source]
  • Joyriding Gang Member Slain; Crash Injures Family [source]
  • Local Soldier Dies in Afghanistan [source]
  • School Gets Tough on Commencement Outbursts [source]
  • Wife Gets $184 Million in Divorce Ruling [source]

From international to household warfare, roadway to classroom outrage, and mortal to financial loss, such stories reveal our fallen, human propensity to sin.

The cause of these impulsive, sinful outbursts is no secret: When we want what we cannot get, we lash out.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight (James 4:1-3).

Although this passage does not seem especially applicable — after all, not many of us are covetous murderers — it echoes Jesus’ words from the Beatitudes: “You have heard that it was said … ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22, emphasis added). Indeed, both these exhortations address the church, not the headline-generating unbelievers that feel comfortably distant from us.

Frustration Is the Key

But the root problem is the same for us all, believers or not: frustration.

“The source of anger is often unmet expectations or personal rights,” writes Os Hillman in his devotional on anger. “We believe we are entitled to a particular outcome to a situation. When this doesn’t happen, it triggers something in us.” This thwarted desire triggers more than mere squabbles, says Martyn Lloyd-Jones; it can even lead to international war.

But just because frustration “triggers” anger — as a physician’s tap triggers a knee jerk — it does not provoke a hardwired, truly uncontrollable response. Rather, says Hillman, “We all choose to get angry. No one else is to blame for our anger. … Anger only reveals what is inside.”

Such anger does not always express itself in physical confrontations like war. Often it is subtler, masquerading as rationalization and self-righteous criticism. Pastors know well these guises of anger, for the one behind the pulpit is familiar with the disappointment and critique resulting from a congregation’s high expectations. In “Why I Expect Conflict,” Pastor Ben Patterson describes two church members who simultaneously abandoned the congregation for opposite, rational reasons: one wished the pastor were more conservative, the other more liberal.

Simple disagreement is natural in any ministry relationship. But when competing interests cannot be resolved, frustration festers and chaos results. As Patterson explains,

Differences, even clashes, between parties in a church do not in themselves constitute conflict of a destructive kind. They can be signs of vitality. … It is when they defy peaceful resolution and become protracted and entrenched in the life of a church that they become sinful and destructive.

Dragon Droppings

The primary evidence of this sinful self-interest is a restless and inflammatory tongue. Just a few of the evils that the apostle James warns can emanate from an undisciplined tongue include blasphemy, profanity, boasting, flattery, complaining, murmuring, deceit, hypocrisy, and mockery. These myriad sins are comparable to the fiery exhalations of dragons, as Marshall Shelley aptly states in Well Intentioned Dragons:

Dragons are best known for what comes out of their mouths. At times their mouths are flame throwers; other times the heat and smoke are not apparent, but the noxious gas does the damage. Their tongues may be smooth, but they are usually forked.

Fortunately, the antidote to heated tongues — or frustrations — is fairly straightforward, though it may be difficult to swallow.

Rx: Stop Talking

The first prescription is to close our mouths. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry,” James suggests, “for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (1:19-20; see also 1:26 and 3:2). Describing our typical response to maltreatment, Mike Zigarelli offers a solution to undisciplined behavior: “Injustice visited us and we threw objectivity to the wind. We responded instinctively. Quickly. Verbally. Probably improperly. Such a response is a function of the way we’re made. … The first step in responding to unfair treatment is to tighten the reigns on our tongue and initially to retreat.”

Rx: Start Praying

The second mandate is to pray. But not just any kind of praying. It must focus on the necessary and helpful rather than on the hedonistic. “You do not have, because you do not ask God,” James explains. “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures” (4:1-3).

Choosing prayer “will be the turning point,” Zigarelli promises. We should specifically ask God to “reveal the source of that anger,” Os Hillman suggests. “Ask him to heal you of any fears that may be the root of your anger. Ask God to help you take responsibility for your response to difficult situations.”

Often, however, our immediate response to difficulties is not prayer at all. “In many areas of our lives, we simply do not consult God. … He is not opposed as much as merely ignored,” Terry Muck admits in his helpful book Liberating the Leader’s Prayer Life. Muck also echoes James’s counsel on slowness to speak, applying it to speaking to God as well:

At times, our prayer requests go unanswered because they are poorly formed or presumptuous. We do not take time to discover what the true, pure desires of our hearts should be, and thus offer up incomplete, half-hearted requests that God would be a fool to answer.

Rx: Start Submitting

The third medication is to submit. A dose of repentance and humility can aid us in deciding which desires to relinquish, and which to pursue.

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.

Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up (James 4:7-10).

As we submit to God, we also need to submit to others. “We must develop an accountability relationship with someone who can provide grace, understanding, and tough questions,” suggests Jim Burns. And to overcome submission to the devil, we must pull out our “I-mean-business” card, as Rich Miller calls it. For resisting the devil demands serious spiritual warfare.

Rx: Start Doing

These three spiritual prescriptions, however, are useless in theory only. We must also act, as James exhorts us. “Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (1:22).

When we recognize that frustration is the root of anger, we can begin to understand the reason for the troubling headlines in our news. And we can ask God for help to control our desires, manage our tongues, and keep us out of the news!

Rich

(Your comments and thoughts are welcome!)

—

Originally published at CTLibrary on June 13, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today International.
Used with permission.

(Note: Most of the articles linked above require paid membership at CTLibrary.com to view, but if you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading Christianity Today, Leadership, Books & Culture, or Christian History & Biography, it may well be worth it. Also, though I was once employed by Christianity Today, I do not personally benefit from any transactions through these sites.)

[tags]accountability, anger, article, Beatitudes, behavior, behaviour, Ben-Patterson, bible, blasphemy, blogrodent, boasting, Christ, christianity, christianity-today, Christianity-Today-Library, church, church-split, complaining, covet, criticism, ctlibrary, deceit, desires, evil, expectations, faith, family, fight, fighting, flattery, frustrated-desire, grace, hatred, hedonism, hypocrisy, James-1, James-4, jealousy, Jim-Burns, kill, leadership, listening, loss, Marshall-Shelley, Martyn-Lloyd-Jones, Matthew-5, Mike-Zigarelli, mockery, murder, murmuring, original-sin, Os-Hillman, outrage, pain, pastors, patience, personal-rights, prayer, profanity, published battle, quarrelling, relationships, religion, repentance, self-abnegation, self-centeredness, self-denial, self-interests, selfishness, sin, Source-of-Anger, spiritual-warfare, submission, temptation, Terry-Muck, the-tongue, theology, war, warfare, Well-Intentioned-Dragons[/tags]

Podcast: AJ’s First Last Day – Graduating Kindergarten

Family, Kids, Podcast/Media, Random Miscellany

AJ's First Last DayLast week saw a milestone pass in our house: AJ enjoyed his very first last day of his very first year of schooling. He has now officially “graduated” kindergarten.

We are very proud.

[Blah, blah, blah — skip Rich’s philosophizing,
and go straight to the podcast!]

Never having parented before, and having no memories of Kindergarten myself (I never went, scofflaw that I am), I didn’t realize there was actually liturgy for Kindergarten graduation. Maybe this is something we only do here in the Midwest. Or maybe it happens all over the world and I’ve been clueless for 39 years. Probably the latter.

I think milestones are important to celebrate — even if there’s no real par-tay and spiked beverages involved. I mean, we really don’t do these things well in America and, growing up, my family did even worse. But despite not having enjoyed a bar-mitzvah myself, or First Communion, or even Prom, I sense that making a Big Deal out of seemingly little events can be an important marker for children growing up. After all, aside from getting the keys to Dad’s car, getting a license that says you’re eligible to get legally sauced, or graduating college, there really aren’t many things in American society that really tell a child, “Hey, you’re growing up. Time to start acting like it.”

I used to think High-School graduation served that kind of function, but having worked with college students for a few years as a Chi Alpha campus pastor, I now realize that college kids are really just High School kids with more expensive text books and a lot more license to misbehave. Why? I think one reason is that upon graduating high school, society places no expectations on graduates to actually grow up. That crisis really seems to occur only on the day a boy or girl receives their BA.

But, as usual, I digress

AJ's First Last DayAJ’s graduation ceremony was short, sweet, and to-the-point. The only real delaying element was a performance by the kindergartners in a typically off-key rendition of a few songs I can’t even recall the tunes to any more. I’m not sure I could identify the melody even during the performance, actually. But that’s beside the point. It was a chance for AJ and his peers to do something in front of an assembled audience that he learned in school. He’d never done that before. It was a first.

AJ's First Last DayUnfortunately, AJ didn’t even notice. Wherever I went with my camera, his eyes followed me, much like my grandmother’s eyes followed me in that creepy portrait that used to hang up on the wall of the mobile home I grew up in. You know the kind. You could press yourself flat against the very wall that painting hangs on and, still, you could feel those flat gray eyes boring into your skull. And if you dared look … yep. Still staring.

AJ's First Last DayI went stage-left. There’s AJ giving me a thumb’s up. I go stage right. There’s AJ looking over his shoulder to mug for the camera. I go to the far back wall. AJ’s still making faces for me. It cracked me up. Everybody’s all into the performance and watching the teacher, but AJ could care less. He wants to be in pictures, and he wants his Dad to give him a thumbs up to let him know the picture came out great. For every shot.

AJ's First Last DayAfterward, we went to Cracker Barrel to celebrate (one of AJ’s favorite haunts — because of the checkerboards and toys in the lobby), and I announced I’d interview him again later that day. He got excited. And before bed-time, he was sure to remind me, “Dad, after you put Ellie to bed, how about I stay down here and you can interview me again with your little computer?”

So, for your listening pleasure, I present to you my interview with Alexander James Tatum, Kindergarten graduate extraordinaire. And, as a special one-time only bonus, I’m also throwing in a short little interview with Elisabeth Rose as well. And just in case you missed the first interview, upon AJ’s first day in class, be sure to check it out.

Interview with AJ: (18:37) [download]

[audio:https://tatumweb.com/blog/wp-content/mp3/podcast-aj-kindergarten-end.mp3]

Interview with Ellie: (5:07) [download]

[audio:https://tatumweb.com/blog/wp-content/mp3/podcast-ellie-interview.mp3]

Man, they grow up fast.

Rich

Music Credits:

Excellent music samples by James Hersch. Check out his site, listen to his excellent music, book him for engagements, and buy his music. Really, he’s that good!

[tags]back-to-school, children, daddyblog, elementary-school, fatherhood, first-day, first-day-in-school, interview, James-Hersch, kids, kindergarten, mp3, podcast, school, secondary-education, last-day, last-day-of-school, AJ, Ellie[/tags]

Will also present for food: Internet Ministry Conference

Blogging, Random Miscellany, Religion

Internet Ministry ConferenceIt’s official: I’m presenting at the 2008 Internet Ministry Conference hosted by GospelCom.

Gospel Communications has teamed up with the Internet Evangelism Coalition and now the two conferences, GospelCon and the Internet Evangelism Conference, have been merged. The conference serves two dual purposes: one is to train GospelCom’s ministry partners how to use technology to do their ministry, whether it’s finding a useable open source CMS, using design to communicate effectively, or writing better post titles. The second purpose is to train believers to do evangelism and ministry more effectively whether it’s learning how to write your personal testimony more effectively, how to share your faith online, or how to use social networking tools wisely.

I’m delighted to be invited to present this year. I’d like to think it’s because I’m a superstar blogger and made a name for myself here at BlogRodent, but that’s not the case. The invitation came about by divine appointment.

As I’ve whined about frequently enough, I’m currently freelancing and doing free-agent consulting stuff. (In other words, I’m unemployed.) So, in the course of talking with potential employers, I contacted GospelCom for an open position they had for an online training developer position. 160+ resumés later, I was invited to be one of four final candidates to come visit the GospelCom headquarters in Muskegon, Michigan, to give a 15-minute presentation in order to demonstrate my “mad training skillz.” (Note the quotes, please. :-) )

If it tells you anything, I wasn’t hired. Happy Dance! On the plus side, though, the hiring manager, Brian Melles, said mine was the only presentation of the four that actually got him excited. He was so excited, in fact, that he extended an immediate (though tentative) offer to expand the presentation and to deliver it at this years’ Internet Ministry conference.

Wahoo!

So, now it’s official. I’m on the speakers’ page, and I’ve got two presentation tracks lined up.

The Blogging ChurchI’d tell you more about the content of my main presentation, but I’m still lining up permissions for the content to use. I’ll give a hint, though: I’ll be using a story from Brian Bailey‘s excellent book, The Blogging Church, to illustrate my theme.

Registration is open. The conference currently costs $300 to attend for two days, or $450 for the full enchilada (early-bird registration).

Will I see you there?

Here’s my entry on the speakers’ page.

Rich Tatum has been working with Internet and Web technology for over 15 years. While the Web was still young and populated by gophers and telnetters, he founded an Internet users group, served as the first webmaster for the Assemblies of God headquarters, and later served as webmaster, Internet operations manager, and online media managing editor for Christianity Today International. He currently freelances, writes Pentecostal commentary as the BlogRodent, and parents two great kids as either “Daddy” or “Mr. Pretzel-Man” with his lovely bride in an obscure Chicago suburb.

Sessions:

  • Influenza Blogging: Become a viral blogger by getting influential and relational
  • Integrity on the Internet

I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this in the future.

Rich

[tags]Blog-Strategy, Blogging, BlogRodent, Brian-Bailey, Brian-Melles, Christian-Conference, Christianity, Conference, Faith, GodBlogging, Gospel-Communications, GospelCom, Gospelcon, Influenza, Influenza-Blogging, Integrity, Integrity-on-the-Internet, Internet-Evangelism-Coalition, Internet-Evangelism-Conference, Internet-Ministry, Internet-Ministry-Conference, Ministry-Online, Online-Evangelism, Online-Ministry, Presentation, Relationships, Religion, Rich-Tatum, The-Blogging-Church, viral-blogging[/tags]

Sexual Conversion: Gender dysphoria, the UMC and the transgendered minister

Assembly of God, Bible and Theology, Pentecostal, Rage and Rants, Religion

Gender Dysphoria I recently wrote about the relatively unremarked issue of gender dysphoria and believers opting for gender reassignment. I wrote that I had communicated with Assemblies of God leadership about this issue some years ago, and that I believed a position paper is in order — now, not at some later date when it becomes a “real” issue.

And it has begun. I’d say the issue is now real.

While it hasn’t surfaced within the Assemblies of God yet, I suspect it will within the next few years. Meanwhile, The Church Report Online released a special report in its May 2007 issue, titled: “Identity Crisis: A Transgender Minister Reappointed to Lead Church.” MinistryToday magazine’s weblog quickly picked up on the story. And the story threatens to go national now that a CBS affiliate has featured the item (includes video).

On May 25, at a previously unheralded United Methodist Church in Baltimore, the Reverend Ann Gordon announced her gender reassignment and consequent name change to the Reverend Drew Phoenix. And while the UMC has rules of discipline regarding “sexually active gay clergy,” there’s nothing on the books about transgendered clergy. So, for now, for the next year at least, Phoenix remains pastor.

(It is no coincidence that the timing of the announcement syncs with Pentecost Sunday, when we celebrate the founding of the Church and the empowerment of the Spirit for ministry.)

Meanwhile his more clear-headed colleagues from the Baltimore-Washington Conference are calling for a review of the decision. Good luck with that. And a conservative UMC group, UMAction, is petitioning the UMC General Conference to come up with a position paper. Good luck with that, too.

As Ann Gordon/Drew Phoenix said, “I want to be the face for an issue.” Phoenix will get his wish. And the issue is going to steam-roll the United Methodist church. If anybody thought that the Gay and Lesbian clerical issues were difficult to resolve (and largely remain unresolved), wait’ll this hits the debate floor.

Here, for your consideration, are the comments I posted to the Ministry Today blog, which asked: “How should the Methodist Church respond to this situation? What would you say?”

Yikes.

I’ve blogged about this nascent issue on my own weblog. Churches simply aren’t prepared for this. And the mainline churches who gave up the struggle on ordaining homosexual ministers will probably have to roll over on the issue if they’re going to be consistent in their rejection of orthodox Biblical values.

While the Bible does not directly speak to sexual dysphoria or sexual identity issues, I believe there is a Biblical foundation for rejecting the claims of the transgendered proponents.

The creation account clearly depicts the inception of two sexes: male and female — not some admixture of the two. And as God created man in his image, clearly expressed gender identity is very likely a part of that imago dei. Any confusion regarding one’s innate gender would, therefore, be a result of the Fall, sin, and its many effects. To surrender to the dysphoria and adopt a new sexual identity does not clarify the chaos, rather, it cements it.

The Apostle Paul makes it clear that our identity in Christ is not tied to our “meat space” identity. He encouraged the Corinthian believers not to waste their energy in changing their social or psychological circumstances:

“Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches. … Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him.” (See 1 Corinthians 7)

I’m sympathetic to circumstances where gender dysphoria arise from true hermaphroditism (having both male and female sexual characteristics) or where sexual genitalia are opposite one’s genetic endowments. In such circumstances, I believe acting out a sexuality or gender that is at odds with one’s innate physical genitalia creates a self-contradictory gender image — and this does violence to the “image of God” within.

Our denominations will have to wake up to this issue, like it or not. I’ve called for my own Fellowship to respond to this — years ago, and it hasn’t happened yet. But the trend is inexorable and we must respond now.

Regards,
Rich

Notes from around the Blogosphere and Web

  • The Albert Mohler Radio Program: “Gender Identity Disorder In The Pulpit” (with MP3)
    “When the former Rev. Ann Gordon returned to her congregation at St. John’s United Methodist Church as Rev. Drew Phoenix, the regional leadership of the United Methodist Church was faced with something of a dilemma. Their decision to reappoint Gordon/Phoenix has ignited a firestorm of controversy and we’re joined by Mark Tooley, of The Institute on Religion and Democracy, to analyze the issues involved in the case.”
  • Teflon at MoltenThought says, “We are created with the proper gender, and those afflictions of body, mind, and soul not self-inflicted do not excuse us from proper behavior. … Is it not more likely that the creature is twisted and the Creator straight and true?”
  • The Baltimore Sun: “Transgender minister is reappointed”
    “In explaining yesterday’s decision to the conference, [Bishop John] Schol said he looked at the Book of Discipline, talked with fellow bishops and other experts and ‘learned that there is nothing in our discipline that speaks to transgendered persons, learned that there is nothing in our policies or guidelines that speaks to transgendered persons.’ According to the Book of Discipline, to be a pastor, ‘the person has to be of good character, and faithful to the church and effective in ministry,’ Schol said in an interview. Phoenix is all of those things, he said.”
  • UMC.org: “Pastor speaks of transgender experience“
    “Phoenix believes his transition is making him “even more effective” as a pastor and said his greatest concern “is that the congregation continues to grow and thrive.””
  • Darrell at Dow Blog in “Post-Modern Gender Confusion” writes: “Is there any doubt that we are living in an era of sexual and gender confusion? In our post-modern mind, we ourselves determine what it means to be man and woman, to be human. The Author of creation is cast aside as the goddess science is enthroned and worshipped, even in the ‘church.'”
  • MBT at Right Pundits in “Transgender Methodist Minister Is Reappointed” comments: “I wonder if a pastor with a conservative bent would even get ordained anymore in the Methodist church, let alone become Bishop?”
  • And more…

[tags]1-Corinthians, Albert-Mohler, Ann-Gordon, Assemblies-of-God, Assembly-of-God, Baltimore, Baltimore-Sun, Baltimore-Washington-Conference, Biblical-values, Bishop-John-Schol, Bishop-Schol, BlogRodent, body-image, Book-of-Discipline, charismatic, Church, Church-Report, clergy, controversy, creation, deviance, DNA, Drew-Phoenix, dysfunction, dysphoria, ethics, female, Gay, gay-clergy, gay-minister, gender, Gender-Confusion, gender-dysphoria, gender-identity, Gender-Identity-Disorder, gender-reassignment, General-Conference, genitalia, GLBT, hermaphrodite, hermaphroditism, identity, Identity-Crisis, identity-in-Christ, imago-dei, John-Schol, Lesbian, mainline-church, male, male-and-female, Mark-Tooley, Maryland, Methodist, minister, ministry, MinistryToday, Pentecost, Pentecostal, perversion, Phoenix, position-paper, Protestant, psychology, Reconciling-Ministries-Network, Religion, Reverend-Phoenix, sex, sexual-identity, sexuality, sin, The-Church-Report, The-Fall, The-Institute-on-Religion-and-Democracy, theology, Transgender, transgendered-clergy, UMAction, UMC, United-Methodist, United-Methodist-Church[/tags]

Ranking the Divine: The Holy Spirit and Search trends

Assembly of God, Pentecostal, Random Miscellany, Religion

Google Trend Search: God, Jesus, Holy Spirit
I’ve often heard it said within Pentecostal circles that the Holy Spirit gets little recognition — even within our own Pentecostal and Charismatic circles. Of course, there’s some theological justification for this: According to Jesus’ promise in John 14:26, one of the Holy Spirit’s primary roles in the believer’s life is to direct our attention to Jesus:

“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

As I was checking out a few of my unread feed subscriptions tonight, I came across a mention of the Google Trends service. This tool has been in service for quite some time, but since I was reminded of it, I thought I’d try a few comparisons out. The tool essentially shows you the trend-line for searches for the keywords you’re interested in. It doesn’t show you how many times the keyword shows up on Web pages, it shows you what the searchers on Google are looking for, over time.

The tool allows you to compare search terms on the same graph. So I plugged in “God, Jesus, Holy Spirit” to see what happened.

I was stunned.

You can see the graph under the image button in this post, or you can click through to do the search yourself.

Whatever happened to the Holy Spirit? Why are there so few people looking for information about the third member of the Godhead? Is he so uninteresting that nothing is being said, much less generating interest? It was God’s Spirit that moved on the face of the Earth to form it. It is by God’s Spirit that he works and moves in the world we see and live in. It is God’s Spirit that formed the Church. It is God’s Spirit that clothes us with power to witness and transform the world.

Why so little interest?

But, I thought, Google just shows us what people are searching for. What about references to God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit in actual pages?

Okay, I thought, That’s probably consistent with the fact that the majority of web pages out there are written by non-believers and are probably commercial in nature. Maybe the blogosphere would have a different result-set? After all, Spirit-filled believers should be truly motivated to use this technology to communicate the Gospel, and surely they’ll have more thoughtfulness about the Holy Spirit?

So, I re-ran the search queries through the Google Blog Search tool:

As you can see, similar results, though Jesus fares a little less-well in the blogosphere compared to God. But, still, the Holy Spirit is getting short-shrift.

So, finally, I thought, let’s see how the PneumaBloggers fare. We’re Spirit-filled. We even identify ourselves as Pentecostal, Charismatic, or some blend of the two. Without a doubt, we’ll knock it outta the park when it comes to thinking and writing about the Holy Spirit. So I went to the PneumaSearch tool to run some queries against the PneumaBloggers in my list:

As fellow PneumaBlogger Dan Edelen recently noted:

[T]he mark of the Church must always be the Holy Spirit in us. Everything else can be copied by other religions. But they do not have the Holy Spirit. He’s the promise. He’s the seal. He’s the power!

Amen!

Rich

PS: I didn’t know where the results would lead when I started my little trend analysis, and boy am I glad my fellow PneumaBloggers helped prove my assumptions true!

[tags]Assemblies-of-God, Assembly-of-God, Blog-Search, Charismatic, Christianity, Church, Counselor, God, Google-Blog-Search, Google-Trends, Holy-Ghost, Holy-Spirit, Jesus, John-14, Paraclete, Pentecostal, Pentecostalism, Pneuma, pneumatology, PneumaBloggers, PneumaBlogs, Protestant, Religion, Search-Results, Spirit, Spirit-Filled, The-Church, Trend-Analysis, Trends[/tags]

Will Social Network for Food

Blogging, Random Miscellany, Work

As most of you who regularly visit know, back in November of 2006 I was laid-off from CTI. It wasn’t anything nefarious or antagonistic — CTI always has been and continues to be very good to me, still tossing occasional freelance work and article assignments my way. (Hopefully because of my skill, not out of mercy. Though mercy is good, too, and welcome!) When my project’s funding ran dry and I was out on the streets (well, more like in my skivvies, lounging around the house, generally making a nuisance of myself) I immediately signed up for a paid account at LinkedIN. I was sold on what it promised for professional networking and job searching opportunities.

Not yet disappointed

LinkedIN has not disappointed me. That isn’t to say it’s actually delivered on its promises. Rather, I’ve found that its usefulness is greater than just for the immediate emergency of landing a job.

No. I haven’t landed a job yet, but here’s what I have done. After filling out my complete work history on LI, I relieved myself of the burden of having to create a four-page resumé, instead I was able to focus on a more high-level “advertisement” of my skills and capabilities, leaving the heavy-lifting of the detailed former-job minutia to LinkedIN. Now, when I want to send a candidate package to somebody, I send them my PDF resumé along with links to my full professional history at LinkedIN, along with some references I’ve picked up along the way.

Hire Rich Tatum!
Rich Tatum's ResumeEvery potential employer has told me they were impressed with my resumé — and not a single interview has had to probe the nitty-gritty details of my previous job experience, because it’s all laid out in black and white over at LinkedIN, with plenty of details to back it up.

Transparency and Accountability

What LinkedIN provides me with potential employers is transparency, accountability, and authenticity. Yes, any yahoo can invent a work history. But when you’ve published it online and placed it in a network where a single click of a button can easily find current employees working for that old company who might be willing to verify details, it’s harder to be sneaky and deceitful. Plus, it helps if your personal network of professional contacts includes former employers and managers named in the work history —which is the case with me. So, the normal paranoia and suspicion that can sour a job interview has been delightfully lacking. I think my online information-packet strategy has helped with that, and LinkedIN has been a valuable part of the experience.

Socially acceptable end-runs

Another benefit to using LinkedIN has been the ability to contact employees within a target company to inquire about corporate culture and the work environment. I did this when I went to interview at the McDonald’s corporation, and made a connection with a fellow believer who works there, and we enjoyed several nice email exchanges. Since interviewing at Awana, I’ve added a couple more contacts to my network. One LinkedIN contact actually led to a job offer, which I had to turn down.

And contacting a Vice President at Zondervan through LinkedIN led to a face-to-face job interview last week.

Now, again, I haven’t found a job. So, in once sense, LinkedIN hasn’t helped at all. But I’m not worried. It certainly hasn’t hurt, and while it may be hard to measure its benefit, I do think it’s helped.

Are you lookin’ at me?

Now, finally, LinkedIN has added a new feature (in beta) that helps me actually see how hard my profile is working (or not working) for me. While I can’t get traffic or stats info from my profile’s views and hits, I can finally see how much activity my profile’s seen over the last couple of weeks, and I can even get a sense of who’s looking at me.

Enter the “Who’s viewed my profile?” feature, recently announced on the LinkedIN blog, “Guess who’s viewed your profile?“

Now I can finally get an idea of what visibility my profile has for people who may be looking for new hires. Here’s what my profile views panel looked like tonight:

LinkedIN: Who's viewed my profile?

Some of these folks, like Awana and MagnetStreet, I definitely know who they are. Some of the others are clearly recruiters trolling for job candidates and Rolodex entries. But I wish I knew who was looking at my profile from the media production, broadcast industry, and religious institutions. Unfortunately, to protect visitor’s privacy, I cannot.

Maybe LinkedIN will allow users to change their privacy settings so they can optionally leave footprints behind, as well.

Close

Well, that’s enough about LinkedIN. Give it a whirl. For what it’s worth, I’m also trying out a combination system that promises to offer some of LinkedIN’s functionality, it’s a mash-up of FaceBook and job-search boards called Jobster. Something else worth trying out.

If you’re interested, check out my Jobster profile, or my FaceBook profile. And feel free to link with me on any of the social networks I belong to (ProfileFly).

Regards,

Rich
[tags]Awana-Clubs-International, BlogRodent, Christianity-Today-International, FaceBook, Jobster, LinkedIN, LinkedIN-blog, MagnetStreet, McDonald’s-Corporation, ProfileFly, Rich-Tatum, Zondervan, employment, freelance, friends, hire-me, job-applications, job-description, job-interview, job-interviews, job-networking, job-skills, networking, profile, profiles, resume, social-networking, social-networks, unemployment, web-2.0[/tags]

Shameless Self-Promotion: Blogger’s Choice Awards

Blogging, Random Miscellany

My site was nominated for Best Religion Blog!

Okay, I’ll fess up. I am a shameless self-promoter. Yes, I blog for the writing and for you, my Gentle Readers, but it’s also nice to get feedback and see real-world data that makes the feedback … um … exciting.

So, some time back I nominated my own site, yes this site right here, in the “Religion” category at the Blogger’s Choice Awards (I waited till now to mention it because Alexa, which generates the thumbnails for the contest, kept pulling in a screenshot for my site that was showing a brain-dead URL.) I am sure this self-nomination is a mark of my own immaturity. And I’m okay with that — while also recognizing there’s probably something there worth analyzing … someday.

Do I think I have a lollipop’s chance in kindergarten of actually winning? No. But it’d be fun to see how many of you pop on over there to vote. And then nominate yourselves. Get yourself in the list, come back and comment here, and I’ll vote for you, too!

Other GodBloggers I know are far better than I am. They’re more experienced, better-educated, better-read, and generally better looking. Probably nicer-smelling, too, with actual hair.

I think bloggers like the winningly witty Julie R. Neidlinger, the irascibly theological Dan Edelen, the diabolically enthusiastic Phil Gerbyshak (though not a Religion blogger per-se), the omnisciently observant Cynthia Ware, the atomically sharp Peter Smythe, the pastorally pensive Mark Lauterbach, the scintillatingly lucid Rob Wilkerson, and the pseudonymously erudite Oengus Moonbones are all far better religion bloggers one and all. (Sorry if I didn’t name you, I had to end the purple prose madness somewhere!)

But, hey, a blogger can dream, right? (“They like me! They really like me!”)

So, feel free to vote!

Rich

[tags]award, Bloggers-Choice-Awards, BlogRodent, Christianity, Cynthia-Ware, Dan-Edelen, Evangelical, GodBlog, GodBlogger, Julie-R-Neidlinger, Julie-Neidlinger, Mark-Lauterbach, Oengus-Moonbones, Pentecostal, Peter-Smythe, Phil-Gerbyshak, religion, Rob-Wilkerson, self-nomination[/tags]

Hollywood: The modern Areopagus

Bible and Theology, Rage and Rants, Religion

Spider-Man 3: Bad SpideyRecently, I posted my Spider-Man Bible Study / Discussion Guide. Simultaneously, I dropped a few comments on some blogs that referenced a different Spider-Man Bible Study produced by Fuller Theological Seminary’s professor Craig Detweiler.

Some GodBloggers have been critical of the whole “movie-based Bible study” enterprise. Not surprising, really: using Hollywood movies to teach Biblical truth is a little like using dance to teach worship, or wine to serve Communion. There may be a place for it, but it’s going to generate controversy somewhere.

I’ve been asked before to justify how I could write a Bible study with a movie as its context. After all, if I’m writing a Bible study, how can I presume to use a movie to develop themes? And if I’m so big on biblical theology, hermeneutics, exegesis, and expository preaching, then why would I water down the message of the Bible or jeopardize the faith of weaker brothers and sisters by endorsing a movie? After all, this is Hollywood we’re talking about and nothing good comes from there. Right?

So, I will clarify: any Bible study or discussion guide I write that uses a movie to illuminate and illustrate biblical themes is not an endorsement of that film.

The Debate

So, when Andy at Heart for the Lost posted a blog critical of Detweiler’s Spider-Man study, I offered up my own version and asked for commentary. (To be fair, Andy was re-posting an item from A Little Leaven.)

Instead of actually reading the study (or my study, at least) it seems Andy’s audience is ready to reject the idea outright, for the usual notions of avoiding “fellowship” with “the world.” But, in my view, writing a critical Bible study using a film as its thematic base is not about being unholy or about sullying the Word. It’s about reaching a culture steeped in godless ideology, and subversively redeeming secular entertainment for evangelistic and edifying purposes.

One commenter, Leonard, asked:

How can you feel right about joining God’s Word to us with such an anti-Christian gnostic film?

I feel like Leonard hasn’t actually read my Matrix study before judging it, or possibly even the Spider-Man study. I suppose, though, if Leonard is morally opposed to mixing film and theology in any way, he might be concerned that reading my study would be a sin, that it might jeopardize his eternal future. Its hard to say. But it’s clear he believes I’m engaging in a sinful enterprise.

My position and answer to this question follows. But first a word from John Calvin:

“From this passage we may infer that those persons are superstitious who do not venture to borrow anything from heathen authors. All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God. Besides, all things are of God; and, therefore, why should it not be lawful to dedicate to his glory everything that can properly be employed for such a purpose?”

 —John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Trans. by William Pringle (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library). [Calvin makes this statement in commentary on Titus 1:12. — Rich]

There is no truth that is not ultimately God’s truth.

And there is no man perfect and without a hint of sin or untruth in us. If it is acceptable for a rank and vile sinner like Leonard or me to teach the perfect Word of God, and if it was appropriate for the apostle Paul to quote pagan philosophers to teach God’s truth (see sidebar), and if it was appropriate for apostle Paul to stand in a pagan worship center in Athens and use their heathen altar to teach God’s truth, then I don’t see how using a story written by pagans to also teach God’s truth is a sin.

Paul’s nod toward pagan truth:

  • 1 Corinthians 15:33:
    “Bad company corrupts good morals.” (Greek playwright Menander, from a comedy, Thais)
  • Acts 17:28:
    “in him we live, move, and have our being” (Sixth century Cretan poet Epimenides)
  • Acts 17:28:
    “We are his offspring” (3rd century Cilician Stoic philosopher Aratus, from Phaenomena)
  • Titus 1:12-13:
    “Even one of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’ This testimony is true.” (Sixth century Cretan poet Epimenides)
  • 1 Corinthians 5:1:
    “There is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans.” (Sadly, pagans sometimes have better morals than churchgoers do.)

More interesting sources of truth:

  • Jude 1:9, Jude 1:14-15:
    Jude cites from the Pseudepigrapha (the Assumption of Moses and 1 Enoch 1:9)
  • Numbers 22, Numbers 23, Numbers 24:
    Pagan prophet Balaam used by God to prophesy the truth
  • Numbers 22:28:
    A dumb animal speaks the truth: “Then the LORD opened the donkey’s mouth, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?”

I suppose my critics might be of the mindset such that when they preach or teach they only use quotes from the Bible, they only use illustrations from the Bible, they only use the text of the Bible in their presentations, and they only ever refer to events in the Bible to make points. If that is one’s philosophy, it would be difficult to say anything other than to simply quote a Bible text and sit down because otherwise we’d be adding to the Scripture and invariably marrying God’s holy Word with sinful ideologies.

“But there’s sin in them flicks!”

Interestingly, though, one major plank of my critics is that secular films portray blasphemers, adulterers, and rank sinners. But I am painfully aware that for all its faults, the heathen Hollywood elite end up painting a more accurate picture of life than the lily-pure world of Christian movies and books where nobody cusses, chews or dates the girls who do. The Christian entertainment industry with few exceptions simply doesn’t reflect the mud, grit, and sin-laden pain of stories from the Bible itself where men rape women, soldiers raze villages, adulterers murder husbands, men sleep with their father’s wives, and friends betray the Messiah.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the sin recounted in my R-Rated Bible it’s this: Sin and error don’t have to be applauded or endorsed to be useful for edification and instruction. Life’s most instructive moments are often found in the errata.

And while Hollywood is not good at showing us the path to purity and perfection, it excels at showing us the myriad ways fallen men fail. What Hollywood glamorizes in film and New York immortalizes in print can be redeemed with the light of the Word. If we would but pay attention.

What are they thinking about?

You see, if you’re going teach others what God wants us to know about how to love him, serve him, worship him and live holy lives, we should spend some time connecting those sacred truths with what people are actually thinking about. Sometimes they’re reflecting on tragedies like the recent massacre at Virginia Tech. Should we also not refer to that event because it was planned, perpetrated, and promoted by a media-savvy godless murderer? Sometimes folks are pondering the most recent Spider-Man or Matrix movie, the latest Ridley Pearson novel, or the latest New Yorker cartoon. If my critics were consistent, we should never mention those things except to denounce them because every word and deed therein are damnable lies.

Perhaps, in my critics world, we should simply pile those things up and toss a match.

Credibility begone! Hello folly…

But you know what happens when we simply denounce everything that isn’t “churchy” and fail to engage? The people listening to us snicker. Because they’ve seen the movies, read the books, and enjoyed the cartoons. And they know that while there are significant problems with them, not every word is a lie. When we superstitiously presume otherwise, we not only lose credibility, we make ourselves look foolish.

Only foolish Christians think they have the only truth. Only foolish Christians think everybody else is ignorant of even the slightest glimmering of light. Only foolish Christians would be so blind.

Please note, I’m not saying Leonard or my critics are foolish. I do think they’re sensitive to the perils of encouraging believers to consume what Hollywood produces uncritically. I commend Leonard and his friends for their care and concern for the mental and spiritual health of believers. Because, really, there is danger in consuming what Hollywood produces uncritically. But these films already shape how people think. It’s up to us to redirect those thoughts, to train people to think critically about the claims made in these films, and ultimately to help them reject the message.

Stop hanging out with sinners!

Leonard continued:

Maybe it is time we remember that as the Body of Christ, we don’t join ourselves to the world. We are in it, not of it. We do not fellowship with the world. Our only real relationship with the world should be one of ministry.

Au contraire, mon frere! Paul encouraged us to disfellowship ourselves from believers who are charlatans. He did not discourage fellowship with pagans, rather, see 1 Corinthians 5.

I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people — not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.

If we ever hope to have anything relevant to say to pagans and seekers, if we hope to do the ministry you speak of, we need to not only know what sinners are thinking about, we need to enter their thought-space and know what we’re talking about

We, like Paul, should spend some time in the Areopagus of this world pointing at the altars to the unknown gods, saying, “Hey! Look! This thing you built in ignorance actually points to God. Look at it this way with me for a moment.…”

Trivial persuasion

After a few more words, Leonard concludes:

Maybe instead of trying to link the Bible with such things as the matrix movies, we should tell the Body of Christ that they should steer clear of such things and run to God. Trivializing God’s Word for the sake of itching ears is wrong.

I can only assume Leonard hasn’t read my studies, else I don’t know why he’s saying I’m trivializing the Word of God. I don’t believe I am. Otherwise, please point out how, exactly, I am trivializing the Word? Because, frankly, that sounds rather insulting. But perhaps I am misunderstanding Leonard.

I invite you, my faithful readers, to set me straight.

Teaching the Word of God is an awesome and frightful task. (In one sense, the mere act of attempting to deliver the message trivializes it immediately. How can you or I or any sinful man or woman hope to adequately explain an convey all the truth contained in even one verse of the divinely inspired Word?

We cannot. Our very presumption to attempt it is trivializing in itself. Further, by our very sinfulness we soil the Word any time we lay hands on it or attempt to interpret it.

But that cannot be our concern because we have been given the task of not only studying the Word, but teaching it, conveying it, preaching it, and delivering it. That is not only our honor, but it is our duty. It’s our mandate.

So let us leave aside these concerns about somehow gutting the Scriptures by presuming to highlight was is good and what is not good about a film in a discussion guide. I suspect God has the power to preserve his Word and I won’t be single-handedly tearing it down in my lifetime.

In reality, the greater danger is not to the Word itself, but to the films we discuss. My hope is that the moral and philosophical framework behind these secular fables will be redeemed, not that God’s Word will somehow be destroyed.

[tags]blogrodent, spider-man, spider-man-3, spider-man-3-bible-study, spider-man-bible-study, spider-man-discussion-guide, spiderman, spiderman3, bible, bible-study, bible-study, biblical-theology, biblical-truth, 1-corinthians-15:33, 1-corinthians-5, 1-corinthians-5:1, 1-enoch-1:9, a-little-leaven, acts, acts-17:28, aratus, areopagus, assumption-of-moses, balaam, belief, christ, christian, christian-classics-ethereal-library, christianity, church, corinthians, craig-detweiler, discuss, devotional, discussion-guide, epimenides, evangelical, evangelism, evil, exegesis, expository-preaching, faith, film, film-and-theology, fuller-theological-seminary, god’s-word, god’s-word, group-study, heart-for-the-lost, heathen, hermeneutics, hollywood, homiletics, ideology, john-calvin, jude, jude-1:14-15, jude-1:9, menander, ministry, movie-based-bible-study, movies, new-yorker, numbers, numbers-22, numbers-22:28, numbers-23, numbers-24, paganism, pentecostal, philosophy, preaching, pseudepigrapha, religion, ridley-pearson, scripture, sin, small-group, spidey, sunday-school, teaching, the-matrix, theology, theology-and-film, titus, titus-1:12, titus-1:12-13, tragedy, venom, virginia-tech, word-of-god, worldview[/tags]

Blog Stats: Get your info-jones on with weblog traffic metrics

Blogging, Links, Random Miscellany

Table of Contents

If you’re like me, you want to know whether anyone’s eating the meat you grind out from the butcher shop of ideas called your blog. Sure, there’s some measure of pride and ego involved: as your stats move ever upward your sense of confidence inflates proportionately. So does your sense of importance and pride. We all want at least a little touch of fame.

Problem is, unless you get a lot of comments on your blog, it’s difficult to know how many subscribers you have reading your feed, or which posts are getting the most attention, or whether your visitors are first-timers who never return, or old die hards who just can’t get enough of your tasty cuts. Yes, traffic analysis is more than just pretty charts, it’s a window into the effectiveness and impact of your writing — and promotion.

Good news: There are a number of free metrics, stats, and performance tracking packages to help you see out what’s going on with your weblog (or website). Just beware, though, mining your blog trackers for insights can get addictive and it often has very little return value for all the effort expended. However, if you’re looking to improve your blogging tactics, you need data. And for that, I highly recommend the following:

Automattic Stats for self-hosted WordPress
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

Automattic Stats for self-hosted WordPress
Andy Skelton has just released this brand new plugin for WordPress sites, and it looks very, very promising (see also his “Day One” report, and Carthik Sharma’s review). As of today, if you are a WordPress blogger, you can piggyback on the WordPress.com blogging community’s very own metric system and, like Google Analytics, you don’t pay a dime, and there’s no server overhead to slow your site down.

According to the plugin’s documentation:

There are hundreds of plugins and services which can provide statistics about your visitors. However I found that even though something like Google Analytics provides an incredible depth of information, it can be overwhelming and doesn’t really highlight what’s most interesting to me as a writer. That’s why Automattic created its own stats system, to focus on just the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and provide them in a clear and concise interface.

And it’s a very nice interface, indeed. Check it out, and enjoy!

FeedBurner
http://www.feedburner.com/

FeedBurner
I think every blogger should use FeedBurner for delivering their feed because:

  • You get a cross-browser, cross-feed-reader way to provide one-click subscription options.
  • FB adds value to your feed items and posts with widgets that allow users to email the entry, find related content elsewhere, and even rate your posts.
  • FB just plain cleans up your feed so that practically any reader on the planet can handle your feed.
  • Plus, if you change your feed URL or your blogging platform, users don’t have to resubscribe. You just point your FeedBurner feed to the new URL.

That’s all good for your readers, but there’s more: For you, the blog owner, you finally get real, useful, stats about how many subscribers you have to your feed, what they’re paying attention to, and what the trends are in your subscribers’ activity. And that’s all good. And it’s free! If you pay for the pro version, you get even more data, more stats, and more options about the URL you deliver your feed from.

Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/

Google Analytics
There really isn’t a more comprehensive stats analysis package available for free anywhere else. If you’re a statsaholic and you need to know the relative performance of every page on your site, if you want to know what’s the top entry or exit page, if you need to track your advertising goals (it integrates with Google AdSense, naturally), or if you want to know more about the “paths” users take through your site. Oh, you can also see the “bounce rates” for individual pages, which tells you which “entrance” pages are also the “exit page” for visitors. If a visitor clicks through your site to another page, it’s not a bounce. But if a visitor lands on a page and then exits, it counts as a bounce. I haven’t seen this metric anywhere else, and it can tell you whether a particular landing page is converting visitors to readers, or not. Very helpful. For infoholics, Google Analytics is your drug of choice.

TanTan WordPress Reports
The only problem, however, is that there is maybe too much information. So if you use Google Analytics and have a WordPress blog, I also recommend Joe tan’s excellent “Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports plugin,” which provides a simple high-level overview of the most important metrics from Google Analytics. It plugs in to your WordPress blog and adds a “Reports” link to your Dashboard for a quick snapshot of the trends for daily visits, daily page views, average page views per visit, popular content, and more. Plus, if you use Feedburner, it will give you a quick subscriber report for your burned feed as well.

The best part about these two options is that neither adds any processing or database overhead to your WordPress site. Too many other WordPress stats plugins explode your database. This doesn’t because you’re not using your database, you’re using Google’s. Want to bet Google’s going to have nice, fast servers that don’t bog down every half hour?

QuantCast Internet Ratings
http://quantcast.com/

Some people like the Alexa stats system, and I check Alexa out from time-to time. But Alexa stats are really unreliable metrics since it only pulls in data from registered toolbar users, and its stats are extrapolated (i.e.: it’s a guess) from that small, self-selected demographic of users.

So, lately, I’ve been using QuantCast, which provides some interesting demographic details for a website. For example, according to QuantCast, here are my site’s demographics summary:

Tatumweb.com has 6,150 monthly unique visitors, 4,054 (66%) reside in the U.S. The site caters to a more educated/highly educated, primarily male audience.

The demographics information is interesting. It remains to be seen, for me, whether it’s truly useful or not, but if I were going to sell ad-space on my blog to another ministry, this would be useful information to include in a proposal.

Others…?

There are other free metrics systems I use (see my “stats junk” link at the bottom of the page), such as SiteMeter and StatCounter. I like SiteMeter quite a bit, but others have complained about it, and sometimes the counter does load slowly. So, SiteMeter may be going through growing pains. StatCounter is a good viable alternative offering a basic free account and a more detailed paid account.

I also use Technorati, The Truth Laid Bear, BlogTopSites, ChristianTop1000, and IceRocket’s BlogTracker.

Another tracker I’ve been using lately was created by my friend and fellow PneumaBlogger, John Abela. It’s The Top 100 Christian Blog Websites. However, it’s currently only tracking four blogs, and John’s not sure how many bloggers he really wants to add to his tracker, since that could hog server resources. Feel free to contact John if you’re interested, but you might want to wait a while, in case he gets deluged with requests due to this mention.

Finally, I use a WordPress plugin to create a Google-compliant sitemap for every post in this blog. This plugin notifies Google every time I update the site, and that kicks off a Googlebot session to come spider BlogRodent and add new pages to the vasty Google Index. This plugin is the Google Sitemap Generator provided by Arne Brachhold and it’s been very good to me.

A bunch of useful measurements are provided by Google via the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard, which provides an eyeful of reports. Some similar reports might be available through your host’s cPanel, but it’s convenient to have it here at Google too. Reports like what pages are generating HTTP errors, which pages return a “not found” error, which pages are timing-out, and which URLs are simply unreachable. This is all good, because it points out what’s broken and should be fixed (when you have the time and aren’t jonesing on traffic data). Plus, these are reports external to your own site’s weblogs, which is a useful third-party verification of problems your site may not be catching.

Top-Linked Pages
at BlogRodent

But there’s more. Google nicely provides a Links page showing you every page it’s indexed from your site with a number in the right-hand column tabulating all the pages outside of your site which link to it. Click on the hyperlinked number and you get to see who’s linking to what page. Nice.

Google lets you download a spreadsheet of all the pages that are linking to every page in your site. Using this, I did a little spreadsheet magic, deleted all the inbound links from my other blogs and from my feed, and quickly found the top ten most frequently linked posts on BlogRodent — apart from the PneumaBlogs page (see sidebar at right).

That kind of data is very useful, and not found anywhere else that I know of.

Comments? Additions? Your favorites?

You might disagree with my picks here. And you might quibble that a number of these tools are WordPress-specific. Well, feel free to add your kudos, criticisms or dissent via the comment form. All takers welcome!

Rich

[tags]AdSense, AdSense-tracking, Alexa, analyitics, Andy-Skelton, Automattic, blog-hits, blog-stats, blog-strategy, blog-tips, blog-traffic, blogging, blogging-tips, BlogRodent, BlogTopSites, BlogTracker, data-analysis, detailed-stats, feedburner, free, free-hit-counter, free-stuff, free-web-counter, freeware, google, google-analytics, hit-counter, how-to, IceRocket, infographics, internet-ranking, internet-ratings, invisible-counter, javascript, measure-traffic, measuring-performance, measuring-traffic, metric, metrics, metrics-service, performance-metrics, quantcast, ranking, ratings, site-traffic, SiteMeter, StatCounter, statistics, stats, strategy, Technorati, traffic, traffic-analysis, traffic-analyzer, traffic-measurement, traffic-metric, traffic-monitor, traffic-statistics, traffic-stats, traffic-trends, trends, truth-laid-bear, TTLB, unique-visitors, visitor-stats, visitors, web-metrics, web-tracker, weblog-traffic, website-metrics, website-traffic, webstats, WordPress[/tags]

Spider-Man 3 Bible Study / Discussion Guide

Bible and Theology, Random Miscellany, Religion

My Spider-Man 3 movie-based Bible Study is here, at long last! I have permission from CTI to provide the study here on my site. Over the next few days or weeks, I’ll post the previous combo-study I wrote for Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2 as well.

Warning: the following contains spoilers! Stop now and do not read below this paragraph if you hate knowing anything beyond what the trailers reveal.

Spider-Man 3
The greatest battle lies … within

Bad Peter

The first two Spider-Man films established Peter Parker and his super-heroic alter-ego as a popular and profitable theatrical draw: Spidey is loveably unstoppable and Peter Parker is the nice boy everybody wants to see “get the girl.”

But Spider-Man 3 severs those silky threads of comfortable niceness, dumping Peter Parker and Spider-Man into a dark abyss where evil infects the heart and vengeance slakes its thirst.

This guide will help you discuss some of the spiritual themes of Spider-Man 3, focusing on pride, the struggle against sin, and forgiveness. Feel free to use this as a starting-point for discussion and explore any other themes you feel appropriate to your small group.

Movie Summary

In Spider-Man Peter Parker was an excited kid testing his boundaries and learning how to use fantastic powers responsibly and for the good of society. In Spider-Man 2, he was sick with unspoken love and the unbearable burden of using power wisely. Laying aside his suit and mask, Peter Parker became nearly impotent until Mary Jane’s life was threatened and he rediscovers his purpose through sacrifice. As that film closes, Mary Jane at last learns of Parker’s love for her, and his super-hero identity.

As the third chapter in Parker’s life opens, we fully expect to hear wedding bells. Instead, we see Parker still in love but struggling with commitment and insecurity even while a crime-free city celebrates his alter-ego, awarding Spider-Man the key to the city. Parker is trapped in a knotted skein of conceit and self-doubt.

The web of romanceThe film starts out romantically enough, with the timeless beauty, Mary Jane, lounging in the center of Parker’s web and still the center of his life. But an ominous falling star is prelude to a venomous creature quietly attaching itself to Parker without his knowledge. The action starts When Harry Osborn, Parker’s best friend and heir to the Norman Osborn legacy (insanity included), attacks the love-struck Parker, nearly killing himself in the process. In short order Parker saves his mortal enemy’s life only to permanently disfigure him later, spurns Mary Jane with a thoughtless bit of grandstanding, learns the true identity of his uncle’s killer, is infected by the evil ooze from outer space, attempts murder himself, and faces a tremendous battle on multiple fronts, both internal and external.

More, more, more!

For more coverage of the Spider-Man movies, visit Christianity Today’s Movies Channel:

Rated PG-13

Spider-Man 3, trumps its two predecessors both in the numbers of villains and the amount of violence on-screen, earning it a PG-13 rating. While this film may be suitable for teens, parents should screen the film before allowing younger children to view it. There is also some profane language.

If warding off Harry as the new Green Goblin isn’t enough, Spider-Man also has to face Flint Marko, his uncle’s killer, who — by way of the usual freak accident — has become a nebulous shape-shifting whirlwind of sand. When the space-borne symbiote infects Parker, he gains even more power and abilities than he previously enjoyed, but along with the power comes a compulsion to aggression and vengeance that the proud and complacent Parker is unprepared to resist.

As the film concludes, Parker has to find a way to not only resist the symbiote but also to destroy it as when its new host, Eddie Brock, joins league with the Sandman to threaten Mary Jane and destroy Spider-Man for good.

Discussing the Scenes

Select one or more of these themes to discuss:

1. Pride Before the Fall
(Proverbs 11:1-3; Proverbs 16:8; Proverbs 29:23; Psalm 10:4)

The film opens with Peter Parker introducing himself in voiceover, and it’s difficult to ignore the subtext of both pride and lingering insecurity:

“Its me, Peter Parker, ‘Your friendly neighborhood —’ you know. I’ve come a long way from being the boy who was bit by a spider. Back then nothing seemed to go right for me. But now? … People really like me! The city is safe and sound.

“I guess I’ve had something to do with that.

“My uncle Ben would be proud.”

Later, when Mary Jane is struggling over critical reviews and her own insecurities as an actress, Parker offers up less-than-helpful clichês from his own experience as Spider-Man who has — he admits with vanishing humility — “become something of an icon:”

“Listen … this is something that you’re going to have to get used to. Believe me: I know. Spider-Man gets attacked all the time. … You can’t let it bring you down. You just gotta believe in yourself, and you pull yourself together, and you get right back on the horse . …”

Gwen StacyParker’s ultimate fall begins as he infected by evil, surrendering to a hunger for vengeance — and becoming enslaved by it. As the dark symbiote threatens to take over not only his suit but his very soul, he revels in a new-found “bad-boy” persona. We watch the devolution of Peter Parker as he maims his best friend, struts and flirts audaciously, destroys his uncle’s murderer Flint Marko, humiliates his newspaper rival Eddie Brock, and uses his lab partner, Gwen Stacy, to crush Mary Jane’s heart.

Pride is the exaltation of one’s self above all others. As Peter’s arrogance swells, he sees Mary Jane’s plight only in light of his own conceit. And even as M.J. reaches out to him from her own pain, knowing that Parker is giving in to blood lust for Flint Marko, he rejects her help, cutting her off: “Okay. I get it. Thank you, but … I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”

The moment Parker isolates himself in misery, cutting himself off from others, that’s when the symbiote takes over.

  • Have you ever found yourself rejecting help for no good reason other than pride? How did you come to recognize the pride? What did you do about it?
  • Mary JaneEven though Peter has already wounded her, when Mary Jane learns about Marko being uncle Ben’s true killer, she reaches out to Parker and offers help. How does pride come into play when you are the victim of someone else’s ego? How do you deal with your own wounded pride?
  • How does Jesus’ command to offer forgiveness “seventy times seven” times combat pride?
  • How do you guard against the effects of pride when helping others who are hurting or who are bound by sinful habits?
  • What is the chief danger of doing ministry of any sort with pride in your heart?
  • The proud are often unaware of their condition. What proactive steps can you take to avoid and address the sin of pride that may be lurking in your heart?

2. The Battle Within
(Romans 7:14-19; Romans 8:5-17; Romans 12; Philippians 2:1-18; Philippians 4:8-9)

Immediately after learning that Flint Marko killed his uncle Ben, Peter Parker wants justice, but wants it on his terms, in his way, by his own hand. Ultimately, Parker’s desire is not for mere justice but vengeance, which Aunt May describes this way:

“It’s like a poison it can — it can take you over before you know it — turn us into something ugly.”

All sin, vengeance included, is transformative: it corrupts from within, working its way out through our words, actions, and even inaction. When caught or snared in sin, even the believer has a difficult time doing what is right. As Paul describes in Romans 7:18-19:

“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.”

Read Romans 12.

  • If sin corrupts and is transformative, what is the antidote? What attitude and actions are necessary to reverse the corruption and to be transformed the way God wants?
  • Do sinful desires themselves cause us to sin, or is there something else at work? Besides a desire or temptation to sin, what is necessary to lead to sin’s bondage?

    Leader’s Note: In Romans 7, the key to freedom from sin is to have our minds set on what the Spirit desires. But what does the Spirit desire? Romans 12, says that when our mind is transformed and renewed we will know God’s will — what the Spirit desires. Philippians 2 further promises that as we work out our salvation with the attitude and mind of Christ it is God himself “who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

  • If the way we think is the key to living either in bondage to sin or as a slave to righteousness, then how should we go about changing our minds? Like Peter Parker / Spider-Man in the movie, how do we throw off the sin that entangles us?

    Leader’s Note: Try to guide the discussion toward repentance as a first step, which involves not only recognizing that one’s actions have been sinful, but also involves a permanent rejection of those sins. Subsequent steps would involve worship, prayer, and reading and meditating on Scripture.

Read Philippians 4:8-9.

  • Regular spectator sessions in church aren’t enough to change thought-patterns or behavior. Saying a few prayers here and there aren’t enough, reading a daily Bible verse isn’t enough, and neither is hanging out with good, upright Christians. Righteousness doesn’t “rub off.” In light of this, why is Paul’s advice to the Philippians so critical, and so effective?
  • How have your thought-habits changed over the years?
  • How have these habitual ways of thinking changed your behavior?
  • What’s been the hardest pattern to change?

3. Forgiveness and Redemption
(Matthew 6:9-13; Matthew 18:15-35; Luke 7:36-50; Luke 11:2-4; Ephesians 4:29-32)

Bad SpideyThe primary emotion driving Peter Parker / Spider-Man throughout this film is vengeance. On the surface, Spider-Man is just doing his job: helping to stop crime and fight evil. Even if he felt nothing toward Flint Marko, Spider-Man would still have had to stop the Sandman from theft and mayhem. Even if he had never seen the black, gooey parasite from space, Spider-Man would still have had to stop it in whatever form it took. And even if Parker had not been Harry Osborn’s best friend, he would have still had to deal with Harry’s madness, just as he had to deal with Norman Osborn’s insanity.

But each of these cases it gets personal. Parker has a real hatred toward Marko for having killed his uncle Ben, and he intends to make him pay with his life because “he deserved it.” And the infected Spider-Man taunts Harry with mocking words, goading him into carelessness and justifying a satisfying coup de grace. With Venom, it became personal because Parker not only opposed its new host, Eddie Brock, but he utterly humiliated him, destroying his career and reputation.

Of course, other characters also struggle with forgiveness and old grudges. Harry Osborn is being driven mad in his belief that Peter Parker as Spider-Man killed his father. Eddie Brock cannot bring himself to forgive Parker for revealing his deplorable journalistic ethics. In fact, he prays to God: “It’s Brock, sir. Edward Brock, Junior. I come before you today, humbled and humiliated to ask you for one thing — I want you to kill Peter Parker.” Mary Jane struggles with her humiliation when Spider-Man kisses Gwen Stacy in public — with their kiss! Marko’s wife cannot forgive his sin, and Marko cannot forgive himself.

While all the crossed lines of bitterness and sin don’t get resolved in the storyline, by the end of the film, Peter Parker releases Marko from his debt of guilt, Harry Osborn releases his unfounded bitterness and forgives Parker, and Mary Jane forgives Parker for his actions while under the influence of pride and the poisonous goo.

But the most stunning sequence in the film is when Parker literally tears the black ooze out of his body in the form of the black suit. It is almost a near-perfect metaphor for repentance and redemption as he crouches underneath the cross free of his stain, washed clean by rain from above.

  • Much has been made in popular literature of the need to “forgive yourself” before you can forgive others. What do you think of this concept. Is it biblically valid? Why or why not?
  • In Matthew, while speaking of forgiveness, Jesus describes our act of forgiveness as both binding and losing things in heaven and on earth. What do you think this means? How does forgiveness — or the withholding of forgiveness bind or release?

In Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4), Jesus gives us a model for prayer. In it, he demonstrates how we ought to pray regarding forgiveness: “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.”

  • What implications does this part of the Lord’s prayer have for us regarding forgiveness?
  • What happens to our ability to pray effectively if we are knowingly harboring grudges? Why does this affect prayers?
  • If we are entangled in sin ourselves, what does that do to our own ability to forgive others? What should you do if someone asks you for forgiveness for a sin you commit yourself?
  • How does forgiveness provide a release? What kind of release? If someone withholds forgiveness, what doesn’t get released?
  • Have you ever sought forgiveness for something and had your request rejected? How did this make you feel, what happened as a result?
  • What is the hardest thing for you to imagine forgiving? Why? Is it possible for you to forgive anything, and if so, does that make you weak, or is it a sign of strength?
  • Is there a difference between forgiveness and apathy? Or between forgiveness and being “a wallflower?” What’s the difference? How do you know the difference when you see it?
  • How do you let go of the anger and hurt when you’ve forgiven someone?

As the Credits Roll:

  • Why do the Spider-Man films resonate so much? What made first two films so popular (to the tune of $1.7 billion grossed worldwide)?
  • Do you think this third film is consistent with the spiritual themes from the first two movies?
  • What encourages you in this film?
  • What is hard to swallow philosophically, morally, or theologically?
  • What do you think the major characters in this film “learned” by the end of the story? How were they changed by events?
  • What do you think about Eddie Brock’s prayer, that God “kill Peter Parker?” Was the venomous ooze depicted as an answer to prayer? Ultimately, Peter Parker was not killed, so how does the storyline change how you perceive that scene?
  • At the end of the film, Peter Parker says, in voiceover:

    “Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice. My friend Harry taught me that. He chose to be the best of himself. It’s the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what’s right.”

    What do you think about that? Do our choices make us who we are, or are we revealed by the kind of choices we make? What’s the difference?

Based on:

Spider-Man 3 (Columbia Pictures and Marvel Enterprises, 2007); screenplay by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, and Alvin Sargent; directed by Sam Raimi; based on the Marvel comic book character, Spider-Man, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Rated PG-13.

—Study by Rich Tatum, blogger, freelance writer,
and former CTI online media editor.

Copyright &copy 2007, Christianity Today International, all rights reserved.
Used with permission.

[tags]Alvin-Sargent, Arrogance, Bible, Bible-Study, BlogRodent, Bryce-Dallas-Howard, Christianity-Today-International, ChristianityToday.com, Columbia-Pictures, Discussion-Guide, Eddie-Brock, Evangelical, Film, Film-Review, Flint-Marko, Forgiveness, Gwen-Stacy, Harry-Osborn, Hatred, Heroes, Ivan-Raimi, James-Franco, Kirsten-Dunst, Leaders-Guide, Love, Marvel, Marvel-comic-book, Mary-Jane, Mary-Jane-Watson, May-Parker, Movie, Movie-Based-Bible-Study, New-Goblin, Peter-Parker, Pride, Rosemary-Harris, Sam-Raimi, Sandman, Scripture, Sin, Small-Groups, Spider-Man, Spider-Man-1, Spider-Man-2, Spider-Man-3, Spidey, Stan-Lee, Steve-Ditko, Super-Hero, Thomas-Haden-Church, Tobey-Maguire, Topher-Grace, Vengeance, Venom, Web-Slinger[/tags]

Should Ministry Leaders Blog?

Blogging, Rage and Rants, Random Miscellany

Hat tip to Michael Davis for alerting me to this question posed over at Total Leadership: “Should Ministry Leaders Blog?” Here are my thoughts…

A blogger with a “why” beats one with only a “how”

KeyboardBlogging can be a waste of a leader’s time if he doesn’t know what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. (Especially why.)

I would never suggest a leader start blogging (or podcasting) unless they’ve already been reading some choice blogs and are starting to get some idea of what value a blog can bring to a ministry or to one’s life. Rushing into blogging without first experiencing it is like convincing someone to preach who’s never heard a sermon in their life. Sure, it might be comical or even refreshing — once.

A few blogging bennies…

For some, blogging can be a kind of spiritual discipline, helping hone thoughts and to dig past the sometimes surface thoughts of hurried Saturday-night sermon prep. It provides a database of sermon themes related to your deeper concerns. It aids writing — requiring clarity and concision. It keeps you in touch with other influential people, and exposes you to criticism and commentary, sometimes kudos. Leaders need all of that.

Too few leaders have opportunities for strangers or even friends to comment and speak into their lives or provide feedback. Blogs with comments enabled are a great way to help provide that. It brings the leader out of the ivory tower. Blogging can be truly incarnational. Leaders need this, too, but it’s frightening because they’ve never had it.

I like to think of Paul the Apostle as the original proto-blogger. His missives dealt with current events, addressed failings in the Church, provided solutions, commented on trends and dangerous ideas. He “blogged” from prison, he blogged on the road, he blogged with the help of a peripheral writing device: an amanuensis.

And his words have become a significant part of our thought-life today many, many years later. Talk about the “long tail!”

If you are a leader and you are intentionally not blogging, you are ignoring one of the most influential media currently available to you.

Banking your thoughts

Blogging, in some ways, is like an interest-bearing savings account. As long as your ideas are only spoken, they’re being spent as soon as you generate them — just like spending your entire paycheck the very week you get it. But if you can “bank” some of those thoughts, they’ll go to work for you on your behalf, influencing more than just the handful within earshot. And like money in the bank, your blog-published ideas compound their influence week after week after week.

Do you have what it takes?

On the other hand, maybe not every leader should blog. After all, it does require a specific set of skills that many of our leaders simply don’t have: the ability to write clearly, the ability to engage an audience, the ability to be consistent, to provide something worthwhile and interesting with regularity, the ability to take criticism and respond irenically, the ability to respond to current events in the real-world, the ability to be transparent, and the ability to turn on a computer and use it.

But some of those guys aren’t leading. They just happen to be standing where the crowd’s facing.

If you’re a ministry leader and you’ve intentionally ignored using Internet technology to augment your message and vision, please ask yourself why. You may have very good reasons. And it may not reflect poorly on you at all. For example, I really don’t see Billy Graham picking up the keyboard to blog nowadays, and he’s not diminished one whit by not blogging. And maybe guys like Dallas Willard, Tim Stafford, and Jack Hayford don’t need to blog: publishing houses are already happily killing trees to extend their reach through the printed page. (But I’d sign up for their blogs so fast my keyboard would melt!)

But it’s easier than falling off a pulpit

But if you’re checking out of the “blogging craze” because it’s the domain of teens and Gen-Xers, or overwhelmingly nerdy, or seemingly too difficult to master, I invite you to give it another thought. Sign up for an account at WordPress.com and start flailing away. Really, it isn’t hard, and you can start doing it in about five minutes.

Ride the long tail and prosper!

Rich

[tags]amanuensis, billy-graham, blog, blog-tips, blogging, blogging-benefits, blogging-skills, blogging-strategy, blogging-tips, blogrodent, church, dallas-willard, engage-an-audience, jack-hayford, leaders, leadership, leadership-blogs, long-tail, michael-davis, ministry, ministry-blogs, ministry-leader, ministry-leaders, ministry-leadership, paul-the-apostle, podcasting, purpose, rich-tatum, spiritual-discipline, spiritual-disciplines, strategy, technology, tim-stafford, tips, total-leadership, vision, wordpress.com, write-clearly, writing, writing-tips[/tags]

Site Outages

Site Updates

Tatumweb Site Performance for 2007-04-26
I apologize for any difficulty you’ve had recently connecting to the site. This blog is hosted on a shared server at SiteGround.com. Unfortunately, when you’re on a shared box you suffer along with hundreds of other providers whenever someone gets spammed, DDOSed, or hit by a runaway process or script. I know — I’ve been the culprit a few times before, and paid the price for it. But once in a while I’m also the victim, and that seems to be what’s happening today.

According to the SiteGround support center, everything’s hunkey dory. According to the server notification center, there are no updates or information that I should know about. So, when I go through the laborious process of collecting information, pulling together stats on server performance (see the graph behind the thumbnail), pinging, tracerouting, and more, I finally get a note back from the help desk:

There has been a short-term overload on the server that hosts your website, caused by an abnormally high activity from a website located on your host server. This probably affected temporarily your website loading speed. SiteGround system administrators are already working on bringing the server performance back to normal.

We would like to assure you that all measures are taken for the problem to be fixed as soon as possible.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation!

Nothing wrong with that response, really. But as I indicated in my trouble ticket, the problems began at 7:30 AM CST, and I was contacting them five hours later! As of this writing, I’m still experiencing server difficulties with long lags and numerous “500 Application” type errors.

I understand what it’s like to provide support to a large user-community — I used to provide help desk and technical support to a network of 1,000 computer users. Yes, it’s not the same scale as, say, 1,000 web sites on a single server on a server farm of hundreds of computers … but I at least get what’s going on.

But there’s gotta be a better way to provide feedback. Despite my complaints SiteGround has yet to initiate a proactive email blast system or even an RSS feed for updates. I mean, how hard could this be? Set up a single RSS feed for each server, and an aggregate feed for all servers, and whenever there’s an outage, plug a note into the feed about the outage and what’s going on. Then, as it’s resolved, plug another note in. Communicate!

:: sigh ::

I suppose if I had a job this wouldn’t irritate me as much. But, nevertheless, it ain’t fun. SiteGround’s answer, of course, to my problems is to buy virtual private network hosting on a dedicated server. Yeah. If I were making $100 a week from Google ads, that might make sense. But, alas, no.

So, anyhow, sorry you’re experiencing problems. I’m sure it’ll be fixed within the next several hours.

Rich

[tags]BlogRodent, outage, server-outage, SiteGround, SiteGround.com, Site-Ground, 500-Errors, Application-errors, Site-Updates, Hosting, WordPress-Hosts, WordPress-Hosting, WordPress, Server-Difficulties, HelpDesk, Help-Desk, Customer-Support, Whining[/tags]

Spider-Man 3 Rocks!

Random Miscellany

Update: The Spider-Man 3 study can be found here.

Spider-Man 3 PosterYesterday I caught a premier press-screening of Spider-Man 3 and I’m officially here to tell you that this movie rocks! And, yes, before you criticize me, that is official trade lingo for a movie that … well … rocks!

It may not be appropriate for a kid still in kindergarten, which is why I didn’t take AJ, even though I could have (I was allowed one guest), but it’s primarily because there is violence (what heroic actioner doesn’t feature violence) and a really scary Venom. :: shudder :: But if it weren’t for the fright factor I’d take AJ tomorrow. As it is he’s already wanting to see the movie and begging me to take him. (I had no idea he’d already watched the first two Spider-Man flicks, and since they aren’t keeping him awake at night, I’m considering letting him watch it when the DVD comes out. We’ll see.

I won’t spoil it for you, but there are plenty of religious themes throughout. Naturally, whatever spiritual content you find in a Hollywood flick must be filtered and corrected through a Biblical values lens, but rest assured, you’ll find redemption, forgiveness, the bitter and unsatisfying pill of vengeance, repentance, and an epiphany literally at the foot of the cross. There is evil alongside misguided altruism. There is love, love denied, love restored, and naïveté brutally quashed.

And there’s a side to Peter Parker you never would’ve imagined. Think: a geeky Stephen Baldwin meets John Travolta. The scene with Peter Parker strutting in his shiny black suit is absolutely priceless.

Stan Less does his usual cameo, and the timing is perfect. The audience laughed, and that’s great, because Stan needs more credit. He could never get enough credit. I love Stan Lee.

Okay, I’m gushing.

The CGI effects are astounding with some scenes taking over a year to complete due to their complexity and level of detail. The acrobatics and combat scenes trump anything in the Spider-Man movies to-date, and as usual, the character development takes turns left, right, backwards, and forwards. On the negative side, the characters are all so much more self-absorbed in this film that I find myself questioning how long it really takes for people to learn from their situation and grow from it. But, then, I suppose there wouldn’t be a moral lesson if everybody always learned from the films of their lives.

But, honestly, there isn’t much to criticize here. I’ll have to reflect on it more to find bones to pick but at this moment, I simply cannot find anything to seriously harp about. It’s a fine movie (if you can tolerate action flicks) and well worth watching. I recommend it.

Stay tuned for more info from my Bible Study.

Rich
BlogRodent

[tags]Bible-Study, BlogRodent, Film, Film-review, Marvel, Marvel-Comics, Movie-Review, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man-III[/tags]

Spider-Man 3 Movie-Based Bible Study Coming!

Bible and Theology, Random Miscellany, Religion

Update: The Spider-Man 3 study can be found here.

Spider-Man 3 Poster
In early 2005 I wrote a Bible study for the Spider-Man 1 & 2 movies, currently only available via ChristianityToday.com. Last week I stopped by the offices of Christianity Today International and “volunteered” to freelance the Bible study for Spider-Man 3, as well, opening May 4 in a theater near you. (Here’s the official site. Here’s the IMDB site.)

So, this coming Tuesday, thanks to CT Movies editor, Mark Moring, I will attend a screening of Spider-Man 3 at 10 AM in downtown Chicago. Wahoo! After that, I will put on my thinking cap, review my extensive notes, think hard and start writing about the many redemptive themes from the film to weave into a Bible study useful for small group discussions and after-movie coffee binges. The Bible study I write will be truly Bible-based, pulling in not only quotes and themes from the movie, but tieing them into Biblical themes, sometimes expanding on the film’s premises, sometimes redirecting, sometimes contradicting or refuting.

Spider-Man I and II Bible Study

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

Spider-Man currently holds the Guinness Book of World Records award for the largest single-day box-office earnings ($43.6 million for its first Saturday opening) and is currently the fifth highest-grossing film in U.S. history ($403.7 million), which paved the way for an even more critically acclaimed sequel, Spider-Man 2.

This study will look at both Spider-Man movies, explore what it means to be a hero, note how choices shape our character, and examine the responsibilities that come with the gift of power.

What’s nice is the Spider-Man movie franchise has consistently provided a wealth of material to reflect on. In fact, Spidey 2 was so packed with religious themes and imagery some suspected that the director, Sam Raimi, might have been intentionally making Spidey look Messiah-like. But, no, Raimi hasn’t gone all “Jesusy” on us — it’s just hard to pull of heroism without being at least a little like Jesus, our ultimate real-life hero. Even the Wachowski brothers couldn’t avoid it with Neo in The Matrix (incidentally, I also wrote a Bible study for the three Matrix films, available at CTI as well).

More good news, according to my editor at CTI, I may be able to republish my original, unedited studies here on my blog for your delectation. I’ll keep you updated for details.

Rich
Rich

[tags]Bible, Bible-Study, BlogRodent, Christianity-Today-International, ChristianityToday.com, Marvel, Marvel-Comics, Movie-Based-Bible-Studies, Movie-Review, Movies, Spider-Man, Spider-Man-3, Spider-Man-Three, Spidey, film, movie, movies, small-group-discussion-guide, small-groups, theology[/tags]

Virgina Tech Massacre and … Repentance

Bible and Theology, Links, Religion

Cho Seung Hui

I’ve blogged on tragedy before:

But since the massacre at Virginia Tech, I’ve been at a loss for words. I’ve wanted to try to research this to put it into perspective for myself and perhaps my readers — as if anyone could. But it’s still too grisly and horrifying. I only know I’m already sickened of the politicizing going on around the tragedy.

So, I am relieved that a fellow Christian blogger has put what I think is the true proper perspective on this or any other tragedy. Kevin Stilley, of Encyclopedia Kevannica, writes:

Today and for the rest of the week every radio talk show and television news program will be discussing yesterday’s events at Virginia Tech. They will host philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and sociologists who will discuss the problem of evil ad nauseam. They will try their best to help the populace make sense of the senseless.

And, when they get tired of those topics they will move on to the political issues; — gun control, campus security, the cultural ramifications of violence in movies and music, etc.

On Sunday morning pastors will stand in their pulpits and explore such themes as the depravity of man, the comfort of God, trusting God when we do not understand, and more.

What a shame.

All of those issues are important and need to be repeatedly revisited and explored in depth, but ….

Jesus said that when we become witnesses to the unexpected tragedies of others to whom we are not personally ministering our response is not to be voyeuristic gawkers, philosophical soothsayers, or even theologians. It is a time for personal reflection and repentance.

It’s a great article, and a sobering one, putting our response into the proper perspective.

Encyclopedia Kevannica
“Our mishandling of the Virginia Tech tragedy“

I would simply like to add that when we are ministering to folks experiencing their own chaos, we should practice the proper response as modeled by Jesus … what Foursquare pastor Jerry Cook calls the Jesus Question:

Yet, here is Jesus Christ stepping out of eternity to reveal the only God there is, and He says, “I haven’t come to be served.” Now to me that doesn’t make sense. Again, my question is, If You haven’t come to be served, why are You here? Why did You come? Again His answer is, “I haven’t come to be served , but to serve.”

Immediately I begin to recall all the questions Jesus asked throughout the Gospels. Almost always they came down to this: “What can I do for you?” What were His first words to blind Bartimaeus? “What would you like Me to do for you?” What about the lepers? “What can I do for you?” What about the man at the pool? “What can I do for you?”

Indeed. How can we help?

How can I help?

[tags]BlogRodent, Cho-Seung-Hui, eric-brian-golden, massacre, murder, psychopath, rampage, sash-assembly-of-god, shooting, tragedy, virgina, virgina-tech, psychopath [/tags]