Social media is designed to be social. With so many users leveraging multiple channels, many tools exist to make it easier to share information across channels. While I no longer use Facebook as much as I once did, I have continued to import my blog posts as notes. A few days ago, I received the following message when I logged on to Facebook: Changes to How You Share Content in Notes You currently automatically import content from your website or blog into your Facebook notes. Read More …
Review of The Myth of American Religious Freedom (#0554)
Meet the Author David Sehat is assistant professor of history at Georgia State University. He earned his Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007. The Myth of American Religious Freedom (2011) is Sehat's first book. Book Basics Today most Americans believe that our country has a rich history of religious freedom. This pervasive perspective stands in contrast to our nation's actual practices, which have been less than Read More …
God is Still Speaking – the First Decade (#0553)
Ron Buford is the lead architect of the United Church of Christ's (UCC) Still Speaking campaign which began in 2002. He recently accepted a call to serve as Interim Minister for Discipleship at Old South Church in Boston, and authored an article about Still Speaking in the denomination's magazine (Vol. 2, Issue 2 - p.54-56). In that piece he explores his experiences over the last decade, including his travel to congregations in all but two of the UCC Conferences. Read More …
Social Media Interaction with Students (#0552)
Earlier this week Slant33, a part of Barefoot Ministries, posted the responses of three youth ministry experts to the question: "Where do you draw the line on social media interaction with students? Why?" The responses vary widely: D. Scott Miller, director of the Division of Youth and Young Adult Ministry of the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, has a personal policy to never friend anyone under the age of eighteen on Facebook. Additionally, he believes this is the best policy Read More …
Teens & Social Networking (#0551)
The Pew Internet and American Life Project released "Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites" last week. Educators, parents, and those who work with teens in any capacity should consider the report a must read (click here to access the full 86 page report). It reviews the multi-stage research that began in December 2010 with a meeting of experts to help refine the project, continued with focus groups of middle and high school students in January and February of 2011, Read More …
2011 American Values Survey (#0550)
The Public Religion Research Institute recently released the findings of their annual survey of American values. The 2011 survey of 1,505 adults was conducted from September 22 through October 5. The data includes: Two-thirds of voters say that it is very important (39%) or somewhat important (28%) for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs. A strong majority (60%) of Americans agree that the country would be better off if the distribution of wealth was more Read More …
Mission 1 – A Denomination Addresses Hunger (#0549)
In April, I wrote about Mission 1: a denomination wide initiative of the United Church of Christ to address hunger. Capitalizing on the number one, the event began on 11/1/11 and ended on 11/11/11. During that time, those within the denomination worked together to feed the hungry and address food-related injustice. The results include: 1.28 million items of food donated (exceeding the goal of 1 million) Over 35,000 letters to Congress (exceeding the goal of 11,111) Read More …
The Gospel in 7 Words or Less (#0548)
The Christian Century recently asked several significant Christians to provide their take on the Gospel in seven words or less. Martin E. Marty, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, responded as follows: " God, through Jesus Christ, welcomes you anyhow." So What? If you were given just seven words (or less), how would you answer the question: "What's the gospel?" Read More …
Prayers of the People – A Different Approach (#0547)
At Naples United Church of Christ the pastoral prayer follows the same basic pattern each week: Pastor provides a prayer focus and invites people to pray Time of silent prayer Pastor offers the prayers of the people Musical response Yesterday, we chose to do things differently. The Rev. Catherine O'Connell, Associate Pastor, and I co-wrote then co-led the prayers of the people, which included a congregational response. The pattern we used was: Pastor provides a prayer focus Read More …
A Misguided Assumption About College Students (#0546)
The Myth Ron Tanner, writing professor at Loyola University Maryland, recently wrote an article, "The Myth of the Tech-Savvy Student" for the Chronicle of Higher Education's special report on online learning. In this piece he suggests that the media mistakenly portrays today's young people as tech savvy based on the amount of time they spend using technology rather than their competence using it to do real-world professional tasks. Background Perhaps no single text has influenced the Read More …