The Kentucky Free Will Baptist church that banned interracial marriage as well as the public use of the gifts of said persons has reversed its decision:

An eastern Kentucky church under a firestorm of criticism since members voted to bar mixed-race couples from joining the congregation overturned that decision Sunday, saying it welcomes all believers.

Stacy Stepp, pastor of the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in Pike County, told The Associated Press that the vote by nine people last week was declared null and void after it was determined that new bylaws can’t run contrary to local, state or national laws. He said the proposal was discriminatory, therefore it couldn’t be adopted.

Stepp said about 30 people who attended church services voted on a new resolution that welcomes “believers into our fellowship regardless of race, creed or color.”

Now two more suggestions for the church: (1) Nulling that decision because it’s against the laws is a tepid reason, friends. You should reverse the decision because it’s contrary to gospel inclusion (thus, Galatians 3:28, to name but one text). (2) I would also encourage them to re-think not discriminating on the basis of “creed.”

By Jeff Shapiro:

One security company is offering a solution to the problem of stolen baby Jesus figurines from Nativity displays by giving organizations GPS tracking devices.

“The holidays are about helping people,” said Todd Morris, CEO of BrickHouse Security in New York. “The theft and vandalism of treasured holiday figures is a problem we can empower communities and congregations to solve. We’re happy to expand the program and help even more people this year.”

The name of the program is “Saving Jesus,” and this holiday season will mark the sixth year the company has supplied the devices to organizations and churches. Some years around 100 organizations have taken advantage of the offer, and BrickHouse anticipates many more to participate this year.

Qualifying organizations will receive the Spark Nano GPS Tracker device, which is described as “matchbox-sized” and can be hidden either on or in the Jesus figurines. BrickHouse even ships the device for free, and it comes fully activated and ready to use.

By Molly Lyons:

A study published this year in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that while gift recipients are happier with gifts they’ve explicitly asked for, givers think that gifts they’ve picked out on their own are seen as more considerate and better appreciated.

What’s more, research led by Mary Steffel, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Florida-Gainesville, suggests that shoppers who are selecting gifts for more than one close friend at a time tend to focus on how the recipients are different, rather than on what they’d like best.

“Ironically, this means the harder shoppers try to be thoughtful, the more likely they are to pass up gifts that would be better liked in favor of unique gifts,” Steffel says.

“Giving is almost more about the giver” than it is about the recipient, says Tina Lowrey, a professor of marketing at the University of Texas-San Antonio who has studied gift-giving behavior.

One way to select better presents is to be aware of what kind of giver you are, she says.

Here are some Giver Types: [Read more...]

From The Atlantic:

What would happen if you couldn’t e-mail colleagues at work? What would happen if you didn’t have to read e-mails from colleagues at work?

One of the largest technology companies in Europe is looking to ban office email. Are they ahead of the curve, or are they totally ignoring the origins of our communications kluge?

One of Europe’s largest technology companies has a new rule for employees. Get off email. Get on instant messenger.
Atos CEO Thierry Breton claims the amount of email pinging around his 50,000-employee company (which is about the size of Apple) is “unsustainable,” forcing managers to spend up to 25 hours a week reading and writing emails. He told employees that the company plans to phase out email between colleagues over the next three years. “Email will still be used for external communications, but employees will be expected to use collaboration and social media tools instead of email to communicate with fellow co-workers,” theFinancial Times reports.

Banning intra-office email: Horrible counter-productive idea, or inspired work-flow enhancer?

This series is by “T”. He’s developing ideas that need to be at work when we think of violent people and how to respond.

We’re continuing our discussion of some of the New Testament’s most central themes, attempting to lay a proper, Christological foundation for discussing issues of how Christ’s followers are to deal with violent people. For now, we’re talking about the typical situations of Christians who are “civilians” as far as human governments go. We will deal with Christians in human militaries and/or police forces later. One of the problems in these discussions, in my opinion, has been that we prematurely spend more time on the (possible) exceptions rather than on the general rule, so to speak, and in so doing we misunderstand both. We’re trying to look deeply at the general rule from several Christological angles.

So far we have discussed this via the lenses of Cross and Resurrection. Today I want to look at Love. Already, and as we continue this series, the interrelationships between these themes (Cross, Resurrection, Love, etc.) are so strong that it will be impossible to look at each in isolation of the others. But that is actually helpful towards our goal of laying a more holistic Christological foundation upon which we can discuss the use of force and related issues.

Given the different kinds of actions and ways that are called “love,” do you see Christ’s own understanding and teachings as especially unique? Look at some of the quotes below—how critical is this enemy-love to Christ’s understanding of God’s kind of love? How critical was that kind of love for Jesus’ mission? How critical is that kind of love to the Church’s mission? Do you see any connection between the call to love like Christ and the call to pick up our cross and follow him? Are these calls different ways of talking about the same thing, namely, the core of following this crucified King, this Good Shepherd that lays down his life for lost sheep? Is enemy-love a rare gift only for martyrs or is it to be the mark of Jesus’ disciples across the board?

Regarding the lens of love, here is a basic thesis of mine: [Read more...]