ɯoɔ˙ǝlʇıʇdılɟ ƃuısn ʇuǝʇuoɔ pǝɹıdsuı ǝlƃƃınbs ɹɯ ǝɔnpoɹd uɐɔ ooʇ noʎ
Translation…
You too can produce Mr Squiggle inspired content using fliptitle.com
Author: Nathan Campbell
Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.
Testing times
Lately I’ve been thinking about how churches should harness the power of PR a little more – particularly regional churches in cities like Townsville – where there’s a strong local media contingent and not so much clamour for media attention. I’ll probably turn that into a post all of its own at some stage – but for now, I have a case study for your consideration…
A group of researchers set out to conduct a series of experiments testing prayer. Their findings created a difficulty for those people who expect science to be capable of testing everything… both Christians, and atheists…
Christians who think science can prove God struggle because the people being prayed for fared worse than the people not being prayed for – and atheists because they’ll often argue that prayer should have a demonstrable psychological placebo effect – which it didn’t.
Christianity Today found a somewhat unpredictable spin to put on events. The study was conducted a few years back, but this article was produced pretty recently. Here’s a description of the study:
“STEP was simple and elegant, conforming to standard research norms and protocols: 1,802 patients, all admitted for coronary artery bypass graft surgery, were divided into three randomized groups. Two of the groups received prayer from committed Christians with experience praying for the sick. But only one group’s members knew they were being prayed for. The result: The group whose members knew they were being prayed for did worse in terms of post-operative complications than those whose members were unsure if they were receiving prayer. The knowledge that they were being prayed for by a special group of intercessors seemed to have a negative effect on their health.”
Here’s the Christianity Today editorial on the results:
The real scandal of the study is not that the prayed-for group did worse, but that the not-prayed-for group received just as much, if not more, of God’s blessings.
It’s an odd interpretation of the results and doesn’t seem to mesh well with the study itself.
Here’s the Harvard Medical School Media Release on the study – and a better description of the methodology… You’ve got to wonder who set these parameters and actually thought they’d work. This doesn’t seem to come close to any Biblical picture of prayer…
“The researchers standardized the start and duration of prayers and provided only the patients’ first name and last initial. Prayers began on the eve or day of surgery and continued daily for 14 days. Everyone prayed for received the same standardized prayer. Providing the names of patients directed prayer-givers away from a desire to pray for everyone participating in the study. Because the study was designed to investigate intercessory prayer, the results cannot be extrapolated to other types of prayer.”
Sadly, the whole report is now going to be used by misguided atheists to bash all Christians over the head as they call for amputees to grow arms.
Bad movie plot: Mormon Theology
Here’s a fairly old piece of orthodox Christian criticism of Mormon theology… Interesting viewing, this, along with a South Park episode, and some segments of John Safran vs God, forms my understanding of the teachings of the US-centric religion. It’s really not at all linked to Christianity – despite what your friendly neighbourhood doorknocker might tell you.
Helpful Atheists
I’ve been challenged by my recent conversations with my atheist friends to consider my comments on morality – apparently atheists find the suggestion that Christians are more inclined to act morally somewhat abhorrent and arrogant – they argue that there are plenty of nice atheists. Which is true.
I made my suggestion in what I thought was a logical and coherent manner. If atheists are prepared to acknowledge that Christianity – in its pure, biblical form complete with love and an other person focus, is a force for good – then it follows that Christians must be gooder than average. I thought that made perfect sense. It lead to vitriol and condemnation.
I may have countered the standard accusation that “religion” has killed lots of people and done bad stuff by breaking Godwin’s Law – and invoking Hitler, and other terrible atheists who have killed many more people throughout human history as a response. This is altogether another argument and worthy of a separate post – this line was rejected on the basis that they weren’t motivated by their atheism. I disagree slightly, but take the point… anyway, that’s a rather long intro to this little story about a nice, helpful atheist who has agreed to help out those Christians who subscribe to rapture based theology. He’s going to send mail on their behalf, post rapture. You can choose from a series of letters and greeting cards… like this one…
So there you have it. Atheists can be nice people after all…
Fade to Black
I trust you all enjoyed my wife’s musings in my absence. If so – please leave a nice encouraging comment so that she’ll contribute more regularly.
While she may have indulged in some typical male caricatures she wasn’t far off the mark.
It is with some sadness that I must announce the retirement of my favourite novelty shirt – the subtle “Black T-Shirt””… It has served me well for many years. Since its purchase from Chermside’s Trade Secret for the low, low price of $9.99 the shirt has accompanied me around the country. Its iconic status recognised by many.
Sadly, the shirt is now a faded dark grey, slightly threadbare, and somewhat permanently on the nose.
Well, it smells ok straight off the washing line – but add any moisture and some sort of chemical reaction occurs, releasing a previously undetectable aroma. A putrid smell. So, with some sadness it will venture out into polite company no more. Farewell, good and faithful servant.
The silver lining to this dark (but fading) cloud is that it reduces the total number of novelty t-shirts in my wardrobe – and thus no doubt frees me up to replace it.
Different strokes
I am back. Camp was good, more on that shortly.
But first things first – I was reading through my unread items in Google Reader and game across these gems – right next to each other.
Two media organisations reporting on the same set of circumstances with vastly different interpretations of the facts:
ABC – Ex-Sharks Player denies involvement in sex scandal
Fox Sports – Former Sharks player Daniel Ninness admits role in group sex incident
In fact – both stories report almost exactly the same statement from Ninness – without making any editorial judgment on his stance, except in the headline.
How is this so?
Card bored?
Business cards are over-rated, well the standard ones are anyway. I get a lot of business cards in the average work month – and most of them are average. And they end up in a bowl on my desk – much like my own in house business card draw, only without prizes. Boring and conservative cards don’t get noticed. They get filed. So a nice card is a nice point of difference.
A while ago I posted 10 novel business cards. Here’s a collection of 100. Most of the ten I posted are there, but there are others that are nice. 90 of them in fact…
Want a youth ministry that rocks?
Let Ignatius ignite you.
His essential ingredients of Youth Ministry:
- An Xbox 360
- A copy of rock band
- A book deal
- A moderately priced hair cut
He’s edgier than Mark Driscoll.
“Ignatius makes Song of Solomon look like Dr Zeuss”
And all about rigourous training and preparation…
“I’m very serious about preparation – I’ll spend two or three hours doing prayer lattes.”
It’s 10 minutes of awesome Youth Ministry instruction…
Relax children, it’s a mockumentary…
Killer craft
If you want your kid to look this awesome you can get the low down here. And why wouldn’t you? It’s quite a finning design. Found here.
Ball loon
This is quite incredible.
It really wouldn’t be out of place in a circus – and I feel like I should know. Because last night Robyn and I hit big top for the Great Moscow Circus. It’s in Townsville for three weeks.
It was worth the price we paid for admission (free through a work contact) and probably worth the price others will pay.
There was a disappointing scarcity of scary animals – unless you’re scared by miniature ponies. Which Robyn isn’t – she wants four for the yard. She dreams of running our very own menagerie of rare and bizarre animals. That’s why ordinary people have pet dogs – and we have turtles.
It was actually a thoroughly enjoyable night – despite Robyn’s head cold/flu thing (she caught my man flu but it’s bashed her about a bit) – and it’s pretty cheap.
There are 13 performers (by my count) who each take on multiple roles (including selling pop-corn before the show and flashing trinkets and refreshments during intermission). It’s impressive. As is the guy on the ball – who prompted the post, and was discovered here…
Twix or treat
Instructables is a veritable goldmine of ideas – a repository of human ingenuity – a hotbed of innovation… I could go on. It’s brilliant. Particularly when somebody gives you the run down on how to produce your very own giant Twix.
The instructions are in some sort of Spanglish – but the pictures tell the story.
Ingredients
2 packages of cookie Maizena
1 package of caramel candy
2 pounds of chocolate to milk
From what I can gather you need chocolate, caramel and some biscuits – based on my experience with Twix, I’d say Milk Arrowroots would suffice…
Shirt of the day: Swinedled
It’s been a while since I posted a shirt link. Mostly because I haven’t found any great ones for a while. But this is vaguely amusing.
Quick reference calendar
I’m genuinely bad at keeping a track of commitments in diaries, although thanks to the iPhone and it’s brilliance I’m getting better.
I’m not sure that having the months of the year etched into your fingernails like these guys did is helpful – but at the very least it’ll teach you not to bite off more than you can chew… perhaps. Found here.
