An Associated Press story in the Raleigh News & Observer reported this week that the decline in U.S. newspaper circulation is accelerating,  Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that average daily circulation dropped 10.6 percent in the April-September period from the same six-month span in 2008.

 

The report went on to say that although newspaper sales have been declining since the early 1990s, the drop has accelerated in recent years. The accelerated change is partly because newspapers have stopped serving harder-to-reach areas and have limited circulation to their core regions. However, in many cases, people simply aren't buying print copies as much as they used to, given the abundance of free news on the Internet. (newsobserver.com 10/28/09)

 

It’s just another sign of the times. The way we report and receive news is drastically changing....

Yesterday morning while getting ready to come to work I found a prayer in my sock drawer. It was a prayer about home. I didn’t even read it. I just left the paper to be dealt with later. That afternoon I got a call asking me if I would go and pray with a group of workers on the Habitat for Humanity house this morning. I agreed. When I got home I read the prayer from my sock drawer.

Last night at a college game night I was introduced to the board game, Apples to Apples. The rules are pretty easy. Each player gets a set number of red cards with nouns on them. In the middle of the table there is a pile of green cards with adjectives on them. When a green card is turned over each play lays down a red card with a noun they think the adjective describes. Sometimes the words make sense other times they are just funny. It is a great game.

Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. So, since the following story comes from the tarheel state, I felt obligated to pass it along to my fellow North Carolinians. This comes from kwtx.com:

CANTON, N.C. (October 13, 2009)—The Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C. will celebrate Halloween by burning Bibles that aren’t the King James Version, as well as music and books and anything else Pastor Marc Grizzard says is a satanic influence.

Among the authors whose books Grizzard plans to burn are well known ministers Rick Warren and Billy Graham because he says they have occasionally used Bibles other than the King James Version, which is the sole biblical source he considers infallible.

According to the church’s Web site, members will also burn “Satan's music such as country, rap, rock, pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel, contemporary Christian, jazz,...

I’ve come to realize that there are no less than three worlds that exist in my church—and perhaps as many as seven. There is the world according to grandparents—those who grew up in the 30s, 40s, and 50s; the world according to parents—those who grew up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s; and there is the world according to children—those who grew up in the 90s and the first decade of the 21st century. This is an oversimplified version of the seven categories some sociologists would suggest.

The bottom line is the world that we live in—planet earth—has changed exponentially with each passing generation. Where does this leave the church? That’s a question I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

In the past week, I’ve heard the prophetic voices of Brian McLaren, Phillip Jenkins, Kendra Creasy-Dean, and a few others speak about the future of Christianity—for American Christians and those across...

Almost every night I get a phone call from my cousin, Valerie. Often she calls because her daughter, Madison wants to talk to me. Madison is two years old so our conversations aren’t very deep. Most of the time I end up rambling on and on while she says “yes” or “no” in the background.