Terry Pruitt's Blog

Forbes has a story on the most competitive countries, meaning economic competition, not soccer enthusiasm. You can follow the link. The World's Most Competitive Countries - Forbes.com : "At the bottom of the ranking of 125 industrialized and emerging countries, in worst to only slightly less bad order, are Angola, Burundi, Chad, Timor-Leste, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe--a gazetteer of economic blight." There you will find photos related to the least competitive countries. You might use that as a guide to pray for the poor. Also in terms of prayer, check out this map of countries where persecution of Christians is prevelant.

This is one of the Bible programs I use. If you have not tried BibleTime, now might be a good time to try it. Oh, yeah, this Bible software is especially for Linux users who are running KDE. BibleTime: Software : "2006-09-22: BibleTime 1.6. A new version of BibleTime has been made available today. It includes many fixes and several new features like the instant search in the installed works." If you are on another platform check out www.crosswire.org . Tags: Bible Software - Linux - KDE - BibleTime

You can blame Joe Carter for this post. Not that I can even begin to imitate him, but he said what he thought on torture and so will I. Hat Tip: Parableman I'm amused by the fact that when I was in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, I was a ultra-conservative in their ranks. Now that I have made my church home in the Presbyterian Church in America, I find myself often leading the more liberal side of a debate. It sort of makes me wonder at times, "Am I really just contrary"? I don't think so, but I might be wrong on that. I work with two guys who are from different ends of the political spectrum, one active in the Democratic party and the other gets most of his best political discussion material from Rush Limbaugh . They both have a love for the entrepreneurial spirit of America and both are hawks. We often get into political discussions. It seems that both are basically in favor of torture of Al Qaida war prisoners in U.S. custody. I think one of them a lea

At presbytery this past Saturday I was impressed by the speaker, Bob Burns . He is a part of Covenant Seminary's Center for Ministry Leadership. He gave a lot of high quality information and made some great points along the way. One of the things that caught my attention was his definitions of management and leadership . Management is developing systems and infrastructure for stability. Leadership is giving direction for appropriate change for an organization. I realized as a part of self-examination, I have not developed my gifts in management. I tend to enjoy and often help guide organizations in change. I find that when they need stability, even when I agree that they need stability, I don't know how to organize and develop appropriate systems for that. It is a weakness I intend to work on. My friend Keith is much more talented at developing stable systems and getting things done. He is another leader in our church and I appreciate that talent that he has. A few y

Jack Yoest's post should be read by every pastor, church sound man, and person who ever make an announcement at church. He is addressing the use of microphones and public speaking. I don't know how many people I see making adjustments to microphones and it really does nothing at all. If it is a little high, well your probably struggling anyway to be seen in the first place. Enough from me, follow the link. Jack Yoest at Yoest.org : "If you deign to be interviewed by a reporter, or instead will speak at a planned, orchestrated press conference, here are 7 tips to remember for the handheld or externally fixed microphone. "

Check out Rebecca Writes post on"My Dad Was A Cowboy ". It is a wonderful testimony and it has a cool picture of her Dad to boot. (Well, actually you can't see his boots, but you get enough of the picture to imagine them.)

I have included Mark Discoll's part of an article from Leadership Journal. I find what he has to say about his office at the church that is more like a living room than an office. Why do Pastor's have to stay in the office anyway? I have never gotten that one. Who are you working with there? If you are in a church with a staff I can sort of see it, but even then, why send everyone to a cubby hole just to make the job seem normal when it is anything but normal. Why not be a few feet from your wife or children rather than a few miles from them if what you are doing is working on a sermon or spending time in prayer? Why not invite a counseling session in your living room? Why not visit the family who needs the counsel? Space is a funny thing. We communicate a lot by our use of living space. We take on roles that we would not dream of without the assistance of archetecture to lead us down that path. Three Kinds of Leadership - LeadershipJournal.net : "Mark Driscoll: L

Emerging vs. Emergent DJ Chuang of http://www.djchuang.com has posted some interesting videos on You Tube. You might check them out.

The past few years reading has become a problem for me. I am 43 years old and I have come to the time in life when my vision for reading has weakened. This happens to most people I'm told by my other friends in their 40s. I suppose so. For me, I went down hard though. I work with my eyes at a computer all day. And yes, enjoy coming home and using the computer to blog and surf the web despite the fact that I use a computer all day at work. My right eye has always been a little weaker than my left. I actually see things a little darker out of that eye. In a class room in grade school, while day dreaming I would look at the ceiling and notice that if I closed one eye and then the other, back and forth, the ceiling was two slightly different colors. Over a year ago my brain started turning off my right eye. I could see out of it okay, but normally I would just ignore the input from the eye. This slowed down my reading. I went to the eye doctor. He gave me bifocals and I