Terry Pruitt's Blog

Richard Dawkins on Colbert Report I got this from Gary Shavey's blog on Resurgence . I'm not sure if Colbert wins the debate but it is an entertaining exchange.

I caught this on Wired . It is very funny. The quote from Neitzsche is randomly paired with the picture from Family Circus. I think this randomly generated pair is particularly funny since Dolly is holding her dolly. The art is along side the reality, which of course is art too. Sort of recursive humor. Follow the link and see funny sayings. The Nietzsche Family Circus : "Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest."

What I'm thinking could be big is Jericho on CBS. I've always loved the whole Alas Babylon and On the Beach scenario where you just have to use those survival skills and bone up on your Boy Scout handbook . Jericho scratches that itch and then has a bunch of interesting characters as well. The small town has a mayor, his wife, his son who is a adulterer, his son who has been out of the picture for five years and has no explanation, the blond school teacher, the bar maid, the St. Louis cop who is new in town, the mayors political opponent, a deaf girl, her farmer brother, an accountant who just audited the farmer, a brunet who broke her leg in a school bus accident, John Lock, Tom Sawyer, Kate, Evangeline Lilly, Henry Gale , and others. So it does have some of the same elements of Lost . There is a lot of characters who need to be developed. They are surviving a diaster together. There is an outside threat. By the way, the Wikipedia article on Jericho, Kansas is pretty...

If you have not voted for Henry Gale to get the big pink slip, go on over to the Jollyblogger and let him have it. But then again, it is pretty clear that real Henry Gale is dead since Said dug him up to prove that the man calling himself Henry Gale was a liar. Now if that is not toppsy -turvy. JOLLYBLOGGER: The Pollester : "Which Lost Character is most likely to die this season?"

Philosophy for Smarty Pant Soccer Players I got this from Rebecca Stark's son, A Stark Place, http://www.astarkmagazine.com/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 ...

Barb and I have been doing a minivaction together to celibrate our wedding anniversary in recent years. We went to Gettysburg, Rehobath, DE, Philadelphia, and New York City. This year we decided to go west to Hancock, MD. We stayed in a bed and breakfast called the 1828 Trail Inn . The keepers of the inn are a wonderful couple. They enjoyed talking but at the same time respected our privacy. The breakfast was great. There was Belgiun waffles the first day and French toast the second. Bill was the cook. He made a orange syrup that was simply del.icio.us . Having checked out all the places in Hancock, it is easy to say, the 1828 Trail Inn is the best place to stay. We stayed in the Railroad Room. It was decorated with trains related things. It had a porch where I went out on to read each morning and jaccuzi that soaked in each night. What a routine! If you look at the picture, you see the little second story porch on the right hand side of the house. That was my morning han...

My wife said this on the telephone today, so I thought someone would blog it. Here is it is... LiveScience.com Blogs »Blog Archive » Polite Demotion Planned for Planet Pluto : "Pluto will always be a planet regardless of its true astronomical nomenclature. There will always be The Nine Planets. This cannot be erased from history by a simple re-classification of everything. History can not be erased. In the US, Rhode Island is just as much a state of the Union as California is a state. Puerto Rico is not a state, but it could be. Is Maine more of state than Texas? Maine was part of Massachussetts at time and Texas was a independent country, yet as it stands right now both are still states. Just as the US has the Thirteen Original Colonies, our home system will always have the Nine Planets, regardless of further additions to the group which inevitably will happen. Pluto is a planet."

I finished reading this book by Ralph Moore on Starting a New Church . I really enjoyed reading the book. A lot of works of this type spend 80-90% of the book on theory and very little on actually how to get it done. I think I already know the theory but I wanted to know more about the mechanics of getting it done. Pastor Moore is a student of organizational management and leadership. So he mixes in a lot of Tom Peters style of organizational management with his biblical insights. That makes me a little wary, but all in all this is the lessons of an experinced church planter. I highly recommend it.

Ok Go--Here It Goes Again These are the same guys who danced in their back yard and 1 million videos were made by home video artists. I don't think we could get 1 million of this one. The tread mill companies would love it.

The poll on this blog Essentials For a Church Plant has not had any new votes in a while so I am ready to give an analysis of the results. So what did I learn? 1. Sunday School is much more important than I thought. While it was listed as number three results, I did not expect it to rank as high as it did. I have always thought of Sunday School as a specialized small group that meets at a convenient time and place, just before church. Sunday Schools are often run much more like a small group than a class that is evaluates your learning. 2. I would place small groups as high as did the whole group. It is the top item voted for as essential for a church plant. However a vocal minority said in the comments and e-mails that this was not important when the congregation was small. The idea repeated several times was that small group fellowship would be the whole congregation when the whole congregation is the size of a small group or two. I think what this really means is that th...