Why the English Language Stinks for Blogging

A great post from Brandon Cox at We Blog Better. All that follows is his post.

English is all I know. I tried Spanish 101 in college – crawled out with a “C”. I do know some Greek, but it’s Koine Greek, which nobody speaks anymore. So I’m stuck blogging in English, which is challenging. Why? Well…

I didn’t write any of what follows – came to me in one of those infinitely forwarded emails, credit to whomever spammed it out first – kudos…

Below is an excerpt from an article titled  “Christians Can’t Ignore the World…” -@ktackel

Today I was reading Acts 17 and it is amazing how Paul uses the local culture of the time to reach people. I think there is a big disconnect in churches about using the culture of the time in church. Well, ok, actually more than a disconnect, there can be major arguments on the subject!

Many churches are using secular songs and video to make a point in relation to a subject they are trying to teach. Now before we go further, I will say secular songs for the sake of doing them, to me has no point, but if they relate to a message I think there can be good reason backed by Paul in this case.

"Because the Bible Says So" Is Not Good Enough

A Case For More Apologetic Teaching in Today's Church

Let me be clear, I believe that the Bible is to be the ultimate authority in a Christian's life, and EVERY WORD is accurate and inspired by God. Because the Bible says so should be enough for a Christian, but sadly it is not.

The Barna Group has an article out today titled New Research Explores How Different Generations View and Use the Bible. It is at the same time interesting and very sad. It really highlights a problem that I have recently come to see a the root of a lot of the problems we are currently seeing in the modern Church, specifically, a low view of scripture. The Authority of scripture is not emphasized, and Apologetics is rarely taught, if at all.

The survey sited in the article defined four generations.

• Mosaic generation - ages 18 to 25
• Busters are those ages 26 to 44
• Boomers are 45 to 63
• Elders are 64-plus.

Researchers found three similarities amoung all four groups.

1. Over 50% of all four age groups consider the Bible a sacred book.
2. Right at 25% of all four groups have the “highest” view of the Bible – that it is “the actual word of God and should be taken literally, word for word.” (Mosaics: 27%, Busters: 27%, Boomers: 23%, and one-third of Elders 34%)
3. 20-25% of all four groups have the "lowest view" of scripture - that "the Bible is not inspired by God." (Mosaics: 25%, Busters: 19%, Boomers: 22%, and Elders: 22%).

The differences between the four groups are more interesting, and show a bad trend towards a lack of belief in the authority of scripture. This is illustrated by the following six areas of belief, or lack of belief.

• Bible as Sacred:
  "9 out of 10 Boomers and Elders described the Bible as sacred, which compares to 8 out of 10 Busters (81%) and just 2 out of 3 Mosaics (67%)"
• Accuracy of the Bible:
  "Just 30% of Mosaics and 39% of Busters firmly believe that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches, compared with 46% of Boomers and 58% of Elders."
• Acceptance of Universalism:
  "Among Mosaics, a majority (56%) believes the Bible teaches the same spiritual truths as other sacred texts, which compares with 4 out of 10 Busters and Boomers, and one-third of Elders."
• Skepticism of Origins of Manuscripts:
  "Young adults are more likely to express skepticism about the original manuscripts of the Bible than is true of older adults."
• Less engagement with the Bible:
  "Busters and Mosaics are less likely than average to have spent time alone in the last week praying and reading the Bible for at least 15 minutes. Interestingly, none of the four generations were particularly likely to say they aspired to read the Bible more as a means of improving their spiritual lives."
• Biblical Appetite:
  "Despite the generational decline in many Bible metrics, one departure from the typical pattern is the fact that younger adults, especially Mosaics (19%), express a slightly above-average interest in gaining additional Bible knowledge. This compares with 12% of Boomers and 9% of Elders."

Read the rest of the Barna Group article here.

This study gives us a picture of American society that is about 50% accepting of the Bible as sacred, but 30-50% accept universalism and only 30-40% believe in the Bible's complete accuracy.

We live in an age were the average person has more information at their fingertips than ever before, and the younger generations are consuming that information as fast as they can get it, but most of what they hear and read concerning the Bible either negative, or completely false. But if you look at the last point in the study, 19% of our youngest adults "express a slightly above-average interest in gaining additional Bible knowledge." I would bet that if we fed the curiosity of that 19%, a good portion of the rest would then become interested.

We (the Church) are doing a horrible job of teaching the historicity and factual accuracy of the Bible, let alone the spiritual truth of the Bible. We need to equip ourselves and fellow Christians with the knowledge, skill and desire to defend the Bible and all that it teaches to the world. Our young people need to know how to defend what they believe. If they can't even defend the provable history and facts in the Bible, how do we expect them to be willing to share their faith to an increasingly skeptical peer group? Heck, how many of us can defend what we believe to our own kids when the come home from high school and college with their heads filled with all of differing beliefs and philosophies taught by their teachers and professors? "Because the Bible says so" is no longer good enough.

Posted via email from Gary's Carpenter

Broadband access a legal right?

from American Thinker Blog

Finland has become the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right. Just wait. The UN is getting involved too.

And you thought our government was insane?

Read the article here.
Broadband access a legal right?

Posted via email from Gary's Carpenter

Twitter bans repeating Tweets, but gives no definitions or guidelines.

I would think that in a time when Facebook has purchased Friendfeed and is adding all kinds of Twitter-like features, Yahoo introducing Meme (it's own micro-blogging platform) and the many other social networking options out there, that Twitter would not want to chase anyone but the most egregious spammers away.

Instead, they announce that they will ban repeat Tweeting. This will hurt many of their core users, and the users who bring the most value to the service: bloggers. Many bloggers have figured out that if they tweet out a new blog post once, only a few followers will see it, but if they tweet it three to four times, about four hours apart, they stand a pretty good chance of getting thier announcement into thier followers view. It also would likely get people who tweet for charitable causes banned.

I can see this having a huge unintended consequence. Spammers, the target of this policy, will just open a whole bunch of new accounts, and just Retweet each other. This is already a problem, but it will get much worse.

Again, with Facebook now owning Friendfeed, a twitter-like service that will most likely be integrated into Facebook at some point, I think it is dangerous to alienate a large portion of it's users. Read the articles below.

From Social Media Today:

Recurring Tweets On Twitter Accounts Are Being Discontinued

by Michael Gass on 10/13/2009 09:35

On Monday, October 12th, 2009, Twitter communicated that recurring tweets are in violation of their Terms of Service. Twitter’s rationale centered around the potential for recurring tweets to result in duplicate tweets.

From Twitter … Recurring Tweets are a violation no matter how they are done, including whether or not someone pays you to have a special privilege. We don’t want to see any duplicate tweets whatsoever- They pollute Twitter, and tools shouldn’t be given to enable people to break the rules. Spinnable text seems to just be a way to bypass the rules against duplicate updates and essentially provides the same problems.

For those of you using services such as Social Oomph (previously named Tweetlater), you can still schedule tweets for a specific day/time, just not recurring Tweets.

and I saw this via twitter last night:

Dear Twitter, please don’t kill your market

I just read Social Media Todays article and the developer group’s announcement of Twitter’s intention to immediately ban any form of recurring tweets. I’m alarmed and concerned because I love Twitter. And with this move, they are taking a giant step toward killing their market and ceding it to Facebook.

Let’s look at the facts:

• Twitter is going for the business market. They’ve already announced a plan for premium accounts and courted business through FAQs tailored to them.
• Twitter’s whole technology is built around the idea of a continuous, real-time stream of information, from which TWEETS FALL OFF.
• Bloggers, businesses, and anyone who actually wants to have a chance of being heard has to tweet the same message more than once. (Especially those who don’t have many thousands of followers.) If they don’t, the chances are miniscule of their tweet being seen by anyone, let alone large numbers of people. (See my last blog post, When is it spam?)
• Although repeats are annoying for client users, the latest stats suggest that a majority of users access through the Web site, where tweets will not be seen unless recurring tweets are allowed.
• Retweets aren’t enough, and recurring tweets help level the playing field. The larger your following, the better your chance of being retweeted. The combination of recurring tweets and hashtags gives tweeps with smaller followings a better chance of getting their message out, and building bigger followings.

It’s clear that many people use Twitter for social reasons. But a big part of the value on Twitter is its ability to surface new information. Twitter users are information junkies. Recurring tweets have a role to play in fulfilling that user goal.

Posted via email from Gary's Carpenter