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A La Carte (7/22)
- 07/22/10
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Dangers Facing Over-Churched Kids - Tony Kummer has some good warnings for parents of church kids. “These are the children who attend every service, and can't remember anytime when they didn't come to church. In my ministry, most of these kids also attend a Christian school. They can recite the books of the Bible, they've memorized countess Scripture verses, and they know details about Bible stories that I can't even remember.”
Screening the Net for Barbarity - Here is an odious job (much like the people who have to give ratings to movies). And yet it’s a job necessitated by our digital world. “An Internet content reviewer, Mr. Bess sifts through photographs that people upload to a big social networking site and keeps the illicit material -- and there is plenty of it -- from being posted. His is an obscure job that is repeated thousands of times over, from office parks in suburban Florida to outsourcing hubs like the Philippines.”
What Amazon Didn’t Say - This article contains information about what Amazon didn’t say in their announcement about the dominance of the e-book.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
Releasing on April 1, The Next
Published in 2008, this book
This is a guide that calls men,
This review of the bestselling
New to the site? You can get
This is a guide written
Comments (6)
I think I must be a book snob. The thought of reading a book on a Kindle or online is abhorrent. Give me a good, old-fashioned book for three times as much any day!
Who can resist the smell of old books?!
Beth, I agree with you on books. I have a Kindle anyway. There are just times that it works better. I don’t think you are a snob, but maybe a bit under-informed.
When I can get a $10 book on Kindle or pay close to $30 for it in hardback, and it is a book I don’t know is worth a permanent place in my library, that’s another time the Kindle works.
Thirdly, there are hundreds of classics that are free on the Kindle…books I probably wouldn’t bother to buy and read but warrant a look on the Kindle since the cost is so low. (Right now I’m re-reading Beowulf…haven’t touched it since high school English.)
When I need to travel light, Kindle is ideal.
But I agree, I’ll never give up my hard copy, paper-and-ink books.
I think that the “over-churched” descriptor is not entirely accurate. Faithful church attendance is not the condition that leads to the problems described in that article. A lack of balance and discipling (at home, at church, and in the community) in the lives of young people certainly can lead to those problems. I wish the author had used a different descriptor, as this type of descriptor fuels the fire of those who minimize faithful church attendance.
I think “overchurched” is a good word for exactly what he’s describing. He’s talking about a situation where so much time is spent at church, that there is no sense that spiritual development is something that is ongoing. Heck, if I’m at church *all the time,*, then I’m being religious *all the time,* right? Well, um, no, not exactly. Not if my faith is so tied to physical presence at church functions that I don’t know how it works in any other context. And I don’t think that’s just a matter of what isn’t happening at home; it’s that there’s not even any *space* for non-church-based aspects of faith to grow. There really are situations where the family needs to be doing things other than church twice on Sundays, Monday night Bible study, Tuesday night AWANAS, Wednesday night family night, etc., etc., etc. (Each of which might be good, some of which are essential, but taken all together, are excessive.) The kids need to learn how to grow and practice their faith away from church, and they can’t actually do that if they never *are* away from church.
I had honestly never even thought about the fact that jobs like those net screeners exist. What a horrible toll that must take on those people. I can’t imagine.
Couldn’t agree more. I didn’t know much of any of the web was filtered by human eyes, other than private companies IT staff. Good to know these companies exist, but wow, what an illustration of the corrosive nature of sin and wickedness. Even unbelievers (I’m assuming there are some [most?] working for these screening companies, are offended by this content. The image of God in us all, even before regeneration, balks at some forms of wickedness.
Good ethics question arises from this: Should a Christian take a job as one of these screeners? Are they helping clean up the world and it’s filth or would it be considered an exercise in futility and really only just exposing themselves to wickedness that may make them stumble in a myriad of ways?Is it a debateable matter, perhaps? Could the ‘stronger’ Christian perhaps do this kind of work but not the ‘weaker’ Christian? (Paul’s words from Romans 14, by the way, not mine)
we should discuss this, perhaps!