Tag: Culture
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Anxiety in Youth Ministry
Over the past several days I’ve started to put words to what I’ve been observing: The tribe of youth ministry is anxious. 2009 has been a ridiculously hard year. Last October when Tony Campolo spoke in Sacramento he said something like… “Church, as we know it today, will collapse with the economy. And we will…
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Americans Love to Hate Winners
We have a fascination with the little guy. Foundational to American storytelling is the little guy overcoming adversity to make it big. Americans love happy endings. The movie credits roll when Rocky raises his fists to the sky. Or when the young lawyer wins the big case against the mean corporation. Or when the nerdy…
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Win a Google Wave Invite
Tonight the Google gods waved their magic wand and granted my wish by inviting me to the first group of beta testers for Google Wave. (See the video above.) Included in my account was the ability to invite a few people. I have to be honest, I don’t see what all of the hype is…
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A culture of fear
Last night I got a Facebook wall post by a former neighbor and childhood friend. He posted some Google Streetview links to the places where we grew up, including the elementary school that we walked to. It didn’t take me long to get curious about our daily walk to and from James Madison Elementary School.…
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Dominant Culture in Evangelicalism
I’m now a few chapters into Andrew Marin’s Love is an Orientation. I have to tell you I am fascinated by two aspects of the book. 1. How much homework Andrew has done. He knows his stuff. He knows the GLBT culture pretty well (from what I can tell) and he definitely knows Evangelical culture…
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Secret Sex
I’ve been around Christians long enough to know that they like to talk about sex. In fact, I know enough about internet traffic to know that only one thing is more popular than a post about sex. In fact, most of you are reading this because you clicked on a link with a keyword you…
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The mindset of college freshmen
Here is this year’s Beloit College Mindset list for 2008. For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Freddy Krueger have always been dead. 1. Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team. 2. Since they were in diapers, karaoke machines have been annoying people at…
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Finding culture from within four walls
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the culture we live in as well as how we discover the culture we live in. Some of it comes from observation, some of it we naturally pick up without noticing it, but a lot of our culture comes from outside. Think about the cultural things you pick…