Talkin' About My Generation

I LOVE infographics. An infographic communicates important statistical information in a visually appealing way for people with decreasing attention spans (which is anyone who grew up on television and uses social media). Here's a great one about my generation, 18-29 year-olds.


Created by: Online Graduate Programs

2012: A Book Odyssey

I am better at admiring books than reading them. If I loved reading books as much as browsing book stores, I would be very well-read. But alas, though my intentions are good, my practice is often lousy. So for the first time, I'm putting together a reading list for the coming year. The following list excludes the books I will be required to read for graduate courses and any "pleasure reading" (even though I think I will find pleasure in reading these). And most notably, I have each of these on my shelf already! No need to purchase more until I knock some of these out. So here they are, with categories and explanations:

Passing on the Faith by Merton P. Strommen and Richard A. Hardel

• Youth Ministry/ Family Ministry
• I'm currently reading Sticky Faith. Hopefully, Passing on the Faith will help me learn even more about how the family and the church can work together to create lasting faith in our children.

The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns

• Christian Living
• I'll let the back cover speak for itself: Stearns, president of World Vision U.S., "uses his journey to demonstrate how the gospel--the whole gospel--was always meant to be a world-changing social revolution, a revolution that begins with us."

The Nativity Story

On Wednesday nights, we are in the midst of a four-part series called "Christmas Playlist." The song for week one was "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and we talked about how Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the hopes and expectations of Israel. Week two's song was "Silent Night" and we spent time simply digging into the birth narrative of Jesus. I briefly looked around on the web for a compilation of the Matthew and Luke versions but couldn't find one. So I combined them myself, complete with sub-headings that I thought might whet the appetite of my middle-school and high-school readers. Check it out and feel free to use it yourself:

Here’s the story of the birth of Jesus Christ:

To Bethlehem for the Census.

In those days, a decree went out from the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus that everyone in the empire should be registered. So each person went back to his hometown for this census. A man named Joseph went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to a town called Bethlehem in Judea, which is the city of King David. He went to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David. And with him was his wife-to-be Mary, who was pregnant.