I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
Online Slide shows are a little hard to follow sometimes, since you don’t get the presentor with the presentation. However, I was able to get the gist of the this. Pretty decent. 
I watched one of the the Youth Specialities podcasts and they mentioned that we should start working with our graduating seniors now so that when they graduate next year they can transition into a college world easier. Interesting thoughts on how to do it.
John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) posts articles on his blog about environmentalism’s extremes and provides a bit of commentary as well. The first article in the post that I have marked was interesting because I keep hearing about this war on science, but when it comes down to it, there isn’t.
“For six and a half years under President Bush,” Senator Hillary Clinton told an audience in October 2007, “it has been open season on open inquiry.” Senator Edward Kennedy, in an April 2007 speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bemoaned the many ways in which “the truth is taking a beating” under conservative influence in Washington. One popular recent book on the subject is entitled The Republican War on Science; another, by former vice president and Nobel laureate Al Gore, is called The Assault on Reason.
But beneath these grave accusations, it turns out, are some remarkably flimsy grievances, most of which seem to amount to political disputes about policy questions in which science plays a role. Ethical disagreements over the destruction of embryos for research are described instead as a conflict between science and ignorant theology. Differing judgments about the proper role of government in sex education in schools are painted as a quarrel between objective public health and medieval prudishness. A dispute about the prudential wisdom of a variety of energy policy alternatives is depicted as a clash of simple scientific facts against willful ignorance and greed.
The American right has no desire to declare a war on science, and nothing it has done in recent years could reasonably suggest otherwise. The left’s quixotic defensive campaign against an imaginary enemy therefore has little to tell us about American conservatives-who, of course, do have a complex relationship with science, though it is not the one the left seeks to describe. But if this notion of a “war on science” tells us little about the right, it does tell us something important about the American left and its self-understanding. That liberals take attacks against their own political preferences to be attacks against science helps us see the degree to which they identify themselves-their ideals, their means, their ends, their cause, and their culture-with the modern scientific enterprise.
I have heard the same things from Democratic leaning scientists whom I respect, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, a noted astronomer. When asked the question at a forum in Los Angeles, he responded with, and I’m paraphrasing, there is no Republican war on science.
Read the whole first article. You can read the second and third articles as well, if you want.
I have been hearing this meme as of late, but thinking back, I can remember the same sort of theme in some of politics of the past. I’m not sure I completely buy into the whole thing, but it is an interesting read which looks like, at times, what is going on. I agree that there is criticism and self-criticism with in the society, that is needed to keep the country from tilting one way or another. The claim of exaggerated criticism or exaggerated self-criticism pushes democracies over the edge is interesting, but I’m thinking that they are temporary and are pushed away by the mainstream once recognized as such.
Ok, now that I have gotten the new blog going, I need to tell everyone here to go there. I already transported my Feedburner feed over to the new site, but I never did a formal announcement. I see Loudtwitter is working again, so I may keep this old site for posting all of my twitter posts through the day. They will have the links to the new site for any new posts that I write. A couple of reasons I went to a new site with WordPress:
So the new site is at Ministry & Meteorology? I couldn’t get wxym.com someone else already had that for some business. All of the links that come from the new site on twitter will go there, so if you click on a ping.fm link from a post that is on my daily wrapup here then you will go to the new site. If you were on the feed, then you already are on the new site. One new feature that I like is Featured Content. If I post something I can keep it on the front page for a while. I have some boxes for some of the categories that I really like to write about and I do have a box for the actual feed so that you can click on my most recent posts, even if they aren’t featured or in my opinion or ministry categories. I like the control over the layout that I have.
Last but not least, I have to thank my wife for all that she has done. She has undertaken creating a business setting up WordPress sites and has taught me how to mess with my site.
Cross posted to the old site.
Thought I would pass this one along. We all struggle with this. I do. The problem is that we begin to see the people we despise as not human, so we think we can treat them as something other than what they are…a child of God.
Coming from a youth ministry background (almost 10 years as a volunteer in some form or another), it is easy for me to say that this post if off base. However, as I thought about it, what is the main complaint in youth ministry, or from youth pastors? Parental/adult involvement in the ministry of the youth/kids. I agree that maybe even my focus on the kids shouldn’t the be primary focus, but discipling the adults to do the youth ministry.
A first reason to focus on adults is that parents have the primary responsibility to disciple their kids. Sure, it’s rare for parents to do that. We’ll teach them to hunt, fish, cook, drive, and other things of life. But do we teach them them to pray? To read and understand the bible? To share their faith with others? To interpret their lives and encounters with the world in terms of the Kingdom of God? Usually not. At least in many UM churches, many of the adults are too spiritually introverted to feel “comfortable” doing these things. Better leave these really important things to the professionals, i.e., the Sunday School teachers and church staff.
I come from a United Methodist background, but in my experience outside of the UM, I see the same thing. Usually, the successfully run youth ministries have a lot of adult help and a lot of parental support.
Read the whole thing here.—>Bandits No More » Success in ministry.
Leave your comments below.
Cross posted on Big Ticket Festival Ministers’ Connection.
Someone directed me to the Facebook page to stop Michael Vick from getting into the NFL. I joined. Then another friend chastised me for it. I reconsidered. Deleted the post and un-joined. Then this article came out. Here’s what really got me about this article.
Who knows if Vick will get on the straight and narrow and become a powerful testimony of God’s grace, as Dungy hopes. The question for us is, do we hope so?
I guess that is the question. If we call ourselves Christians, do we extend grace to those who don’t deserve it?
Read the whole article.
Tony Dungy, Michael Vick, and the Grace of God – Real World Parents.
I often feel that the extreme right and extreme left pull us into this kind of discourse. Not because they have any new ideas, but they just can’t bring themselves to agree at all with the other side.
I usually read this stuff through XXXChurch.com, but I ran into this through another blog site. This secular view of the trends is what we have been saying has been happening. This is a secular site so I’ll give a warning for some of the language in the article.
HOW INTERNET PORN IS CHANGING TEEN SEX: DETAILS Article on men.style.com.
