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Jonathan and Laurie
Originally uploaded by Jdblundell.

She’s standing on a fireplace just to reach my height and it’s still one of my favorite pics.

Ed Young’s Fellowship Church just opened their Miami campus with over 600 people in two Sunday services.

Over the weekend we celebrated an incredible movement of God during the Fall Kickoff at our Fellowship Church Miami Campus. After weeks of community outreach and preparation, we were excited to welcome over 600 people in our two Sunday services during the official grand opening weekend.
Opening this campus has really taken us back to our roots as a small church when we started in an Irving, Texas office complex with 150 people. We began with an even smaller base in Miami and have already experienced amazing growth. And though things are definitely different in a small church, the underlying approach we use for all five of our campuses remains the same. We’re employing creativity and personal interaction to reach out and touch one life at a time.

The blog entry at Creative Pastors gives a rundown of what they’ve found helps and works. I think the main thing to take away from it is that personal relationships make a huge difference.
Thanks to CMS for the heads up.

Some other related links:
How the Internet is Changing Denominations – Minimal design, but some interesting thoughts about technology changing the church.
Come As You Are – “To say that Mars Hill is just a church is to say that Woodstock was just a concert.”
88% of Teens Leave Church After High School – The stat keeps coming up–when are churches going to do something about it?
Another Church Talks About … It – You know, it. As in the birds and the bees?
BrandSpankingNewChurch.com – Gotta love the site for this new church plant.

Many cultures practice excision (excision is a permanently disfiguring procedure that is sometimes called female circumcision and is a permanent loss of sexual pleasure). Upwards of 150 million women and girls world wide are estimated to have undergone ritual cutting. Estimates suggest that roughly 200,000 women who have been excised have moved to the United States. While many people in this culture say that the practice is “barbaric,” in the cultures where it is practice a number of defenses are given for the practice.
How do you think we should morally evaluate the practice?

EDIT: Note, the practice is done willingly by adults.

In Eskimo cultures (in the past) female babies liable to be killed and this was permitted simply at the parents’ discretion, with no social stigma attached to it. Also, when older people were too feeble to contribute to the family, they were left outside in the snow to die.
Basically the Eskimo society had little respect for life.
They killed the babies because the Eskimos lived in a harsh environment, where food was in short supply. A fundamental Eskimo thought was this: “Life is hard, and the margin of safety small.” A family may want to nourish it’s babies but unable to do so. Eskimo mothers would nurse their infants over a much longer period than mothers in our culture…for 4 years or longer.
So even in the best of times, there were limits to the number of infants one mother could sustain. The female babies were the ones that were killed b/c the males were primary food providers.
So today’s question is: Eskimos practiced infanticide (usually with female girls) and also that they sometimes left the elderly in the snow to die. How do you evaluate the practices morally?

I’m really excited about the new encounter blog because of great posts like this…

Ruined: “Just recently I was doing a lesson in which I mentioned the fact that one of Jesus’ leadership qualities was that He “ruined” peoples’ lives. Well, actually, He ruined people to their former lives – they were never the same again. Beggars became workers, postitutes became women of virtue, tax collectors became generous, and lepers became party-goers. And those who knew Him best? The influence of Jesus was seen by even their enemies – Acts 4:13 – and the conclusion they drawn is that it was Jesus’ influence that made the difference! I want to be ruined like that! I want to see Jesus ruin me to some bad habits and maybe some of my less than stellar character flaws. Unfortunately I don’t think I get to choose what Jesus works on. Zacheus (a wee little man was he) only wanted Jesus to recognize him, but instead he got a lesson on grace and generousity! So I’m trying to be open to Jesus’ ruining power – even if it’s going to take me places that I don’t expect. I pray (reluctantly) that Jesus will ruin me thru this year!