The study by Willow Creek was been years in the making but only splashed across the blogosphere with its sensational headlines late last year. (Read: "Mind-Blowing!" - "Painful!" - "Revolutionary!") I'm not sure why CT is still doing stories on it at this late date except that their publishing schedule is generally 3-6 months out. (I first heard about the Reveal study in

Greed is the surprising accompaniment to almost all our sins.

We all like lists. They help create organized presentations, and they are easy to remember. Perhaps that is why God chose a list format to present some of his most well-known laws. But what if we took that list — the Ten Commandments — and reduced it to its essence? What basic sins would we identify? One hopelessly alliterative preacher condensed the Decalogue to a clever three-point quip: man's chief temptations are "gold, girls, and glory." Gary Downing, in his article "Accountability That Makes Sense," agrees, calling them "the three issues with which we all struggle: money, sex, and power."

But perhaps we could distill even further, to a sort of grand unifying sin: greed. It is the misplaced love and desire that drives broken

These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.

(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. )

Okay, okay, okay. I know. This is a day of tragedy and mourning for my lost and beloved RodentMobile. But blame it on Travis Johnson. He posted a link to the “Concerned pastor” voicemail Trent Fuller released on the GraceHead blog, and I badly needed the humor. Perhaps you do, too.

I’m a white guy (well, not really, I’m Hispanic—maybe [long story]—but I think I’m white) so, naturally, I don’t move much when I sing. And when I catch myself moving, I nervously stop, shove my hands in my pockets, and look around with a sheepish grin. The Bride of Rat, though, she loves to move when she sings. She spent a year in Brazil as an exchange student and learned to enjoy dancing over there; consequently, she gets a little rhythm goin’ on during worship now and then.

Nothing wrong with

For years I've bemoaned the lack of serious, thoughtful, theologically rich lyrics in the praise songs and worship choruses I'm subjected to at church. Some of the recent praise and worship music remedies that, but I'm still occasionally struck silent by vacuous, empty lyrics using clichés to resonate with worshipers and the time-tested trick of singing a single chorus line over and over until we all fall into a trance-like worship state.

:: sigh ::

I miss scripture in my worship. I miss theology in my worship. I miss the hymns.

But what I don’t necessarily miss are the hymn’s melodies and forms. As my wife and I have discussed this, I’ve often wondered aloud why church worship directors don’t apply their musical talents to translate older hymns into contemporary sounds. Okay, maybe most church worship and music directors really aren’t that good at creating

Kathryn Lang, of Guntersville, Alabama, grew up Episcopalian, started attending a Southern Baptist church a few years ago, and lately began attending a local Assembly of God church because of the programs for her kids. They’ve taken membership classes at the A/G church, and her oldest son was baptized there.

Her comments in The Huntsville Times’ community column are interesting, in light of what I’ve recently blogged on. She remarks that the main differences aren’t as much theological as practical: Do you think you have a structured service, or an unstructured service? (Perhaps she glosses over the problems rampant in the ECUSA, or maybe her recent church activities have taken her “out of the loop.”) But then she analyzes the apparently unstructured services of the Baptist and Assemblies crowd and, guess what? We’re pretty structured after all.