G.K. Chesterton on Thanksgiving

I found this quotes at Tod Bolsinger's blog:

"Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace."

"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

Newcomers and the Antelope Valley

PALMDALE - The Antelope Valley's population growth is driving the region's economic engine, adding more households with spending power and fueling local job growth.

Nearly 2,150 additional households a year have moved to the Antelope Valley since 2005, and the average household income of those living in the region less than four years is $67,900 - 3.5 percent higher than the overall area's average household income, a study has found.

"It's household economic stimulus to the economy and the job market," said Alonzo Pedrin, who led the study. "Every dollar spent by new households generates $1.28 in economic activity in the Antelope Valley."

Since 2000, the number of residents joining the work force has grown 1.56 percent annually; job growth has gone up 1.78 percent annually in the same period.

"You are adding local jobs at a faster rate than you are adding workers," Pedrin said.

The figures were part of a $55,000 labor market study done by Anaheim-based Alfred Gobar Associates for the Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance, or GAVEA, a nonprofit economic development organization supported by local cities and businesses and other government agencies.

Read the entire Daily News Report

Catching Up With The Jones's?

Two Latino surnames are among the top 10 most common in the nation.

They are Garcia and Rodriguez and a third Latino surname, Martinez, nearly edged out Wilson for 10th place.

Garcia moved to No. 8 in 2000, up from No. 18, and Rodriguez jumped to No. 9, from 22nd place. The number of Latino surnames among the top 25 doubled, to six.

The number of Hispanics living in the U.S. grew by 58 percent in the 1990s to nearly 13 percent of the population.

Press here to read more about the Census report

Presbyterians on Cyberspace...

So what happens when John Stuart posts his daily devotions on his blog, “Heaven’s Highway”?

People write to him from India, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Folks from his congregation say things like, “That’s not what I believe,” or “I never thought about that,” and conversations begin.

And, as an added bonus, a teacher from a local high school is having students download his sermon podcasts. The students are preparing for an upcoming production of the musical “Brigadoon,” and their teacher wants them to get it right.

“They’re copying my accent,” Stuart, pastor of Erin Church in Knoxville and a native of Scotland, said with pleasure.

There is no blueprint to Web 2.0, but the simple truth is this. Presbyterians — like lots of other folks — are using Web-based technology more and more. They find it freeing, a doorway to discipleship, a way to creatively meld words and music and images and ideas.

Click here to read the complete Presbyterian Outlook article

A Good Preacher...

I found this at Rev. K.C Wahe's blog:

I came across this story about Clarence Jordan, who was instrumental in founding
Habitat for Humanity. He visited an integrated church in the Deep South. He was
surprised to find such a large church so thoroughly integrated not only black and white,
but rich and poor. So he asked the old hillbilly preacher, “How did you get the church this
way?” The preacher said, “Well, when our preacher left our small church, I went to the
Deacons and said, ‘I’ll be the preacher.’ And the first Sunday, I opened the book and read, ‘As many of you as has been baptized into Jesus has put on Jesus, and there is no longer any Jews or Greeks, slaves are free, males or females, because you is all one in Jesus.’ “Then I closed the book and said, ‘If you one with Jesus, you one with all kinds of folks, and if you ain’t, you ain’t.”
So Jordan asked what happened after that and the preacher said, “Well, the Deacons took
me into the back room and told me they didn’t want to hear that kind of preaching any more.”
Jordan asked, “What’d you do?” He said, ‘I fired them Deacons. I preached that church down to four people. And not long after that it grew and grew and grew. And I found out that revivals sometimes don’t mean bringing people in, but getting people out who don’t love Jesus.’ (William H. Willimon, Eating and Drinking Among the Lost, Pulpit Resource, Vol. 35, No. 4, Year C, p. 24)

On Reading the Bible

Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned
scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of
professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically
involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.
Thomas Merton

A Prayer on Service

Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest;
to give, and not to count the cost,
to fight, and not to heed the wounds,
to toil, and not to seek for rest,
to labor, and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do thy will.

Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1566)

Presbyterian (USA) Multicultural Congregations

To qualify as multicultural, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregation must have members from two or more racial-ethnic groups, with no more than 80 percent in any one racial-ethnic group. In 2006 we find that:

• 291 congregations are multicultural (less than 3 percent of the total, but up from 120–125 in 1996).
• Most are relatively small, with a median membership of 84, compared to a median of 105 for all congregations.
• Two-thirds have a white majority (187 or 64 percent). In 29 (10 percent) the majority is African American; in 14 (5 percent), Hispanic; in 13 (4 percent), Asian; in 9 (3 percent), Native American; and in 3 (1 percent), other.
• No one racial-ethnic group has a majority of the membership in 36 congregations; of these, 15 are located in the New York City area.
• Overall, 37 states and Washington, D.C., have one or more multicultural congregations, with concentrations in New York (44), California (39) and New Jersey (22).
• The largest percentages of congregations that are multicultural are in Massachusetts (8 of 36; 22 percent), Arizona (6 of 37; 14 percent) and Hawaii (1 of 7; 14 percent).

Press here to read more about the research

A Doxology...

"And now unto him who is able to keep us from falling and lift us from the dark valleys of despair to the mountains of hope, from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy; to him be power and authority, for ever and ever. Amen".
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Prayer as Uprising...

"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world."
Karl Barth

On Prayer and Service

"A Sister who does not pray cannot remain with us -- she might as well go. Through prayer you will believe and through belief you will love -- through love you will serve."
Mother Theresa

A Prayer by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you:
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me…
Restore me to liberty,
And enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before me.
Lord, whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised.

Go and Plant Churches of All Peoples

An important insight about church planting as evangelism among the America's shifting population...

"Today's church plants often target immigrants, which means adjusting church traditions to diverse ethnic cultures. "Any denomination that has an aggressive church-planting program and doesn't have a bias toward the white community will be largely ethnic," says David Ripley, who leads ethnic ministries at the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois. "If we are challenging people to reach their neighbors, the reality is that the neighborhood is changing." As an example, he notes that 25 languages are spoken at Wheaton North High School, formerly dominated by WASP students".

For more insights read the entire Christianity Today article

Grad Student Etiquette

I identified with this cartoon...

Paul Hiebert...An amazing life!

Paul Gordon Hiebert, Distinguished Professor of Mission and Anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, arguably the world's leading missiological anthropologist, died on March 11 of cancer. He was 74.

Paul combined attributes not easily combined: anthropologically—and theologically—informed scholarship and a passion for God's global missionary purposes. The story of how Paul fruitfully merged these commitments is worth telling.


Read the entire article here

Francis Bacon on Methods...

"If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must
expect to employ methods never before attempted".

Auditoire de Calvin

This was the place in Geneva where Calvin began expounding Reformed Theology in 1536. It was also used by the reformer John Knox, during his exile there in the 1550’s. Here Knox ministered to an English-speaking refugee congregation and developed many of the ideas that were to be influential in the Scottish Reformation. Later, it became a place used by numerous Protestant refugee groups including Italian Waldensians, Dutch Reformed and Scottish Presbyterians. Will we be able to re-discover this multi-cultural /multi-lingual legacy of our Reformed identity?

Census Data: Diversity in the US

Number of Immigrants Hits Record 37.5M- By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly one in five people living in the United States speaks a language at home other than English, according to new Census data that illustrate the wide-ranging effects of immigration.

The number of immigrants nationwide reached an all-time high of 37.5 million in 2006, affecting incomes and education levels in many cities across the country. But the effects have not been uniform.

In most states, immigrants have added to the number of those lacking a high-school diploma, with almost half of those from Latin America falling into that category.

However, at the other end of the education spectrum, Asian immigrants are raising average education levels in many states, with nearly half of them holding at least a bachelor's degree.

"There is no one-size-fits-all policy that you could apply for all immigrant groups," said Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau. "I think most of the attention has been on low-skilled workers coming from Mexico. But we have 10 million immigrants from Asia, a number that's growing."

The Census Bureau on Wednesday released a host of demographic data about the nation, including statistics on immigration, housing, education and employment.

The data come from the American Community Survey, an annual survey of 3 million households that has replaced the Census Bureau's long-form questionnaire from the once-a-decade census. It does not distinguish between illegal immigrants and those who are in the U.S. legally.

Mather analyzed the differences in education levels among immigrants from Asia and those from Latin America. Together, the groups account for about 80 percent of all immigrants.

About 48 percent of Asian immigrants held at least a bachelor's degree, compared with about 11 percent of immigrants from Latin America. Among people born in the U.S., about 27 percent were college graduates.

"Driving this are people coming from China and India," Mather said. "They are either coming with a bachelor's degree, or they are coming with visas and getting degrees once they arrive."

At the other end of the spectrum, 47 percent of adult immigrants from Latin America lacked a high school diploma, compared with 16 percent of Asian immigrants and 13 percent of people born in the U.S.

Those numbers are fueling overall increases in the number of high-school dropouts in four states: Nevada, Arizona, Colorado and Texas, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

"It used to be the poor southern states that had low levels of education and income. Now it is the high-immigration states as well," Frey said. "But that isn't to say that the second or third generation won't do better, because they will," he added. "There is upward mobility."

Among the other highlights from the 2006 data released by the Census Bureau:

_Massachusetts led all states in college graduates, with 37 percent of adults 25 and older holding at least a bachelor's degree. West Virginia came in last with 16.5 percent.

_Mississippi led all states in high-school dropouts, with 22.1 percent of adults 25 and older not graduating from high school. Minnesota was at the other end, with only 9.3 percent.

_California led the nation in immigrants, at 27 percent of the state's population, and in people who spoke a foreign language at home, at 43 percent.

_West Virginia had the smallest share of immigrants, at 1.2 percent. It also had the smallest share of people speaking a foreign language at home, at 2.3 percent.

_New York residents had the longest average commuting time to work at nearly 31 minutes, while North Dakota had the shortest, at 15.5 minutes.

_More Americans are working later in life. In 2006, 23.2 percent of people age 65 to 74 were still in the labor force _either working or looking for work — up from 19.6 percent in 2000.

_Fewer households consist of a married couple with children — 21.6 percent in 2006, down from 23.5 percent in 2000.

What Does the Media Mean by "Presbyterian"

This is a Colorado journalist's attempt to answer that question...
A look at Presbyterian alphabet soup and what it means.

To follow Presbyterian news updates, outsiders need to learn a few key facts.

The Presbyterian Church in America is not the same thing as the American Presbyterian Church. Also, Orthodox Presbyterians are not to be confused with Bible Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians, Reformed Presbyterians, Associate Reformed Presbyterians or Evangelical Presbyterians.
This Presbyterian alphabet soup became less complicated in 1983, when the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. joined with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the so-called Southern branch. This created the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which today has about 2.3 million members.

Is that clear? If so, take a deep breath because Presbyterian affairs are about to get more complicated as new divisions and unions reshape the churches that trace their roots to John Calvin and his Reformed branch of Protestantism.

Read the daily camera article