i’ve tried what i can to eliminate spam trackbacks, but they just keep coming up with new ways to get them through. and i’m sick of policing my blog for spam trackbacks, as many as hundreds a day. so i’ve sadly turned off the trackback and pingback feature. i’ve also temporarily changed my comment moderation so that only previously approved commenters get posted immediately - the rest go into my moderation cue, and once i’ve “approved” them, they’ll get posted. we’re looking into some wordpress plug-ins that will deal with all of this more directly; so hopefully i can reset things to normal soon.

evil spammers!

i thought this post on the CT blog had some interesting points about the conservative church’s prohibition against alcohol and tobacco, and the tacit endorsement of obesity. worth reading.

(ht to len evans)

so many youth ministry applications here. i’m going to be sending fun messages and weird pics to my small group guys all year, from this massive list of generators. check out the links down in the right column.

(ht to bobbie)

i had a few people ask me to provide an email subscription to ysmarko. so i’ve installed a feedburner email sub — it’s down at the bottom of the left margin.

i stumbled onto this extremely articulate post by a teenager (wow, sign that girl up for a book!) about why she’ll be in church every sunday, but no longer attending her youth group. well said, natalie, well said.

who woulda thunk you could mix those themes into a wonderful post? this guy.

(ht to bobbie)

if i stopped

if i was quiet for a minute
if i was calm
if i was still

if i turned everyone down
if i switched everything off
if i ceased looking everywhere all at once
if i was silent
if i was still

if i stayed at home
if i didn’t pick up the phone
if i was out even when i was in
if i was silent
if i was still

if i slowed
right
down

if i simply sat
here
there
anywhere

if i stood on my head
and emptied out the contents

if i stopped

would you be there
would you speak to me
would i be able to hear you
would it be worth it?

if i stopped
would it be long enough?

if i was silent
would i hear anything?

if i heard something
would i know it was you?

if i did
would i be interested?

if i was
would i stop again?

(Martin Wroe from ‘When You Haven’t Got a Prayer: A journalist talk to God’; ht to paul chambers)

sorry for the days of blog silence without warning. it snuck up on me. i was in grand rapids friday morning, when our email went down as part of a change-over to the zondervan/harper collins system. for those in the office, it was only down for a bit, but required some tweaks on everyone’s computer, and mine was with me. i flew out saturday morning (after going home to san diego to sleep) for texas, to attend jeremy bush’s wedding (jeremy’s the drummer in the crowder band, and a great guy and friend of ys) and start my quarterly 3-day mini-sabbatical/spiritual retreat/silent retreat. and when i found out monday that i could get the reconfiguration done over the phone, i decided it wasn’t very conducive to my retreat purposes, so stayed off-line. i haven’t seen email since friday noon (still haven’t, won’t until i’m in the office tomorrow morning), only used my cell phone to call home once, and haven’t been online until now (sitting in the houston airport).

(just had a youth worker from sacramento walk up and say hi. too weird. nice, but weird.)

anyhow, it was a great retreat, but i’m really missing my family. i read 3 books, slept a bunch, watched 6 movies, spent 2 hours (in 1 hour intervals) on a waverunner flying across lake conroe, sat silently and listened to god, and generally shut my stinkin’ fat mouth for 3 days. i’ll have more to say about it all tomorrow.

yup, you’ve seen ‘em. tacky church signs with sappy or stupid or embarassing slogans. you’ve even seen the church sign generator, where you can make your own jpeg images of whatever you want on a sign (fool your grandma with signs like this…)

but here’s a website with real crummy church signs. there’s a bunch of sections to this site (including a blog and a trophy room), but my favorite is the “hall of shame“. you gotta read this. the commentary is priceless.

(ht to think christian)

i finally hit 526 incoming links from 200 blogs on technorati. i’ve been hovering in the high 100s for half a year or more. i got to the 190s, then slowly dropped back down to the 160s, and stuck between there and 180 forever. why does this matter, you may be wondering. well, only in that technorati ranks blogs by how many blogs link in (not how many links, but now many blogs — so the 200 number matters, not the 526. btw, my technorati page also says “641 links to this URL…”, which seems completely in conflict with the 526. does anyone understand that?). really, all of this means nothing, at the end of the day. but it’s fun to reach that marker.

the christian e-tailing newsletter had an uninteded comment on the church in america in their recent email. their list of links had these two in succession:

‘CCM’ launches ‘It Girl’ search
Presbyterian Publishing re-elects Perkins, plans hymnal

nice summary of how well we’re doing these days?

(ht to mikey)