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Selling Soap and Grace
I was once a member of a pyramid scheme multi-level marketing business ( which will remain unnamed, but rhymes with “Scamway” ), that had a number of little sayings to encourage new members to do what they had to do to succeed. One such saying was “Fake it until you make it!” In other words,…
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Indian Giver!
When I was a kid, “Indian giver” was a spiteful thing that you called someone who gave you something, then, for whatever reason wanted it back, asked for it back, or worse, took it back. The phrase has pretty much faded from common usage, in large part because of it’s clearly a negative racial stereotype.…
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What This Nation Needs is a Return to God’s Law!
During every election cycle here in the U.S. there are always evangelists and Christian leaders pounding the pulpit and declaring the need for America to return to obedience to God and His Righteous Law. Great! But what would that look like? Well, dinner would have to change… No more bacon – or ham sandwiches, Easter ham, stuffed pork…
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Why ya’ got to be Predictin’?
The Blood Moons tetrad has come and gone and we are still here. While Hagee apologists are now saying that he only predicted “something” would happen “around” the time of the tetrad, Mark Biltz, who provided most of the source research for Hagee’s slick DVD and posters, made clear predictions that the 7 year tribulation began…
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Verse of the Day – Part 3: MailChimp templates
Beside getting OAuth 2 setup for Google Apps, the hardest part of this was to come up with a simple way to create and send MailChimp campaigns with a similar layout and look, but with some custom content. My choices seem to be to between: 1. Create the full HTML5 content from scratch, taking care…
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Verse of the Day, Part 2: using Google Spreadsheet
Last time, I described what I thought needed to happen in order to send out a verse of the day message via SMS and email. This makes use of Google Drive, ESV Bible, Twillio, and MailChimp APIs and interfaces. The first thing is to create a place to store our information. This includes people’s signup…
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Verse of the Day, Part 1: Making use of Google Apps, Twilio, MailChimp, and ESV Bible WS
Our Church does a 40 Day Event during this time of year that includes, among other things, being able to signup to get an relevant Bible verse and message via SMS and/or email. This year, I decided it was time to make the process a little less labor intensive and take a few ruby modules…
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Tackling the Fallacy of the Fragile Gospel
I have the opportunity to share something from God’s Word and His heart on the first Sunday of every month. It may not seem like the best situation for doing a series, but I’ve really felt the urge to cover an entire book of the Bible, cover-to-cover. So, for the next 10 months, I’m walking…
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Being the Bag Man
One of the most humbling things that ever happened to me as a new Christian was coming home one day to find several full bags of groceries on my front porch. Bread, milk, eggs, peanut butter and much more. I was newly married, both of us working part-time. Me as a farmhand, her as a…
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Koinonia and the Lone Ranger
Hi-ho, Silver, Away! “When the West was young and danger lay at the end of every trail, the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, brought law and order to the length and breadth of the early Western states.” For many years, I have accepting the idea that it is at least possible to…