a bit of a relief

Had a momentary panic over the weekend when I was told I couldn't sign in to my blog to update it. Blogger (the hosts) have been taken over by Google - you know, the people who won't allow folk in China to do a browser search for 'democracy' - and I mistyped my email address when signing up to continue my account. For a few weeks that seemed ok, and I woudn't be getting any unwanted emails from Google either. Trouble is they discovered the email didn't exist and wouldn't let me get at my posts. All is now resolved.

So, a few links to be getting on with:

There are some blogging awards on the go at the moment - I have no idea whether these are the blogging Oscars or something completely worthless, but the list of nominated religious blogs is here: http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/categories/14
If nothing else, it answers the question about what all those Catholics who no longer go to Mass are doing with their spare time, as virtually every blog in the top 30 seems to be RC. MadPriest, one of the blogs linked here, is in the top 20 at time of writing.

http://learningmastery.wordpress.com/2007/04/11/presentations-that-dont-suck/ is a good place to visit for some online conversation about use of Powerpoint and presentations during sermons. As a church which is starting to get into this, and having spent most of the last fortnight lugging my laptop around Yeovil, it's quite helpful.

http://starttheweek.typepad.com/stw/ is a mission blog I visit regularly, and usefully it's updated at the same time every week. 2 really interesting things on it this week - at the top is a big plug for 'Back to Church Sunday', happening this autumn, then part way down some comments on some recent research by TEAR Fund which (the headlines reported) showed that 3m people might come to church if they were asked nicely.

The comments in question remind us that this means that about 45m people therefore wouldn't come to church if they were asked nicely (and also would need to be asked by a good friend or family member), which raises a lot of questions about whether 'Back to Church' is the right message or not. Someone else wondering aloud about that is Alan Hirsch, a pioneer thinker in the emerging church movement.

Finally, Venn that Tune, a series on someones blog, for those of you who like music and mathematical diagrams. Can't remember if I've linked this before, but he's put some new stuff up since then anyway.....