Church revitalization; Selfies Say 'Lonely'; Court bans pro-life plates in NY...more

Rainer: 8 Common Characteristics of Successful Church Revitalizations
...As I gathered the information for successful revitalizations, I noted eight common characteristics that took place in most of the congregations. Unfortunately, many leaders are not willing to make all the sacrifices these characteristics suggest. Those who will make the sacrifices, however, are often seeing blessings beyond what they anticipated...

$52,293 NIH Study Aims to Reduce Discrimination of LGBT Schizophrenics by Convenience Store Clerks   ...“Complementing a study of community participation amongst an ethnoracially diverse group of individuals with schizophrenia in Toronto, Ontario, this project will involve the development of a new arm of the study that would focus specifically on lesbian, gay, and transgender (LGT) people with schizophrenia and those with whom they interact,” it stated...

Marine Court-Martialed for Refusing to Remove Bible Verse from Work Computer   ...A U.S. Marine was court-martialed and discharged from the military for displaying a piece of paper with scripture on it at her work computer.

Fox News reports Monifa Sterling had posted the Old Testament quote, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper,” on her computer. When a superior asked her to remove it, the lance corporal refused. The next day, Sterling found the paper in the trash...

Court Rules Pro-Life Views Are "Patently Offensive," Bans Choose Life License Plates in New York



Suspected Boko Haram Militants Kill 29 in Brutal Nigeria Attack ...Suspected Boko Haram members on Friday (May 22) slaughtered 10 Christians with machetes in Pambula-Kwamda, a Christian community in Adamawa’s Madagali Local government Area (LGA). Area residents told Morning Star News members of the Islamic extremist rebel group attacked at 4 a.m.

“They destroyed the telephone mast first before invading our community – this was to prevent us from telephoning and requesting help,” said an area pastor who requested anonymity for fear of being hunted down by the terrorists. “They killed 10 members of our church [Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, or EYN] using machetes and then slaughtering them.”

Here’s how badly we’re getting ripped off by our mobile phone providers   ...UK's Three offers unlimited data and texts (even roaming to US) all for £20 ($31)...

Selfies Say ‘Lonely’
...But I have yet to see a selfie — even a humorous one — where the subject didn’t appear attractive. They can exist (see deleted photos from iPhones), but no one’s sharing them. We’re not trying to present who we really are, warts and all, with selfies. We’re presenting who we want to be seen as. Like pop stars and presidents, we’re salesmen — of ourselves.

There’s something sad and lonely about that. Sure, we can project some feelings onto an image (there aren’t exact figures on how many of us are under the delusion that we’d be best friends forever with, say, Beyoncé or Kate Middleton, if we got to meet, though I’m betting the figure’s high, given our collective cultural obsession), but we can’t have a genuine friendship or bond with an image. Real relationships aren’t based on illusion. They’re based on knowing a person, both his flaws and his strengths, his weaknesses and his traits that suggest the promise of a better someone developing in the future...