Around the Horn

At first, here’s a great little piece about motherhood, or not. Spend some time meditating on this and how it should equip us to minister to hurting people.

At second, Julian Freeman writes on the Top Mistakes He Makes in Preaching. It is a helpful tool for evaluation. Many of these things (too much study, not broad enough an audience, too long, preaching commentary, giving too much detail) are indications that a preacher loves his message rather than his audience. I think it is a mistake to fall in love with a message. We need to love the audience.

At third, Gretchen Rubin writes about “decoy habits,” the list of “gonna do things” that we never seem to get around to. She says, “Decoy habits are harmful, I think, because they allow us to pretend to have certain aims or values that we don’t really have.” This is probably true in a lot of churches and ministries. The truth is that we never seem to get some things done because we never do them.

And last, just for fun, watch about a minute of this from the 1:08 mark. What’s interesting is how these well-known songs change character by changing their style. If you know the originals (someone told me about them once), then you experience a bit of disconnect hearing these short snippets. And it should make you think a bit about what style does to the effects of music.