• I will be taking a brief hiatus from blogging until shortly after the new year. Aside from the usual Christmas and New Years celebrations, I will be in New Orleans, Louisiana for several days to be a part of my best friend’s wedding. Although I won’t be blogging, I will be Twittering, so why don’t you tag along? 12/23/2007

Best of 2007

I am pleased to present the second annual JakeBouma.com “Best of” list. Feel free to argue with my choices in the comments. Here’s the list for 2006.

1. Army of Me - Citizen
2. Matt Nathanson - Some Mad Hope
3. Andy Davis - Let the Woman
4. Anberlin - Cities
5. Kanye West - Graduation
Honorable Mention: Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger, The Alternate Routes - Good and Reckless and True, Eric Hutchinson - Sounds Like This, William Fitzsimmons - Goodnight

1. Once
2. Atonement
3. Bourne Ultimatum
4. 3:10 to Yuma
5. Sweeny Todd
Honorable Mention: Ratatouille, American Gangster, I Am Legend, Oceans 13, No Country for Old Men

1. Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From A Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation by Andrew Root (Review forthcoming)
2. Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K. A. Smith
3. Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren
4. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
5. The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr (Review forthcoming)
Honorable Mention: The Courtier and the Heretic by Matthew Stewart, The Primal Teen by Barbara Strauch

1. Chicago Cubs games
2. Heroes
3. Man Vs. Wild
4. The Colbert Report
5. Project Runway

1. Google Reader (seriously, I live a different life because of it)
2. Twitter
3. Bleed Cubbie Blue
4. IAmJoshBrown
5. Rethinking Youth Ministry

• There’s a fantastic post over at presbymergent issuing A Challenge to Emergent Authors. “I guess it all boils down to this: In the emergent conversation, are we writing the things we’re writing because we want to sell books, or are we writing the things we’re writing because we want to change the world?” 12/22/2007
• GOOD Magazine has a great article about Joel Osteen called God, Without the Fuss. If you don’t know anything about Osteen or the Prosperity Gospel (and even if you do), this is an informative and engaging read. “It’s the Bless-Me Club. It is self-help, and that kind of message plays very well in America. It’s the opposite of the message of salvation, which is that you are saved by grace from God.” 12/21/2007

Blogging goals for 2008

In the last four months, JakeBouma.com has gained a lot of exposure in the blogosphere. As with any blog, this is partly due to my efforts (blog redesign & contest, frequency of posting, quality of content, etc.), and party due to the readers. In addition, I was honored to be selected as a member blog for The Daily Scribe.

It is my hope that in 2008 JakeBouma.com continues to grow in popularity and readership and that I continue to be faithful to the medium of blogging. Therefore, I am laying out a few goals for 2008 to give me something for which to aim.

Increase my RSS readership to at least 200. Right now it fluctuates between 85 and 95 (it was only 20 at the end of August).

Increase my Technorati authority to above 100, and rank in the top 50,000 (I’m not sure how the two are tied together).

Increase my average daily unique visitors to 250 (right now it averages at around 120).

Increase visibility through social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. (Here is my Digg profile and StumbleUpon profile… let’s be friends).

Design a new logo for the top of the blog.

If you have your own blog, I encourage you to come up with some of your own goals for 2008. If you’re a reader, what would you like see for JakeBouma.com in 2008? Leave a comment and let me know!

(ht: Daily Blog Tips)

Exploring Relevant Faith

I have been given the opportunity at my church to teach an Adult Education class for four weeks in January/February. The title for the class is “Exploring Relevant Faith”, and I am really excited about it. Promotional postcards are being mailed to all members of the congregation between the ages of 20 and 45 to encourage them to attend.

I have a very general idea of topics I want to cover during the four weeks (hours), but I don’t have anything really cohesive yet. I imagine the class as more of a guided conversation about several topics; for example, I believe I want to cover the cultural transition from modernity to postmodernity in the first class and discuss the impact this has on the church.

I want your input.

What topics would you want to talk about in this class? In other words, what are some topics you’ve been grappling with but haven’t really hashed out?

Again, I’m really excited about this opportunity, but I don’t want to try to cover too much ground too quickly. I want stuff to seep in slowly; I would prefer that people leave with more questions than they entered, you dig?

• Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen is an engaging and perspective-inducing presentation by Hans Rosling. “In Rosling’s hands, global trends — life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates — become clear, intuitive and even playful.” (ht: rtow) 12/19/2007

I played the ‘Candidate match game’ and won

USA Today’s Candidate match game has been around for a while, but I just took it for a spin and the results are below. I’ve been an Obama supporter all along, so this is somewhat reassuring (insofar as one can be reassured by an oversimplified online quiz). I’m just glad it didn’t match me with Fred Thompson.

Why don’t you take the quiz yourself and post your top three matches in the comments? I’m interested to see who others are matched with.

Review: Web Hosting Choice

The following is a sponsored post:

Web Hosting Choice is an “advertisement free guide to choosing the right web host for your personal or business site”.

If you own a self-hosted website or blog of any king — whether it’s big or small — finding the cheapest web hosting service that has all of the options you need is a big priority. That’s where Web Hosting Choice comes in. They have a large database of web hosting services that you can search based upon your website’s particular needs.

Say you’re looking for a website host and you want to pay $5 or less per month with no setup fees, and you need 500mb of storage. You can simply plug all of that information in their search, and they’ll give you a list of web hosting services that match your needs, and they even provide ratings of some of the services. The advanced search page has a bunch of plan details, features, and payment options so you can find exactly what you need without paying for extra junk.

If you’re setting up a self-hosted website for the first time, the quick start guide will walk you through the process, which can be a bit scary at first. Sadly, they make no mention of blogging platforms and their respective installation processes. Their front page says they can help both small websites and large e-commerce websites alike, but it seems like they cater more towards e-commerce and business websites. If they really want to increase their market share, they’ll add information for those looking to set up blogs, which are much easier and user-friendly than messing with FrontPage or Dreamweaver.

So if you’re looking for the right web hosting option for your particular needs, Web Hosting Choice will make the process a little less painful than a Google search.

H. Res. 847 is absolutely absurd

H. Res. 847: Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith has passed the House of Representatives and is on its way to a vote in the Senate. It’s not long at all; I encourage you to read the whole thing (if you can make it that far without vomiting). Here’s an excerpt from the end:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;
(2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;
(3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;
(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;
(5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and
(6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.

So much for separation of church and state, I guess. And to top it all off, the congressman who introduced the bill, Steve King, is from Iowa. I’m ashamed.

When nine members of congress voted “No”, King said,

I would like to know how they could vote… No on Christianity when the foundation of this nation and our American culture is Christianity… I think there’s an assault on Christianity in America.

The following acronym accurately defines my reaction: OMG.

What are your thoughts on H. Res. 847?

(ht: Nathan Rice)

• Say hello to the First Ever “Emerging” Amish Church. “When asked about his sources of inspiration, Pastor Jay (who wears a soul-patch instead of a traditional Amish beard) responded by saying: ‘I mean, there I was, settling with ‘church as usual’ when I stumbled upon the writings of Brian McLaren. I felt like his words were coming right from my own head, you know?’” The picture alone is worth the visit. Hilarious. (ht: TSK) 12/13/2007
• I opened a new Twitter account at http://twitter.com/jbquotes to post short quotes from whatever book I am currently reading. Actually, I set up an entire “quote blog” a long time ago, but it never really got off the ground. Heck, let’s make this fun: I will give $10 via PayPal to the first person who finds my secret quote blog and contacts me with the correct URL. UPDATE: Scott (from Transformatum) is the winner, by finding http://www.jakebouma.com/quotes/. Nice work. 12/11/2007
• While we’re on the topic of adolescent brain science, Andrew (from Faith’d) provides some fantastic thoughts via this comment:”Keep in mind that over interpretation is the danger in utilizing brain science, and new research helps us to temper what we think we know. My concern for youth ministry is that we don’t over-do the credence we give to the tentative findings of brain science. The science is generally credible, but the conclusions we draw are often severely overblown. Grab Epstein’s article “Myth of the Teenage Brain” [.pdf] and read this article on the seduction of neuroscience.” 12/10/2007

Encouraging a growth mind-set in students

A great new article in Scientific American, The Secret to Raising Smart Kids, discusses human motivation and encouraging a “growth mind-set” in children and adolescents. Lots of good stuff in there:

This belief [that intelligence is innate] also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

There is clearly a link here to youth ministry and encouraging/equipping students to grow in their Christian faith. Some students are just better at being “students of Christianity” than others, which means that the onus is on youth workers for teaching our students to have a “growth mind-set” as the article says. Check this out:

In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

Now, some of you might be saying, “We [youth pastors] should just be loving on kids and teaching them that Jesus loves them.” First of all, please don’t ever use any form of the phrase “love on” ever again. Second, teaching kids that Jesus loves them approaches pointlessness if they have no grasp of context. Context within the biblical canon (How does Jesus’ teaching relate to and interact with the Old Testament?), context within history (What was the first century C.E. like, and how did it influence Jesus’ ministry?), and so on.

Obviously there’s much more that can be taught, but I’m just making a point that youth ministry involves quite a bit of straight-up teaching. This has become a stark reality to me in the few short months I have been teaching Lutheran confirmation. It follows, then, that articles like the one mentioned above should make us think critically about youth ministry.

For more on adolescent brain science, be sure check out The Primal Teen.

Christmas List, Yo

This would still be hilarious, even if it wasn’t my friends and former co-workers.

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