- 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
December 23rd, 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.
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)
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