We did the Halloween thing this past week… our kids dressed up as Little Orphan Annie and Pippi Longstocking. I’m trying not to psychoanalyze our kids’ selection of figures who don’t actually have parents. At least they were girlish and not ghoulish. ;^) The red-headed wig for “Annie” was one of those things that provides endless grief, but my wife came through by finding one at a drug store for $5 on the afternoon of the 31^st. Pippi’s pigtail braids actually stuck straight out sideways from her head — they were braided around a coathanger fashioned in the approximate shape of those gag arrows that are made to look like they’re sticking through your head.

1. Lainie Petersen now offers Top Ten Missional Bee-Attitudes in an attempt to be positive.
2. If you read the comments around here, you might remember Peggy taking me and John the Shepherd to task over our criticism of the RDCV Bible… In response, the Shepherd is beginning to review The Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of the Bible. I’ve not taken up Peggy’s challenge, but am sharing in the hesitation vicariously…
3. “Heaven is important, but it’s not the end of the world” — N.T. Wright
4. Two Millennia of Western Christianity in Thirty Minutes or Less — Handout and Chart by Webber & McLaren, courtesy of Paul Soupiset.
5. 11 Bad Ass Church Stats — a lot of stats involving money, like $1.5Million average cost per baptized Christian in the USA, then this one: “91% of all Christian outreach/evangelism does not target non-Christians but targets other Christians in the world.”
6. Reformation Sunday was last weekend; Reformation Sunday: Some Thoughts from TSK. As for Reformation Day (October 31^st …Darryl Dash.
7. Mike Clawson takes note a church distributing funds in the offering plate with a challenge to members to use the funds to bless others.
8. Puns from Ben Witherington
9. Can anyone still resist the conclusion that the USA is post-Christian?
10. Another farming parable from Glenn Hatcher.
11. Top 25 US Cities, rated in various categories (via)
12. Relationship Restored: Mark Van Steenwyk on changing the concept of sin of lawbreaking to instead be one of relationship breaking. Good insight.
13. Pat Loughery follows a Celtic trail, and brings up the themes of pilgrimage and other aspects of Celtic spirituality.
14. Does the Universe Have a Purpose? Question with a variety of answer-perspectives (via).
15. Freakonomics interview with Scott Adams (you know, the corporate philosopher). Begin speculating which Dilbert character is going to die….
16. I thought you could only make this stuff up… two identical twins, separated at birth and reunited 35 years later: ‘Identical Strangers’ Explore Nature Vs. Nurture. The book is called, what else, Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited.
17. Apparently it’s not just the emerging church that Don Carson misquoted and misunderstood in writing a book about understanding us. Stackhouse to Carson on the Emerging Church: Leave Me Out of It I confess, I loved this part: “Hmm. Apparently Brother Carson is not sufficiently conversant with the emergent church to quote one of their authors to make his point. So he uses me via that nice academic double negative: ‘not unlike.'” He then unravels Carson’s quoting of his article on a subject unrelated to the emerging church.
18. Bare Wilderness: what happens when two guys decide to try surviving for 30 days in the wilderness of northern Manitoba with nothing but a knife each. They just got back, so I guess that’s one part of the goal achieved: they survived.
19. Facebook is worth $15 Billion and I know you’re trying to figure out what your particular profile is worth. Now there’s an easy way to calculate it. Mine is worth $44… more than I thought!
20. Love this Celtic Prayer for the celebration of heaven!
21. Grace paraphrases the 95 theses
22. Robbymac ponders the apostolic misfit club
23. Another way of splitting the emerging church into three groups — makes more sense than some divisions.

That’s it for another week… happy reading!