Ah – #8 in the “10 commandments” for social media is interesting.

Good push-back on the church influence article. Not only did he leave out the elements you mentioned, he did not even seem to be sure about the social networking contributions of Willow Creek and Saddleback. In fact, his article showed me how many similarities there are in the 4 churches.
However, his emphasis on Twitter makes me (and some of those commenting at his site) even more uneasy about it. It can be used for encouragement, but also can be seen as promoting celebrity.
The Tiger Woods stat is interesting. Another one I heard- he has never come back from behind on a Sunday to win a tournament.
Special shoutout to Michael Phelps for winning the 100 fly in an “inferior suit” at the World Championships.

Regarding the Sowell piece:
It seems to me that if one concedes that human beings aren’t perfect that opens up a role for collective action through government, rather than ruling it out in all cases (which seems to be the de facto position of conservatives today in almost every policy area–or every economic policy area, at least).
Good piece on the roles government plays in the health insurance industry right now (most of which I think most of us are pretty grateful for):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31krugman.html
(Sorry if you linked to this previously and I missed it.)
You can also flip the argument about imperfections on its head. Will the new system being adopted being perfect? No, but my best appraisal is that it’ll be much less imperfect than the current system–in which, for example, someone who loses their job and has a preexisting edition like cancer is basically screwed. I’d love to here Mr. (Dr.?) Sowell explain to me how the market forces will help that person.

I had no idea Hurtado was a TEDS grad. (MA/NT in ’67).

In the UK they had magnets like that to go on the cars of people who were learning – they were a big “L”. A little more subtle. I brought one home and slapped it on the car when my kids were learning to drive. I don’t know how long they’re required to use it there, but perhaps they’d have policies in place that would help with the decision.

Scot, is there an Intelligentsia near NPU? I’ll be driving through Chicago on the way from dropping off college kids to visit family near Madison, and I thought of visiting friends en route. Some really good coffee may inspire my driving to reach Chicago “standards” of hyperactivity and hyperattentiveness!
By the way, did you see Karen’s link to a Denver Post article by an atheist?
http://www.denverpost.com/perspective/ci_12744910

Hi Scott, I appreciate your thoughts on the article I wrote a couple weeks ago:
http://blog.ourchurch.com/2009/07/30/why-willow-creek-and-saddleback-are-losing-influence-while-north-point-and-lifechurchtv-are-gaining-influence/
The reason why “there is no analysis of gospel theology, of Christian life vision, of prayer” is because the blog is not about not theology, Christian life, etc. but rather the use of Internet technology in ministry.
And if you read the article carefully it does not “evaluate why one church is doing well and another one not so well.” It is evaluating the influence of the churches mentioned, not their effectiveness or godliness.
In our culture we have this tendancy to equate bigness with goodness. But just because a church has more attenders, a televangelist has more viewers, a pastor sells more books, or twitter has more followers doesn’t mean they’re better than others. I apologize if that point was not clear in the article.
Thanks again for making your readers aware of the article and sharing your opinion on it.