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Today and tomorrow only (July 14^th and 15^th): TODAY ONLY Receive a copy of Ask, Seek, Knock: Prayers to Change Your Life for only $5 (plus free shipping)! Visit www.navpress.com and use the promo code H20E2M3X6 at checkout.

Ask, Seek, Knock journeys through the prayers of the Bible and the history of the church and shows how you can use these prayers as your own.

Next fall, Doug and I are hosting a learning party in the Twin Cities for people who love Christ, love Christianity, and are interested in the future. The two of us have been given the microphone a lot in the past decade, and we began our event company with the express intent of giving the mic to others.

Our first few events have spotlighted one or two presenters, but for Christianity21, we wanted to follow the excellent example of TED Talks and give some of the most provocative and innovative voices in the faith 21 minutes each to communicate their passion. Some will give straight talks, others will use various media, still others will present 7 minutes each day, building their presentation throughout the event.

As you can see on the website, the presentations run the gamut of topics from theology to grassroots organizing to consumerism to ecclesiology to parenting. Although all of the voices are women, the topics are as broad as any Christian conference I've ever seen.

At our events, there is no "green room." In other words, the presenters (whom we are calling "Voices") won't be hiding away when they're not onstage. They, along with other Christian leaders, activists, publishers, and the like, will be mixing it up with everyone else. We hope/plan to build a true community at this gathering.

As I mentioned, all of the Voices are women. That's not a gimmick, nor is it an affirmative action decision. Instead, it's our attempt to catalyze a chemistry at an event that's never been achieved before. It's an attempt to do something different. (If you're a guy (or a woman) who feels uncomfortable about that, probably all the more reason that you should be there!) And, as well as their presentations, all 21 of these Voices will be in a pulpit somewhere in the Twin Cities that Sunday morning, so you'll get another chance to hear one or two of them.

We also thought it's high time that speaker/authors like me, Doug, Joe Myers, Shane Claiborne, Peter Rollins and others should be sitting behind the registration table, handing out nametags. And that's just where you'll find us.

We've done everything we can to keep this event affordable. As you can imagine, flying in 21 speakers and paying their expenses does add up, but we're working hard to raise sponsorship money to subsidize that. We've worked out a great deal on a hotel/breakfast combo, and we're committed to keeping the registration at our events under $200.

So, if this sounds interesting to you, if you're intrigued about the way the Christianity will be changing in coming days, if you're keen to hear women get the mic for a few days, then consider joining us, October 9-11, for Christianity21.

The Dallas Morning News pioneered the Sunday "Religion" section in daily newspapers, launching it in 1994. They were quickly emulated by newspapers around the country, including my hometown newspaper, the StarTribune, which established a more politically-correct sounding "Faith and Values" section on Saturday.

As someone -- like over half of Americans -- who takes religion seriously, I've enjoyed that section. About three times a month, there was an original story by the local religion beat reporter, and once-a-month they picked up a story off the wires. There was also the "Notes" section with newsbriefs about religion stories local, national, and international, plus a Faith and Values Calendar that displayed concerts and lectures around the Twin Cities. They even ran the occasional column. In all, it gave those of us interested in religion an nice weekly sense of what was going on around the metro area.

The DMN killed the religion section a few years ago, relegating it to a noteworthy blog. That blog has thrived, on the good graces and during the free time of its authors...until now. Yesterday, Get Religion reported (via Rod) that the DMN has reassigned its two excellent religion reporters, Sam Hodges and Jeffrey Weiss, to cover suburban issues.

Ugh.

It seems that the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association will not reprise the ill-fated CBE. As Marcia Nelson reports in Publishers Weekly, the ECPA is "pulling the plug" on the CBE, and hoping to clean up the quarter-million dollar debt they amassed before diving back in to direct-to-consumer events.

As someone who just co-started a company that specializes in small events (100-300 persons), I'm neither surprised nor worried. There's still a market for events, but I think the era of mega-events is coming to an end.

I've already blogged about this a couple times, but here's the video artifact of the panel at the Christian Book Expo.  If you've got 90 minutes to spare, you can decide for yourself about whether Scot's (and my) charges of Kevin's uncharitableness require an apology or not.

Honestly, the strangest part for me was when one of the Harrises told me that it was inappropriate to mention that it was personal as well as theological differences that led to Mark Driscoll's break with Emergent.  Yes, it was a bit strange to have two 18-year-olds on the panel, much less to be upbraided by one of them...

I'd been waiting for Publisher's Weekly to file a report on the Christian Book Expo of last weekend, and now they have.  Marcia Nelson begins with this ominous lede,Stacks of unsold books and glum publishers stood for three days inside...

Andrew Sullivan weighs in on that question.Traditional newspapers are dying, to be sure (although I think that some of them will have a future as non-profits).  Andrew thinks that traditional publishing (ink-on-dead-trees) is in a similar state.  Money quote:My own...

Geez, I had no idea.  It's actually Interfaith Heroes Month, at least according to David Crumm, late of the Detroit Free Press and now the editor of ReadTheSpirit.com.  Today he asks one of my favorite persons in the world, Sheryl...

Scot had a nice post on blurbing last week.  My own endorsement requests have dropped significantly of late.  I guess "blogger" doesn't have as much cache as "national coordinator of Emergent Village" on the back cover.In general, I agree with...

Steve Waldman asked each of the Bnet bloggers to nominate the best spiritual or religious book we've read this year.  He'll post them all in the next week or so.I confess that I'm ending the year having read much less...

Friday and Saturday of last week marked the inaugural event of JoPa Productions, a partnership between Doug Pagitt and me.  Doug and I are involved in the publishing industry both as authors and as editors/consultants/gadflies.  And just when it seems...

My editor extraordinaire at Jossey-Bass, Sheryl Fullerton, pointed me to a depressing post from Chip McGregor (a well-known literary agent) on the Black Friday (December 3) in the publishing industry.Some of the lowlights:Simon & Schuster cut 35 people (2% of...