A waitress with frizzy blonde hair appeared. She seemed older than her fifty years, with deep wrinkles and a posture of a woman who has spent most of her life carrying food to hungry customers. Her southern accent was thick as she took our order. When she returned with our rolls and butter, she grinned as she asked us a question that caught us completely off guard.
needed a little break from writing and got to thinking about you guys…GOTTA LOVE THE YOUTUBE FREEZE FRAME…goo. They all looked like this. ::sigh::
by the way, if anyone has any secrets as far as making their internal mic on mac book pros work a little better, please share. i know i’m kind of quiet naturally, but i was talking pretty loudly here! my input settings are maxed out in system prefs and i put the volume at 150% in iMovie…you’ll still have to turn it up to hear me….so, help a sista out?
I’m sure you have a calendar for each of us. And on that calendar, with all of your experience, you probably have certain days circled in red. These days would represent days like today when I email you and say I am having looking-my-deadline-in-the-eye-induced-panic-attacks.
Breathe in, breathe out.
My brain has locked up. My fingers have locked up. And (breathe) I (breathe) have (breathe) two (breathe) weeks?
I don’t know what agents do on these days. But you do.
one of my friends, who’s been working in research and statistics for the last decade or so, wrote that in an email to me.
what led us to that conversation were some statistics many of us have seen before. i know i have, and i was hoping to use them in my book. but having been recently influenced by my brilliant stats-minded friend, i knew i had to track down the source and make sure it was indeed scientific and unbiased before claiming it gospel truth.
the stats i was looking up:
1500 ministers leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, burnout, or contention
50% of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce
80% feel unqualified and discouraged
50% would leave ministry but fear they couldn’t make a living
70% constantly fight depression
40% have had an extramarital affair while in ministry
70% say their only time reading the Bible is when they prepare sermons
i looked around and was able to track most of them down to an informal survey focus on the family did. sounds legit, right?
not so.
the survey was conducted at seminars for pastors/marriages. something i’ve learned in the course of writing mad church disease is just because you have a group of people answer questions, well, that doesn’t make it real research.
unfortunately, these stats cannot be considered accurate for a couple of reasons:
-it’s not a representative sample. the group is pastors who went to a FOF event. totally idiosyncratic.
-the wording of the questions are biased. and grouped. you can’t ask if they feel something AND something.
it would be like getting a group of 20 and 30 year old pastors together and then saying a majority of pastors are young. that’s just not the way statistics are done.
97% of christians get 80% of their stats from unreliable sources, and 73% of them will pass it on as truth. and yes, that whole sentence was a bunch of bull. christians like info porn!
moral of the story? take a stand against info porn. don’t spread bad stats!
on another note, i do have some scientific research that was conducted legitimately. and because i want you to wait a year and buy the book, i won’t put it up just yet… :)
but please let me say…things are not as bad as they may seem.
Evidently, this little freestanding building was the place Nashville’s best comfort food called home. Tucked away in a residential area with limited and awkward parking, my husband Chris and I decided, after several recommendations from friends, to explore what this cozy little café had to offer. We moved to Nashville at the end of June, and finding delectable hole-in-the-wall restaurants is one of our favorite hobbies.
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Church · Writing
“christians like info porn”
