As you may have noticed, I killed my blog yesterday trying t upgrade WordPress. It was been restored, but some of the comments were lost. Please accept my apologies.

Welcome back. Welcome one. Welcome all. As if you haven’t already had enough information bombarding your poor little head this week, here comes an avalanche. Welcome to The Weekly Town Crier, my weekly link dump where you’re sure to find at least one treasure among the trash. But remember, linking does not equal endorsing, it just means that whatever is on the other end made me think a bit and hopefully will do the same for you.

Read Pitchfork’s review of Scarlett Johansson’s debut album, a collection of Tom Waits covers.

Read Paste’s review.

Browse as PC World suggests five “groovy” sites for free music.

Browse this list of 20 similar sites.

Read as Yahoo uncovers the unhealthiest drinks.

Gold earwax spoon?

Read about the recent study that found that as age goes up, memory does down.

Read this piece which wonders whether the “new Baptist Calvinism” must “divide churches, denominations?”

Read about Brownback trying to “woo” Catholics for McCain.

Read about a U.S. General apologizing for desecrating the Koran.

Read about the pastor of a Plano megachurch who recently resigned after being arrested in an internet sex sting.

Read this letter from John Piper about The Bethlehem Institute’s plans on becoming an “accredited college and seminary.”

Read James K.A. Smith’s thoughts on “Teaching a Calvinist To Dance.”

See this Calvinist dance. I’m not really Southern Baptist (well, I guess technically we are), so it’s OK.

Vote in Paste’s contest for the “greatest” B movie of all-time.

Read Paste’s report that, among others, John Cusack will be a guest DJ for KCRW.

Pray for the family of Steven Curtis Chapman.

Read about academia’s changing view of evangelicals.

Read about Willow Creek’s novel idea: church for believers!

Read as Forbes says “Help, We’re Running Out of Internet!”

Read about the recent study finding that most Americans find divorce morally acceptable.

Read this piece examining the church-switching trends of many Americans.

Read about the “Pornification” of our nation.

Read as Newsweek considers reading and its trends.

Read as Tom Waits interviews Tom Waits.

Read about studies looking into the “neuroscience” of religion.

Read about the British Parliament approving animal/human “hybrids.”

One of the things I like to occasionally do is open up this forum to hear from people other than myself. With that in mind, both today and tomorrow we will be hearing from guest writers. Enjoy.

Our internet is down at the house. That means I haven’t had the chance to work out anything presentable today. I have interviews I’m transcribing with Peter Hicks of Aradhna and members of the Trees Community, I have a half-finished review of Andrew Peterson’s first book On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness and some other things, but nothing ready to post. So enjoy yourself. You are dismissed.

Could someone help if at all possible? Over the past few days I upgraded all of my WordPress stuff and somewhere along the line, my visual rich editor became all messed up. All the buttons are assigned incorrectly and some of them don’t actually work. Any ideas as to what I may have done wrong? Did I do anything wrong? Help? Someone? Please?

By Adam Groza

This will be a short post with a simple message: Christians need to stop reading blogs that practice slander and gossip. I am basing this on St. Paul’s words in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 5:11. St. Paul makes is clear in the beginning of the verse that he is talking about so-called Christians; that is, people who profess to be saved but by their unrepentant lifestyle prove they are not members of the Redeemed (the new lump, verse 7). Specifically, Paul mentions in verse 11 the sins of immorality (pornos, or fornication), covetousness, idolatry, reviling, drunkenness, or swindling. Paul says we are not to associate with such a person, not to even eat with such a one. There is debate as to whether the Supper is in view in this latter prohibition, but for my purposes, Christians are first commanded by St. Paul not to associate with such people who (1) claim to be Christians and (2) exhibit such unrepentant ways.

There is a practical application of this verse in regard to blogs that generate readership by reviling people, especially (but not limited to) those whom God has put in authority, such as pastors, religious, or government authorities. The Bible is clear that God establishes those in authority over us, and our respect for God is demonstrated in our submission to them (1 Peter 2:13-15). People who revile others are not Christians (1 Corinthians 6:10). Those who verbally abuse or blaspheme others will not inherit the kingdom.

Some blogs have literally become popular for the kind of scoffing mentioned in Psalm 1. Spurgeon says that those who tempt others sit in the seat of the scornful. Many blogs daily tempt Christians to engage in gossip and slander, or to take joy in other peoples troubles. Spurgeon calls such tempters the “Doctors of Damnation”. The Psalmist warns that those who scorn and revile will not stand on the Day of Judgment. If we have interaction with people who contribute to online slander and gossip we should witness to them because they need to be redeemed. Furthermore, their churches are negligent for not practicing church discipline.

St. Paul commands followers of Christ to have no association with those who revile others. In the same way that you should leave or stop a conversation in which someone is being reviled or blasphemed so too Christians should avoid such blogs. If you enjoy listening to gossip in a traditional conversation you sin, being yourself guilty of gossip. Having nothing to do with those who revile means walking away from conversations in which people are being attacked and I am suggesting it means we avoid online sites that engage in gossip and slander.

Praise God for friends like Brent who use their sites to help us reflect on the glorious truth of God as it relates to life and culture but not at the expense of others. Don’t let your internet traffic be the fuel for the online fire of slander.

• Read When People Are Big and God is Small by Edward T. Welch
• Read Speaking The Truth in Love by David Powlison

I was just made aware that my RSS feeds have been down since Friday. Has anyone else noticed this? To my knowledge, nothing on Friday changed that should have affected the feeds, so I’m not sure what’s going on. You can go here to see what it says.

I looked and, from what I can tell, the code appears normal in the index, so I’m I’m not sure if I’m looking in the wrong place. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I know there’s people much more savvy than I out there! Here is the error message if that helps:

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/colossia/public_html/wp-blog-header.php:21) in /home/colossia/public_html/wp-rss2.php on line 8

What does this even mean? Oh the glories of modern technology!

There is definitely no shortage of blogs. Wikipedia reports that “As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs.” According to recent numbers from Technorati, the “blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago” and that “over 75,000 new weblogs are created every day, which means that on average, a new weblog is created every second of every day.” In addition, “daily posting volume tracked by Technorati is now over 1.2 Million posts per day, which is about 50,000 posts per hour.’

That’s a lot of blogs competing for our attention. But in the midst of all this blogging, there’s a curious phenomenon, especially ones with “Christian” content. It’s not uncommon to come across statements to the effect of saying that the blogger in question doesn’t care if anyone reads their blog or not, it’s just something personal that they do.

I’m not sure what compels people to make such statements. But let’s be honest: if that were really true, these people could simply open up a Word document, type their thoughts and save it. Or better yet, go back to an old-fashioned journal with a pen and paper! The very fact that we publish our thoughts on the internet means that we want someone to read them. Your intended audience may be very small. You might keep a family blog as a way to keep in contact with family and friends and give them update on your family. In that case, your intended audience is family, close friends and not much beyond that, but you do want someone to read your blog.

Of course, there is always the danger of focusing too much on readership, finding self-worth or lack thereof in numbers. There is also the inherent danger of blogging of falling into the trap of believing that simply because you have a forum you “deserve” to be heard and of course you’re an expert on what you’re talking about! But wanting someone to read is neither necessarily prideful or wrong and we might as well do away with the false modesty and admit that the very act of blogging means that we want people to read.

• Read Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World by Hugh Hewitt

Don’t forget to check the author of each post from now on. In addition to contributions from Adam, I’m very excited to introduce to you the first contribution to Colossians Three Sixteen from my good friend Jim Ierley. Jim has been a regular commenter here for some time and I always appreciate his insight and balance.

I for one am looking forward to many more contributions from him as Colossians Three Sixteen makes the move towards world domination. Well, at least blogosphere domination. OK, maybe just a wider variety of content. Alright, maybe just different contributors. But it’s a step, right?!

I’m wondering if there’s any WordPress gurus out there who can help me? I’m trying to use a different header image on a specified page of my blog. I’ve tried altering the Main Index PHP using the following code, but it doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, am I missing something? Am I putting it in the wrong place? Do I need to specify something in the stylesheet as well? Do I need to try and create different page PHP files? Am I making any sense?

Also, I’m trying to host my images externally. This code references them in my themes/images file, is that possible? Also, is it possible to specify a different sidebar for a specified page?

Thanks to one and thanks to all.