• Gary Gilley reviews The Shack
• Ban on Political Endorsements by Pastors Targeted
• Saddleback Civil Forum on GodTube — video clips of both McCain and Obama responding to each question

Al Mohler, in his “On Faith” article for the Washington Post last week addressed the question Sally Quinn raised as she wondered how Christian evangelicals can affirm a woman as President or Vice President of the United States and yet believe that women should not serve as pastors of churches. Dr. Mohler’s article is well worth your time.
Palin Can Serve Family and Country, by Al Mohler

Seth Godin says “write like a blogger“

• Found a web page you want to read but don’t have time now? Use Instapaper.com to mark it for later
• Noel Piper shares a few tips for those who wish to be writers: So You Want to Be a Writer?
• Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer’s Shortcut to Stronger Writing
• In the “useless” but “novel” category, while we’re talking about writing, when you start working on that novel and you need to think up some names for your characters, save some brain power and use the Name Generator

• Christianaudio.com has available for free download during November the unabridged audio book Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards — free registration required, use coupon code NOV2007 (see free audio page each month for a free download)
• Preaching Points Podcast is a fairly new and brief podcast from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, that seeks to encourage preachers toward preaching excellence — Haddon Robbinson is one of the participants (via UW)
• At Pulpit Magazine, Seizing Opportunities for Evangelism
• At The Baptist Bulletin, an update on a completely normal family — home of the McCaughey septuplets

I’ve not link spotted in a while but I have a few worthy links for you today.

• Pyromaniacs is about as good as it gets when it comes to taking on the hot topics of the day in the broad evangelical landscape. Subscribe to their RSS feed today.
• Think On These Things is a monthly publication from the ministry of Gary Gilley, pastor at Southern View Chapel. I had the privilege of hearing him speak at a pastors conference last spring. Gilley also takes on and writes about some of the most debated topics in the church today. You can subscribe to receive the newsletter by email. There’s also an RSS feed for the articles.
• Tim Challies reviews Joel Osteen’s latest book Become a Better You and warns that, “he teaches self-help but wraps it in a thin guise of Christian terminology. Thus people believe they are being taught the Bible when the reality is that they are learning mere human wisdom rather than divine wisdom. Osteen cunningly blends the wisdom of this age with language that sounds biblical. He blends the most popular aspects of New Age and self-help teaching with Christianity. And his audience is eagerly drinking this in.”

Three great, and free, reasons to get a not-so-free iPod — of course, you could just listen to these on your PC too.

1. The recent Pastors Conference Audio from DesiringGod.org
2. J. Vernon MacGee’s Thru the Bible - MP3 Download’s of his 5-Year Program
3. The NIV Bible in MP3 - Listen and Download
   — not my translation of preference but free and worthwhile

• My eldest checks in with his thoughts on THE GAME
• For those without a clue — A viewer’s guide to Ohio State vs. Michigan
• Thanks to Smith and Tressel, the Buckeyes have it (of course)
• Ninjawords - “a fast online dictionary” - seems to be an understatement
• The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do the Work - we love homemade bread

I know you all can’t wait to get my pick for Sunday’s Super Bowl. STEELERS it is. Had them picked early in the season–even over the unbeaten Colts. May be just wishful thinking on my part but it seems like its time for the Steelers. We’ll see. No Super Bowl party for us instead of church. But we’ll be recording the game to watch after our evening worship service–it’s better that way–no commercials or half-time show. Came across the Ben Roethlisberger Blog tonight.

For those of you who enjoy computers as I do, you might find this cool Mac Expose clone for the PC interesting–it’s called SmallWindows–it’s still in beta but works pretty well. I’m usually running five or six or ten applications at a time–especially since I just added a gig of ram to my workhorse notebook–so this is a fun tool that makes switching between open windows a breeze–no pun intended. I loaded it up last night and was showing the guys the cool application switching action and I was getting a bunch of oohs and aahs.

And my oldest son, Kevin, pointed me to the ESV Bible Firefox Plugin. If you use Firefox as your web browser–if you don’t you should–the plugin adds the ESV Bible to the list of available searches in the search menu bar.

Pray for me if you think about it this week as I prepare messages for Sunday. We’ll be in Acts 9 in the morning and I’ll be continuing a series on spiritual warfare in the evening. (When you’re preaching on spiritual warfare you definitely don’t cancel the service for a Super Bowl party.)

• Less as a competitive advantage–I think some of us “small church” guys could find some wisdom here
• Electronic Newsletters are Dead!
• Measure those stats–Measure Map is looking good
• Remember the Milk–another online task list
• inquisitor–instant search results, slick
• The new iPod out today–with video
• Commas before ‘and’ or not? Finally cleared up for me–Serial commas
• Looking for a publisher? Sell your book online the Daily Pundit way (from)
• Google’s feed Reader–it’s alright but I’m still stuck on Bloglines.

• 6 Easy Steps to Grow a Blog
• Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Blog
• Tag, You’re It
• Tips From Top Taggers
• Tagyu - “Tell him what you’re talking about and he’ll tell you what tags you might want to use”
• Fasterfox - “Performance and network tweaks for Firefox”

• elfURL–makes huge URLs shorter, provides free stats and tags
• GmailThis! send a Gmail email without visiting the Gmail site
• Is GCalendar next from Google? I hope so.
• Tagging can increase your readership!

Anyone with a blog wants to increase readership. Here’s a handy resource for helping you learn how to do that by improving your writing—Increase readership with better writing

Are you “tagging” yet? If you aren’t, you’re missing out on the huge benefits of using sites like del.icio.us and LibraryThing.com and those are just two for starters. Businessweek.com has a quick article on the benefits of tagging that will get your feet wet—Tagging: Keeping Tabs On The Net.

• Adding Your Voice to the Conversation. Why CEOs Should Blog–a Pastor is not a CEO but this is a good piece for Pastor’s thinking of blogging
• For bloggers who frequently link to other posts this is one hot extension for the Firefox browser. “The Copy URL+ extension enables you to copy to the clipboard the current document’s address along with additional information such as the document’s title, the current selection or both.”
• Want better digital photos? Learn how to resample your images.
• On writing–short is good

• Tame that book collection - LibraryThing (Via Lifehacker)
• Grace and Truth Books - Well chosen Christian books–site includes brief, helpful summaries
• Joshua Sowin suggests Adblock and Adblock Filterset.G Updater for the Firefox browser
• Paint.net - Paint.NET v2.5 Alpha 3 is now available–a great free photo editor for Windows
• The Opera web browser is now free–it’s another excellent choice
• Looks like Google is going wireless–just as many figured

• ABWE organizes Project: Help the Shepherds for Hurricane relief
• ESV Bible blog could use help sending Bibles for hurricane victims
• SQ3R may help you get the most out of your reading time
• Meebo.com - new web based chat client - it’s in alpha testing right now but looks good
• A new browser on the horizon - Flock (Via Wired)

• Will bloggers need “Comments Disclaimers“?
• Why WordPress is so good for getting your content on the web with some ideas about how easily it can be customized.
• Blogging/Podcasting/RSS 101 Resources v. 2.0
• Google Blog Search
• “Yahoo Goes to War” - Check out the “Hotzone” here
• Will digital movie making gear put the pressure on Hollywood?
• From the article above - worthwhile videos - Faces from the Front

• A bit of good news - New Orleans Sweep Reveals Fewer Dead
• Under “not good news” - Environmental extremism
• Under “You’ve got to be kidding” - Scripture Shoe Inserts (Via: Between Two Worlds)
• A very recent Firefox and Mozilla security issue and fix
• Homemade paper pda - PocketMod