Death by PowerPoint!?

General Stanley McChrystal and others decry the poor use of PowerPoint: We have met the enemy and he is PowerPoint!

Likewise Seth Godin here.

How many mind-numbing presentations/talks/sermons have we all sat through, or given, where PowerPoint is being over-used, the speakers turns his/her back to us and reads the bullet points off the screen, etc?! Some good tips and the worse errors to avoid here.

Great stand-up comedy about Powerpoint here!

God All-Matey or God Almighty?!

My thanks to fellow-blogger Robin Parry for asking this question, quoting from a recent sermon by my Salt and Light colleague Dr Rick Thomas. Whilst we've rightly by-and-large got away from a view of a stern and killjoy God who's rather keener on condemning us to eternal hellfire than a nicer alternative, some preachers and churches have probably erred too far the other way with a depiction of a God who wants to be our 'best mate' and for whom almost any behaviour or belief is OK...

Maybe we can recover a more Biblical perspective of God, well-exemplified by the account of Jesus Christ in the gospels, who having saved the woman caught in adultery from a horrible death by stoning, told her 'then neither do I condemn you' - but then encouraged her to 'go and sin no more'.