If the next election were held today, would the general population go Republican or Democrat?
Would the evangelicals go Republican or Democrat?
Here are the results of a survey from the Barna Research Group: http://bit.ly/ckZb01

Facebook cares nothing about your security. Facebook defaults to the new Places feature turned on. That means people know where your are. That means if I go to LA and use Facebook, people know no one is at my home in Portland.

Places defaults to ON. You need to be a genius to go through all the steps to turn the Places feature off. Here is a good description of how to do it. Takes a little time.
http://bit.ly/boljqd

At the present time the host is having some problems with the Cold Fusion on our site. This is add-on service that drives the quotations (and soon the photos) on this web site. They are working on trying to resolve this. If you access any of the quotation files on the Http://www.creatingnewworlds.org web site, you will notice the loading is slow. You can see the entire quotation file from http://www.creatingnewworlds.org/allquotes.cfm. You can also see how slow it is.

For the time being, the quotation access on the index page is turned off so that this home page loads quickly. The other quotation pages work, but you will need patience at the moment.

Some links to the home page may not work temporarily, as some of these pages access the old Cold Fusion home page that has been removed during the diagnostic work. We did not want a home page that loaded slowly.

The blog works fine. The blog pages do not use Cold Fusion. Most of the web site doesn’t use it – but will be using it shortly. That’s why we want that fixed before continuing.

The entire site was moved to a new server recently, and the problem began at that point.

Interesting article about teens becoming “fake” Christians:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html?hpt=P1#fbid=zlwyPToAbvW&wom=false

The late Jamie Buckingham reported,

“A leader relies primarily on his influence to get the job done, not the system. In fact, while he may have a system, he often circumnavigates the system to win his followers by influence and persuasion, rather than dictate and order. He deliberately arouses potent and positive emotions in his followers and influences their beliefs and behavior. The leader understands that his personal influence comes from simple guidelines about how to deal with people, such as:

• Show people how to be successful in their own area, and they will be indebted to you. Set up roadblocks to their successes, and they will retaliate with hatred.
• Lead by rules of equity. Those who live by them earn respect. Violating them brings hostility.
• Avoid absurd directives that cannot be carried out, or have no long-range purpose.
• Listen with a ‘third ear.’ Be attentive to what another person wants to say, what he doesn’t want to say, and what he can’t say without help.
• Support your followers in the task of getting the job done. But don’t try to ingratiate yourself to gain their regard or love. That kind of manipulation often backfires.
• Never make promises you can’t fulfill. The leader’s reputation rests in part on delivering what he has promised.
• Above all, do not complain when God puts you in the crucible and turns up the heat. This kind of purging is for a purpose. The finest leaders are those who have gone through deep grief, personal breaking, humiliation of family, and career despair. Transformation occurs most frequently as a result of trauma. Consequently, true leaders often feel they are being tested. Their willingness to tolerate stress without becoming paranoid can lead to new strength, courage, determination and optimism.

Motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar says in his leadership seminar, “Leadership is getting people to do what you want done because they want to do it.”

Here are some more good insights on leadership:
http://briandoddonleadership.com/2010/08/28/i-have-found-the-perfect-leader/

Whoopsi!
Recently the White House reported on the President Obama’s spiritual convictions. The picture showed Obama at the rostrum, but the text is a third person report by Deputy White House Communications Director Jen Psak.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/19/white-house-strikes-back-at-muslim-tag/?hpt=Sbin

Big mistake. No one should send someone else to report on their spiritual convictions. Always do it in person and in first person. The effect in this case is exactly the opposite of what the President intended. Yep, I got an email:
“Carl, do you believe it?”
Wouldn’t you have the same response?

Guess who said this about the idea of a Mosque near Ground Zero in NYC that is now in controversy:

“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.

The proposed “Cordoba House” overlooking the World Trade Center site where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks – is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that Cordoba House is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba , Spain the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.

Today, some of the Mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to “symbolize interfaith cooperation” when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest. It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way. Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for “religious toleration” are arrogantly dishonest. They ignore the fact that more than 100 mosques already exist in New York City. Meanwhile, there are no churches or synagogues in all of Saudi Arabia. In fact no Christian or Jew can even enter Mecca.
And they lecture us about tolerance.

If the people behind the Cordoba House were serious about religious toleration, they would be imploring the Saudis, as fellow Muslims, to immediately open up Mecca to all and immediately announce their intention to allow non-Muslim houses of worship in the Kingdom. They should be asked by the news media if they would be willing to lead such a campaign.

We have not been able to rebuild the World Trade Center in nine years. Now we are being told a 13 story, $100 million mega mosque will be built within a year overlooking the site of the most devastating surprise attack in American history.
Finally where is the money coming from? The people behind the Cordoba House refuse to reveal all their funding sources.

America is experiencing an Islamic cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization. Sadly, too many of our elites are the willing apologists for those who would destroy them if they could.

No mosque!
No self deception!
No surrender! This is total Insanity. Wake up America while you still have a semblance of a nation to live in.

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence because it is so rare! ”

Newt Gingrich- Statement on the Proposed Cordoba House Mosque near Ground Zero
July 21, 2010

The Ten Commandments of Speaking
http://ow.ly/i/3ojR/original

Wow – this is great. Thank you Randy Elrod.

Catalyst Atlanta is coming soon. For more information see http://bit.ly/agfgS7. For registration see http://bit.ly/bA8vyZ.

The founding of America was heavily influenced by the Protestant Reformation years earlier. The early settlements in America failed, for two major reasons:

• They lost their spiritual moorings. Columbus started with a mission to bring Christ to heathen lands, but soon got more interested in getting gold. Same thing with many of the next settlements. (1)
• The settlements could not build any level of community in a hostile land.

These early Americans were not necessarily Christians, but they did share the values of the Protestant Reformation and were willing to die for the values they had lost in England. These are commonly expressed in our Bill of Rights. They, like the Puritans, used the Bible as a reference point for their government.

The Puritans, however, came over and landed in 1630. They were different. Although they weren’t the first group to come over escaping religious persecution, they were the first to be able to make their settlement work. Their mission was an attempt to escape the persecution in England and Holland and to plant a New Israel in America. They were the cutting edge of the Protestant Reformation. They wanted to see a community committed to God. Their law book was the Bible. Unlike the stories of strict justice frequently told us about them, they really demonstrated a lot of compassion in their communities and they were ready to forgive if the sinner repented. They had a strange settling strategy: In a given area, the Puritans would first covenant together and build a church, and then the town would form around the church.

There is a common teaching today that the American Revolution was birthed from objections to taxation without representation and primarily a political issue. This statement is not wrong, but it is incomplete. With the large evangelical base emerging from the first awakening, people where tired of a king with a dying religious institution in England telling them what to believe and how to worship. Many men and women who converted during the awakening had defied various religious authorities to uphold their new convictions.

By the 1760s, Americans were getting more than angry with their relationship with England, with the Revolutionary War beginning in 1775. In 1776, it was Thomas Paine who used a press to print a series of articles called Common Sense that rallied the colonists of America to throw off their yoke of slavery and be free:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
From The Crisis, by Thomas Paine

Just as Luther did more than two centuries earlier, Paine’s publishing created a “swarm” that rallied the demoralized American colonists and led to a free nation.

Paine was not a Christian—in fact, he was against religion and Christianity. Yet he used an almost spiritual language in his writing that the evangelicals could relate to as being able to mobilize the colonies to a political awakening that many evangelicals saw as a holy war against a sinful and corrupt Britain. Unfortunately, this man who moved the nation lost his followers and friends due to his strong anti-religious views and eventually died in New York, lonely and abandoned.

These early Americans were not necessarily Christians, but they did share the values of the Protestant Reformation and were willing to die for the values they had lost in England. These are commonly expressed in our Bill of Rights. They, like the Puritans, used the Bible as a reference point for their government.

The warning that God gave the Israelites applies to America today:

Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;…
Deuteronomy 8:11-14

The Lord also told them the consequences.

Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known.
Deuteronomy 11:26-29

This judgment has already started in America today.