Caring for Marriage Named in List of Top 10 Marriage Blogs

Back in March I told you about Daily Marriage Emails, written by Lori Odhner (of Caring for Marriage) called “Marriage Moats.”

Caring for Marriage has now been listed at #5 in a list of "The Top 10 Marriage Blogs of 2010"! (The list is put together by Stu Gray of TheMarryBlogger.com.)

The listing is well-deserved in my opinion. Frankly I'm amazed that, even though it's been months since the program started, every day there's another email in my inbox with an interesting image and yet another thoughtful insight, quote, tool, or anecdote about some aspect of marriage.

Congratulations Lori!

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Sign up for “Marriage Moats” or view the archive of past emails.

Curtis Childs Wraps New Church Ideas in a Cool Video

Curtis Childs (who works for KidsLIVE) put together a cool little video called “How Do You Know God's Not in a Tree?” Here's his summary of it:

I don't understand the logic that says: “since I know a lot about something, I know everything about that thing.”

Curtis tells me that more videos are to come and, if you want to keep up with them, I'd recommend subscribing to his Youtube channel, offTheLeftEye.

General Church Websites Get Shareable

A couple of General Church websites have recently gotten features that they should have had for a while—sharing tools and subscription tools.

If you go to newchurch.org, and you scroll down to the bottom of the homepage you'll see that you can now subscribe to the news feed, either by RSS or email. That means you'll be updated whenever there's new content on the homepage of newchurch.org. And if you click on one of the items, you'll see that you can now share it with other people via email, Facebook, Twitter, or a bunch of other services.

These features are also being rolled out to individual society sites like BrynAthynChurch.org. So if you want to stay up to date on a particular local society, or you want to promote an event that's happening at a local society, you now have more methods at your disposal.

The sharing features have also been implemented on NewChurchAudio.org so it's finally easy to send people a link to a sermon that you really liked. I happen to know that other improvements are also in the works for NewChurchAudio.org. I'll let you know when they've been implemented.

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While we're on the topic of subscriptions, I'll mention that I recently made it so that you can subscribe to New Church Thought by email. If you scroll down on the right you'll see "Get New Posts Emailed to You" and a box where you can put your email address and hit subscribe. And you might just want to subscribe (if you haven't already) because New Church Thought is about to get an exciting overhaul and you'll want to keep up. (If you do subscribe there's a chance that you'll receive some nonsense posts as I work on revamping things. Just think of it as finding a couple of 2x4s in your inbox—part of the excitement of remodeling.)

Book Proposal Competition

As a collaborative effort to generate dynamic book proposals and publications from aspiring authors, the General Church of the New Jerusalem and the Swedenborg Foundation, publisher of the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg, are pleased to announce a new competition, called the Bridge Book Awards. The authors of the winning proposals will receive a cash award in the amount of $1,500, be honored at an awards ceremony, and be guaranteed a review by the Swedenborg Foundation Press editorial board with the possibility of publication.

There are 4 categories you can enter: The Afterlife, Living a Spiritual Life, Biblical Commentary from a Swedenborgian/New Church Perspective, and Swedenborg for Dummies.

Entries are due on February 1st, 2011 and must include an entry form, a query letter, a chapter outline or synopsis, and one to three sample chapters.

You can read more about what's required in the Entry Form (PDF) or in the news item about it on newchurch.org.

I'm excited to see what comes of this.