Sunrise Service – Jeremy Noffsanger preached at the Calhoun City Park as part of a 7 a.m. worship service on Easter morning. I preached at the same service last year, in a public place where a handful of churches meet together for a few songs, prayers and a short message. I may know a little bit about a lot things but my personal experience with Christian worship is limited to the southeast United States. I grew up with sunrise service being a regular part of the Easter experience but I wondered if it was the same everywhere. According to History.com some churches during the Protestant Reformation retained the Christian calendar while others rejected Easter celebrations. It was not until the late 19th or early 20th century that some Protestants, such as Baptists, started to reclaim the sunrise service traditions.

Today, sunrise services are held in the pre-dawn hours around the world. There is even one in Israel where the two Marys are believed to have first encountered the risen Lord. Here are some other well-known services held in high profile locations: at the Hollywood Bowl, first held in 1921 and becoming a long-running annual tradition; Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta since 1944; Mount Rushmore in South Dakota since 1945; Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado outside of Denver, since 1947; and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., since 1979.

Easter Egg Hunt – I don’t really want to stir that pot but here are some church ladies watching kids hunt eggs after our morning service but before we sat down to dinner in the fellowship hall. I did not take any pictures of people eating… this time.

Lulu Roman – I saw this post on Friday morning and learned that Lulu Roman had passed away on Wednesday at the age of 78. I honestly did not know she was still around. She is probably most famous for singing gospel music on Hee-Haw back in the day but I have seen more recent pics of her with Dolly Parton and other contemporary artists. I don’t remember Ricky Skaggs having a full head of gray hair but I guess time marches on with or without our consent. Here she is at a Bill and Gloria Gaither Reunion in 2012.

I am not advertising the God Bless the USA Bible. This edition was plugged by Lee Greenwood of “God Bless the USA” fame (think back to the Gulf War in the early 90’s). This same product is sometimes sold as the Trump Bible and includes documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Even while Trump was campaigning on a policy of bringing manufacturing back to the United States, the Bible was being printed and shipped to the US from China. It’s a strange fact that most Bibles sold in the US come from China, a nation with strict controls on religious expression and a known history of persecuting Christians. The cheap strings of Christmas lights we buy in bulk may have been put together in Chinese factories by Christian missionaries and other church leaders imprisoned for their faith. It’s a complicated issue. Maybe we should not have Bible printed in a nation that does not allow Christian worship. But if they were printed anywhere else they would cost more. Look on the title page of your Bible to see where it was printed. Since you already own it there is nothing to be done now, but it might be something to think about before your next purchase.

The State of Blogging – I sometimes lament that blogging is not what it used to be. It could be that blogging is alive and well and those of us that were early adopters are just not seeing the traffic we used to. According to the information above, there are 31 million active blogs in the US with “active” defined as putting up at least one post per month. 31 million sounds like a lot but it’s only 10% of the American population. At the same time 77% of internet users regularly read blogs. It is also a gross exaggeration to say that every person alive today has their own podcast. Apple lists a little over 2.7 million valid podcasts. Spotify claims to offer over 6 million podcast titles but many of those may be inactive or have only one episode. There are over 158 million podcast listeners in the US (over 500 million worldwide) so the market is not over-saturated.

Direct Correlation – that’s would I call the data on these two maps.

They didn’t have to watch the movies before? I imagine we all asked the same question.

And Finally…

We turned a page, literally and figuratively, Monday morning on the Read the Bible series. We finished Genesis on Sunday morning which I did not know for sure we would do when we started. That was a work in progress but I feel like we are there, in terms of style and production value. I have asked some friends and blog readers to begin sharing those posts with others. Help me spread the word. Here is a link to Read the Bible: Exodus 1 which is a good place to start.