To most Apple fanboys, an Apple event day like today can feel like Christmas. Excitement and anticipation of new toys (let's be honest, now, they are toys) is enough to get anyone of any age excited. 

I'm guilty of being vain enough to want to have the latest and greatest gear. That doesn't mean you have to be, though. 

The great thing about an Apple event for the average consumer and not a tech-crazie like me is the hand-me-down factor. 

The hand-me-down factor is just like it sounds: when other people get rid of their devices, you can take advantage of that opportunity and get their hand-me-downs. Sites like Gazelle.com will buy your used gadgets at a great price and turn around and sell them to average consumers. Like you. Like your wife. Like the minister on a limited budget. Like the youth minister on an extremely limited budget. 

With devices now, especially Apple devices, hand-me-downs are almost as good as the newest, shiniest products. I have a year-old iPhone 5 and love it. My wife has a two-year old iPhone 4S and she's looking to upgrade. We have an iPad 2 that's over 2 years old, and it has some dings and scratches but works fine. Having the latest and greatest has its perks, but usually you can make do with a previous generation. 

If you're not playing graphics-heavy games or pushing your hardware to extremes, odds are you can get by with the last model of a certain device. Apple products are great because you can usually run the latest versions of software even on 2+ year-old devices. 

There's a whole ecosystem that has sprung up around hand-me-down devices, and odds are you can get a phone that's only one or two years old off-contract for a couple of hundred dollars. Off-contract phones at full price are $650 for the lowest model. 

So go check out Gazelle.com's eBay store, which is sure to see an influx of product in the coming weeks) and also look at your local Craigslist. Odds are you can get a great deal on a one or two year old phone and keep up with the pace of technology. 

Every church has lots of different ministries to keep up with, and every ministry wants to update their site with news and notes quickly and easily. If you're familiar at all with the Wordpress engine for running websites, its an awesome free platform for all your content. Wordpress Multisite looks like a winner for churches.  

Check out ChurchMag's article on WPMS here.  

Euthymius says only men with a beard can enter his Judean Desert monastery, not boys "with female faces."

Classic stuff (and a history lesson) from Ted Olsen over at Christianity Today.  

Here they are: 

"The Great Commission does not apply to me."

(Thanks Craig Evans.)

When Christ told us to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, it wasn't a suggestion, and it sure wasn't just meant for those who work for churches. 

Loy Mitchell says this:

"One reason we have too few workers is we thought we could pay someone else to do it."

Ouch. 

But don't we look at it that way sometimes? 

Visiting the sick - that's the Elder's job, or the family minister's job. Helping with youth activities - that's the youth minister's job. Talking to people about Christ - that's the pulpit minister's job. 

It's ALL our job. Every single one of us. 

In his article yesterday with almost the same title as this one, The Last 8 Words of a Dying Church, Trey Morgan says that those famous last words are

"But we’ve never done it that way before!"

And he's right. 

Why are we trying to bring people to Christ and grow as a church doing the same old things? 

Someone once said that definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting different results. 

I'm not talking about any ideas that are anti-Biblical. If it goes against the Word, then we shoud have nothing to do with it. But what about getting oustide our comfort zones? What about breaking the monotony of doing "what we've always done," and trying to reach people in a new and fresh way? 

Our worship and dedication to the Scriptures doesn't need to change. Our structures of our classes and activities don't need to change. It is our perspective towards outsiders that needs to change. 

Jesus looked at everyone as a lost soul in need of saving. Do we look at people that way? Of course we don't. I think if we could convince ourselves to look at people that way then we would see the Great Commission in another light. 

A church that ignores the Great Commission is a dying church. It may take generations, but that church will eventually die out. 

We're in the business of making disciples, and those disciples should be taught to make other disciples. I don't know if it's an art that we've lost because we're disconnected, lazy, scared, complacent, or we think someone else will do it - but we need to desperately get back to the core of the Great Commission, to seek and save the lost. 

MTV has largely been about sex since its beginning, and Miley's performance was almost a brilliant parody. It was a beautiful young woman, very scantily-clad, parading in front of millions, and it was... well, repulsive.

MTV, you're doing the near impossible. You're making sexuality seem boring.

Excellent article by Brant over at Air1.