How much did you give to this lady?

A few of you will no doubt recognize Miss Lottie Moon, the faithful servant of the Lord who spent her life as a Southern Baptist missionary to China.

As you also know she is the namesake of the SBC's international missions offering held during the Christmas season.

On Sunday, I found out that our church fell well short of our giving goal to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering. Well short of the goal and well short of last year's giving.

Not sure when the national numbers for the offering will be announced but I hope other local bodies did better than we did. However, given that our state is still doing better than much of the nation in terms of the economy and labor markets I am worried.

DD

Red Light, Green Light (Nov employment)

The map shows how each state has fared in terms of year over year employment growth. States in red are seeing significant employment declines, yellow shows states around zero, while the greens are still growing well - well kinda well.

DD

Billy Graham & Chruch Membership

Happy New Year!

I saw earlier this week that Billy Graham is moving his church membership from FBC, Dallas to a church in SC, about 90 miles from his home. I think I knew that he was a member in Dallas but had forgotten.

Question. Did he ever live in Dallas? I don't recall him ever doing so. Of course with his ministry he had limited time at home anyway but how could he really be an active member of a church several states away from his home?

On the surface at least this seems to be a pretty casual and nearly meaningless type of church membership.

DD

New posts coming...

Hope to have posts about the new JOLTS data up by the end of the day. Also looking ahead at post(s) about the state employment data releases at the end of this week.

DD

Preaching Deacon, Part II

Have been very busy the past couple of weeks. About three weeks ago my pastor asked me to fill the pulpit for the Sunday just passed. I preached in both the morning and evening services (teach Sunday School in the morning as well).

I was empty afterwards. After the morning service I forgot that I needed to drive my oldest son back home (my wife did not have room for him in her car). Left the boy at church I did! Oh, my!

Still, it was a great blessing to be able to preach the Bible to God's people. Our Lord has been so good to me. May His holy name be lifted up!

DD

Volvo! Say it aint so!

Just saw a story about Volvo's new truck orders in Europe for the third quarter. Last year they had in excess of 40,000 and this year orders fell to 115.

Absolutely stunning. This does not look good.

DD

A "jolt" from the JOLTS program!

Job openings continue to fall according to the most recent numbers from BLS.

DD