by Stephen Rodgers

Note: It’s been a while since I’ve done an “Editor’s Note” post, and I’m thrilled to finally be able to show you the reason why.  We’ve been working on a series of “hub posts” here at the Beacon: collecting previous series and topics of articles in a single location.  In the future, we’ll be able to update this page in order to provide everyone with a handy reference to these series.

I hope they bless you as much as they’ve blessed me!

This is a collection of hub posts for the various series available internally here on the Beacon.  For a similar list of resources available externally, please see our Recommended Resources page.

• Abortion – A collection of articles, sermons, and resources on the subject of abortion.
• Baptism –  A 7-part series by Richard Shin on understanding the ordinance of baptism. This now also contains additional articles, sermons, and resources on the subject of baptism.
• BOB – An ongoing series that studies all 66 of the books of the Bible by Stephen Rodgers. I’ve moved it up from the section below because the OT books are complete, and the series is taking a (temporary) break.
• Caution – A 3-part series by Mike Chon on humility and pride.
• Church Discipline – A collection of articles, sermons, and resources on the subject of church discipline.
• Church Plant Interviews – A 9-part series by Richard Shin interviewing the Pastors of LBC both before and after the San Jose church plant.
• Decisions, Decisions, Decisions – A 5-part series by Mike Chon on Biblical decision-making.
• DTR – A collection of articles, sermons, and resources on the subject of dating and relationships.
• Encouragement – A 7-part series by Mike Chon on encouragement.
• Getting Back to Basics – A 2-part series by Patrick Cho on spiritual disciplines.
• Gray Issues – A 7-part series by Peter Lim on understanding so-called “gray issues” (or “wisdom issues”) in the life of a Christian.
• Israel Journal – A 20-part series by Patrick Cho detailing his trip to Israel.
• Lessons from a Child’s Heart – A 5-part series by Mike Chon on lessons we can learn from the attitudes of children.
• Living Theology – A 59-part series by Garrett Glende on how to apply doctrine to our daily lives.
• Nebát Se A Nekrást – A 2-part series by Stephen Rodgers on how the personal motto of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk gets to the core of Christian devotion.
• No Better Place on Earth – A 2-part series by Peter Lim examining priorities in this life vs. realities of the next.
• Peacemaker – A 16-part series by Cesar Vigil-Ruiz (mostly) on Biblical conflict resolution.
• Signs of Spiritual Maturity  – An 18-part series by Peter Lim that takes a look at what progressive sanctification looks like on a very practical basis.
• Star Trek and the Local Church – A 2-part series by Peter Lim examining church polity using the analogy of Star Trek.
• The Apostle Thomas – A 4-part series by Stephen Rodgers on the person of the Apostle Thomas.
• The Glorious Gospel – A 7-part series by Patrick Cho on the details and implications of the Gospel.
• Understanding the Lord’s Supper – A 4-part series by Richard Shin on understanding the ordinance of communion.

The following series will be added to the list when they are concluded.  Until then, you can click on them to catch up and stay current. (Please note that since they are ongoing, the search feature may be slightly imprecise)

• 9Marks Index (Stephen Rodgers)
• Common Pitfalls for Young Men – (Patrick Cho)
• FOF – An ongoing series on the Fundamentals of the Faith (Patrick Cho)
• Strange Fire Index (Stephen Rodgers)
• Tabletalk Index (Stephen Rodgers)

by Stephen Rodgers

Just to let you know, the Beacon will be on a two-week hiatus starting now.  As longtime readers know, we generally take a break in the summer (for missions) and a break in the winter (to accommodate staff and writers who are travelling, and quite frankly, who would love a little time off to be with their families).

We’ll be back on January 9th with not one…not two…but three related posts which I think will be an enormous blessing to our readers, and to our staff as we move forward.

For those of you looking for something to read or study, I’d highly recommend exploring the Recommended Resources section. There’s something in there for everyone.

Until then, we wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and we’ll see you in 2012!

Pro Rege

by Stephen Rodgers

It occurred to me that we hadn’t done one of these for a while.  On one hand, I hope that you enjoyed your break from my ramblings, but on the other hand, I probably should have done a better job of keeping everyone informed of the going-ons behind the scenes here at the Beacon.  If you have a moment, I’d ask that you indulge me and read the following announcements.

• Hiatus: first and foremost, I just wanted to let you know that the Beacon is going on a planned hiatus for the month of July.  There are a number of factors that contribute to this: a number of our writers will be out on the missions field, I won’t be available to do updates for part of the time, and quite frankly, a number of folks (myself included) could use a little break.  Normally we only take two weeks off in July, but this time, it will be for the remainder of the month.  There’s just a LOT going on.
• Can I Haz Article?: need something to read?  Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.  Through the miracle of modern technology, I’ve enabled a “Random Posts” widget (just look over at the right column…there it is) that will suggest three random articles every time you visit this page.  I’ve excluded posts from the Lighthouse News and Editor’s Notes categories since those tend to have a bit of an expiration date on them.  My sincere hope is that you will discover a number of great articles and series this way.  PLEASE avail yourself to it.  And of course, you’re welcome to simply explore the various categories and series in a more systematic fashion if you prefer.
• Plans for the future: when we return in August, we’ll have a number of new articles for you, along with the continuation of some of the more established series.  And in the near future we’re going to be starting up a new series, so keep your eyes peeled for that.  And if you were considering being a staff writer for the Beacon, please let me know since we’re already starting to set the article schedule for the fall.
• Apology: I also just want to briefly take the opportunity to apologize for the somewhat haphazard article schedule lately.  For those of you who don’t know, I manage most of the administrative functions myself, and the recent employment issues threw me for a bit of a loop.  But that is all settled, I’ve learned to hand off some of the responsibility to others, and when we start up again, we should be much more timely with the regularly-scheduled updates.  So thank you for your patience, and I will do my very best not to let that happen again.

That’s all for now.  I’m very excited about what the future has in store, and looking forward to sharing it with you when we get back.

See you in August!

Pro Rege

by Stephen Rodgers

Hey everyone,

We’ve mentioned this was coming for a while, but today we are officially launching the LBC Beacon on Facebook. I know some of you found it already because we turned it on yesterday to make sure all the settings were correct. For those of you who didn’t know about it until now, here’s what you need to know:

1. First of all, there won’t be any “new” or “exclusive” content on Facebook.  If you’re in the habit of visiting us everyday, then nothing will change.  This is just a way for us to alert Facebook users to new content, and possibly introduce some new people to our church.
2. You may have noticed that there’s no way to leave comments on Facebook.  This is intentional.  There’s also no way to leave comments on the Beacon.  My personal experience with comment sections has been that they tend to produce far more heat than light.  If you want to discuss the articles with the author, then I would encourage you to actually discuss the articles with the author.  As in face to face.  Preferably over food (if I’m the author, I know that’s my preference!)
3. Also, this will enable us to separate the LBC Beacon from my personal Facebook page.  Since I might not always be the editor, and since I’d like to leave a working system for whoever replaces me someday, this is important.  For the next 10 days (10/01 to 10/10), we will be posting to both my personal page and the official one.  Starting 10/11 however, we will only be using the official Beacon page on Facebook.

So that’s pretty much it!  If you have a Facebook account and you’d like to receive posts when there are new articles here at the Beacon, then please take a second to click the little icon to the right, and then click the “LIKE” button at the top of the page.  And feel free to spread the word to other people who might be interested as well.

Thank you again for all your support.

Pro Rege

by Stephen Rodgers

Hey Everyone,

I’m writing this from the Mellwigs’ kitchen table in the Czech Republic to let you know that due to an unfortunate combination of events, we’re not going to post any new articles this week. However, the plan is that we will just pick it up next week like nothing ever happened.

However, since we have the “related posts” section at the bottom of each article, I thought that this might be a good time to draw your attention to some articles in the archive that would be a good springboard for exploring.

• First of all, there’s an entire category on the subject of missions.
• Or you could use the search box on the right to search for various words like Czech, missions, or Meinolf.
• And last but not least, did you know that we have three sermons by Meinolf in our sermon archive? You should check those out if you haven’t heard them before; they’re “gweat!”

Enjoy everyone, and we’ll see you when we get back!

Pro Rege

Update: Some people have noted that it’s difficult to find Meinolf’s sermons. So, ease of access, let me list them for you here:

1. Missions in the 21st Century
2. Two Reasons for Missions
3. Get Ready to be Involved in Missions

by Stephen Rodgers

I just have a quick note for everyone related to some minor changes to the blog.

• I know a lot of people share articles via Facebook, Buzz, Twitter and whatnot, but not very many were using the links at the bottom of the articles to do so (heck, I wasn’t using them, and I post every Beacon article to my Facebook page). Since they weren’t getting use and were just taking up space, I’ve removed them. If you feel that there’s a need for a particular kind of share code, come talk to me.
• The blog is getting a lot larger than it used to be. We’re currently at 600+ articles and climbing. To make it easier to delve into the archive, I’ve enabled some code to link to 5 articles that seem to be similar (mostly calculated by the recurrence of keywords in the content; we could filter by category, but that seemed unnecessary for now). These links will appear at the bottom of each article under the heading of “Probably Related Posts.” I’m hopeful that this will help you browse particular topics more easily, but please let me know if you spot anything strange.

Pro Rege

by Stephen Rodgers

And just like that, another hiatus comes to an end. From the previous notes you can see what our goals were for the break, and I’m happy to say that most of them were met (although a couple will continue to resolve in the next week or so).

Just to let you know, the recent LBCSJ church plant has had a rather significant effect on our staff. Some faithful workers were a part of that team, and have since left. Now don’t get me wrong, they left with our best wishes and prayers, but they’re still not here anymore. Other staff members have taken the initiative to step into some of the positions in other ministries left vacant by their departure. And while they’re still here in the broader sense, that means they’re not here as much in the narrower sense.

To make a short story shorter, we’re a bit understaffed from where we used to be. The plan for dealing with it is simply that we will continue to post Tuesday-Saturday on our regular schedule, and Mondays will become a bit of a…can I say surprise? Like a party? Or a weekly Christmas that sometimes just doesn’t happen sometimes?

In other words, if I have an article for Monday, I’ll be sure to post it for you. But that won’t always happen.

This might change for a number of reasons. A current staff writer might get a wild hair to write more. A new staff writer might emerge from the shadows. I might try to create a new series that doesn’t require much effort (a la “Random Post from the Archives” or the like). But in the meantime, we’re just going to take a tiny step back, take a deep breath, and see what happens.

We’re still here five days a week.

Thanks for reading!

by Stephen Rodgers

A quick update for anyone who keeps track of such things:

• The migration to WordPress 3.0 went off without a hitch.
• The old SPARK category no longer exists; it has been merged into the Lighthouse News category. You can find all the previous entries there now.
• The 2010 College Graduation testimonies have been posted.

As a matter of personal curiosity, does anyone use the “Share on…” links at the bottom of each article? I know when I post on Facebook, I just copy the URL. If they’re not getting much use, it might be better to put something that would be helpful to more people there, like a “Similar Articles” list. If you have an opinion on that, please track me down and let me know.

Thanks!

by Stephen Rodgers

Just in case you were wondering where today’s article is, I wanted to let you know that the Beacon is taking a short break. We’re taking two weeks off to…

• give our writers a breather (they’ve earned it!),
• adjust to some recent changes in the church (San Jose church plant),
• finish a couple of Beacon-related projects (including something for the hallway at church),
• do some site maintenance (WordPress has a new version out, there’s some cleanup to be done in the archives, Dan has some spiffy new designs),
• and plan the rest of the year.

We’re planning on returning on 7/26.

See you then!

by Stephen Rodgers

You might be wondering where the Weekly Links are.

It was brought to my attention that we’ve been screaming along at a pretty quick pace lately. Lots of new content. A new writer or two. We started by posting articles four days a week. Then five. We’re at six now. Frankly, we’re running out of week.

Sometimes we get so caught up in what we’re doing that we don’t stop to consider why we do it, and what it’s supposed to accomplish.

So there won’t be a Weekly Links this week. Consider today a small break. Take a moment to catch up on articles you’ve missed (there’s a list of Recent Posts on the right). Download and listen to a sermon you didn’t fully get. Get a cup of tea and relive a few recent events…maybe you were there, maybe you weren’t. Are you behind in your Scripture reading? Take the time to fix that; remember to pray first. Shoot an encouragement email to a friend. Write a note to your spouse.

And thank God for the grace and opportunity to do so.

Pro Rege