In the News...

Do You Attend a Small Church?
Fifty percent of all churches in the United States (and there are some 350,000 of them) have 100 or fewer members, according to The Hartford Institute. One fourth have 50 or fewer.

Today, many teens are finding e-mail and IM effective ways to keep in touch with others who share and support their Christian values, especially when there are few or no other teens in their local congregation. Attending United Youth Camps and other regional church activities are effective ways of building relationships with other "church kids."

Who Makes More?
The New York–based Families and Work Institute (www.familiesandwork.org), in its new study on the quality of American employment, found that Americans are working harder today than they did 25 years ago. Two-career couples averaged 81 hours a week in 1977, compared with 91 hours today. Self-employed workers tend to earn more than those with regular wage jobs—$58,000 a year, on average, compared to $45,000. The most successful group, financially, are small business owners, averaging $110,000 a year, and they also report more job creativity and satisfaction in life. But they also tend to work longer hours—38 percent of them work more than 50 hours a week.

Proverbs 24:27 says to "prepare your outside work, make it fit for yourself in the field; and afterward build your house." In other words, prepare yourself for your "field" of employment first so that you will be able to provide for home and family later. But God also cautions against overwork. He tells us in the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:9-11) that we are to do all our work in six days a week, and to leave the Sabbath as a day of rest and worship. And we are not to become workaholics and neglect our families.

Can You Trust Your Science Textbooks?
The Texas State Board of Education voted on Nov. 9 to use only scientifically accurate science texts.

Well, duh. They needed to vote on that? Seems that for years, seventh-grade science texts contained numerous known factual errors "that overstate the evidence for evolutionary theory," said Bruce Chapman of The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based public policy organization. Included in a list of 20 corrections that needed to be addressed were claims that human embryos have "gill slits" (they don’t); overstatements about peppered moth research that purported to explain the process of evolution; and diagrams showing supposed similarities in human embryos with eight other species including tortoises, frogs and chickens—diagrams that were drawn in the 1800s by German biologist Ernst Haeckel, but that many scientists today acknowledge are inaccurate and misleading.

Still, biology texts remain overtly evolutionary. Efforts to have the Board of Education also require that weaknesses of the evolutionary theory be addressed in their textbooks, as some say is required by Texas law, failed. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards require that the student "analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information" (emphasis added).

"We were also hoping that the Board would require textbooks to include coverage of the peer-reviewed scientific weaknesses of evolutionary theory. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a majority on the Board that was willing to enforce that," said Mr. Chapman.

As one of the largest buyers of textbooks in the United States, the Texas decisions dramatically influence textbooks marketed across the nation. (Source: Discovery.org.)

For a factual evaluation of the evolution vs. creation issue, write for our free booklet, Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe?