Don’t Call Her A Baptist

I grew up in a Baptist church. I was in handbell choir, church choir and GAs. I led a group at middle school camp and belonged to an “accountability group.” I went to Disciple Now. I gave money each Christmas to the Lottie Moon offering and went on choir tour/mission trips for years. I even graduated from a Baptist university and now work for a Baptist organization.

But if someone was to ask me, “Are you a Baptist?” I would say, “No.”

Because I can’t really tell you what a Baptist is.

I don’t say this to offend anyone. I know some truly great Baptist men and women. Some of the greatest are those who led me to Christ as a child, who molded in my heart a love for missions and service. It’s the men and women I work with everyday who love God with all their hearts and live their lives accordingly.

But the truth is, to my generation, it just doesn’t matter whether you’re Baptist or Methodist, Catholic or Presbyterian. We don’t see ourselves as part of a denomination. Or as Cara Jane put it a couple of weeks ago, we aren’t married to the brand.

Instead, we see ourselves as part of the Body. The Body of Christ. And we want to do whatever we can to please God, to serve him, and to love his people while we’re on earth. The only label or agenda we would ever want to be tagged with is the Jesus Agenda.

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BON Images and Hotlinking

Those of you that follow BagOfNothing.com through a feeder or a social web browser, such as Google Reader and Flock, may have trouble viewing images.  The only image you may actually see is the one to the right which says “I Love BagOfNothing.com.”

I added some code over the weekend to discourage hotlinking.  At first I didn’t mind hotlinking, but it’s gotten considerbly worse.  For those unaware of hotlinking, that basically when someone directs an image from BON to display on another website.  When this happens, the performance of BON is comprimised and the bandwidth I’m paying for is being used.  So now when someone hotlinks they will only see the previously mentioned image.

My apologies to those of you that only see this image, but for now this is something I plan on sticking with.  It’s really something I don’t want to do, but I really need to discourage hotlinking to keep BON performing at optimal peak.  The workaround is to access BON directly.

Update:  When I get home tonight I’m going to update the code only to exclude blogging platforms such as Blogger, so that should fix the reader issues.

Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

Pizza Shop Robbed By Employee’s Father

A Denton pizza restaurant employee surprised by a robbery Friday says she was even more surprised by whom the robbers were.

As Stephanie Martinez was getting money out of a cash drawer Friday night, another clerk fought back against the gunman, knocking off the wig and sunglasses disguising him.

“I dropped the money,” Ms. Martinez said. “I said, ‘Don’t hit him again! That’s my dad!’ And he said, ‘What’s he doing here?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know!’ ”

Police say the suspect, Benjamin Ramirez, 41, ran out of the Pizza Patron in the 100 block of East University Drive to a pickup truck, where Ms. Martinez’s mother and husband were waiting.

Witnesses followed the pickup and helped lead police to it, where Mr. Ramirez, Sonia Palacios, 38, and Jose Miguel Martinez, 26, were arrested.

Denton police say they believe Ms. Martinez didn’t know her family was planning the robbery.

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Posted in DFW, Goofy, Texas | 1 Comment