I spent a little more time with the U.S. Census Data Ferret, and came up with an interesting comparison of the age distribution of ABCs and OBCs in 2000. I think that this helps to explain a particularly challenging leadership problem in U.S. Chinese churches in moving to the parallel stage and beyond.

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What does it mean to be a man? For centuries, young boys did not need to contemplate this question because there were commonly accepted rites of passage that let the community know when a boy became a man. But due to rampant gender confusion and a blurring of distinctions, today there are many men in their 20s and 30s who are still not sure that they are “men.”
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Sometimes it is helpful to look to past generations for an example of godly devotion. One such example is John William Fletcher (1729-1785), whom John Wesley admired and desired to imitate. Seven months after his conversion, Fletcher penned a covenant with God which is a classic statement of Christian devotion. The covenant in its entirety is quoted by Fred Sanders in Scriptorium Daily.

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Steve Pavlina write on How to Make Accurate Time Estimates. This practical article offers great advice on coming up with more accurate estimates of the amount of time to allocate for tasks in your personal or professional life.

At Scriptorium Daily, John Mark Reynolds has a helpful article on What is an Evangelical Christian?. He answers some of the negative stereotypes of Evangelicals and provides a helpful introduction for non-Evangelical friends.

John Mark Reynolds has written a follow up article on Grand Auto Theft in which he deals with some of the responses to his first article.  This is another article well worth reading.

One question that I explored in working on my dissertation was the age structure of the ABC population. Since turning in my final draft, I have finally figured out how to use the U.S. Census Data Ferret to get the information that I wanted. The graph below shows the number of ABCs for each year of age in the 2000 census. (Click on the image for a larger view.)
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