Happy Birthday to us! While this is list number two-hundred-and-something at Thinking Out Loud, it's list #52 at PARSE. One year! Time flies when you're having links.

• Some churches make guests feel welcome all too easily, while other people are actually running metrics on the welcoming factor. (Second link opens as a .pdf)
• Baptists may lament a drop in baptisms and new members, but across the road at the Assemblies of God Church, things are hopping. (Pun intended.)
• Essay of the Week: Theology meets parenting in Daddy, Does God Want to Save Me?
• Of the more than two hundred kidnapped school girls in Nigeria, some are members of families involved in Bible translation in the region.
• Authorities in Scotland have dropped charges against Christian apologist and street preacher Tony Miano.
• Contrasts: Christianity versus Christians.
• Shrunken Sermon: We didn't invent the doctrine of the Trinity. Like the early explorers to North America, we discovered something that was there all along.