Elsewhere, 25 January.

• I’ve taught previously that it’s okay to offer to pray for people. But Steven Fouse from Mundane Spirituality has another take on the matter, from the viewpoint of someone in the service industry. It’s a fair point.
• For those who aren’t clear on how God’s grace is compatible with God’s rewards for good works, Craig Keener has part of a good answer.
• Jonathan Merritt wrote on the tendency of Christian bloggers (heck, of loads of people on the Internet) to indiscriminately overshare. I know what he’s talking about; I get letters, from time to time, which I’m never gonna post on More Christ because they’re just not appropriate for a public forum. Public confession isn’t true confession, folks. It’s offering up your soul for entertainment. And judgment.
• A LifeWay survey, as reported by Christianity Today, has some new figures about attitudes on ethnic diversity in U.S. churches. Though more than 80 percent of the churches are still predominantly of one ethnic background, and 50 percent of the respondents agree that’s a problem, 67 percent figure their churches are doing all they can to encourage diversity, and 53 percent feel their churches don’t need to become any more diverse.