CHICAGO, IL (August 21, 2015) — Many Covenanters routinely share links to social media articles and videos with one another that Covenant News Service believes may be of interest to others. Each Friday we post five of them. Following is a sample of those submissions—their inclusion does not represent an endorsement by the Covenant of any views expressed.

Twenty-Five Really Weird Things Said to Pastors and Other Church Leaders
Half the fun of reading the list is trying to imagine the situation in which someone said these things. One of my favorites actually was in the many responses, when a pastor recalled one church member saying, “I’m tired of all these suppository sermons you preach. I actually had to go buy a book and study something I wanted to learn about.” When I was a pastor someone told me that our Taizé service was too Catholic because we used so many candles. I pointed out that we used far more candles in our Julotta services. Let me just say that did not win her over. (The link takes you straight to the comments so scroll up to see the original post).

Here’s What’s Missing From ‘Straight Outta Compton’: Women Dr. Dre Beat Up
Despite his misogyny and physical abuse, it seems the public and media really don’t care if Dr. Dre, one of the most famous rappers ever and a major business mogul, beat women and has never seemed to really care. He once said, “It ain’t no big thing—I just threw her through a door.” Ice Cube, another member of the group, recently told Rolling Stone that their misogynistic lyrics were about b*tches and not “upstanding ladies.” This afternoon, Dr. Dre sent a statement to the New York Times apologizing for the pastk.

The Reason You Haven’t Heard More about the 177 Bikers Arrested in Waco
You remember that battle that broke out between rival biker gangs as well as police, and led to nine people being shot dead, right? It’s not that people aren’t trying to tell the story: They’ve been told not to by a court. The author alleges the gag order was issued to cover up numerous mistakes by officials. If true, the order is something that is more dangerous to the general public than a biker gang.

The Problem We All Live With Parts 1 and 2
Last week, I wrote a story about attending McCluer North high school in the Ferguson-Florissant School District that was integrated when a court ordered that students from the all-black Kinloch district be bused to my school. After the story was posted on Facebook, several people responded online and through emails that I should listen to these two broadcasts of This American Life. They are well worth the listen.

Websites Crash as People Search Leaked Ashley Madison Data
There must be a lot of people worried that their sins have caught up with them, or a lot of others seeking to see if their partners sinned against them. This story is sad because the purpose of the Ashley Madison site is to help members cheat on their partners— and that there were 3.7 million people who were members at one time or another. It’s sad because there are so many people afraid they have been cheated on.