Dear Church Matters Readers,

We're grateful for the many good and constructive comments that many of you bring to the window, fulfilling the request we have made from the beginning (look at the right column) about comments being make "with the respect you would offer to people face to face." That's 99.9 percent of you.

However, since .1 percent of our readers have felt inclined to offer their insights in a slightly different vein, we've decided to take a more active role in deleting comments. As Mark D. has put it, we're not concerned about the "I don't agree" comments. In fact we welcome them. We're even grateful (sort of) for what may be legitimate criticisms of us, such as those recent comments which suggest that we suffer from a lack of humility (to steal a line from G. Whitfield, if you only knew how true that is!). It's the "I don't like you, and let me insult you" comments that we're going to remove more consistently. In our estimation, remarks of this variety do nothing to serve the conversation or edify its readers.

With regrets to the 99.9 percent for bothering you with this announcement, and with apologies for all those ways in which we fail to perfectly image our savior in tone or content,
Jonathan L.