While this is list number two-hundred-and-something at Thinking Out Loud — and probably about the 400th link list over all, it’s list #52 at PARSE. A year! Time flies when you’re having links. Since Leadership Journal owns this weekly piece, clicking anything below takes you to PARSE where you can then link to the item you wish to read first.
- 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.
- Praying for Pop Stars: Lessons from Justin Bieber’s mom. (Be sure to read all 3 pages.)
- …Meanwhile, earlier this month The Biebster was baptized.
- Does the Charismatic/Pentecostal teaching on prophetic words override sola scriptura?
- …And some Charismatic types you really don’t want on your altar/ministry team.
- I link rather frequently to Karl Vaters’ blog because the reality is that many churches are small(er). In a recent piece, he suggests such churches may be that way by design, or they may be failing to move forward. (His words: ‘Strategic or stuck.’)
- Meriam Ibrahim has been released by the government in Sudan; now the ACLJ is petitioning for her and her family’s safe passage to the U.S.
- Analogy Avenue: How churches went from being ocean liners to cruise ships. (There’s a big difference.)
- Second-guessing the Teacher: Why did Jesus make Judas the treasurer when there were better choices?
- It’s possible your church website is already powered by WordPress. Why not go the next step and use WP to take donations.
- Andy Stanley armchair quarterbacks the Southern Baptist Convention convention on the issue of revival.
- Tim Challies joins the many writers who have looked closely into the publishing phenomenon, Jesus Calling.
- 2013 stats are out, and while philanthropy for environmental causes, education, and the arts was up; religious giving was down…
- …But if your missions committee wants to get more bang for its buck; “…as a native African missionary, my team and I can do more effective work in evangelism with $10,000 than a visiting missionary can do with $100,000.”
- …Or perhaps people need to “give ’til it hurts.”
- Most talked about this week: Why I Miss Being a Born-Again Christian. (For more from both sides, Google the title along with the word ‘response.’)
- What can your church learn from World Cup fever?
- Church Profile: Capital Hill Baptist Church is drawing Millennials.
- Not new, but new to me: The Passion Bible Translation.
- Point/Counterpoint: Is the gay issue worth splitting a church over?
- I don’t think I’ll ever sort out all the various Baptist groups; especially when Presbyterians are this complicated.
- On kids sitting still in church; wiggling or wriggling during worship. (Sit still while you read it.)
- Quotation of the Week: Looking for a leader or a babysitter?
- For your faith to be viable, is it necessary for there to have been two actual people named Adam and Eve? Albert Mohler and N.T. Wright would disagree on this one.
- Five paragraphs. Six theological conundrums. And they’re not all gender issues.
- The Newsboys’ declaration of faith, “We Believe” is number one this week at Praise Charts.
- Would a Christian hire a hit-man to kill his wife? It’s not a riddle, but if it were the answer might be “No, he would have to stop being a Christian first.” An update on the lead singer of the band As I Lay Dying.
- Link to more links: If you like your links on a single theme, check out Blogging the Apocalypse.
- Some of those other Christian link writers pad their lists with cute cat videos, but after one year at PARSE, I can honestly say we would never do that here. (Especially if the feline is shilling for a cat food conglomerate.)
Thursday through Tuesday, Paul blogs at Thinking Out Loud, both writes and steals devotional material at Christianity 201, and provides hints of the following week’s link list on Twitter.
It’s not every day that we see a Jaguar X16 with a Jesus fish in our part of the world. Mind you it’s a gold fish, nicely framed and matted.
Thinking Out Loud 
Point/Counterpoint – church splitting over gay issue: Did you read that entire article Paul?
“Denominations and congregations are gradually coming to the realization that gay people do not choose to be gay any more than left-handed people choose to be left-handed, and that the Church has been wrong in labeling homosexuality a sin.”
I’m going to be eaten alive in the comments for what I said about the Bible defining sin and the Church not giving homosexuality a label. Just before the SBC met for their annual convention, Al Mohler predicated that every church in the future, and probably the very near future, will have to make an official decision as to where their congregation stands on this issue. And I will stand by the Word of God regardless of what any pastor, local church or my denomination “realize.”
Comment by Clark Bunch — June 25, 2014 @ 8:47 am
Briefly, (1) It’s not a true point/counterpoint as it mostly raises questions and scratches the surface of the question it sets out to answer; and (2) I think some people have some expectations of what appears at Red Letter Christianity, where the tension on this issue is always in the forefront, hence the “On the one hand… on the other hand…” approach.
Comment by paulthinkingoutloud — June 25, 2014 @ 9:39 am