Wednesday Link List

We’re back with another mid-week link meeting! Here’s what your brothers and sisters from random parts of the big ‘C’ church were up to this week. Clicking any of the links below will take you to PARSE, the list’s benevolent patron.

• What’s the difference between a canoe and a Christian in a restaurant? A canoe tips. [Rim shot!] Now a website is dedicated to giving food servers a chance to describe their experiences with church people at Sundays Are The Worst.
• Pastors: Be careful what you offer in a sermon, especially if it’s not in the church budget.
• Marketing Christianity: A special offer from pastor and radio host Steve Brown allows you Three Free Sins.
• A funeral director whose blog deals with how we face death offers suggestions as to the proper etiquette of dealing with loss on the internet…
• …The same author once noticed that at funerals, almost all pastors are universalists.
• A secular news website looks at the various blogs that highlight survivor stories of spiritual abuse in fundamentalist sects.
• Strange Cloud Conference: It doesn’t sound like John MacArthur will be buying a ticket for the Heaven is For Real movie adaptation.
• Gay Christians in same-sex marriage are now eligible for employment at World Vision…
• …but the World Vision shift brings a quick response from Baptist ethics writer Russell D. Moore.
• Pastors often suffer from depression. Here are seven ways God can use that.
• Essay of the Week (1): When it comes to personality tests, I think I’m an HIJK. Is that a thing? Anyway here’s Why English Majors Make Lousy Fundamentalists.
• Essay of the Week (2): Two lesbians walk into a church. No, it’s not a short story and there is no punchline. But there is quite an ending.
• Houston Crime-Stoppers will pay you $25,000 for information leading to an arrest in the theft of $600,000 at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church.
• For a member of The Newsboys, his involvement in the movie God’s Not Dead is the continuation in a chain of events begun when Billy Graham visited Australia in 1959…
• …while the movie’s opening weekend landed it in the top five.
• With everyone in the U.S. thinking basketball, I thought we’d take a different route and offer this delightful religious gift idea for the football fan. (Pictured above.)
• The British Law Society is one step closer to a legal system that accommodates Islamic law.  (Wait, what?)
• Meanwhile, Jewish News Service is reporting that in countries where they are a minority, there has been a major exodus of Christians in the face of religious extremists.
• So who’s up for a good debate? On Moody Radio a look at the decline of altar calls in Baptist churches.  (Click the link for the 54 minute program.)
• YMin: One of the big challenges to youth ministry is the reality that the kids all attend different schools.
• Intermission: A pause while we pay a tribute to church basement coffee.
• Thanks for the Complementarian: Is Cedarville University planning to restrict a particular course to women only?
• Jamie the Very Worst Production Consultant breaks her Non-Disclosure Agreement and tells what was going on in the desert that day.
• Analogy of the Week: To this writer, fellowship is like oxygen.
• While reading Brad Lomenick’s latest list of young influencers, I learned that on Hillsong’s popular song Oceans, the lead vocal belongs to Taya Smith.
• Since PARSE is part of Leadership Journal which in turn is part of Christianity Today, I’m sure they weren’t happy with this shot taken by Frank Schaeffer…
• …but I did think that Karen Spears Zacharias had an insightful, deeper look at the late Fred Phelps and what he is now experiencing…
• …and in Fred’s home town of Topeka, Kansas, the local newspaper provides a family tree of sorts.
• Source Unknown Department: Every pastor’s prayer.
• A Spanish church occupied the first floor and basement of a building that was destroyed in the New York City gas explosion. Some church members perished in the blast.
• Book Review: A look at Renegade Pastor, a book encouraging those in ministry not to settle for average.
• Time Warp: Michael W. Smith is releasing a new album.
• Here’s another infographic from Josh Byers, this one showing the harmony of the gospels’ telling of the Passion Week narrative.
• Internet Diversions Department: 27 indicators you grew up Evangelical. (Yes, I know, the whole internet is a diversion.)
• Finally, specialization has hit the automotive fish industry. Now your car icthus can have special meaning.  (Including a Southern Baptist fish icon.)

Stay in touch with Paul Wilkinson during the week on Twitter.

Our closing cartoon is rather interesting, don’t you think? The artist is Jess MacCallum and you can click the image to see more.