Wednesday Link List

Copyright © 2011 The Zondervan Corporation

Wednesday List Lynx — two, actually

Time for another round of Christian blog and news links for the whole family. In the past we would often begin and end here with cartoons, but the whole question of fair use gets muddy sometimes, especially when humor meets illustration. I’ve studied the permissions statements of some of these and can’t reconcile what I read with what seems to be ubiquitous online. So we decided to run one, since it’s been awhile. Click the image to visit Reverend Run’s site.

• The question many reading this may face: Should a Christian go for counseling with a secular therapist?
• Essay of the week: The New Music Business, or Why I am No Longer Friends With Derek Webb.  No, it’s not what you think.
• Social justice and religious freedom: The ten worst countries in the world when it comes to persecuted for Christian belief. The list and a video.
• Meanwhile in the relative Christian security of the U.S., lists are published of the top five churches using social media best. 
• A ministry leader affirms all the good things he learned from Willow Creek, while at the same time confessing to the sin of methodolatry.
  
• What to say when someone is suffering. Your theodicy is probably determined by your theology. And that affects how you answer the “why” questions that will never fully go away.
• At the risk of continuing yesterday’s theme here ad infinitum check out Wade Burleson’s How To Kiss Calvinism Goodbye.
• Most of us have heard of Mormon baptisms for the dead, but in the first half of LDS history, baptisms for health were more common.
  
• Looking to give a book to a non-Christian friend, neighbor, relative or co-worker, but sure which one to give? Lots of good ideas can be found at Books for Evangelism.
• Lest someone think we have a vendetta against James MacDonald, we’ll bury this story in the middle of the link list: A popular teacher is dismissed from a Harvest day school for questioning the authenticity of church camp conversions.
• Taking their cue from U.S. federal politics, the Southern Baptist Convention yesterday re-elected their first black president, Rev. Fred Luter. Church Curmudgeon tweeted: “Houston, it will take much prayer and fasting to cast out this denom.”
  
• What if you have a calling to local church ministry, but also an understanding that you’re not quite ready? Here are eight tips on what to do in the meantime.
  
• Your Bible translation dollars at work: A Bible for Texans. “Don’t y’all not know that y’all are the temple of God?” 
• But in North Texas, another high school graduation speech is cut short for its references to God and faith.
  
• Okay, serious translation issues: How the ESV managed to change two words to singular case while every other translation had the words plural.
• The Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church of America have jointly produced Lift Up Your Hearts,  a brand new hymnbook with over 800 entries. Wait a minute; what’s a hymnbook?
• I’ll let this one introduce itself: “I love Al Mohler. I love 99% of his articles. I didn’t love his 2013 Summer Reading List. What a litany of bloodshed, suffering, death, and destruction! I’d hate to see the Winter Reading List.” Then he offers some alternatives.
  
• Here’s some reading for any woman considering the transition from SAHM to working mother. It’s sometimes a decision of career vs. tentmaking.
• And now Queen Elizabeth is being dragged into the gay marriage debate.
  
• Enough with the Sunday morning announcements already: Here are seven alternatives for your church to consider. Some people won’t like #5, though.
• For the church webmaster — and everyone else — to consider: Is your church website attractional or missional? This article could revolutionize your online presence.
• From our Folk Theology corner: Twenty theological urban legends. You may be guilty of accepting a few of these yourself.
• Sometimes worship leaders find themselves faced with a very popular worship song that people want to sing that they happen not to personally like.
  
• Don’t like the priest or rector touching the communion bread or wafer? Maybe he should get a Purity Communion Solutions Host Dispenser. And yes, it’s an older video, but the item is still available.
• One year after we first mentioned it, Cardiphonia is still offering entire album downloads for $1, or even less.
  
• Just in time for summer at a church near you: Why VBS Scarred Me As a Kid.  Is that scarred or scared? Guess it’s all the same.

Don’t forget to get your link suggestions in by 6:00 PM, Mondays, EST; and as always, for breaking links, you can follow me on Twitter. Look for @PaulW1lk1nson (change the letter i to a number 1).

Concordia Decides Enough is Enough with VBS Entertainment

VBS (Vacation Bible School) is a major industry. Let me be clear, VBS is big business. In North America, nearly two dozen publishers compete — in every sense of the word — for your church’s summer Christian Education dollars to be spent on their program. Each year the programs get more and more elaborate and involve an increasing number of ancillary products which help vindicate what each publisher spends on marketing.

And according to one publisher, each year it gets, from a Biblical viewpoint, more and more silly. Concordia Publishing has decided to swim against the current. Good for them.

On another blog that I write, I deal with issues confronting the world of Christian publishing in general and Christian bookstores in particular. Sometimes I link to articles at a Strang Publishing website called Christian Retailing, but usually I don’t need to because bookstore owners and managers already have that information covered and are regular readers there.

So normally, I wouldn’t reblog anything from Christian Retailing there, let alone here, but this is something every Kid Min director, every Children’s pastor, every Christian Education department head needs to be aware of. As always, reading at source is encouraged, click here.

Concordia Takes Stand Against VBS Entertainment Machine

Concordia Publishing House is calling on Vacation Bible School (VBS) publishers to make the gospel—not entertainment—central to their VBS programs.

“Our stand is against Vacation Bible School programs that confuse children with images and characters that are unrealistic and too similar to cartoons on TV and in the movies—where is the Christian focus?” said Emily Barlean, senior public relations specialist.

Acknowledging that VBS themes may use cartoonish figures or themes to “hook” children and get them interested in participating in a church VBS program, a company statement observed that “the steady transformation of VBS programs into full-on entertainment machines has created a rather distressing situation.

“Instead of being used to share the Word of the Lord, VBS is being used to babysit and cure boredom—and many children are leaving VBS more confused than ever as to who and what is real and who and what are just characters and stories.”

Laying the blame at the feet of publishers, parents and churches alike, Concordia, publisher for The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), has spent three years refocusing its VBS brand and creating programming that remains faithful to the gospel message and the Scriptures as a whole. The publisher calls this renewed focus “VBS with Purpose.”

“After many years of trying to mold our VBS programs after what was considered fun and popular, we decided that we’d had enough,” said Pam Nummela, Concordia’s VBS editor, who is also a director of Christian education and a 30-year veteran leader of VBS programs.

Concordia’s VBS curricula will be changing significantly as a result. Stores and churches will see the publisher’s VBS programs will no longer be set in locations that cannot be found in the Bible, stories will no longer feature characters outside of the Bible, all artwork will be realistic, and “wise-cracking animals” will not be the spokesmen for Concordia VBS themes.

“Kids love all kinds of art, but that does not mean all art is best for presenting Bible stories,” said Gail Pawlitz, a childhood education expert. “During the early childhood years when children sort out for themselves what is real from what is not real, realistic images for Bible stories trump others because they communicate the idea that if ‘it looks real, it is real.’ “

…[T]o learn more about Concordia’s 2013 program, click Tell It on the Mountain.

Wednesday Link List

Wednesday List Lynx

And now here’s a Wednesday Link List that needs no introduction…

• The other members of the band America (“A Horse With No Name”) pay tribute to Dan Peek who later had a career in Christian music, who passed away on the weekend.
• Jay Grelen joins the cast at GetReligion.org, a blog that looks at how the media handles religious stories.  His own story was interesting.
• Josh McDowell believes that the internet is the greatest threat to Christian belief: “The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have… whether you like it or not,” said McDowell.  Read more at Faith and The Law.
• Pressured by his elders’ board to apologize, Mark Driscoll makes a half-hearted effort following his remarks on Facebook about “effeminate worship leaders.”  Rachel Held Evans calls him a bully.
• Just in case you’re wondering, here’s the website for Hope Unlimited Church in Australia, the church Mark and Darlene Zschech call home since leaving the Hillsong mother-ship; though they’ll still be part of music events.
  
• Tim Challies looks at the ‘Christian’ label being applied to the man who brought about the carnage in Oslo, Norway.
  
• Paul Clark reads Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God and notes that the greatest books — starting with the Bible — have already been written.
  
• Paul also has a great article on creating a “culture of generosity” within your church in this article about stewardship.
  
• C. Michael Patton knows how to kick off a discussion and he’s got enough readers that he gets a response.  Be sure to read all the comments on this discussion about praying over and over and over and over again.
  
• Michelle VanLoon at Her.meneutics tells about growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with her father’s porn magazines openly displayed on the coffee table and how it affected her.
  
• While it wasn’t a Christian story per se, Eugune Cho posted this story about the latest “Susan Boyle” type of story on Korea’s Got Talent.   Read about Sung-Bong Choi.  (No relation to Song Sung Blue.)
• While this one isn’t a link at all, I wanted to post something rather unique: My church is doing a VBS during the last week before school starts and they’re doing it as an evening program from 6:30 – 8:30 PM.  Different, huh?
  
• For our Canadian readers: Yes, it’s true, McMaster Divinity School is giving Christian broadcaster David Mainse an honorary doctorate degree.  (My favorite Mainse quote: “My wife and I were virgins on our wedding night and we’ve been virgins ever since.”  …They have four children.)
  
• Nick Costello’s book, Kiss What? is another book to examine the music scene and might be a resource for the teen in your home who is OD-ing on popular music culture.  Here’s a video preview.
  
• Here’s a Vimeo vid on the release of the full (OT & NT) edition of the Common English Bible.  (Note: This HD clip takes awhile to load.)
  
• New Blog of the Week: Housewife Theologian by Amiee Byrd — Articles of interest to women and a penchant for reviewing books in the Reformed tradition.
  
• He calls his blog The Ugley Vicar and recently posted this hymn verse that was sung while attending a “Junior Clergy” conference; a verse that should be the prayer of all of us:

Facing a task unfinished,
That drives us to our knees,
A need that, undiminished,
Rebukes our slothful ease:
We, who rejoice to know Thee,
Renew before Thy throne
The solemn pledge we owe Thee
To go and make Thee known.