Wednesday Link List

First, two strongly related links:

• Author Mike Breen guests at Verge Network with Obituary for the American Church.  He notes three factors responsible for killing the church, celebrity, consumerism and competition.
• Rachel Held Evans guests at Relevant Magazine with a particular focus on the celebrity mindset in the church, check out When Jesus Meets TMZ.

Other links this week:

• Christian authors facing the justice system in the UK win some and lose some.  Here’s a snapshot of just one day in a British courtroom.
  
• Cathy Cleaver Ruse of the Family Research Council guests at Washington Times, explaining why she won’t be buying Girl Scout cookies anymore, and why you might also want to reconsider your yearly purchase.
  
• Author Anne Jackson makes what is now a somewhat rare online appearance at Donald Miller’s blog, sharing her thoughts as she visited Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art.
• Rebecca Trotter shares with her sons, and all of us, her radically different approach to why we have a moral obligation not to have sex outside of marriage.
  
• Here’s a new song from the band Caleb, fronted by Caleb Chapman, son of Steven Curtis Chapman.  Enjoy the music video, We Will Wait.
  
• From Sunday night’s Grammy Awards here are the winners in the gospel and contemporary Christian categories you didn’t see in the telecast.
  
• Carolyn Arends gets together with several other older brothers and older sisters, and concludes that for older siblings, pleasing God is often performance based.
  
• One day late for Valentine’s here’s a rerun of Biblical Ways a Man Finds a Wife; with some added commentary by myself this time around.
  
• Out of Toronto’s Eight Letter Conference, comes a book from InterVarsity Press releasing in April: Letters to a Future Church, including contributions from such diverse voices as Ron Sider, Peter Rollins, Tim Challies and Andy Crouch; and many others who participated in the event.
  
• Your pastor’s job description actually requires him to fulfill five different roles on a weekly basis. (And that doesn’t count about a dozen more things he does if your church is smaller in size.)
  
• Russell D. Moore notes that although the “worship wars” have abated, we still need to “seek the well-being of others in worship… resonate with worship through musical forms we previously never considered.” He makes it clear that choosing songs on the basis of nostalgia isn’t worship.
• Stand to Reason, an apologetics blog, offers some instruction to people who think that homosexuality is the worst sin.
  
• Closing graphic here was chosen mostly because I really enjoyed singing the song this week at church.  Click the image to see more.  Click here to listen to the song as recorded by Matt Redman.
  
• That’s it for this week; thanks for tuning in.