Wednesday Link List

Poor signage or a creatively named new outreach for Teen Challenge?

Okay, hands up everyone who remembers the Bible story about The Horn of the Llamas?

Witty introduction, not in the Advance Reader Copy, to appear here in print edition.

• R. T. Kendall pastored at Westminster Chapel for 25 years and has authored dozens of books. As part of a continuing series at Premier Christianity, here is his Open Letter to the U.K. Church.
• The Cross and the Crescent: “I really felt like I had failed as a mother and a Christian and church member and the daughter of my parents, failed by not passing onto her what I call a saving knowledge of who Jesus is.” An evangelical author and lifelong churchgoer learns that left Christianity for orthodox Islam, becoming a Muslim.
• Some people go on mission trips and sneak in a few Bibles. Other are traveling with sealed envelopes packed with wads of cash. [Update: The practice is being discontinued.]
  
• So here’s a wedding cake story with a difference. Yes, it was a gay wedding, but as we learn in the comments section, the script wanted was “Support Gay Marriage.” The Christian baker refused. The customer sued. The baker lost.
• If you haven’t heard of churches doing this, you need to read this. One church we attended called it “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” These guys called it The Open Table.
• Driscoll returns to a Seattle-area church, preaches three services, and gets at least one standing ovation. There were protests there…
• …and there will be protests at Sydney, Australia’s Hillsong Conference.
• After 128 years, a Lutheran Church in Allentown, Pennyslvania is closing down and donating its property and building to Big Brothers Big Sisters.
  
• When one of the babies in the church nursery is a child of rape.
• An interview I never expected to exist: A family counselor weighs in on why pastors commit suicide…
• …Related article: Things that validate a pastor’s gifts and ministry.
• Was there really a guy named Adam? Or was that story more of an allegory. Peter Enns lists eleven recurring errors occurring in the discussion of the historical Adam. 
• This one links to a very, very long article but one many of you will find worth the time. Among other things it includes five top ways to use Twitter in ministry.
  
• Denominational doldrums: Eight reasons people are leaving denominational churches in favor of attending non-denominational churches…
• …speaking of which… Now you can be a missionary in the Southern Baptist Convention if you drink and smoke. Okay, not really, but they did relax a few rules, including one that eliminated you if you’d ever spoken in tongues.
• Over at PARSE, the blog I was released from as a writer because presumably it was shutting down, there’s an interview with a nurse from Michigan on what it’s like to keep your bags packed, and then find you’re going to Liberia to fight Ebola. 
• Teen archeology hobbyists in Israel took it upon themselves to dig up at 1,400 year-old wine press.
  
• Two pastors, a hotel room and a couple of lesbians. 4 1/2 min. video.
• This couldn’t happen in most of North America, but in Wales, a group of mourners got confused in a traffic circle (roundabout) and ended up following the wrong hearse for nine miles.
• ‘We don’t need a church website because our church is on Facebook.’ Agree or disagree?
• Rear View Mirror: Was Olympic springer Eric Liddell a legalist?
• Now it can be told: What the creator of Veggie Tales and What’s In The Bible is working on next. It’s truly out of this world.
• Sermon Shoutout: Kyle Idleman just launch a new series at Southeast Christian: Flip The Script.
• Forget Star Wars; in Fountain Valley, Arizona it’s all about theology wars. 
• When John Walton’s brother Jim Walton joined Phil and the gang on this week’s Phil Vischer Podcast, they recommended you visit The3rdChoice.org, an apologetics website.
  
• A Texas teen was without a heartbeat for 20 minutes, during which he says he saw Jesus.
• According to this article at Huffington, there are more important things Christians should be concerned about than the recent religious stats. 
• Tweet of the Week: “Finishing off the last two chapters of my book with pink eye and a broken finger. I look like an albino rabbit with a swollen paw! :)” — Sheila Walsh…
• …and speaking of writers, keeping it all in the family, Ted Dekker’s daughter Rachel is Tyndale House’s newest fiction writer.
  
• Finally, there was the church that did the blessing of the toilet paper.

Tomorrow on the blog: In Case of Rapture, Or Long Weekend, This Church will be Closed — a look at a major megachurch that already takes one weekend off in the winter, now doing the same in late Spring. (Title similarity to the graphic above was pure coincidence.) 

Video of the Week: This reminded me so much of Boney M who did Rivers of Babylon, though this sounds more like Rasputin.