Wednesday Link List

Click the image for the story behind today’s lead picture. Welcome to today’s WLL, which a Tuesday night internet outage and the season finale of Trial and Error couldn’t stop.

• Observation of the Week: Is your pastor burned out after a busy Easter season. Have you thought of inviting them over for dinner? Rethink that. “Even when we do try to do something nice – perhaps, we invite them over for dinner – we don’t realize that we are still taking his time away from quality (and very necessary) family time. And, we usually just end up talking about church stuff anyway, so he’s really not getting away from work.”
• Speculative Theology: Did a post-crucifixion Jesus go looking for a post-suicide Judas?
• Provocative Title of the Week: “Sunday Schooling our Kids out of Church.” Samples: “…kids and parents were separated from each other, having different Sunday experiences…” “…we shifted kids out of the main worship experience, en-culturated them in their own program, and robbed them of any touch points with the rest of the body of Christ.  Another way of saying it: by segregating our kids out of worship, we never assimilated them into the life of the congregation.” …
• … A friendly response with an equally provocative title, Killing the Church with Sunday School.
• Couples living together. That’s an issue with younger generations, right? Actually, it’s trending most with the 50+ crowd.
• Memoir of the Week: This Christian high school’s baseball team did not have enough gloves; the Spanish teacher delivered take out after hours; and the school itself didn’t actually have a name.
• Knee-jerk reaction? Baptist Press reports the Bott Radio Network has canceled Hank Hanegraaff’s Bible Answer Man program following his outing himself as a member of a Greek Orthodox church. Most of the network’s repeaters are in Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska. The article also makes it clear that Hanegraaff has been attending this church for two years, and is adamant that his views haven’t changed.
• British writer Simon Loveday passed away in 2016 and didn’t get to see the release of his book The Bible For Grown-Ups: A New Look at the Good Book releasing this month from Icon Books. I don’t know anything about the man’s faith and I doubt you’ll find the book for sale at LifeWay or CBD, but it was the product of a decade’s work. Here’s the publisher page, and here’s one balanced review.  
• Parenting Place: Andy Crouch’s The Tech Wise Family is about “putting technology in its proper place.” This could be the most important book released this month.
  
• Agree or disagree? Do the peeps in your church sit in the same place each week. This author says, “The space we regularly inhabit on Sunday is a sign of our desire to be both bodily and spiritually committed to the local church.” So the ones who roam around aren’t really committed?
• Church and Politics: British newspaper The Independent reports on Americans leaving church following the U.S. Election, describing it as, “an enormous amount of churn in the religious economy.”
• Another Christian college, another LGBT issue. This time the entire faculty senate at Gordon College resigned in support of a staff members who felt that speaking out against college policy on the issue resulted in her being denied a promotion.
• “What if God is virtually everywhere, not just hovering over things, and closer than we ever imagined?” Text and 3-min audio from John Fischer.
• To homeschool or not to homeschool? Going against the Evangelical trend, this mom put her son back in a public middle school for Grade 8.
• At The Phil Vischer Podcast, guest Paul Pastor (my former Wednesday Link List editor) talks about his new book and the gang discuss the most recent appearance of Veggie Tales characters on Saturday Night Live.
• Leadership Lessons: A must read for pastors from David Murray, 20 cautionary warnings about overwork and burnout…
• …At the same blog, a reader brings a confession: “I’m a Master of Divinity and I don’t know my Bible.”
• What is 5Q? “5Q is a typology rooted in the fivefold or APEST (Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, Teacher) described in Ephesians 4:1-6.” Download a free introduction at this link.
• People see different things. Looking at the new six-volume ESV Readers Edition, I see Bibliolatry; the making an idol of the book. Check out the edition that nobody actually needs.
• Your church receptionist’s greatest ministry impact this month might be a simple statement to the person sent to repair the copier or the UPS driver. Your tech director’s largest ministry accomplishment might be to with one of the vendors who sells the church sound and lighting equipment.
  
• Nothing to see here: Do unborn babies and young children who die go to heaven? Mark Driscoll introduces this topic on his website but doesn’t come through with an answer.
• Print Media Department: Remembering and relaunching Focus On The Family’s Brio magazine for girls.
• Bookmark This One: The classic IVP book, Hard Sayings of the Bible is now online with a Hard Saying of the Day.
• Unless a miracle occurs, St. Joseph’s Chapel across the street from the World Trade Center in NYC will close in June. Their rent is set to rise to as much as $230,000 a year.
• Missed this ♫ in our Easter collection. Check out Grace Has Now Appeared. (But you can learn it now.)
• Our regular ♫-of-the-Week is from the new Mercy Me album Lifer. The song “Even If” was posted just two weeks ago and is over 4 million views.
• The latest Saeed update.
• This is the survey they’re handing middle school kids in California. This is Carl Trueman saying it goes too far.
• Things Pastors Say: The absurdity of saying, “We just go by what the Bible says;” or “We just preach the Bible.” What they really mean is, “You are no longer questioning my views or interpretations, you are really questioning God himself and what God has written.” Nice default position if you can get it. 
• LifeWay bookstore management is pondering some of the closing Family Christian locations.
  
• Next Tuesday (25th) Christian comedian Chonda Pierce is featured in a one-night-only 90-minute documentary Enough in 850 theaters in the U.S.

Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta didn’t care for these kids acting out the crucifixion, calling it “Jesus Torture Cosplay.” Click the image to read his comments.

Silly Songs With Larry? This is the lower left quadrant of a larger March Madness parody called March Gladness, but then the blog writer simply stopped posting. (Click the image to see it all.) Turns out Matthew Pierce had one of these going as well and that one went the distance.