Wednesday Link List

Stryper guitarist Michael Sweet said, “I can tell you this: if you kind of take the best of a handful of STRYPER albums and you kind of roll it up into a big, old fat burrito, that’s what you’re gonna get with this album.” God Damn Evil releases April 20th. More details at this link.

Here we are once again with Link List #396. Thanks to those of you who sent suggestions, and those of you who produce your own roundups from which we steal only the best… Many of these are double links, so if the topic is of interest, be sure to click both parts.

Mismatched billboard ads? Nope. It’s intentional, promoting a new sermon series at Stevens Creek Church in Augusta, Georgia. Click here for details.

• There’s a new documentary about Rob Bell — produced with his cooperation — and appropriately for some, it’s titled The Heretic. More at TheHereticMovie.com.
• A faulty Christian education? Millennials who grew up in church feel they were “set up failure” and handed “an intellectual narrative of the Christian faith, that can be dismantled inside a semester at a decent school…” Furthermore, Millennials regard the Seeker Sensitive agenda as “a 30-year failed experiment. Essentially, this was a business model implemented by Churches turning them into programmatically driven organizations. In these Churches, the pastor was more administrative and executively driven rather than pastorally caring. Crosses were removed, messages were watered down, stage crews were hired, and rock bands were brought in.” 5½ Reasons Millennials don’t want your church.
• Title IX states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” A professor used that to help end 88 years of gender discrimination on Moody Bible Institutute’s campus with respect to their Pastor Ministry Major. It meant she was fired. She’s now suing the school for wrongful dismissal…
• …Also, parsing the controversies and challenges over inerrancy at Moody with a long term view.
• Rachel Denhollander, the first woman to go public regarding the Olympic gymnasts’ doctor, Larry Nassar, has now set her sights on Sovereign Grace Ministries pastor C. J. Mahaney. 
• After 30 years, the NRSV is the next translation in line for an update.
  
• “In most states, including my own, the birth mother has ten days to revoke the adoption.” With only 96 minutes left, their worst case scenario happened. Read an article written within hours, reaching out to anyone dealing with brokenness caused by placing hope in the wrong things. 
• The Young Influencers Lists: Brad Lomenick catches up with the January seven and a missed November/December double list. (If you’re under a certain age, check to see if they spelled your name correctly.)
  
• Not a Question of Volume: Being solemn and being holy are not synonymous.
• Facebook Follies: “Facebook wanted me to post birthday greetings to my friend’s timeline. I didn’t bother. Facebook knows his birth date; I also know his date of death. Facebook sent out reminder messages to 94 friends and family members that they really didn’t need to see yesterday. For some I am sure it was a bitter reminder of how much they miss a loved one.”
• New Organizations: “New Room has emerged as a place where Christians sharing a common Wesleyan-Arminian theological perspective can find common fellowship and a valuable resourcing platform. The goal of New Room is to be a community where individuals can remain true to their own traditions—Nazarene, Free Methodist, Wesleyan, United Methodist, Salvation Army, Pentecostal, nondenominational, etc. while at the same time joining with passionate believers who share their hope for revival…” Read more about the New Room Movement and their September, 2018 conference…
• …On the other side of the doctrinal floor, with the Southern Baptist Convention moving toward a more New Calvinist position, this would be a rather interesting development.
• Provocative Teaser of the Week: (This wasn’t the article headline, but how it appeared at Real Clear Religion) Creationism Isn’t Science; It’s Bad Theology.
• Provocative Title of the Week: [I can’t even print it here] 
• When unbelievers show up at your church, there are things they need to hear and things they don’t need to hear.
  
• 24% of the world’s population are Muslim. Still, “…[H]istory has never seen so many Muslims bowing the knee to the Lord Jesus! The last 27 years of increased harvest among Muslims has been remarkable!“
• Listicle of the Week: 10 Reasons to keep the Sunday evening service.
• Parenting Place: On School Choice – “Even though we’re two years into the experiment, my husband and I continue to struggle with these questions and concerns. Our kids aren’t trapped in a district with low graduation rates, but on the other hand, sometimes we feel trapped by ideals we aren’t keeping as parents.”
• Standoff: The Kentucky church voted 173-0 to get rid of their pastor, but the pastor said the vote was illegal under the church bylaws. But church members say those bylaws were never adopted by the congregation and are themselves invalid…
• …It gets better. The church’s motto on their website is, May it be in Lexington as it is in Heaven. (I hope not.)
• 🇨🇦 Canada Corner: In the wake of the federal government’s restrictions on summer job funding for students, “Two critical unintended consequences – or unexpected benefits, depending on your perspective – came out of the backlash, [Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform’s Jonathan] Van Maren says. Groups that had little or no contact with each other suddenly recognized the vital need for collective self-defence. And abortion itself, which had been relegated to the deep, dark hidey-hole of political conversation, was given new life by a government committed to suppressing it as an issue.”
  
• Catholic Corner: This priest will not be giving up Alexa for Lent.
• 🎬 Actor Jon Voight will play a Supreme Court judge in a forthcoming film, Roe V. Wade: The Untold Story. 
• Leadership Lessons: Comparison and people-pleasing are “The Hamster Wheels of Ministry.”
  
• ♫ Worship Workshop: For musicians, singers and worship leaders, David Wesley launches No Pro Worship, for those of us who aren’t professionals. (Subscriptions encouraged.)
• ♫ Vintage CCM? No it’s actually The Hollies (Bus Stop, On a Carousel, The Air That I Breathe, etc.) with an apocalyptic warning.
  “Everybody’s gonna pray
  On the very last day
  When they hear that bell
  Ring the world away.”
  Check out Very Last Day from 1966.
• ♫ New Music: I Don’t Want it by LoveCollide the duo of Lauren Deleary and Brooke Deleary. 
• ♫ New Music: The blog Think Christian was gushing about this band last week. Check out Calexico’s End of the World With You from the album The Thread That Keeps Us.
• CBS News presents America’s top megachurches in pictures.
  
• Theological Conundrum of the Week: From the deep thinkers on Reddit, “Do masochists go to heaven when they go to hell?“
• Divinely Inspired Denial? Better described as: Despicable. “In a deplorable display of ignorance in service of religious superstition, televangelist Gloria Copeland, wife of Texas televangelist Kenneth Copeland, explained to her Facebook followers that there is no such thing as flu season, and that they don’t need to get a flu shot because ‘Jesus himself gave us the flu shot.'” She then said, “I will never have the flu.“

“Bring your children to Church. If you don’t hear crying, the church is dying.” Read more at this extended Facebook caption.

While other articles at Thinking Out Loud may be used on your blog, please respect the unique character of the Wednesday Link List; it is the exclusive property of paulwilkinson.wordpress.com