Wednesday Link List

Okay, so this was everywhere online this past week, but if you missed it here’s an explanation of the Biblical phrase Gird Your Loins. (click image to link)

Here are the news and opinion pieces from the past week that stood out. You can also read today’s links at PARSE by clicking here.

• The world of Christian publishing: A guide to who owns who, and who isn’t owned.
• Why didn’t I think of this? VBS for seniors. Are curriculum publishers paying attention?
• The grandson of Robert H. Schuller, Bobby Schuller is now officially the new host of the Hour of Power telecast and now officially lead pastor of Shepherd’s Grove.
• For those of you who have the time to run these weekly rabbit trails, you’re going to need 42 minutes for this one, and about halfway through you may be tempted to bail, but I guarantee you there’s nothing like Kirk Cameron’s address last week at Liberty University as he explains the forthcoming movie Saving Christmas.
• I really hope you can’t relate to this new book’s title, but I suspect some might: When Bad Churches Happen To Good Pastors, coming soon from Beacon Hill Press.
• A dozen elderly Iraqi Christians were told to convert or die; they chose to die and were released instead.
• Churches liable for sexual solicitation? “The suit alleges that the churches put [the youth worker] in a position that allowed him to manipulate and sexually exploit children. It also says that despite…not properly being trained to deal with children, Second Baptist encouraged him to foster bonds with them.”
• Worship Moment: Here’s a new song by Keith and Kristyn Getty, co-written with Graham Kendrick, My Worth Is Not In What I Own from a new online-only album.
• Andy Stanley and North Point Community Church now top the list of the 100 largest churches in the U.S., though admittedly numbers from Lakewood and Lifechurch aren’t showing.
• For college and university students, their freshman year is often a spiritual valley.
• The YouVersion Bible app has over 700 languages and now, one thousand translations.
• Are they fronts for abortion providers or, as this article suggests, are pregnancy help organizations “the best kept secret in the pro-life movement?”
• The co-founder of the UK Christian network, GOD-TV is withdrawing from ministry due to moral failure. Rory Alec’s wife, author Wendy Alec will assume management of the channel where she has overseen programming for 19 years.
• For this one, we take you all the way back to 2012: The Dark Side of Pastor Appreciation Month.
• Speculative Theology Department: What if we keep incarnation and resurrection, but have a Christianity without the cross.
• This next one is about **pauses to sip from water bottle** the annoying things people in ministry say and do from the platform.
• In Nepal, a celebrity singer and actress converts from Hinduism to Christianity and refuses to sing material venerating a Hindu goddess.
• Ministry Refresher Course: Why senior pastors should take a turn teaching the preschool class. (Link to a 2-page .pdf)
• From our agricultural news department, this year in the Jewish calendar, 5775, is a sabbath year which makes growing crops a challenge. Sample: “But people have to eat, so a century ago rabbis found a way to bypass the law so no one goes hungry.”
• This book isn’t new, but it offers the counterpoint to Left Behind rapture doctrine.
• Story coverage from the other side: The Freedom From Religion Foundation contests the “Bible-like” cover of an elementary school yearbook.
• Congratulations to my editor of these weekly bullets, Paul Pastor, on winning Multnomah University’s Distinguished Young Alumnus Award for 2014.
• Essay of the Week: We return to the subject of whether the children should sit through the worship service, and one pastor’s compromise.
• Wait, it’s not the end of the year yet! Beating the rush with a subject-indexed top ten books list for church leaders which contains 150 titles.
• He’s got the #5 position on this week’s Billboard Top Christian Albums chart. Check out Matty Mullins song My Dear, and note the lyrical similarity to the Jesus Calling books.
• U.S. economic health is sometimes measured by mobility, but many Americans are staying put because moving would mean changing churches.
• Video of the Week: From July, a young Autistic man has his own “Heaven is for Real” experience and reflects on its impact.
• The internet loves an infographic, especially if measured by the reposts and re-Tweets of this detailed explanation of what it means to ‘gird up your loins.’
• Apparently those “terms and conditions” boxes we click when downloading can have serious spiritual implications.
• In the name of religious accommodation for Ultra Orthodox Jewish men, passengers on a New York to Tel Aviv flight encountered a number of flight delays.
• Separation of Church and State Trooper: Should a policeman proselytize while he’s got people pulled over for routine traffic stops?
• Tim Tebow can but a Muslim football player can’t. So now the NFL is reviewing the rules regarding touchdown celebrations.
• Diversion 1: Preaching to an older demographic means making sure you are heard correctly.
• Diversion 2: This direct telephone to God is featured this Christmas in a catalog used by a number of Christian bookstores. “Compliments Any Décor.” Operators are standing by.
• A movie we missed: Believe Me opened two weeks ago in select markets and satirizes Christian culture.
• Finally, even if you don’t play the video this is funny. But it gets really strange when you do.

Because this is Blogger Appreciation Month, you can catch Paul Wilkinson at Thinking Out Loud, Christianity 201, or @PaulW1lk1nson on Twitter.

 

Wednesday Link List

Here’s our deal:  I find ’em, you click on ’em.

• Pants on Fire Department: Apparently Perry Noble may have fudged some stats on church attendance in his home state when he was trying to justify some church expansion.  
• This is a must read, especially for women who have a man in their life (father, brother, son, friend) who is going where he shouldn’t go online. Check out Four Reasons Why Men Like Porn.
  
• Two quick posts about actor Andy Griffith who passed away last week: Ron Edmondson on how Andy was prepared to die;  and a Christianity Today post on the secret to understanding life in the Town of Mayberry.
  
• If Solomon* were alive today, instead of the Proverbs 31 text we know, he might have written something like what Dennis Muse posted about what makes a girl beautiful. (*Or Lemuel; see comments!)
  
• An eight-year old girl discovers that the dinosaur pictured in the brochure for the IMAX show at the show at the Smithsonian is actually from (gasp!) The Creation Museum.
  
• Is this religious persecution? An Arizona man’s weekly Bible studies at his home have cost him $12,000 in fines and two months in jail, because he was violating the building code.
  
• Christian bookstores may be disappearing, but according to Rachel Held Evans, their influence isn’t. She thinks their conservatism is choking author creativity.
  
• Lisa Robinson thinks that having a “life verse” isn’t a good idea for four reasons, including that it isn’t a nice thing to do to the verse.
  
• This one was found linked on Rachel’s blog this weekend: If you are feeling in a silly mood or need to entertain the junior high youth group this weekend, here are The Top Ten Zombie Scenes in the Bible. And here’s a transparent look at the subject of repentance.  Good explanation of the phrase in Matthew, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”
  
• Darrell at SFL explains why, in fundamentalist circles, many people have the calling but only a few have the job.
  
• Blog Discovery of the Week Department:  Caleb Jennings Breakey, an author with two books slated for Harvest House Publishers in each of 2013 and 2014.
  
• An internal link here back to 2009: If you’re planning small group ministry for the fall, here’s how National Capital Church (Mark Batterson) allows free-market principles to guide the birth of small groups.
  
• This one will be eight days old when you read it, but it supplies some background into the injury suffered by author and missionary Steve Saint.
  
• Apparently not all scientists are happy with the term “God Particle” for the Higgs-Boson. But you saw that coming, right?
  
• And if the universe is the answer, what is the question? Answers in Genesis weighs in on Higgs-Boson.  (Link is correct, go to the second item.)
  
• Yes, we saw that piece about the “whites only” Christian conference, and no, that could never happen in Canada (at least they wouldn’t be able to advertise it.)
  
• Christian Piatt shares Ten Clichés Every Christian Should Avoid. I guess every blog post happens for a reason.
  
• If you happen to be in my part of the world on Sunday, August 5th, Canadian male vocalist and storyteller Steve Bell will be doing a rare appearance here — the only one on the current tour — with the Steve Bell Trio.
  
• Matt Chandler is offering a free chapter preview of his newest book, Explicit Gospel.
  
• Check out the growth of the YouVersion Bible app — click the image to see the app’s blog, or click here to go straight to YouVersion.
  

Wednesday Link List

By request, a fresh take on the recurring List Lynx pun here

(B)link and you’ll miss it! 

• Hard to imagine anyone opposing a translation of the Bible into another language, but the Jamaican patois version isn’t pleasing everyone.  Text sample: “De angel go to Mary and say to ‘er, me have news we going to make you well ‘appy. God really, really, bless you and him a walk with you all de time.”
• Daniel Jepsen admits it’s not like him to walk out of a church service, but he did just that when the service went too far, or perhaps didn’t go far enough. Teaching the Bible would have been a refreshing addition.
• Fuller Theological Seminary’s Kara Powell thinks that while adults and children are all sharing the same church, they’re all having a different experience of it.  In a 4-page article at CT, she suggests keeping kids in church beyond high school means giving them a faith that sticks.
• He uses his involvement in TV and film production to evangelize well known actors, and he’s been fired by one prominent casting agency for doing so.  Steve Cha talks to Christian Post about evangelizing Hollywood.
• This is the link to part one of the original video that Ben Breedlove posted at YouTube just days before he died on Christmas Day; though you need to watch part two to get the full story.  Gateway Church in Austin, Texas also posted the 42-minute memorial service  video in which lead pastor John Burke refers to Ben’s faith in Jesus Christ.
  
• Cerebral palsy and epilepsy didn’t stop Toronto’s Robert Gagnon from completing a BA at Redeemer and an MTS at Tyndale Seminary, or from launching a new ministry for people with visible disadvantages, Abilities in Christ.
  
• Here’s an interesting standup routine by Phil Long that gets some deep analysis on Tyler Braun’s blog.
  
• Still haven’t made those New Year’s Resolutions?  Ann Voskamp offers five steps to help you begin.
  
• Is heaven and The New Jerusalem the same thing? Think about it.  Here’s a C201 blog post that took on a life of its own in the comments.
  
• Mike Breen looks at the Rainer Research Group’s ten trends for the next decade in church life.
  
• The man at the center of the Jesus movement in the early 1970s, Costa Mesa California’s Calvary Church pastor Chuck Smith is now battling lung cancer though he never smoked.
  
• TV Producer Mark Burnett is joining with Zondervan and the digital team that developed Glo Bible to introduce a new app, Bible 360 which will integrate with devices and social media. Sales will be through iTunes.
  
• Seems a policy statement issued at Rossville Christian Academy in Tennessee is really just a mass memo directed at a single student. (The video is useless, but there’s a full text of the story when you scroll down.)
  
• Time for one last Christmas image; J. R. Briggs got this from David Fitch; it’s titled Advent Distraction: