What Does All This Accomplish?

As a content creator, I try to deliver a decent product 7-days-a-week to my readers. I want there to be value in exchange for the time people spend reading what’s posted. Here are some questions I must ask myself…

1. Is it informative?

My opinions leach out all over this blog, but hopefully I also provide raw information, spot new trends, help readers make connections to other resources, and even educate my readership about things they didn’t know.

2. Is it helpful?

The passing on of information by itself doesn’t really guarantee that reading said articles will make any difference in the life of readers. My goal should be to communicate for life change; to write in the hope that the day’s topics and focus is not only interesting but practical and beneficial.

3. Am I authentic?

People create all types of false personas on social media. I don’t want people to meet me in the real world and find me to be anything less than what my online trail would indicate. That includes the possibility of me deceiving myself into thinking that by virtue of this blog — and its numeric success — that I’m something I am not.

4. Is it positive?

In the last few weeks I’ve been getting messages from one reader who feels that the type of things posted in the Wednesday column each week simply aren’t encouraging. I did an analysis of last week’s and found it to be a rather mix of basic links but also containing some cautionary tales. I am to celebrate the good that God is doing, but we can’t bury our heads in the sand, either.

5. Is it fruitful?

The first four questions were probably sufficient, and I could have left it there, but one of the things I long for on a personal level is to see the fruit of the various endeavors that occupy my time. It’s not a matter of looking for validation as much as simply wanting to experience that organic moment when the seed takes root in the lives of people both individually and collectively.

I think these are questions we need to ask of anything we’re involved in.

When Christians Presume Upon Your Good Nature

The article which appeared here on the weekend is currently being suspended as the story has taken an unexpected turn which is hopefully leading to resolution.  I don’t usually pull back stories — if it happened, it happened — but in the spirit I sensed coming through several emails this morning from two different people,  I don’t wish to leave negative publicity online. The party concerned did not request this; I’m doing this of my own accord.

As Metaphorical as a Simile

Maybe it’s because of the pending release of a certain movie which will go unmentioned which is based on a certain book which was so very controversial in 2007 when it released; but I keep thinking that some of us Christians are very narrow when it comes to embracing different art or literary forms…

…Just because you heard the phrase, “Life is like a box of chocolates…” in the movie Forrest Gump, you shouldn’t extrapolate the individual comparison in a single scene in the film to be a general guiding principle for life. In most respects, life is not at all like a box of chocolates. Nor, as Google might lead you to believe, is like an arrow, a bicycle, a camera, a deck of cards, an elevator, a football, a grapefruit, a hurricane, or… I’ll let you work your way through the rest of alphabet. In my wife’s opinion, life is more like a sushi bar, or the bag containing the Scrabble letters, or herding cats, but I’m willing to bet this month’s rent that those don’t work for you either.

Comparing things can be helpful to our understanding however. In Jesus’ teaching ministry, he took examples from the world as his hearers knew it — mostly agricultural comparisons — and either made direct connections or taught the principles as parables because they were parallel to things his audience could relate to. In my world, I often will use computer jargon and terminology to create an analogy which teaches a Biblical principle.

Our language generally offers us two options: Metaphor and simile. (You’d have to be as dumb as an ox not to know the difference. Just kidding! That’s an example of simile. And sarcasm.) A popular technique in the broad category of metaphor would be allegory, with the most recognizable examples in Christian literature being Pilgrim’s Progress, or the Chronicles of Narnia books; along with a number of contemporary writers in the Christian fantasy fiction genre.

But there is another writing technique I would like to offer here as simply springboard. Skye Jethani does this in The Divine Commodity where he uses the art of Vincent van Gogh to get the discussion rolling, or in Futureville where the springboard is the vision of the future as offered by the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Mark Batterson does this with The Circle Maker, beginning with the legend of Honi.

You could also argue that almost all Christian fiction — while some of it allegorical — is mostly springboard for further discussion; consisting either of internal deliberation, or discourse with friends in your book group, church library or at the Christian bookstore.

This technique does not sit well with all readers. The purists who prefer expository preaching to topical preaching would, with horror, rate the springboard type of writing even further down the spectrum. It’s just all too easy to criticize; to get lost in the metaphor or allegory and miss the point. Some recent popular preachers shun illustrations entirely to the point where, several years in, their advisors corner them to say, “We don’t really know anything about you.”

So here are some reminders:

1. Most metaphors are limited to single aspects of the thing being compared. Any similarity life has to a box of chocolates is overshadowed by other aspects of the box, the wrapper, the plastic inset, etc., and life generally does not come with a complete guide printed on the lid. This is because…
2. …All metaphors eventually break down at some point. There are a few ‘perfect’ metaphors, but more imperfect ones. This can lead to a situation where…
3. …Metaphors and allegories are easily misunderstood. Not everybody grasps the comparison first time around, especially if the chosen metaphor is something somewhat foreign.
4. Borrowing a theme or idea from another world — whether it’s a legend from another religion or a principle of motorcycle repair — does not necessarily imply endorsement.
5. The placement of a metaphor or discussion springboard in mainstream Christian literature may result in it being seized upon by people on the fringes of mainstream Christianity who want to use the metaphor to say things the author never intended.

However — and this is so important — the use of parables and similar teaching forms by Jesus should be an encouragement to us to find similar redemptive analogies in our modern world. If you’re a writer, avoid the pressure to be boringly precise and instead, introduce edge into your writing by finding the connection everyone else has missed heretofore.

Communication is only achieved when the hearer fully gets it, and that will involve drawing parallels between ‘A’ and ‘B’ rather than repeating the words of a definition over and over to someone who is missing the point.

Thinking Out Loud: The 8th Anniversary

So, Paul; it’s been eight years.

Yep!

…and…?

Yes?

What are your thoughts?

Sorry, I thought you were going to ask me questions.

I thought you were going to write out your own questions and then provide the answers.

Shhh!

So did you ever think you’d be doing this eight years later?

Yes and no. I was doing this and Christian Book Shop Talk and a local-interest blog where I lived and a consumer advocacy blog and using a blog platform for our business and doing a local-interest blog in the community and setting up a blog for a specialty daycare center where we live and writing a book on internet addiction which was using a blog format and then later adding Christianity 201.

At that point anyone could have said, ‘You’re going to burn out doing all these things at the same time;’ and they would have been correct, but fortunately I jettisoned a few of those projects. If you only post to your blog once a week, or if you don’t bother to fact-check things you’re referencing or quoting, then I suppose it’s easy to sustain that for the better of a decade. But to post fresh content to two blogs every single day and to do this for free for eight years is probably, for the average person, somewhat inadvisable.

What about the free thing? Why not monetize the blog?

I did ask for donations at one point. Our business has a toll-free number that works across Canada and the U.S., and I thought if people were enjoying what was happening here they could make a donation using their credit card and we set up a day for that, but the phones didn’t exactly ring off the wall.

First of all, I’m not going to be a referrer to Amazon or even CBD because I have too many friends and too many years invested in brick-and-mortar Christian bookstores. I believe in doing everything I can do to help these stay in the communities where they are doing ministry.

Second, I don’t think you can run advertising on WordPress.com; so that just isn’t an option.

To be really honest, there are a number of components of my life, not just my writing that I thought I would be able to monetize at some point and it’s never worked out. For whatever reason, God has kept us hovering around the poverty line for more than 20 years now, and while I don’t remember answering a call to be a missionary, I’m realizing now that I’ve become one by default. Maybe that’s why I relate to Randy Alcorn, who for different reasons, is in the same situation.

As a writer however, I’m thankful I was able for 22-months to create a synergy with a version of the Wednesday Link List created just for Leadership Journal at Christianity Today and the one that appeared on the blog. That income was not huge, but it helped buy some weekly groceries.

Thinking Out Loud is very much faith-focused. Snippets of personal life are few or even personal spiritual life.

I try to write at least one of the Christianity 201 devotions each week. If there isn’t a name attached to it, then I wrote it. And obviously I’m not listed among the many Calvinist bloggers. But beyond that I realize I’m somewhat of an enigma to people who don’t read every day, and even those who do.

My beliefs are each rather hybrid in nature. On church government, I’m congregational but I believe in structure and accountability. On women in ministry, I am more sympathetic to the egalitarian position, but with a recognition of God-ordained differences between men and women. On eschatology, I believe “we see in part and we prophesy in part” and that many of the models currently taught are still somewhat insufficient. On worship, I prefer doctrinal substance over empty emotion, but at the same time think that we can be passionate about God, about Jesus and about theology in general. On supernatural spiritual gifts such as miracles and tongues, I calculate that if 50% of the people are faking it, that means that 50% are having some type of genuine experience.

Some doctrinal issues are above my pay grade. This is one of the few blogs that has risen to prominence that is written by someone who is not a pastor, not a seminary professor, not a local church pastor. I believe we can appreciate the complexity of a subject like substitutionary atonement or divine foreknowledge without having to dissect it, just as one can be a connoisseur of fine foods without necessarily being a great cook. If I can, in my lifetime, fully master just two things — incarnation and atonement — then I will have accomplished much.

For me, it’s about whether or not something resonates with me, in light of other teaching I’ve heard, other reading I’ve done, and the general apprehension I have of the ways of God. Is that subjective? You bet it is.

Why not do the pastoring thing?

It’s now been two years since I last did pulpit supply in a church; though with our bookstore ministry, I get to preach several times a week; it’s just the crowd size is much smaller. Over the past year, my goal was simply to completely memorize a 35-minute sermon, and I think that’s ready to go now. Otherwise, there’s no way I would want to take what local church pastors take on, either in terms of time or the emotional energy that must be spent.

I would like to be ordained however. I know that sounds strange, but I’m looking for an Evangelical organization that offers some accountability beyond paying $50 a year for a clergy card so you can perform weddings. I don’t want to do funerals, weddings or pastor-for-hire events, but I would like to be able to sit at the same table as clergy and have a collegial relationship that I don’t have now despite the blog or the bookstore or time spent in itinerant ministry.

On the other hand, I’ll take an honorary degree from a recognized Evangelical institution. They can present it to me in ceremony, or just let me know if one falls off the back of a truck, Proverbs 25:27 notwithstanding.

Next on the blog?

There’s always a breaking story or issue waiting to happen, and always someone in the widest sphere of Christianity about to have their fifteen minutes of fame. At a deeper level, there are always trends resulting from the continuing tension between Christianity and popular culture. Rather than just jump in on the story that’s the flavor of the week, I think we should carefully choose the issues that use our mental energy.

Anything else to add?

Tonight I’m speaking about the blog to a group of students at Canada Christian College; but I’m doing it pre-recorded, which means if you’d like to learn more, click this link. It runs about 18 minutes and it is audio-only with a few quickly-put-together slides. I’ll leave it up for a limited time.

 

 

Content Not Copyrighted

There is no limit on what can be done for God as long as it doesn’t matter who is getting the earthly credit.

There’s a worship song currently making the rounds that goes, “It’s your breath, in our lungs, so we pour out our praise; pour out our praise…”  To me, the song is a reminder that it’s God who gives us breath, gives us abilities, gives us opportunities and one of the best uses of that is to offer back praise to him.

For the third time in nearly 2,000 posts, this week we got a take-down order at Christianity 201. Yes, it would be nice to have a staff and be able to contact writers in advance and say, “We think your writing would be a great addition to C201 and we’d like to include what you wrote last Tuesday in our gallery of devotional articles.” But I just don’t have that luxury. So we pay the highest compliments to our writers by encouraging our readers to check out their stuff at source, while at the same time archiving it for the many who we know statistically don’t click through. 

The one this week offered some lame excuse about how I was disturbing his Google analytics by publishing his works, and reminded me that he could sue me. Nice attitude, huh?

These days, most of the authors are appearing for the second, third or fourth time, and many write (both on and off the blog) to say how honored they are that we find their material helpful.

I honestly can’t remember the name of the first two authors, but I know one had some recognition in Calvinist circles; so when the lightning struck again this week, I checked out the guy’s Twitter to look for clues and guess what?

That got me thinking about something I wrote here about 16 months ago…

The Bible has a lot to say about the accumulation of wealth and the hoarding of possessions. Probably the classic statement of scripture on the matter is,

^{NASB Matt. 6:19} “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal…

or

^{MSG Matt. 6:19-21} “Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.

The Bible doesn’t say, ‘Don’t have any treasure whatsoever.’ True, when Jesus sent his disciples out he told them to travel light, advice that extends through all of life:

^{NLT Matt. 10:9} “Don’t take any money in your money belts—no gold, silver, or even copper coins. ¹⁰ Don’t carry a traveler’s bag with a change of clothes and sandals or even a walking stick.

But in everyday life, the Bibles teaching presuppose you will have a home or a donkey or bread that you may or may not choose to give your neighbor when he comes knocking late at night.

This week it occurred to me that at the time the Bible was written, one thing that we can possess that they didn’t was intellectual property. There was no Copyright Act; no Letters Patent. Did Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph the Carpenter have a special way of doing a table that would cause him great consternation if Murray the Carpenter down the road started copying the idea? You get the feeling that everything was open source.

I think it’s interesting that in the prior verse of Matthew 10, Jesus makes the often-quoted statement, “Freely you have received, now freely give.”

Personally, there’s nothing on this blog that isn’t up for grabs, provided it’s cited properly and quoted properly and being used non-commercially. Like this article? Help yourself. Yes, in the past I have been paid to write and could thereby consider myself a professional writer; but this is only a blog and it’s vital not to get too caught up in your own sense of self-importance; and I say that not out the spirit of someone who is loaded with wealth, but as a person who has had no specific fixed income for 19 years.

I also thought it was interesting that the one person who was so upset about the use of his material on other than his own website was complaining about a particular article that was about 50% scripture quotations. More than 50%, I believe. Oh, the irony. I can just hear Jesus saying, ‘Uh, could you just link to my words in the Bible rather than print them out on your own website?’

That said, I am consciously aware that a double standard exists in the Christian blogosphere. We both permit and excuse the copying of text, but there is far less grace for poachers of cartoons and photographs. (I guess a picture really is worth a thousand words.) If you take what belongs to them, it’s like trying to wrestle a t-bone from a pit-bull.

In the early days of this blog, the weekly link list included cartoons from Baptist Press. Not any more. Baptists can be very litigious, which is too bad, because the cartoons were worthy of an audience beyond a single denomination. Everybody loses, but that’s the Baptist way, I guess.

Words are cheaper however. I respect intellectual property rights in general, but hey, guys, it’s only a blog.

I really think when the writer is a little older, they will look back and see the foolishness of trying to hang on to what really isn’t yours to begin with.

Think About It: Some things simply didn’t exist when the Bible was written, such as smoking cigarettes or driving over the speed limit. It’s the same with intellectual property. We have to appeal to the timeless, grand themes of scripture to make behavioral determinations.

The corollary to this is that if I do choose to copyright my blog writing here, I am basically saying this is mine; I wrote this, I created it, it was my talents and my gifts that went into creating it.

I’m glad the Biblical writers didn’t feel that way. If you believe in plenary inspiration — that God birthed ideas within them but they stylized it and added their individual touch to the writing — then even if you hold that “all Scripture is inspired” (which I do) you could still make a case that they could copyright the particular words used.

But some would argue that even if you say, “This came entirely from God and I shouldn’t really take any credit for it;” if you want your writing to reach the greatest number of people, then you’ve got to put somebody’s name underneath the title.

That’s essentially the case with Jesus Calling. I don’t want to get into the larger debate on that book, because it’s been done elsewhere (with many comments) but if, like the classic God Calling, the “authors” feel that this book is the equivalent to Dictation Theory in Biblical inspiration, realistically, nobody’s name should appear on the cover. I wonder if “by Jesus” or “by God” would sell more or fewer copies than “by Sarah Young.”

You can however engage the commercial marketplace and at the same time take no money (or very little) for your wares. Keith Green is a name that some of the younger generation don’t know, but Keith basically said that if anyone couldn’t afford his records or cassettes, he would send them copies free of charge. It was radical at the time — this was before free downloads — and Keith took ribbing that perhaps he was also going to ship stereo systems to people who had nothing on which to play the music.

Keith Green would have loved blogging — he’d have about ten of them — and would be fighting hard for the open source blogosphere mentioned above, and also  when the first writer protested. (The post then was triggered by an irate blogger at C201 as well, so we’re running one complaint every 700+ articles, which isn’t bad.) In fact, Keith would argue for open source thinking in a variety of Christian media and art.

Bottom line: We have to be careful about holding too tightly to the things of this world including possessions that are tangible and those which are intangible such as intellectual property. 

Moving forward: We’ll try to stick to repeat authors and original devotional material. If you’ve ever wondered if you could write devotional material — and it’s both a rare and challenging calling — check out the submissions guidelines at C201.  

“It’s your breath, in our lungs, so we pour out our praise…”

Wednesday Link List

St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery – Kiev, Ukraine. More interesting church architecture at this link.

Some day I’m only going to run links from blogs that don’t have pop-ups asking for subscriptions. There will only be about five links that week.

• We don’t make up the stories here… “A vicar in the Church of England has proposed a motion that would allow for a liturgical celebration of an individual’s identity following gender transition, much like a baptism, and would include a renaming ceremony.”
• Piper Pontificates: If you “sowed some wild oats” in your day, there is the question of how much of that is relevant to telling your children.
• A Rabbi looks at the use of the term “Old Testament” in relation to various alternatives. 
• Brother Lawrence would be proud: A recipe for praying for racial reconciliation while making soup. At the very least, skim this one; it’s a great concept. 
• Do you find it seems that people in your church seem to dress down to come to weekend services? This author gives four balanced guidelines on what we should wear to church.
  
• “[B]ecause the [Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum] is operated by the Christian group Foundation Advancing Creation Truth (FACT)  and puts forth a biblical worldview about creation, the church-state separation group Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) sought to put an end to the trip. It sent a letter to school officials earlier this month asserting that it would be illegal for a public school to send children to the museum.” The Montana school’s trip was canceled…
• …Meanwhile the Freedom From Religion Foundation is fighting a Colorado school over a variety of what it calls illegal religious activities.
• Leadership Lessons 1:  Don’t blame the big church down the street, or anyone else, for ministry fails. Here are twelve reasons.
• Leadership Lessons 2: “Nine stupid things I did as a pastor.”
• From a veteran Charismatic insider, five ways he feels they quenched the movement.
• A pastors wife reflects on events surrounding the day her husband, a student pastor, was arrested on sex crimes. 
• His quotations are in much of what you read. Here’s a primer on why you should read G.K. Chesterton for yourself.
  
• At a ministry fork in the road: Should I stay or should I go?
  
• Essay of the Week: Zach Hunt on the Duggar Disaster…
• …Related: “It’s the Law of Reality TV. Whether what goes wrong is a fact that emerges from a cast member’s personal life or a fiction that emerges from the way producers edit the show, something always goes wrong. Reality TV thrives by balancing on the knife’s edge of fact and fiction, between creating drama to attract viewers and deflecting drama when it will repulse them.” 
• Equal Time Department: We know what Calvin believed because it’s ubiquitous online. Here’s what Arminius taught.
  
• Musing of the Month for May: Challenging the idea of issuing a ministry license to someone before they can serve.
• More on the Gospel for Asia story: “Dividing currency amongst travelers requires the filing of a CMIR for the entire amount as intentionally aggregating currency exceeding $10,000 to evade reporting is against the law.”
• Your Mileage May Vary: A mom of three males offers five ways to raise strong Christian boys. Sample: “I let my boys fight with weapons. Not real ones, mind you.”
• Remember last week’s college pool link? Sheila Walsh posted this on Monday.
• The teenaged daughter of a Canadian blogger wrote a short essay and created a video on the subject of dignity with respect to the homeless.
• Don’t know where he found this, but Jeremy Myers offers seven examples of Christianese.
• Some mailmen have complained to Israel Post that they don’t want to be forced to deliver material from a Baptist group seeking Jewish converts. One of the arguments was that “children, who arrive home from school before their parents and collect the mail, are the first to be exposed to the material.”
• A year later, the With God Daily Devotional subscription program is still going strong.
• The Very Worst Prayer Card: Some classic JTVWM from 2009.
• Voter’s Guide: “In my mind, whenever someone touts their Christian beliefs in a political campaign, it ought to immediately disqualify that person as a trustworthy candidate in the eyes of every serious Christ follower.”
• Finally, a Twitter account dedicated to the October 15, 2015 rapture date.

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.

Wednesday Link List

The interior of an abandoned church is seen on September 5, 2013 in Detroit, Michigan. From the Huffington Post link below, click through to see 14 more abandoned churches.

What you see each week are the links that ‘survived.’ You don’t get to see the rabbit trails which led nowhere, which can tie up the better half of an hour before I realize they aren’t yielding anything worth publishing.

• The place for Christian humor and satire: First he wrote this post about 10 Shocking Bible Verses. But apparently, some people took it seriously.
• At Huffington, a story about different types of gatherings meeting in unusual locations. “The church steeple in the American town square hasn’t gone, but it’s got some company.”
• Big sins, little sins: A former Evangelical turned Catholic, with part one of a look at the RC distinction between mortal sins and venial sins.
• Quotation of the Week: “The big secret in the LGBT community is that there are a significant number of gays and lesbians who oppose same-sex marriage“.
• Biomedical ethics: In China, research on editing DNA. “Advances in technology have given us an elegant new way of carrying out genome editing, but the strong arguments against engaging in this activity remain,” [Francis] Collins said. “These include the serious and unquantifiable safety issues, ethical issues presented by altering the germline in a way that affects the next generation without their consent and a current lack of compelling medical applications.”
• Church Real Estate: In the face of declining attendance and giving, it turns out that Baptists are just as attached to their church buildings as Anglicans and Catholics.
• Lost news story: Not all the reports of African American young men dying while in police custody are deemed important enough for the network news. This one, from over a month ago, is about a young man who was pulled over for a minor traffic violation while dealing with a personal medical emergency. He was denied access to an inhaler and died. He was the son of a pastor.
• Put away the flutter-boards: You can dispense with the mental image of the tablets having McDonald’s-type arches, because the original Ten Commandments were probably rectangular.
• Church membership trap: You’ve done something wrong and find yourself in an authoritarian congregation under church discipline which you think is unjust. Well, it’s a church; you can always just walk away, right? Well not if you signed a “clause, contract, covenant or membership agreement that limits your right to leave a church while you are under discipline;” or “mandates mediation instead of seeking legal protection by the courts.”
• Christian clichés: Okay, it worked out well, and maybe it was “a God thing,” but perhaps it’s also a God thing when things go wrong.
• Demographics: Even ABC World News Tonight mentioned the latest Pew Research survey about the downturn in Christian identification in the U.S. 
• Human Resources: Maybe there are several population segments that Wal-Mart simply shouldn’t assign to manning the checkouts.
  
• Studying Satan: A lot of what we think we know about Lucifer is from passages in Ezekiel and Isaiah, but this author contends there are other ways to read those sections.
  
• You read a news story, but you probably don’t critique it. The website Get Religion looks behind the written words and notes what’s missing, as in this story about sports chapels in the NBA.
• Leadership results can take years: “Yet if leaders give in to supporters’ or critics’ short-term thinking, we end up focusing our evaluation on the day-to-day work. We end up spending more time counting how many events we’ve held or meals we’ve served. We end up being micromanaged, with supporters and critics telling us how to do the work, without a clear picture whether anything we’ve done is transformative.”
• Update from Saeed: A family member who visited the imprisoned American pastor in Iran forwarded a letter.  “The American Center for Law and Justice, which represents Abedini’s wife, Naghmeh, and the couple’s two children…has been campaigning for the release of Abedini and three other American citizens imprisoned in Iran, but has criticized President Barack Obama’s administration for abandoning the Americans in the nuclear deal agreement with Iran.” President Obama has previously promised to do all that he can to see Abedini released.
• Essay of the Week: A reprint of a 1999 article that ran several months after Columbine.
• Our once-a-decade link to a symphony orchestra video: The Czech Television Studio Orchestra performs Tim Hughes’ “Here I Am To Worship” conducted by Keith Getty in Prague.
• Muslim egalitarianism: A proposed ‘women-only’ mosque in England. “The plan seeks to provide women with a platform where they can play a larger role in the religious life of their community, a role that would include women leading prayers on Fridays and the introduction of female imams.”
• Rachel’s dirty laundry: Peter Enns excerpts and praises the new book by Rachel Held Evans…
• …While another look at RHE’s book by Tony Jones raises questions for the Mainline church to which Rachel was attracted.
• Name change: A fixture in Canada since 1922, Prairie Bible Institute now becomes simply Prairie College. But far from taking the Bible out, the institution is actually increasing core Bible curriculum in its various programs.
• It’s not cheating if you get divine help: Ben Carson claims he aced a college chemistry exam because God gave him the answers in a dream.
• Another faith-interest movie releasing this month, Brother’s Keeper is about wrongful imprisonment…
• …While on the small screen, ABC-TV is making a movie about King Saul. 
• We didn’t have time to come up with a closing image so we figured we’d just run a picture of homeschool idol Jordan Taylor from Blimeycow but then, as it turned out, there was something newsy here, as Jordan has a new YouTube channel, which actually doesn’t have much on it right now.
  

Wednesday Link List

That time of the week…

• A firm policy of complementarianism can easily lead to “hyper-headship” which is a hop, skip and a jump away from the potential for domestic abuse. Now, some changes in policy at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnesota, where John Piper pastored.
• Who Would Dare to Love ISIS? Just. Watch. This. A Letter from the People of the Cross  (4-min video)
• Essay of the Week: Sean Palmer’s When Job’s Friends Come to Balitmore. 
• Noteworthy this Week (1): Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove defends the Red Letter Christians movement, in response to a critique of the red-letter premise by Christianity Today. 
• Noteworthy this Week (2): Blogger Nate Fleming offers 9 lessons learned after 40 days of nothing but Christian media.
• Church Planting: The pews were replaced by rocking chairs and they serve communion in mason jars. “Some come for the food, others for the fellowship. Some love the music and many are drawn to the casual, participatory worship style.” 
• After the Big Fight: Read the faith angle in the Manny Pacquiao story. (Our annual sports link!)
  
• Relevant Magazine: Finding the middle ground on Bible contradictions.
• Worship leading: Resisting sentimental song choices, and five hymns the author would like to see dropped.
• Rachel Held Evans in the Washington Post: Millennials don’t want church to be cool. Best line (or saddest) “At the end of the service, someone will win an iPad.” 
• Milestone: Gideons International announce the distribution of their two billionth Bible.
  
• Five suggestions for sermon preparers who are looking for an instant fix and become commentary junkies. 
• Church Growth: The difference between growing churches and declining churches may be a matter of attitude. 
• Tabloid Journalism: The (long) headline reads, “Single woman wins payout from church that shamed and fired her for getting pregnant – after it’s revealed one pastor had a child out of wedlock and another had an AFFAIR and ‘hired prostitutes'” Once you’ve got that, the article isn’t really needed.
  
• In the wake of Bruce Jenner’s interview: 9 Things to consider if you’re pressed for a response.
  
• If you believe that the age of miracles has passed, you might want to skip this story.
• Quotation of the Week: “Christianity started in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise.” …and then a student raised her hand to ask a question.
• Okay, they won’t actually read this, but from Barnabas Piper, here are seven pointers for the sons and daughters of the pastoral staff.
• Steve Brown’s weird 60-second church promo:  “Leave before you get hurt. We’re not wonderful people. We’ll stab you in the back.” Well, at least he’s honest.
• Movie Musings: “Every Bible film ever made, from Veggie Tales and The Greatest Story Ever Told to The Passion to Noah and A.D. The Bible Continues, takes varying degrees of license with the text. Often, they turn to other texts and traditions to spark the imagination. The thing is, the Bible is a terse book. Whole familiar stories fill scant chapters. Lots—maybe on purpose—is left to the imagination.”
• As the service begins, the seats are half-empty. Ten minutes later the places is packed. So what do you do about latecomers?
• NYC Museum of Biblical Art to close:  In the world of fine art, Bible themes don’t attract wealthy donors.
• Canadian Corner: A review of Shifting Stats Shaking the Church by Patricia Paddey and Karen Stiller.
  
• God is love, but not all love is God.  
• Listicle of the Week: 5 Next Generational Worship Bands… I’d never heard of the first two, but if you clicked the video above, you’ve heard a great remake of an old hymn by Pacific Gold.
  
• Bonus Essay: This article is about … well, several things. Check it out.
• Author Emily Wierenga: 8 lies Christians believe about what constitutes success. 
• Work in Progress: Here’s a preview of an IVP title still in the early stages.
  
• And now for something completely different: Isaac Watts on Psalm 23. 
• A blogger I’ve been reading for a long time reviews a book by a blogger I’ve been reading for a long time.
  
• Shoe on the Other Foot Department: This time it’s an atheist group whose bus ad got rejected.

It was the best of album covers, it was the worst of album covers. What do you think of the cover for Empires (title not showing), the latest by Hillsong United??

Wednesday Link List

Wednesday List Lynx, the understudy

Okay, maybe not as many as last week, but…

• “[I]n coming decades, religiously unaffiliated people are expected to make up a declining share of the world’s population, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.”
• No SDA at SBC: A group of young pastors, calling itself Baptist 21, is protesting the original booking of Ben Carson, who identifies as Adventist, at an upcoming Southern Baptist Convention conference for pastors.
• Dr. Russell D. Moore on transgender transition: “My 3 year-old identifies as Batman. We don’t let him fight crime at night, or drive a car.” Moore was referencing the latest case involving a 4-year old.
• The State of Kentucky likes the tourism potential of the replica Noah’s Ark, but Answers in Genesis is doing it for the evangelism potential. There lies the conflict.
• In Wisconsin, the top religious story this week has to do with an increase in cremations, and churches’ rights under Religious Land Use to house the remains on their property.
• The “undeniable appeal of Osteenism. It feels good to think that we are not as far gone as we thought, that there are things we can do to make ourselves better, maybe even things sanctioned by God for just that purpose.”
• An Anglican has five questions for Rachel Held Evans. (Question one applies to far more people than Rachel; maybe even you.)
• There’s a whole genre of blogging that never gets touched here, but if you’re a mom, you already know it.  So we’re including a post today that is representative of the heart of what’s called Mommy Blogging.
• Apologetics Alley: Three reasons why people might reject a truth claim.
• Pastor Place: Five reasons why church staff leave by Rick Warren.
• Lots of tension this week as Franklin Graham weighs in as a comic book character comes out as gay…
• …And I’m sorry, but maybe Christians should just get out of the cake decorating business. Here we go again…
• …And the website that first published “Bake Them Two” is asked to clarify their position on homosexuality. Does this article accomplish that? …
• …But this t-shirt printer actually won his case.
• Five ways church members use their tithing as leverage to hold the church hostage.
• How to compliment your pastor so it doesn’t lead to spiritual laziness or pride.
• Faith-focused movie news: 2nd Century monk Polycarp (after whom a town in Quebec is named) is the focus of the movie Polycarp; while “faith, family, friendship and the ties that bind” is the subject of Little Boy.
• American street preacher Tony Miano went off on a tirade against the “pagan temples” of Nepal, but then, 41 minutes into his podcast, got as soft as a kitten. Find out what new subject brought about the change of tone. 
• Mark Hall of Casting Crowns didn’t tell his children, age 7 to 17, about his recent diagnosis.
  
• Jon Acuff is reinventing himself once again.
• It won’t be as large a production as The Book of Mormon, but with the addition of new musical this summer, Nephi and the Sword of Laban, visitors to Salt Lake City can choose between two stage show based on the LDS text.
• Could your child answer these five catechismic questions? (I just made that word up…what do you think?)
• By the numbers: The top seven churches in the U.S. by attendance.
• Finally… You’re reading this right: Infant baptized in Baptist church.

Excerpt of the week from the website Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace:

…Imagine that you and I are sitting in my family room. The television is turned off; it’s 5:20pm. I lean over and ask, “What channel is the weather report on?”

“I don’t really know,” you respond.

“Well, give me a channel number’” I insist.

“OK, channel 7,” you reply, shrugging your shoulders.

I turn on the television and switch over to channel 7. Lo and behold, the weather report is being broadcast at that very moment on the channel 7 nightly news. “Good call,” I proclaim as you grin with satisfaction. You made a proclamation about where the weather forecast was being aired  and your claim about the truth was accurate. You were right. But you were only accidentally correct. You made that proclamation without any evidence to support your claim; you simply took a stab at it and happened to be correct. This doesn’t in any way diminish the “rightness” of your proclamation, but you came to it “by accident.”

There are lots of us who are Christians in a very similar way. We have trusted in Jesus for our salvation; acknowledging He paid the price for our sin on the cross. We recognize He is God. We accept the essential orthodox teachings of classic Christianity. But if you asked us why we believe these things to be true, many of us would have little to offer. We just happened to guess the right “channel”. We’re accidental Christians. We happen to hold to the truth of Christianity in the same way you guessed the right channel for the weather report…

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Thanks for taking the time to read this.