Wednesday Link List

By the look of it, this “internet” thing could be really big someday. Here’s this week’s highlights:

• Christian groups are asking a top rated cable network to call off the series Black Jesus, scheduled to debut a week tomorrow.
• When an evangelism team blitzes nursing homes, residents know they can’t defer the decision for ten years.
• In Canada’s French-language province, a church closes every week.
• You thought the comment sections of Christian blogs were heated, but that’s nothing compared the writing and rewriting that goes on at Wikipedia pages for Jesus, Christianity, The Catholic Church, etc.
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  You can also read today’s links at PARSE, a Christianity Today website; click this image

  Worst case scenario: When dissent at a local church, in this case Mars Hill Seattle, appears in mainstream media.
• The members of Protect Portland Children bought a full-page ad in the local alternative weekly to warn parents about Child Evangelism Fellowship’s conversion tactics.
• Nine suggestions for pastors entering a new church, or first time pastors. (Sample: #1 — “You have only four jobs…”)
• Chad Estes reviews Matthew Paul Turner’s Our Great Big American God. From the review, “America was the land of opportunity and God needed a fresh start from His messy history in Europe.” Now I want to read it, too.
• On Martin Luther: “What can we learn from a man so greatly used of God…yet so prone to the sins that beset us all?” Like all of us, Luther had a dark side.
• As Calvinism becomes a default doctrinal position for many Southern Baptists, sometimes the language gets heated.
• Not sure what to do with their backlot, an Austin, Texas church turned it into a disc golf course (aka Frisbee golf).
• An insider look at a PCUSA church’s decision to leave the denomination. (The headline incorrectly says ‘church split;’ the vote was in fact almost unanimous.)
• Most quoted and Tweeted religion article this week: Cindy Brandt on the trend toward irreverence.
• The Children’s Church option: Should they stay or should they go.
• Christians, culture and taste: “We go to the movies and read books with a pre-approved ideology and plot already in mind. It’s like going to a get-together hoping to meet only ourselves.”
• This article gets four Zs: A Biblical theology of sleep.
• Maybe you didn’t get the memo: Holding to a position that was common a few years back may today be considered bigotry.
• Thinking twice before packing up the hymnbooks.
• Ken Ham’s outspoken statement on life on other planets, and a time-frame for locating our new friends.
• The new BibleGateway.com site reminds me of my old Logos Bible software. Many available resources, but you have to pay to unlock them.
• That Bible project we mentioned here a few weeks ago went way past its $37K goal. Try $1.44M as in million! And you can still order the 4-volume ASV edition…
• …Michael Hyatt sees this as a significant moment in publishing…
• …also, there might be ways you can use the crowd-funding approach for church projects…
• …and also at Church Tech Today, important rules for preachers to remember if you’re using video in other venues.
• Essay of the Week: Zondervan author Nish Weiseth on her generation’s exodus from the suburbs.
• No less than Warner Bros. Pictures is behind the making of a movie documenting the rise of the band Hillsong United.
• A newspaper editor who criticized the Queen James Bible in his private blog is appealing the termination of his employment.
• The members of the Amish sect that were imprisoned in 2012 found themselves immersed in a different world while in prison.
• There seems to be no shortage of articles suggesting why people don’t sing during the worship times anymore. Either the problem is huge, or churches aren’t getting the message.
• Another recurring article theme is the eternal destiny of the unevangelized.
• Just two days to go! CT’s own Skye Jethani launches With God, a daily devotional subscription especially for mobile users.
• A Happy Birthday shoutout to the Assemblies of God denomination which turns 100, and the band Jars of Clay, which turns 20.
• Canadian author and retired missionary Eric Wright has released his tenth book, his third foray into suspense and mystery fiction.
• Quotation of the Week: “Minecraft is essentially online Lego with infinite bricks.” A look at what players derive from the popular game.
• On my own blog this week, getting over Evangelism-phobia; and when worship leaders should stop singing.
• The movie When God Left The Building continues one-night showings this fall from California to Ohio. (If you haven’t yet, watch the trailer and this recently posted excerpt.)
• And the faith-oriented movies keep on coming. The Green Prince is based on Son of Hamas a Tyndale House memoir published in 2010 and releases this fall.
• Finally, creating a welcoming place for visitors.

Remember, every time you share the link list on Twitter or Facebook, an angel gets its wings.

Paul Wilkinson hunts for devotional writing each day at C201, rants at Thinking Out Loud and tweets to a vast army of followers. (They keep leaving the “K” out after the number.)

Wednesday Link List

While this is list number two-hundred-and-something at Thinking Out Loud — and probably about the 400th link list over all, it’s list #52 at PARSE. A year! Time flies when you’re having links. Since Leadership Journal owns this weekly piece, clicking anything below takes you to PARSE where you can then link to the item you wish to read first.

• Some churches make guests feel welcome all too easily, while other people are actually running metrics on the welcoming factor. (Second link opens as a .pdf)
• Baptists may lament a drop in baptisms and new members, but across the road at the Assemblies of God Church, things are hopping. (Pun intended.)
• Essay of the Week: Theology meets parenting in Daddy, Does God Want to Save Me?
• Of the more than two hundred kidnapped school girls in Nigeria, some are members of families involved in Bible translation in the region.
• Authorities in Scotland have dropped charges against Christian apologist and street preacher Tony Miano.
• Contrasts: Christianity versus Christians.
• Shrunken Sermon: We didn’t invent the doctrine of the trinity. Like the early explorers to North America, we discovered something that was there all along.
• Praying for Pop Stars: Lessons from Justin Bieber’s mom. (Be sure to read all 3 pages.)
• …Meanwhile, earlier this month The Biebster was baptized.
• Does the Charismatic/Pentecostal teaching on prophetic words override sola scriptura?
• …And some Charismatic types you really don’t want on your altar/ministry team.
• I link rather frequently to Karl Vaters’ blog because the reality is that many churches are small(er). In a recent piece, he suggests such churches may be that way by design, or they may be failing to move forward. (His words: ‘Strategic or stuck.’)
• Meriam Ibrahim has been released by the government in Sudan; now the ACLJ is petitioning for her and her family’s safe passage to the U.S.
• Analogy Avenue: How churches went from being ocean liners to cruise ships. (There’s a big difference.)
• Second-guessing the Teacher: Why did Jesus make Judas the treasurer when there were better choices?
• It’s possible your church website is already powered by WordPress. Why not go the next step and use WP to take donations.
• Andy Stanley armchair quarterbacks the Southern Baptist Convention convention on the issue of revival.
• Tim Challies joins the many writers who have looked closely into the publishing phenomenon, Jesus Calling.
• 2013 stats are out, and while philanthropy for environmental causes, education, and the arts was up; religious giving was down…
• …But if your missions committee wants to get more bang for its buck; “…as a native African missionary, my team and I can do more effective work in evangelism with $10,000 than a visiting missionary can do with $100,000.”
• …Or perhaps people need to “give ’til it hurts.”
• Most talked about this week: Why I Miss Being a Born-Again Christian. (For more from both sides, Google the title along with the word ‘response.’)
• What can your church learn from World Cup fever?
• Church Profile: Capital Hill Baptist Church is drawing Millennials.
• Not new, but new to me: The Passion Bible Translation.
• Point/Counterpoint: Is the gay issue worth splitting a church over?
• I don’t think I’ll ever sort out all the various Baptist groups; especially when Presbyterians are this complicated.
• On kids sitting still in church; wiggling or wriggling during worship. (Sit still while you read it.)
• Quotation of the Week: Looking for a leader or a babysitter?
• For your faith to be viable, is it necessary for there to have been two actual people named Adam and Eve? Albert Mohler and N.T. Wright would disagree on this one.
• Five paragraphs. Six theological conundrums. And they’re not all gender issues.
• The Newsboys’ declaration of faith, “We Believe” is number one this week at Praise Charts.
• Would a Christian hire a hit-man to kill his wife? It’s not a riddle, but if it were the answer might be “No, he would have to stop being a Christian first.” An update on the lead singer of the band As I Lay Dying.
• Link to more links: If you like your links on a single theme, check out Blogging the Apocalypse.
• Some of those other Christian link writers pad their lists with cute cat videos, but after one year at PARSE, I can honestly say we would never do that here. (Especially if the feline is shilling for a cat food conglomerate.)

Thursday through Tuesday, Paul blogs at Thinking Out Loud, both writes and steals devotional material at Christianity 201, and provides hints of the following week’s link list on Twitter.

 

It’s not every day that we see a Jaguar X16 with a Jesus fish in our part of the world. Mind you it’s a gold fish, nicely framed and matted.

Wednesday Link List

I spent a lot of the week listening to Christian radio stations from around the world on DeliCast.com; so the temptation was to make the entire list this week simply links to all the wonderful stations I found. However, reason prevailed…  Each of the following will lead you back to Out of Ur, a division of Christianity Today, where you may then click through to the stories.

• So as to not keep you in suspense, we’ll kick off with the news that religious liberty lives in East Tennessee for snake handling denominations. Church motto: There’s an asp for that.
• Shortest. Church. Service. Ever. I hope nobody drove any distance to this church.
• This December article at 9Marks also appeared at Gospel Coalition offering some interesting insights into the sharing of pastoral leadership authority in the local church.
• Open Doors USA has released its latest World Watch list of the most dangerous places to be a Christian, including some changes from last year’s list.
• Explaining the confiscation of three Bibles from a commercial bookstore, a spokesman for the Agency for Religious Affairs in Kazakhstan said, “The Kazakh state must defend our citizens from harmful materials.” Twelve icons were also seized.  Asked if they were harmful, he replied, “We have experts to check icons.”
• Compassion has assembled an infographic which illustrates some rather shocking economics related to human sex-trade trafficking.
• One observant writer sees Perry Noble’s New Spring College as simply an inversion of their apprenticeship program: Instead of paying students, students pay them.
• Changes to the Church of England liturgy for infant baptism now lets parents and godparents off the hook for dalliances with the devil.
• James Dobson says he’ll shut down his current ministry organization before he’ll comply with new U.S. health care requirements for employers to cover abortion products.  I have no doubt he’s serious.
• The latest volley in the Mark Driscoll plagiarism discussion suggests that in addition to whatever authors were involved, Driscoll also plagiarized himself.
• Randy Alcorn is scheduled to preach a Sunday morning service, but moments before it starts, the pastor has other plans.
• Provocative suggestion of the week: “John Piper’s doctrine is not Reformed, not even Protestant, but pre-reformation Roman Catholic!” Read more here.
• I deliberately omitted this article from last week about conservative fundamentalist men who engage in what we might call ‘wife discipline’ encounters of the corporal punishment kind. This week, I decided it’s something to be aware of.
• Using an internet example we all can relate to, here’s a refreshing discussion on why the Bible translation process involves more nuances than we might think.
• Which is a good place to mention that College Park Church in Indianpolis, Indiana — weekly attendance: 4,000 — raised $1 million in a single pre-Christmas offering for Wycliffe Bible Translators.
• Meanwhile, if you’re an average American, I am 90% sure you own a Bible, and 85% sure you don’t read it.
• At my own blog this week, more details about DeliCast, the radio portal I mentioned in this week’s intro; and my encouragement to megachurch pastors to follow Greg Laurie’s lead and consider crusade-style outreach.
• So…that story about the Adventist pastor who wanted to live like an atheist for a year? Well here’s a surprise, he lost his job as a seminary professor. Who better to pick up the story than Hemant Mehta aka The Friendly Atheist.  And you won’t believe this twist.
• There are some things about children’s and youth ministry I remember well, and others I’d like to forget ever happened.
• Just in case you need it, Todd Rhoades offers pastors seven things to include in your resignation letter.
• Or, if you’re on the receiving end of a resignation letter, eight tips on how to respond.
• Here we go again: This time seven children were removed from a Texas home over the parents’ right to home-school them. At the time of the article four had been returned.
• I didn’t recognize the titles, but someone took the time to assemble a list of the worst Christian book covers of 2013. (You’ll like #1.) (Here’s last year’s list, too.)
• Parenting Place: One of the challenges of parenting in today’s world is that often kids feel a sense of entitlement.
• Question of the Week: If you regularly attend movies and listen to popular music, is what we term as ‘engaging the culture’ just a sophisticated way of justifying worldliness?
• Still in weather recovery? An economics professor used his snow day off to build a church.
• A devotional thought: Now that ‘selfie’ is in the Oxford Dictionary, what does it say about our culture?
• Someone tries to prank a Christian TV show, but the host turns it around, perhaps unwittingly.

Paul Wilkinson writes from Canada (Motto: Home of the Polar Vortex) and blogs at Thinking Out Loud and edits Christianity 201, a daily devotional.

 

Fantasy Financing: Church Edition

In the small town we live, several years ago I identified 38 “worshiping groups” locally and in the surrounding area, and set out to experience worship at 33 of them, in most cases attending more than a single service. Because of my work, I also am closely attuned to what’s currently going on in our local churches.

I also have an over-active imagination. In one of my fantasies, a tall distinguished looking man walks into my place of business wearing a suit. That in itself would be a rarity in a town that super-casual part of the world where only the funeral director wears a jacket with matching pants and tie.

The well-dressed man explains that he wants to invest a large amount — somewhere between one-and-two-hundred thousand dollars in the ministry of local churches in our region. He then asks me to identify some needs and tell him how to divide the pie. So as the fantasy continues, I get to play God with money that’s not my own; though I also get to apply knowledge as to the needs in our area.

Now the fantasy isn’t an obsession, but I’ve played this mental game several times over the years and each time the dividing takes a slightly amended form. There’s one or two ministries that are consistently at the top of my list, both in terms of need and the impact of their ministry in our community. And to be honest, there’s a few that are consistently near the bottom because either the need isn’t great or nobody’s being impact.

There’s also a few that I can’t guaranty will be around in five years. True, there are some things they’re doing now, but I’m assuming the well-attired gentleman in my fantasy wants to make a ministry investment. It also needs to be said that a huge amount of money that is suddenly dropped into a church’s balance sheet can actually have a devastating effect. So although I don’t write anything down, I know my list changes somewhat over time.

Generally speaking though, I think many of the local churches in my area would be thrilled that they got mentioned in my visit with the stranger in town with the deep pockets.

…The other day, while was doing something completely unrelated, it suddenly occurred to me that there was a major flaw in my fantasy.  The flaw is this: Money isn’t the answer for whatever challenges your church is facing. Yes, a financial shortfall may require adjustments, but at the end of the day, someone passing through town with a large bank draft made out to your church doesn’t really make a whole lot of difference to the day-to-day ministry of the place where you worship.

It would be nice. It’s a fun fantasy. But the churches in your area simply need more people who will take their faith seriously and then two things will happen. You’ve heard the phrase, “Follow the money.” I offer you this one, “Money will follow.” If ministry is taking place, people will respond without promptings and urgings and money won’t be a problem. Secondly, the church will grow, and there will be more people contributing.

…If your church (or parachurch organization) operates on an “If only we had…” basis, then by all means, start your own financing fantasy. But ultimately, I think God uses our congregations most when we aren’t sitting with budgetary surplus, flush with cash. On the other hand, if you own a nice suit and a large checkbook…you know how to contact me.