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

To link or not to link, that is the question…

• This is a real masterpiece, and if I could, I would steal the whole thing and post it here.  Perry Noble has written a list of ten things he desires for each and every person who calls NewSpring Church home.  Follow the link to the first one, watch any related video, and then click the arrows for each of the other nine.  Sample: ” #6 – I want every owner of NewSpring Church to know how to lead someone to Christ and feel the calling/responsibility to do so.”
  
• TBN refused to air an episode of Jack Van Impe‘s weekly rant because it slammed Robert Schuller and Rick Warren, so Van Impe has decided to take his ball and his bat and go home, and has pulled his programs from the TBN schedule. “Although I understand, and actually agree with, your position that you ‘will not allow anyone to tell me what I can and cannot preach,’ I trust you understand that TBN takes the same position with its broadcast air time as well,” TBN President Paul Crouch wrote in a letter to Van Impe. More on this here tomorrow from a different perspective…
  
• Here’s a great article for this time of year published a month ago at Leadership Journal, for people involved in ministry to young people who are leaving the local (church) area to go on to college.  Love what this Texas pastor says, “Our job doesn’t end at graduation, we call that ‘Day One.’  Each graduate leaving for college receives a $10 Starbucks gift card with the following instructions: go find a spiritual mentor on campus to take out for coffee.”
• “Something good is going to happen to you.”  Remember that phrase?  I found this tucked away in a remote corner of the net, and even though it’s a full year old, someone here might like to have a look.  Randy R. Potts is now in his mid-thirties, he’s the grandson of Oral and Evelyn Roberts and he’s gay and estranged from the church.  If you’ve got 8-10 minutes take a look at life from his perspective.
• The whole Xtra Normal text-to-animation method of making a point is awesome.  My son made one for a school presentation that he did, and here’s one I found on How to Be Really Terrible at Interpreting the Bible, aka “How To Show”  part two.
• Two Perry Noble posts in one link list?  This is a must for singles; some of you may want to cut/paste and send this out as a FWD.  Check out Ten Reasons I Should Not Be Dating Him/Her.
  
• On the one hand, I can’t believe Pete Wilson posted this video of a mother/daughter discussion on heaven and hell and religion in general; on the other hand, it’s probably more true to life than we realize.
  
• On the weekend’s U.S. Open golf tournament, NBC-TV ran a video of a somewhat edited U.S. Pledge of Allegiance with the phrase “under God” edited out.  Twice.  What were thinking?  Apparently they are ready to admit they weren’t. Meanwhile the Supreme Court has decided not to hear another appeal to delete the clause from the pledge.
  
• Canadian Anglicans in four churches that split from the apostate Anglican Church of Canada have decided to give up the fight to keep their buildings.  They will revert to the denomination which in fact is one of the largest holders of real estate in the country.  Legally legit I suppose, but morally wrong.
  
• And speaking of Canadians, here’s a cold and snowy edition of one of the classic “religious” Peanuts comic strip — featuring Linus, of course — which actually isn’t the first time we’ve included Peanuts here in a Wednesday Link List.

So Which Church Would You Visit?

On Tuesday I created this hypothetical story and then posed a question…

1. You are just married, no kids, and have moved to a rather small-ish town with very limited church choices within the type of church you’re familiar with; in fact, there is only real possibility according to the information you were given before you moved.
   
2. You make contact with someone to get the address and time only to discover that this particular church has had some kind of split with half the congregation staying and half going to a new location.
3. The person you’re talking with is very helpful and informative, but doesn’t attend either and really can’t offer you a thing as to why the church split and what the particular issues were.
4. You have to choose between the two; picking something else or staying home isn’t an option in this particular scenario.

So which one do you choose and why?

There is actually a good reason to choose one over the other.  But it might be a different choice for different people.

Let me begin by saying that I think there are strong compelling arguments for both choices.  Especially when you consider that in information point #1, it says quite clearly, “you have just moved.”  Starting at the beginning, at the church which was recommended to you, makes a lot of sense.  It would also give you context to know the situation the breakaway group is coming from.

Church of Star Trek south of Lynchburg, Viriginia; You never really know what a new church is all about, do you?

You’d also want to consider the possibility that the breakaway group is simply a bunch of malcontents.  The complainers.  The trouble-makers.  The chronically dissatisfied.  I’ll grant you that.

You would also want to consider the possibility that the splinter group is the beginning of a cult fringe; the possibility that they broke away over some obscure point of doctrine or some misinterpretation of a scripture passage.  Here are some comments from Tuesday:

• My gut reaction is to go with the church that stayed and didn’t move to a new location. My reasoning is that I would be very suspicious of why the other group left, was there no effort made for reconciliation if there were obvious differences between the two camps? However, it really is hard to answer not knowing all the details, maybe they left due to theological differences, if so, can they really be faulted?
• Being Anglican, the church that moved onward would probably have been the group that was more orthodox. Liberals [or revisionists – for revising what Scripture says to allow non-biblical moral standards of behaviours] would stay. Only those keen for Jesus would move on.
  
• i would be inclined to favor the group that “stayed the course.” if there are issues within a fellowship, leaving (especially en masse) is a last resort. if they had stayed and prayed, the lord would have made the necessary changes (in the situation or in their hearts).
• …The group that stayed could have become liberal in its thinking and social in its outlook – or the same could be said of the group that left, departing from the true basics… (One of a couple of comments that tried to break the rules and suggest going to both; which you probably would eventually, but this was about choosing your first visit in your new hometown.)
  

The deck seems a bit stacked, doesn’t it?

Having said all that…

…I’d choose the new group.

The reason is simply the argument from church history that so many new movements and so many fresh works of God began in places where a group reached a crossroads and decided it was time for change.  I would want to see if the break-off group fits that paradigm and if indeed a fresh wind of the Holy Spirit is recognizable in their Sunday worship. 

I’ve also found in my own life that sometimes it is interesting to be part of something at its genesis.  Plus… I would always be able to visit the original group afterward without having actually arrived and “left” in that particular sequence.

Furthermore, if the new splinter group is off the rails doctrinally, it would be good to find that out right away; but if they are doing a good thing, it would be good to support them at a time when they need warm bodies.  

So… does that work for you, or are those arguments insufficient?

Remember, people blog because they write well and because they are provocative!  You’re allowed to disagree!

An Apology

While hunting, gathering and collecting all the ingredients of this blog’s midweek “best of the Christian blogs” list, I came across something too good for the list.  I don’t like stealing other posts, I’d prefer to just link to things and watch the stats show that you’re clicking.  But the stats don’t always bear out that taking place.  This is from Joe Boyd at the blog Rebel Pilgrim…

I ask your forgiveness for the ongoing corruption of the church at large since the early days of the church, for I believe that it is a sin to use the church for personal or political gain.

I ask your forgiveness for every boring church event, church service, or sermon since the creation of the world, for I believe that it is a sin to bore people with really good news.

I ask your forgiveness for the silence of a significant percentage of the European church during the Jewish holocaust and of the American church during the years of slavery, for I believe that it is a sin for the church of God to stand by while innocent people die.

I ask your forgiveness for the unimaginable violence done in and through and with the blessing of the church throughout history, for I believe Jesus died once for all of us to put an end to violence.

I ask your forgiveness for the weight of rules and legalism that has shackled the church, making it oppressively fear-based and guilt-centered, for I believe that it is a sin to deny people their freedom in Christ.

I ask your forgiveness for every power-crazed political zealot who has ever advocated hatred against people in the name of Christ, for I believe that it is a sin to judge in the place of God.

I ask your forgiveness for every sidewalk and soap-box preacher who has so much as cracked upon a Bible with anger or pride in his heart, for I believe that it is a sin to misrepresent the character of a loving God.

I ask your forgiveness for every cult leader and extremist group leader who has ever led people astray in the name of Jesus, for I believe that it is a sin to desire the position of Jesus as the head of the church.

I ask your forgiveness for every pastor or priest who has ever served the church to get money, fame or sex because I believe the church is Jesus’ Bride, not some random guy’s mistress.

I ask your forgiveness for the millions of men in the church who have somehow stretched the Bible to validate their own sexist views, for I believe that it is a sin to dishonor a woman.

I ask your forgiveness for the thousands of church splits and denominational factions that have ripped the body of Christ in every direction except heavenward, for I believe that Christians loving and forgiving each other is the best way to show people who God is.

I ask your forgiveness for the thousands of churches who are set up as extravagant social clubs, for I believe that it is a sin to ignore the poor among you.

I ask your forgiveness for every misspent dime that was ever placed in an offering plate, for I believe that it is a sin to waste an old lady’s tithe.

I ask your forgiveness for the prostituting of the American church and the American church leader to the American dream, for I believe that it is a sin for the church or her leaders to love money more than God.

I ask your forgiveness for every self-centered, self-proclaimed “miracle worker” who has sold people counterfeit hope and light and fluffy theology for $19.95 plus shipping and handling, for I believe that it is a sin to spit in the face of God.

I ask your forgiveness for every sin of every priest, pastor, minister, reverend, teacher, elder, deacon, pope, nun, monk, missionary, Sunday school teacher, worship leader, and for every Christian who has ever come into your life for any other reason than to love you. If any of us came to you and hurt you, we are the ones at fault. On our behalf, let me say that I am very sorry. It’s not who we are supposed to be.

And lastly for me. I am no better than the rest. I am no role model. I’m misguided. I get confused a lot and I have hurt people in my misguided attempts to be “Christian.” I have not always loved God or the people around me. I am ashamed of me much of the time. I am ashamed of my people who have hurt you.

But I am not ashamed of the gospel. I am not ashamed of the good news that God has come near to you and is right now available to you through Jesus. I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is power from a loving God who can save you. He can save us all, even us Christians.

~Joe Boyd