Wednesday Link List

Clicking anything below will re-direct you to PARSE, the blog of Leadership Journal who snapped up the rights to this weekly aggregation of linkage before Salem Communications could even submit a bid. From PARSE, click again on the story you want to read.

• Don’t question your leader. That’s the message this week in several Mars Hill-related (Mark Driscoll) stories like this one…
• …and a number of Lampo-related (Dave Ramsey) stories like this one
• This one is suitable for framing: 25 Bloggers summed up in a single sentence.
• Last Friday, CT documented church demolitions in China with photographs of officials removing the crosses from churches.
• Justin Welby became the first Archbishop of Canterbury to host a live call-in program, but same-sex marriage questions took up 20 minutes of the hour.
• Essay of the Week: Jen Hatmaker writes about parenting troubled teens.  (You might also enjoy the article’s prequel.)
• A recent book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer challenges the idea that he was an assassin that is sometimes used to justify redemptive violence.
• After the passing of Maya Angelou, many Christian writers hand-picked quotations to join the general tributes; but in this clip, her faith was more pluralistic.
• Even as confused Left Behind followers are thinking the “new” movie is actually the fourth in the old series, the trailer for the remake of the first movie is now out introducing Nicolas Cage in the lead role.
• Must read: Proverbs for people who use social media.
• With over 500 comments, here are some reader suggestions on what an all-Fundamentalist TV station lineup might look like.
• This week we decided to ‘love on’ our friends at the Dictionary of Christianese who examine the phrase ‘love on.’
• Did Fred Phelps have a late-in-life change-of-heart on some issues?
• If there’s a modern worship song that’s unique to your congregation but deserves a wider audience, let the writer know about the Sing It Sunday song contest.
• Should church staff be allowed to start new ministries nearby existing ones? Will they take parishioners with them? A look at non-compete contracts.
• A Christian author feels that Franklin Graham’s desire for leaders to stand up on moral issues is based on a false understanding of God’s holiness.
• A former student of Bill Gothard’s ministry now believes the entire ministry should be shut down.
• Your mileage may vary, but this writer thinks the reason we go to church is not sermon and not worship.
• A 29-year old woman describes her bi-vocation as a Catholic teacher and a tattoo artist, “the best of both worlds.”
• …Meanwhile the creators of the Jesus Tattoo advertisement lost their lawsuit over a rejected ad in a school publication.
• If you know someone who faces discouragement in ministry, this story is for them. (It’s also a reminder that results don’t happen overnight.)
• Jefferson Bethke has a new “spoken word” album. (That was the genre that launched Word Records all those years ago.)
• Faced with a “No Prayer” edict at their graduation, these students simply ignored it.
• One in four Canadians belong to the “nones,” but they are surprisingly religious.
• WLWJS or What Language Would Jesus Speak? The Pope and Israel’s Prime Minister squared off over this recently, and a BBC reporter gets two paragraphs in, but then can’t resist asking if Jesus existed at all.
• If you’re a religion writer, you can write about anybody’s faith, but articles about witches are still off-limits.
• From earlier last month, the video of the 20-ton boulder that just missed a Boston area church.
• Among Brad Lomenick’s latest list of young influencers, was Ben Houston, lead pastor at Hillsong’s Los Angeles location.
• Here are some thoughts for those of you who want to get your church to have a Bible study culture.
• Do not do this: Top 5 worship leader fails.
• Starting July 2nd, Churches in Canada need to be careful about sending unsolicited email, as new anti-spam legislation carries fines up to $10M.
• Here’s the teaser: Holiness, toothbrushes, sex and cars.
• Stewardship Department: Is it time to pray about your cable bill?
• It may be an innocent kid ministry song to you, but to Christians in communist China in 1972, it formed a secret code.
• If you need to brainwash your congregation to tithe more, you could take some tips from this guy.
• Classic video: Check out how this church performs How Great Thou Art.
• More recent video: Malcolm Gladwell spoke at Saddleback in March. Gotta catch up on that, but it’s 66 minutes long.
• Finally, after linking last week to Skye Jethani’s piece about long sermons, we’re wondering if a concentration of Sunday morning services ever show up on Wind Map.

So that’s this week’s list. We didn’t even steal anything from iMonk or Rachel H.E. Tune in next week; same bat time, same bat channel; or visit during the author during the week at Thinking Out Loud, C201, or Twitter.

Hitler’s Pants after the assassination attempt. Some feel that surviving the event only empowered him more. Source: Rare Historical Photos

Jon Acuff is Back

The only thing harder than beginning is beginning again.

So states Jon Acuff in the opening paragraph to the opening blog of his new website. I’d include more of that paragraph, but Jon’s website people have reached a technical sophistication with this blog that renders his words non-copy-and-paste-able.

He may be extremely popular, but he’s not about to be most-quoted. I didn’t check to see if his people had also found a way to block screenshots. I’ll just use an older file picture here.

Still, yesterday on Day One, or as he calls it, Day Zero, the Stuff Christians Like guy found a way to rally the troops and no doubt got a gazillion readers, as evidenced by over 600 comments. The post itself is called Day Zero. (Two other short posts followed Monday as well.)

Wither all that content from the previous SCL?  The parting of ways between Acuff and Dave Ramsey was said to have been amicable.  I guess we’ll have to see… 

Meanwhile, the blog has a banner containing an ad for a new book by Jenny Acuff, How to be Married to a Dreamer. Click the image and you find yourself signing up to be on a mailing list. Clever. You’ve got to give them all credit, these guys have got working social media down to a science. 

Ironic twist: Blog post number two ends with:

Do you ever feel guilty when you self promote? 

Why don’t you tell us, Jon.

Wednesday Link List

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a link list without any links!  To see the interactive page, click over to Out of Ur.

The interwebs were moving slower over the Labor Day weekend — and we stepped outside our rolling 30 day window — but hopefully what we lack in quantity this week we make up for in quality…

• A pastor leading a Financial Peace University course realized that along with everybody he was teaching, he and his wife needed to create a budget.
• “In the Church…”  is the definitive blog post for anybody who finds themselves planted squarely in The Church, but at the same time wanting to distance themselves.
• In most jurisdictions, kids need to be vaccinated to attend school, but if they’re home schooled… Furthermore, if immunization is dismissed for fear of autism, is spreading measles a valid trade-off? (Also, a related opinion piece at Religion Dispatches.)
• Yes, you can write a song. Here’s a primer on the form and structure of modern worship compositions.
• Essay of the Week: Perhaps instead of looking at the five points of Calvinism as dry doctrine, we should think of TULIP as a narrative.
• There’s always been a campus version of The Alpha Course, but now a Canadian group has completed Alpha Youth, scheduled for January release across North America.
• So exactly what can be extrapolated “just because the bloggers of the Gospel Coalition happen to be in agreement with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe and authoritarian Russian boss Vladimir Putin”?
• Considering we usually think the ethnic churches have it all covered, it’s interesting to read an article concerned with the ‘white church’ looking for a Latino evangelism game plan.
• Carlos Whitaker has five or six things he wishes worship leaders would stop saying, followed by 200 more reader suggestions.  (Somewhat related quotation.)
• It’s small group start-up time again, making this the link you should most want to forward this week.
• Flashback – One year ago: Psalm 42 in the Pirate translation.
• Jamie The Very Worst Author talks about a book project that is apparently having trouble getting off the ground.
• Niche blogging reaches new heights of narrowcasting (Oops! Mixed visual image) with the blog edition of Bearded Gospel Men. Possibly related piece at Christianity Today.
• Interview of the Week: A Vancouver, Canada journalist talks to Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove about intentional, New Monasticism communities.
• A Mormon websites trumpets the new stat that a majority of Latter Day Saints now live outside Canada and the U.S, where the religion began.
• The artist who gave us the 2011 song “Blessings” (and “Indescribable”), Laura Story has a new album on the way.
• Here’s a blog archive ‘find’ from earlier this year at Adorate: You hear a lot about ‘sheep stealing,’ but not so much about ‘shepherd stealing,’ or ‘pastor prostitution.’
• It’s a frequently covered topic, but if you’ve got time, this is one of the better articles on taking a social media fast.
• At a blog for pastors’ wives, a book promo video for Speak Love also becomes a lesson in journalism for Pete Wilson’s son Gage Wilson. (The Zondervan book by Annie Downs sounds good, too.)
• Just in case you’ve never heard the music of Johnnyswim, enjoy Heartbeats.
• We leave you with this weekend Tweet from Church Curmudgeon: “Headed over to the seminary barbecue this afternoon. Otherwise known as casting a pig into a herd of D. Mins.”

Hope you enjoyed today’s selection. Our goal is to celebrate people you know and people blogging in relative obscurity. Suggestions accepted by 5:00 EST through the contact page.

Wednesday Link List

I like a church that covers all the basics for living

Years from now, when anthropologists discover this blog, they will say, “Truly, this was the Wednesday Link List for August 24th, 2011.”

• Randy Alcorn quotes a Chuck Colson report that we shouldn’t be talked into thinking there’s been a lessening of persecution of Christians in China.
• The author and publishers of The Shack — a bestselling Christian novel — found themselves on opposite sides of a lawsuit which was finally settled out of court.
  
• Just what WOULD the Beatles have come up with, creatively speaking, had they been followers of Jesus all those years ago? A good friend of ours has finally given us the green light to release the link for a take-off to The Beatles “When I’m Sixty-Four.”  So enjoy “Matthew Six Three-Four.”  (The link will open your computer’s media player.) Stay tuned for more from Martin Barret on a soon to be released project featuring this song and others.
  
• Schullergate Item of the Week:  The Crystal Cathedral succeeded in getting a dissenting website, Crystal Cathedral Music, taken down this week. The site featured commentary from former members of the CC choir and orchestra and friends of the Cathedral’s former music style.
  
• Darryl Dash warns pastors and others that when it comes to email and online correspondence, nothing is confidential.
• Christianity Today profiles Dave Ramsey, noting the new Momentum curriculum, designed to bring the same advice to cash-strapped churches as is given individuals.
  
• Alex Mejias at the blog High Street Hymns gives you Five Reasons to Use Liturgical Music in Your Contemporary Worship Service.  (And no, “Liturgical songs are free of copyright worries” wasn’t in the list.)  [HT: Zac Hicks.]
  
• This one’s a repeat from April, but I read it again and laughed again.  What if churches used their signs to suggest “purpose statements” that were actually achievable?
  
• DotSub — the online service which adds subtitles in any language to your videos — picks up a June, 2010 TED Talk by Larry Lessig which deals with copyright and fair use, but begins with an observation about Republicans: They go to church.
• Ronnie McBrayer adds his voice to The Underground, a Christian website like no other, and notes that a lot of people do strange things because they thought they heard God’s voice.
• In an in-depth article, CNN ponders whether Christians can win the war against pornography. (Over 3,000 comments as of Monday.)
  
• Julie Clawson considers the theological implications of the Veggie Tales song, “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything.”  Okay, that’s not exactly what this post is all about.
  
• Just discovering the music of Phil Wickham.  Gave Mrs. W. the Cannons album last week for being good!  This older song, You’re Beautiful, is closing in on 2,000,000 YouTube views.  For the already-converted (!) here’s a clip from Phil’s October-releasing album, Response.
  
• Darrell at Stuff Fundies Like delivers a fundy take on I Cor. 13; though in all honesty, I gotta say this one is high in contention for being tomorrow’s post here.
  
• You’re not really going to the bathroom at Bible study group are you?  Bryan Lopez reblogged Tech-Crunch’s Technology is the New Smoking.
  
• Somewhat related: Chrystal at Life After Church introduces a new blog series by describing a very non-Baptist way to engage with scripture.
  
• Thomas Prosser at the UK Guardian newspaper thinks that Christian youth camps are manipulative, but before you read, you need to know that what they term as camps, we refer to as festivals.
  
• If you’re a link-o-phile, you’ll also find a daily rundown at Take Your Vitamin Z (Zach Nielsen), Kingdom People (Trevin Wax) and Tim Challies.  These bloggers include things from the broader blogosphere including lots of tech news, but when it comes to theological discussion the links are all from a single doctrinal family of bloggers.  (Note the vast number of links that turn up on all three over the course of a month.)  The mix here is quite different, but feel free to check out the three mentioned above as well as the large, diverse number of other bloggers in the margin at right.  These links are constantly checked for (a) a spiritual focus, (b) frequent and recent posting, and (c) taken as a group, doctrinal mix and balance.

The Wednesday List Lynx arrives late to the party

The Total Money Makeover Scam

Each day, I access data from Ingram International which tells me which books did the best in their Spring Arbor division, the Christian book side of the company.   On Tuesday (12/2) the book Total Money Makeover finished 5th for the day; one if its better showings.

It just occurred to me that in today’s economy, at $24.95 hardcover, the only financial crisis this book is aiding might be the author’s own.  Though published in 2003, there is still no scheduled paperback