Here’s this week’s collection, with the hope that you’ll be my Valinktine. Click anything below and you’ll find yourself at PARSE, the link list’s exclusive official owners and operators! (Or just click now, it’s easier to read there.)
- The Christian Song Competition at Praise Tracks is narrowed down to the top twelve finalists.
- It’s like a flash mob, only everybody ends up at church, so I guess it’s actually a flash mass. (Or a mass mob. Take your pick.)
- Know someone who is questioning their faith? Here are eight important questions to help them qualify what they mean.
- Canadian Christian TV host Lorna Dueck travels with a group of journalists to bring a Christian perspective on the Burning Man Festival. (see pic below)
- Church Appreciation 101: A writer for the National Catholic Review sees some things her church can learn from Willow Creek. Days later at the same site, a Willow Creek-er turned Catholic responds.
- Last week we linked to a confession by Donald Miller that he skips church more than occasionally. This week, a lengthy reply to the many comments received. (And a long-form sample of those comments.)
- You may choose a church because you like its music, but blogger Tim Challies is somewhat drawn to a church that sings poorly.
- Maybe there are atheists in foxholes, but not in plane crashes, as in the plural crashes, as in one near miss and two crashes.
- As my kids would say, “I didn’t know that was a thing.” But this week we went to a U2charist. The music of U2 and… I’ll let Wikipedia explain.
- Missional Moment: An interview with Michael Frost on the release of his newest, Incarnate.
- Singer/songwriter Darlene Zschech provides a health update on her blog after her first round of chemotherapy.
- Increasingly, church leadership and participation is a young man’s game (or women’s) but there are advantages to getting old and ugly at church.
- Speaking of which, you didn’t seriously think I was going to link to that NBC story about the nudist church in Ivor, Virginia did you?
- Prognostication of the Week: Could organ music at church be ripe for a comeback? Actually, the article is about more than music.
- This is a recurring theme lately, but this UK article has some hard stats: Children no longer know the most basic Bible stories.
- Was some grassroots campaigning effective? This year’s Superbowl ads were a lot less sexist.
- You won’t find it on the Zondervan website yet, but the company is releasing Faith Commander, a 6-week curriculum based on Duck Dynasty with editions for children, teens or the whole church.
- Church Growth Department: The atheist church in Tennessee has added a second service. (There’s also a documentary airing in May on CNN.)
- The MovieGuide Awards, sometimes called “The Christian Oscars” were handed out last Friday.
- Nadia Bolz-Weber gets into the topic of jargon, and while I always like what she writes, you gotta read the comments on this one.
- Allegory of the Week: Author Tyler Blanski teaching a friend how to drive with a manual transmission on his Honda Civic is likened to moving beyond his Baptist roots.
- How to create a marketing strategy like Steven Furtick’s, so that your book ends up on the New York Times bestseller list. (For at least one week.)…
- …and now NBC News in Furtick’s hometown is tracking sales of the book at the church.
- Carlos Whittaker on how the nature of (and demand for) worship leadership is changing.
- Perry Noble definitely has his detractors, especially when he teaches on tithing. This one spares no punches.
- More links: I meant last week to include Brad Lomenick’s latest list of young influencers.
- Kidmin Korner: I didn’t get paid for this, but Phil Vischer’s What’s In the Bible is now available as a church curriculum. (But they know where to mail the check.)
- Pastors burnout and bloggers quit often because they’re living a top-heavy life.
- When President Obama’s State of the Union address had ended, one pastor presented God’s State of the Union address.
- Been invited to a same-sex wedding yet? Check your mailbox. And then check these three articles to consider your response.
- Okay, one last response to Donald Miller, but only because you insisted. Unless, of course, this isn’t how you learn.
- Finally, a Christian fiction title for serious readers who normally don’t touch fiction.
After winning the silver medal in linking at the 2008 Bloglympics, Paul Wilkinson settled into a quiet life of writing at Thinking Out Loud.
If you watch all four parts of the documentary about Burning Man linked above, you discover that all photographs taken at the event become part of a commons that photographers agree to share. It’s part of an overall philosophy that guides the event and why there’s no photo credit here.
Thinking Out Loud 