Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the 40 days of Lent.
Some weeks the link list is rather lame, but this week, any one of these links could have been expanded into a full post.
Checking out a few of these takes time, but this week I urge you to make the time for topics here that interest you.
- A movie originally scheduled for release in 2007 providing scientific verifcation of Bible continues to grow in scope, sometimes crossing into new political sensitivities. Read the ongoing story from WorldNetDaily about the film, The Exodus Conspiracy.
- Brian McLaren calls him “the Emergent Buddhist.” The YouTube vid title is “Zen Monk Hip-Hop Rap & The Monk Bar.” Gee…I wonder where they’re borrowing these concepts from? Do they have megatemples? See it here.
- If you’re in children’s ministry, you need to read this. We already know Gen-X and Generation-Y. Now read about Generation-Z.
- Here’s a freedom of religion story that has attracted nearly 700 comments at USAToday: Muslims have announced that airport body scanners violate Islamic law. The story is no surprise, really, but keep reading, it’s the comments that reflect the American mood, running about 20:1 along the lines of, “If you don’t like it, you can walk.” There’s definitely a lot of anger out there.
Matt Appling at The Church of No People blog and Pastor of Levi’s House inteviews athiest Bruce Sheiman, author of An Athiest Defends Religion (Alpha Books, 2009). Sample quote: “…It is questionable whether there has actually been a rise in militant atheism. More likely, there has been an increase in the vociferousness of existing militant atheism.”- Fellowship Church’s Ed Young becomes the latest pastor to come under news media scrutiny, though he seems to defend himself admirably in a 25 minute briefing to his church. Here’s what channel 8 had to say (8 minutes long) and Ed’s response. But not everybody was impressed.
- A Christian version of Second Life? Apparently. Read Virtual World News to find out about the upcoming Universe of Faith. Seriously.
- New Blog of the Week: Orthodoxie. A sometimes humorous look at life from an Orthodox Church perspective from Fr. Joseph Honeycutt the author of We Came, We Saw, We Converted. Start with this piece of Poetic Lenten Humor.
- An often seen blog on these link lists is Jeff McQuilkin, who steps into a gigantic minefield with this article on experiencing reverse prejudice.
- Church conflict. The very words can raise blood pressure. David Fitch at Reclaiming The Mission searches for balance between the autocratic approach to church government and the democratic approach; and finds it in The Incarnational Approach to Leadership.
- All you diehard, hardcore Rob Bell fans will want to check out this five-page article at Leadership Journal where he unpacks his preaching process and suggests that the results aren’t yet in as to a possible dark side of video preaching.
- I love the name of this Kentucky town: Falls of Rough. Poetic, huh? Anyway the blog for the Yeaman Church of Christ there has a short post titled, Why Do I Need The Church.
- Greg Atkinson thinks the song Meteor Shower by Owl City represents the future of worship music. Check out his thoughts, and then — ONLY if you live in the U.S. — check out the song at lala.com.
- Another Christian book, CD and DVD website, Title Trakk claims to have all the answers, reviews, interviews, etc., with, not surprisingly, the appropriate links to iTunes and A-zon, and other commission-paying sites.
- Tim Archer takes a somewhat op-ed view of everybody’s efforts in Haiti, and expresses three concerns about the relief frenzy.
- Mark Driscoll’s book for men, Porn Again Christian is still available for free online reading at Re:Lit. Mark doesn’t pull any punches or waste words on this topic.
- This week’s comics are from Joe McKeever at Baptist Press (upper) and Australian John Cook at A Time to Laugh
Thinking Out Loud 
