The long hot summer is just about over, and the kids are back in school. Time for a look at the pages that grabbed my attention this week, with a little help from our friend (at right) the links lynx.
- First of all, there’s a live event online tomorrow (Thursday September 9th) night: A Night of Worship, streaming live from North Point Community Church at 7:30 PM Eastern, 6:30 PM Central. To watch at home you need enough bandwidth to capture the live feed, and this website.
- When Chad Holtz isn’t busy pastoring a rural Methodist church, he’s busy confronting evil at the local Islamic Center. Sort of.
- Greg at the blog, Lost in the Clouds posts an edgy response to the Christianity Today cover story Hipster Christianity by Brent McCracken based on his book of the same name. Greg says “I’m sorry, but all of this is adding up to a sorry picture of our tour guide through the world of Hipster Christianity…” I think he struck a nerve.
- Students at Belmont University are being handed cash to make a difference. Donald Miller explains the $20 giveaway; but I wonder what they’d do if — after the manner of Matthew 25 — one of the students simply handed back $40?
- Carlos Whitaker doesn’t want attendees at the Catalyst Conference to be singing the songs he chooses, so he asks his readers to report the song titles they are connecting with at their churches. So far, over 125 replies.
- Frank Turk, who probably doesn’t write a lot of music reviews, joins a number of bloggers who are noticing what can only be termed a “modern hymnwriter,” Matthew Smith.
- Andrew Jones lists five major game changers that revolutionized who he is today. People in ministry, don’t miss this one.
- Thom Turner knows that baptism can be a divisive subject, but suggests there’s room for diversity even within denominations and possibly within local churches as well.
- If you missed the blog tour — actually it was more like a progressive dinner — for Anne Jackson’s Permission to Speak Freely (Thomas Nelson), you can still catch all seven excerpts by following the links, starting here. Anne’s honesty will resonate with anyone dealing with various types of pain.
- Brian, a regular reader of this blog, invites you to join him and others in a week of prayer for Beja people — nomadic camel herders — of Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea. Read more here.
- Our video link this week is a worship song you may not know by Willow Creek’s Aaron Niequist, simply titled Changed.
- U.S. Fundamentalist nutcase Terry Jones is determined to burn copies of the Quran on September 11th — I doubt even the U.S. President could stop this guy — so as of Tuesday night officials announced plans to quell access to his property through an identification checkpoint, so fewer people can see him do it.
- John Stackhouse has no problem with street preaching, but that’s usually in commercial areas, right? What happens when the preachers invade a residential street? That, he says, is going too far.
- Anglicans in Nova Scotia, not content with the annual “blessing of the pets” service, are having a “blessing of the techs” service for laptops, cellphones and mobile devices.
- This may be your church, or at least your church sign: Grace Methodist Episcopal in New York, circa 1922; from Shorpy.com; a classic photograph site. Middle picture is from the Gospel Mission in Georgetown, circa 1920; final picture is a storefront church from the “Black Belt” of Chicago in 1941 and where deciding where you’re going to eat after church isn’t an issue with the lunch wagon next door. Click through any of the pictures to see the images in super-giant size.
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Thinking Out Loud 