Wednesday Link List

Okay, so this was everywhere online this past week, but if you missed it here’s an explanation of the Biblical phrase Gird Your Loins. (click image to link)

Here are the news and opinion pieces from the past week that stood out. You can also read today’s links at PARSE by clicking here.

• The world of Christian publishing: A guide to who owns who, and who isn’t owned.
• Why didn’t I think of this? VBS for seniors. Are curriculum publishers paying attention?
• The grandson of Robert H. Schuller, Bobby Schuller is now officially the new host of the Hour of Power telecast and now officially lead pastor of Shepherd’s Grove.
• For those of you who have the time to run these weekly rabbit trails, you’re going to need 42 minutes for this one, and about halfway through you may be tempted to bail, but I guarantee you there’s nothing like Kirk Cameron’s address last week at Liberty University as he explains the forthcoming movie Saving Christmas.
• I really hope you can’t relate to this new book’s title, but I suspect some might: When Bad Churches Happen To Good Pastors, coming soon from Beacon Hill Press.
• A dozen elderly Iraqi Christians were told to convert or die; they chose to die and were released instead.
• Churches liable for sexual solicitation? “The suit alleges that the churches put [the youth worker] in a position that allowed him to manipulate and sexually exploit children. It also says that despite…not properly being trained to deal with children, Second Baptist encouraged him to foster bonds with them.”
• Worship Moment: Here’s a new song by Keith and Kristyn Getty, co-written with Graham Kendrick, My Worth Is Not In What I Own from a new online-only album.
• Andy Stanley and North Point Community Church now top the list of the 100 largest churches in the U.S., though admittedly numbers from Lakewood and Lifechurch aren’t showing.
• For college and university students, their freshman year is often a spiritual valley.
• The YouVersion Bible app has over 700 languages and now, one thousand translations.
• Are they fronts for abortion providers or, as this article suggests, are pregnancy help organizations “the best kept secret in the pro-life movement?”
• The co-founder of the UK Christian network, GOD-TV is withdrawing from ministry due to moral failure. Rory Alec’s wife, author Wendy Alec will assume management of the channel where she has overseen programming for 19 years.
• For this one, we take you all the way back to 2012: The Dark Side of Pastor Appreciation Month.
• Speculative Theology Department: What if we keep incarnation and resurrection, but have a Christianity without the cross.
• This next one is about **pauses to sip from water bottle** the annoying things people in ministry say and do from the platform.
• In Nepal, a celebrity singer and actress converts from Hinduism to Christianity and refuses to sing material venerating a Hindu goddess.
• Ministry Refresher Course: Why senior pastors should take a turn teaching the preschool class. (Link to a 2-page .pdf)
• From our agricultural news department, this year in the Jewish calendar, 5775, is a sabbath year which makes growing crops a challenge. Sample: “But people have to eat, so a century ago rabbis found a way to bypass the law so no one goes hungry.”
• This book isn’t new, but it offers the counterpoint to Left Behind rapture doctrine.
• Story coverage from the other side: The Freedom From Religion Foundation contests the “Bible-like” cover of an elementary school yearbook.
• Congratulations to my editor of these weekly bullets, Paul Pastor, on winning Multnomah University’s Distinguished Young Alumnus Award for 2014.
• Essay of the Week: We return to the subject of whether the children should sit through the worship service, and one pastor’s compromise.
• Wait, it’s not the end of the year yet! Beating the rush with a subject-indexed top ten books list for church leaders which contains 150 titles.
• He’s got the #5 position on this week’s Billboard Top Christian Albums chart. Check out Matty Mullins song My Dear, and note the lyrical similarity to the Jesus Calling books.
• U.S. economic health is sometimes measured by mobility, but many Americans are staying put because moving would mean changing churches.
• Video of the Week: From July, a young Autistic man has his own “Heaven is for Real” experience and reflects on its impact.
• The internet loves an infographic, especially if measured by the reposts and re-Tweets of this detailed explanation of what it means to ‘gird up your loins.’
• Apparently those “terms and conditions” boxes we click when downloading can have serious spiritual implications.
• In the name of religious accommodation for Ultra Orthodox Jewish men, passengers on a New York to Tel Aviv flight encountered a number of flight delays.
• Separation of Church and State Trooper: Should a policeman proselytize while he’s got people pulled over for routine traffic stops?
• Tim Tebow can but a Muslim football player can’t. So now the NFL is reviewing the rules regarding touchdown celebrations.
• Diversion 1: Preaching to an older demographic means making sure you are heard correctly.
• Diversion 2: This direct telephone to God is featured this Christmas in a catalog used by a number of Christian bookstores. “Compliments Any Décor.” Operators are standing by.
• A movie we missed: Believe Me opened two weeks ago in select markets and satirizes Christian culture.
• Finally, even if you don’t play the video this is funny. But it gets really strange when you do.

Because this is Blogger Appreciation Month, you can catch Paul Wilkinson at Thinking Out Loud, Christianity 201, or @PaulW1lk1nson on Twitter.

 

Wednesday Link List

We either start off with really serious issues and end with something silly, or we do it the other way around. Today leads off with the latter:

• Psalm 42 in the Pirate translation. Seriously. Why would I lie about that?
• Which is just a warm up for SFL’s grand old hymn of the week, I’m Not Going to Hell.
• Which takes us to that other “stuff” site, SCL and the issue of inviting friends to church: “It doesn’t matter how great your church is Sunday after Sunday. On the one day you actually invite a neighbor for the first time, there’s a moment of panic that passes through you.”
• Hey, remember that 30-minute film you watched in youth group about a factory worker who finds a music box? It never went to DVD, but turns out it’s been on YouTube for five years.
  
• Eight weeks later, Jamie The Very Worst Blogger remembers she has a blog and updates it a second time on her birthday.
  
• Karen Spears Zacharias has met the enemy, and the enemy is talk radio.  Or maybe that one belongs in the next section…
  

Okay, we need some serious links also, right?

• Here’s a re-issue of a classic 2004 Michael Spencer post at iMonk where the fallibility of those in vocational ministry hits full force.
• In another re-print, Pete Wilson quotes Peter Scazzero on the American Church and the American Dream.
• Or check out Will Mancini’s take on how success in ministry adversely affects pastors.
  
• Here’s an interesting thought: If your church permits women preachers or allows women as elders, who ‘permits’ and who ‘allows’? Chances are it’s men. Hmmm. Kathy Escobar elaborates.
  
• The sad story of Jack Schaap continues with a plea agreement, followed by being taken into custody on the 20th, with a first court appearance scheduled for today (26th).
  
• Brian McLaren guests at CNN’s religion blog to discuss Islamaphobic Evangelical Christians in light of recent events in the Arab world. Also a response and video interview from Tony Jones.  
• Also at CNN’s Belief Blog/News page, the 15 Amish people who last fall “sheared” the beards of other Amish people could face ‘recommended’ prison terms of 17 years. 
• October 28th to November 4th is WRAP Week (White Ribbon Against Pornography) an annual event that creates a useful opportunity to raise the issue of pornography within the Church, and to call all Christians to renewed lives of sexual purity and freedom; and a project of the Salvation Army USA. Here’s the poster. Here’s info about the film Somebody’s Daughter. 
• Veteran Christian Band The 77s are touring in October. If you missed them, here’s an audio of one of my favorites.  (Two Ontario dates are available!)
• After Monday’s post about canonization, I realize how little I know about other faith traditions… Just when I think I have the rosary figured out, there’s prayer ropes for the Orthodox.
  
• I was wrong last week; the national Canadian Christian talk show hosted by Lorna Dueck has actually been out under the Context format (with a live audience that Listen Up never had) for over a year.
  
• Two articles on supporting your pastor(s): One from Lisa Robinson at Parchment and Pen, and one from Keith Brenton at Blog in My Own Eye.
  
• Sometimes I find about blogs from the “God Blogger” segment on The Drew Marshall Show. This week it was Timothy Dalrymple.
• Also this week discovered the blog, Hieropraxis while trying to track down a female apologetics expert, Dr. Holly Ordway; one of a few in what is otherwise more of man’s game.
• The funny graphic at the top of this post is actually from a very serious 2011 article, The Mega-Problem of Mega-Churches.
• …And the closing cartoon is from Dave Walker at CartoonChurch.com, but when I tried to find it for a proper link, I couldn’t.  This one is from the blog Digging a Lot.
  

Not enough links for you? The new Top 200 Church Blogs list is out.

Pastor Appreciation Minute

I’m exhausted.

I don’t know why it is, but serving in any capacity in a church on Sunday morning is always draining.   And I don’t do it that often.   And this wasn’t anything close to a large crowd.  This was the third time in six months, so I’m tracking a pattern close to “once every eight weeks.”   Hardly full-time ministry.

What if I had to do this every Sunday?    Plus board meetings?   Plus counseling?    Plus visitation?

I started an outline on the subject of worship, but it just didn’t take root.   So Thursday I was back to square one.  Although I don’t believe in recycling notes, this time around I redeveloped a sermon from the files.   About ninety minutes to recopy it and update some of the scripture readings from NIV to NLT and Message.   (A daring move considering this is an older congregation.)   Then thirty minutes later on Saturday to go over it all.

And it went well, based on their comments.

I think it simply went different. Congregations need to hear a different voice now and then.

Anyway… once again I have a great respect for pastors.   Is there something you can do to drop a note of encouragement to your pastor this week?   Do it!   Don’t wait for some card company version of “Pastor Appreciation Week.”