Wednesday Link List

Time for another episode of Link-O-Rama…

• Our opening graphic is a t-shirt from Café Press which can be yours for only $27.00 U.S.  It’s called “The lamest sin.”
  
• In a single-shot sermon from a guy who always preaches in series, Andy Stanley delivers the strongest-ever apologetic for small group ministry in a message titled Stumbling Along.
  
• Bill Hybels addresses delegates to this year’s Leadership Summit as to why Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, was pressured by the gay community into cancelling his signed contract to be a speaker at the event.
  
• In this week’s chapter of Schullergate, the big glass church gets told they can’t decide not to sell, but need  to accept one of the bid offers.  Details at Orange County Register, but follow the Register for updates on this as the story changes regularly.    This just in: The Roman Catholic diocese has raised its bid.
  
• CBN News reports an affiliate of a well-known terror organization is using four animated cartoons to recruit children.
  
• 

  Kanon Tipton - Pint Sized Preacher

  A kids story of another kind: Kanon Tipton, the 4-year old “pint-sized preacher” gets interviewed on NBC’s Today Show.
  

• Here’s another one of those online prayer request sites.  I’m not sure about all this.  I still think your best bet is to be involved with a group of brothers and sisters who will come alongside to pray with you when you need them.  Fall is a good time to join a small group.  If your church doesn’t have them, find one that does which allows outsiders to join.
• Fall kickoff got you bewildered?  Here are ten reason to under program your church from Jared Wilson.  Sample: “If a church looks like it’s doing lots of things, we tend to think it’s doing great things for God. When really it may just be providing lots of religious goods and services. “
• The boomers aren’t going to accept being called “seniors” which raises other questions about how we do “seniors’ ministry.”  Start at Trey Morgan’s blog and then link through for more from Thom Rainer.
  
• It’s not just hell and heaven.  Some Evangelical scholars are questioning the whole “Adam and Eve” thing.  Start at Tony Jones’ blog and the click through for the full NPR story.
  
• The current Miss Canada, Tara Teng, kicked of the Ignite the Road to Justice Tour on Monday, traveling from Vancouver to Ottawa thru September 4th to raise awareness of human trafficking.  More in this story at B.C. Province.
  
• Speaking of which, Dr. Robert Peterson of Covenant Theological Seminary offers a video response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins.
  
• Pete Wilson gets embedded deep behind the lines at Saddleback Church and does some serious Megachurch myth-busting.
  
• Indie music link of the week: Toronto-based Every Spare Second — click the titles in the left margin to play full songs.  Similar to Owl City and To Tell.
  
• Greg Laurie says that casual, consensual sex is hurting America.
• Christianity Today talks to the cast and director of the movie, The Help.
• Pastor Michael Minor decided the best way to fight the obesity epidemic was to begin in the church fellowship hall.  Might not be a lot finger-lickin’ going on at his Tampa church.
  
• On Thursday, Regent Radio, the internet broadcast arm of Regent College, begins an 11-lecture series by historian and missiologist Andrew Walls.  The lecture series “From Tertullian to Tutu: 2,000 Years of christian History in Africa…” was delivered live at Regent. One free lecture per day at Regent Radio; click the play arrow in the middle of the page.
  
• “People can’t worship while bats rain droppings and urine over them. Services have had to be cancelled.”  That’s the complaint over at St. Hilda’s Church in Ellerburn, somewhere in the UK; but an environmental group is preventing the church from evicting the bats.
  
• A gay website — no I’m not a regular reader, thanks for asking — is reporting a Princeton Review study saying that Wheaton College is the least LGBT-friendly school in the U.S.  Gee, ya think?
  
• Here’s a break from all the seriousness with Beaker from Sesame Street performing Ode to Joy. Join the fifteen million viewers to date.
  
• Our Christian-flavored cartoon discovery of the week was Cake or Death by Alex Baker, and I hope to soon go through the archives and read every single one of them.  Here are some recent entries:

Wednesday Link List

Wednesday link kangaroo

A kangaroo walks into a bar.

“Wow!” the bartender says; “We don’t get many kangaroos in here.”

“Yeah,” says the Kangaroo, “And at these prices, you’re not going to get many more.”

…I know it’s pathetic, but that’s always been one of my favorite jokes, and the link list seemed the best place for it.

• Our lead link this week: David Santisteven on How To Fail as a Worship Leader In Ten Easy Steps. (Step 5: Leave theology to the preachers.)
  
• And here’s a bonus ten for people interested in worship: Ten Ideas to Incorporate the Scriptures into a Worship Service.
  
• They won’t respond to communication from outsiders, but a surprising number of Amish Teens are now on Facebook, getting online through their cellphones.
• Sarah Pulliam Bailey brings an 7-page look at the reshaping of Focus on the Family; and a 2-page sidebar as to what James Dobson is up to.
  
• Dana at Upwrite asks all the hard questions about the TOMS shoes fad.  (If I’d known you could get that word length writing about shoes, I would have done it long ago!)
  
• Let’s go two in a row from Upwrite: Can you be a hybrid Christian? Can you combine ideas from other faiths with Christian belief?
  

Click the image above to see 226 more pictures from North Carolina's Wild Goose Festival in June by photographer Courtney Perry

• If you missed the Wild Goose Festival, photographer Courtney Perry has 227 pictures; you can even purchase copies.
  
• John Starke nails it on How to Write a Great Book Review (Or How Not to Write a Bad One).
  
• Speaking of which, Benji Zimmerman does a great review of Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle’s Erasing Hell the response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins. (Easier to read with a Javascript Black/White swap app.)
  
• And Chan himself sits down with Mark Galli at CT for what appears to be an interview but is really more of a dialog.
  
• Stephen Brewster was one of many syncrobloggers who joined together in June to talk about blocks to creativity.  He links to some of the other writers, too.
  
• Frank Turk digs into the can of worms being opened by New York’s new marriage law.
  
• Craig Groeshel, the guy with the .tv web domains, is now suggesting individuals and families take a few nights off each week to unplug.
  
• A few days late for the 4th, but for our American friends, Louis Giglio reflects on the Declaration of Independence with Chris Tomlin on camera and some cheap shots at England’s Matt Redman.  (HT: Worship Blog)
  
• Matt Rawlings brings his twice yearly top five books list, and his top 62 “geek” books list.
  
• Also on books, Jon, our academic book-watcher on the left coast wants you to know about Christians at the Border: Immigration, The Church and the Bible.  Basically this is a Guatemalan professor of Old Testament studies discussing social policy.  Here’s the publisher’s 411, and a 9-pg .pdf preview.
  
• Adam Young, aka Owl City, has a new video, packed with footage from the Back to the Future movies.  Check out Deer in the Headlights.
  
• But we can take the animal video linking thing further with this Charlie the Hamster audio file. (HT: Stuff Fundies Like.)
  
• Anne Jackson, transparent as ever, has reactivated her blog which has been dormant since March.  You can read her posts from June 17th and June 24th.
• No link here, but my son Chris put this on his Facebook page:
  .
  The Parable of the Dry Stick
  .
  I was out for a hike a while ago and there was a stick on the path.  I gave it a kick, and all the bark broke off and scattered, leaving only the bare, white wood.
  .
  God then said:  “The world is full of people who will completely change, who are just waiting to be prompted, quietly hoping someone will disrupt their daily ennui.”
  .
   If you know one of those people, give them a proverbial kick.  Tell them their life can amount to something.  Invite them to join the adventure of discovering God.

Separated at Birth (and by a few generations) — Lyn Cryderman, author of Glory Land, republished as No Swimming on Sunday and Colton Burpo of Heaven is for Real fame.  The Cryderman book is a bit of a hard-to-find collector’s item but an excellent document capturing growing up in America in the Free Methodist denomination.  “I gotta home in Glory land that outshines the sun…Way beyond the blue”

Wednesday Link List

Intro, intro, blah, blah, blah… [nobody reads this paragraph anyway…]

• Opening and closing cartoons today are from Sacred Sandwich…
• So what do you when you’re Rob Bell and everybody who has read Love Wins and everybody who hasn’t read Love Wins is asking, “What’s up with that?”  Answer: You do what you do best and go on tour renting large auditoriums in places like New York.
• Though I’ve never been able to visit his church, this five-minute clip demonstrates why Pete Wilson is one of my favorite pastors.
• Honestly, I don’t make these links up.  The choir members at the big glass church must sign the “Crystal Cathedral Worship Choir and Worship Team Covenant” affirming the church’s stand against homosexuality.   Yet oddly: “John Charles, a spokesman for the cathedral, said this does not mean gays are banned from the choir.’This contract is to educate choir members about what our church believes in,’ he said.”  Read for yourself.
• My prediction:  Within 3-5 years a segment of Calvinists and neo-Calvinists will complete their breakaway from the rest of us and form an isolated denomination called The Gospel Coalition that will separate them from both Protestantism and Evangelicalism.  They’re already building concensus for their own hymnbook.
• The Message Bible translator — and I do mean “translator,” not “paraphraser” — Eugene Peterson has a new book out, The Pastor, A Memoir (HarperCollins) and it’s reviewed at Christianity Today by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, co-editor with Shane Claiborne on the recently released Common Prayer liturgical resource.  The review contains this quotation from the book: “”North American culture does not offer congenial conditions in which to live vocationally as a pastor. Men and women who are pastors in America today find that they have entered into a way of life that is in ruins.” The impression one gets of a book that is half autobiographical and half prescriptive.
  
• Ryan Dueck asks the musical question, “Why Should We Then Blog,” which should be must-reading for those of us who blog.
  
• Hannah Goodwyn at CBN News has a list of the top ten current Christian bestsellers you should read, though I personally disagree with her #1 choice, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young.  All are recently released except for Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.  And no mention of Crazy Love which we covered here yesterday.  Not sure why people do these lists.  Not sure why I just linked to it.
• Speaking of books, Jason Hood writes at Christianity Today that Eric Metaxas’ book on Bonhoeffer may lead to misunderstandings as to where, from an Evangelical perspective anyway,  the subversive/pastor “fits in” theologically.
• Meanwhile, Sherry at Semi Colon blog recommends using Bonhoeffer‘s Cost of Discipleship this year for Lent.
• If you watched the Grammy Awards, or have an awareness of current music, you may be somewhat aware of a song that was performed as “Forget You,” but also has another similar, but different title that can’t be printed here.  So here’s an equally disturbing parody of the song from a Christian perspective, “Bless You.”
• Mark Almlie at Out of Ur asks the question, “Is being a Protestant single pastor like being a married Catholic priest? Is it an oxymoron?”  Okay, that was really two questions.  If you’re an Evangelical, have you ever known or had a pastor who was unmarried?
  
• Zac Hicks’ worship blog reviews a Neue magazine article and carefully differentiates between traditionalism and tradition.
  
• The original Friendly Athiest (the one that’s not Matt Caspar) breaks out the list of the Ten Most Religious and Ten Least Religious U.S. States.  By the way, is it just me or is “Utah Jazz” a rather conflicted name for a sports team?
• Anthony Bradley says the best apologetic is simply to live a radical Christian life, and that’s how believers in earlier generations understood it.  “Being different is a struggle for American Christians who often find it desirous to be as much like our society in every way except for the occasional Sabbath from culture for religious activities.”
• Thom Rainer, CEO of Lifeway, which regular readers know is one of my favorite Christian publishing company in the whole world [Note to not regular readers: That was a lie] offers four principles for pastors and leaders who find themselves in a change-resistant church.
• For Lent he went on an all-beer diet.  Seriously.  It’s a long story. He’s now up to day 15 of 40.  Personally, based on yesterday’s post, I’m not so sure that J. Wilson is going to go the distance.  The above link is to his blog, this one to a media story about him.
• Link suggestions are always welcomed.  Here’s another from Sacred Sandwich (click images to link).

Wednesday Link List

I think we’ll start with a shout out to all the people who gave up social networking and blogs for lent. In which case, why are you reading this?

• We kick off with a few quotations from an interview U2’s Bono did with a Johannesburg radio station last month, along with a link to an audio file of the entire program.
• The Rob Bell release date for Love Wins has been moved up by two weeks to March 15th, less than a week away!  Mars Hill Bible Church in Granville, Michigan has made no official comment, but on Sunday, parishioners were told that church staff are supportive and excited about the book’s release.
• However, Jon Rising suggests that there’s a whole other controversial book releasing at HarperOne — the same day — and traces links to advance reviews of Miroslav Volf’s simply titled Allah: A Christian Response.   The publisher blurb helps define the book’s hot spots.
  
• A young Christian woman tells her Christian father that she is gay. We’ve all heard stories like this, but what does that actually look like?  How does that play out exactly? John Shore takes what is, to many of us a very abstract concept, and spells out what that really looks like in many families in his fictional Smith Family Chronicles; episode one and episode two already complete with more to follow.
  
• A couple of strong stories at Christian Week (three actually, and we’ll give each one its own bullet!). First a piece on how urban poverty is not a downtown thing anymore but is hitting the suburbs featuring the director of the Yonge Street Mission.  (In fact, urban downtown areas are reconsolidating into a very upscale vibe.)
• Next, a piece about the relationship between the church and political debates sparked by Billy Graham’s statement that he regrets the times he waded in on political issues.
• Last in our CW hat trick — and I don’t expect my U.S. readers to get the full impact of this, but here this is huge — Crossroads, Canada’s largest Christian television ministry gave InterVarsity Christian Fellowship five of its Circle Square Ranch summer camps.  No strings attached.  An outright gift from one ministry to another.  They become part of the ministry of IVCF as of the first of April.
  
• I find it interesting that many of today’s younger preachers are the subject of condemnation by older ones because the younger ones don’t do expository (verse by verse) preaching.  But Andy Stanley really rose to the occasion in this series on Acts titled Big Church.
  
• Okay, it’s not that Facebook is solely responsible for one in five divorces as originally reported in 2009; but it is definitely accelerating the process.
  
• Spent about 40 minutes on Sunday night enjoying a mini-concert by an artist who is quite established here in Canada who needs to be shared with the rest of the world.  Check out Greg Sczebel’s website.
  
• Got baggage?  Know someone who’s got baggage?  Check out this short video at GodTube.  Also at GodTube here’s a music clip from Christy Nockels from the new album Passion: Waiting Here For You.
• Looking for some good news online?  Here’s a site with a difference: My Miracle invites readers to post stories of God’s intervention in their lives.  Maybe your story.
• Got a question for The Pope?  He hits the Italian TV airwaves on Good Friday for a little bit of Q & A in a pre-recorded program.
• Several months ago, this blog ran a piece on modesty for girls.  Now here’s a modesty test for your preteen or early teen daughter from Dannah Gresh’s Secret Keeper Girl website.
  
• If you’re reading this Wednesday morning or afternoon you can still catch our contest from Monday to win a copy of One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.
  
• Here’s another one from Darrell at Stuff Fundies Like featuring all your favorite types of church songleaders.
  
• And speaking of same; here’s CT’s list of the Top 27 All Time Favorite… Hymns?  That’s right, all scientifically calculated using books which contain them that nobody actually uses anymore.  This could be the very last such list.  (Click the image to see the chart clearer as a .pdf)
  
• Our cartoon this week recognizes that today is the first day of Lent, which every good Evangelical knows is the _____  ____s before ________.  (Betcha we caught a few off-guard.) Bad Sheep is the product of Jay Cookingham who blogs at Soulfari, You can also click the image below to check out Lambo and Chop’s merchandise.

Wednesday Link List

Here we link again!…

• Five screen pages is longer by Christianity Today standards, but you should take the time to read this article by Drew Dkyk about “The Nones” and in particular, the group of people in their mid-to-late teens and early twenties who are exiting the church in droves who are termed “The Leavers.”
• If micro-finance is a key tool for lifting people out of poverty, Shane Claiborne of The Simple Way and Peter Greer of Hope Internationalare featured in this CNN piece asking Was Jesus a Communist or a Capitalist?
• Is the Pope Catholic?   If you missed this week’s condom controversy, here’s where it all began.
• Donald S. Whitney brings a list of the top ten things a church can do to have the best worship services.   #2 – Have clear Biblical support for every element in worship.  Read the other nine here.
• Tim Stafford travels to a would-be “international” Christian conference only to discover that a very western mentality governs all the proceedings.   Read his report from Lausanne.
• Bene at Bene Diction Blogs On (BDBO) is tracking ongoing developments in the Crystal Cathedral story, and concludes that with the level of compensation the CFO received, “The flock got fleeced.”  Link here.
• Here’s a second link from BDBO.   It concerns the reaction of a Canadian Christian talk show host to the “It Gets Better” campaign to try to prevent the suicides of gay teenagers.   The typical response which alienates non-Christian gays (and Christian ones alike, of which there are surprisingly many) lacks compassion.  Watch what Michael Coren said and a contrasting response from Wendy at New Direction.
• Got introduced this week to a new band which does some very current hymn cover tunes.  Check out the MySpace page for Ascend the Hill.
  
• Okay, if you didn’t guess by now, the graphic at the top of the post is from Stuff Fundies Like.   Click the image to link.
  
• First saw this at Darryl Dash’s blog, but it’s easy to read here at Zach Nielsen’s:  The latest statistics on internet p0rn0graphy.
  
• While the radio announcer reports the latest crashes on the rush hour drive home, he could be kept just as busy reporting the moral crashes of movie- and music-industry teen idols.   Here’s some discussion at Streaming Faith with a media and culture specialist at Focus.
• And what better place to insert this link:  The blog On The Fence With Jesus, where a skeptical screenwriter and a Christian pastor discuss faith, asks the musical (pop music) question, Is Justin Bieber Really Religious?
• Bieber also talked about how his faith keeps him grounded in the madness of Hollywood and celebrity. He told the AP[Associated Press], ‘Like, I’m a Christian, I believe in God, I believe that Jesus died on a cross for my sins. I believe that I have a relationship and I’m able to talk to him and really, he’s the reason I’m here, so I definitely have to remember that. As soon as I start forgetting, I’ve got to click back and be like, you know, this is why I’m here.'”
• Church in a box department:   If you want to know where your denomination fits in with all the others, you could do worse than clicking through a couple of times to view The Great Chart of Denominations.   Hey, you’re curious aren’t you?
• Or maybe you’re more into statistics on mega-churches; after all there’s a whole book in the Bible about Numbers, right?  (Warning to readers outside the 50 states:  The relevance of all this is somewhat geo-blocked beyond the borders of the U. S. of A.)
• Here’s a great piece on “The Sinner’s Prayer” that is actually part one of two.    This was also at Christianity 201 last night, as I’m really in awe of how this writer cuts to the heart of this issue.
• For all our U.S. readers who are heading into a weekend of massive gorging on food and massive consumer spending; here’s a re-run of last year’s TG cartoon from Joyoftech…

…Of course, regular readers will despair that this is our first Wed. Link List repeat cartoon, so we’ll have to have a new one — the newest, in fact…

…This, of course will just frustrate my more spiritual readers who will contend that with this addition, I’ve gone off the blog’s mandate; so…

…That one should be sufficient to be offend everyone, not the least of which is Nitrozac and Snaggy, the JOT creators who probably have a two-panels-per-blog limit.

Wednesday Link List

• Making the Same Mistake Twice? Department:  Nobody felt the original reached its true potential so there’s going to be a remake of the Left Behind movie.   Guess who’s doing it?  Cloud Ten Pictures, the exact same company that made the first one.   Huh?
• Truth is Stranger than Fiction Department:  The American who pastor who threatened to burn the Qu’ran and then didn’t is getting a free car just for being a good boy.  “Okay, Terry; you’ve been a good boy and remembered not to play with matches; so here’s the present we promised you…”
  
• Personal Inventory Department:  Trey Morgan on the various things people use to gauge their self-worth.  What’s your’s based on?
  
• Indie Christian Artist Department:   If you like dance music with bass that thumps while at the same time enjoying strongly Bible-based lyrics, check out the song “Life” by artist Beckah Shae.   Or go here for the YouTube now closing in on 200,000 views.   (Is that someone blowing a shofar in the background?)  Here’s another one:  Here in this Moment is closing in on 300,000 views.
  
• Iniquities, Transgressions and Sins, Oh My! Department:  Washington, DC pastor Mark Batterson introduces the Jewish understanding of the three dimensions of sin.
  
• Ecclesiology For Fun and Profit Department:  David Paul Door says when you plant a church, you have to think less like a pastor and more like a missionary.
  
• You Really Should Read This Department:  A Christianity Today interview with Joni Earekson Tada on suffering, chronic pain, and breast cancer.
• “I’m a Full Gospel Preacher” Department:   Challies posted this link this week to Erik Raymond, the Irish Calvinist, answering the musical question: Why are some pastors so fat? Except he didn’t bother with the word “some.”
  
• Gettin’ Ready to Party Department:  If tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1611 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the KJV, the author of Majestie: The King Behind the King James Bible figures we’d better know a little about James Stuart.  Here’s the video trailer for the book which officially released yesterday.
• Why Can’t We All Just Sing Along? Department:  CNN gets church choirs across North America to join together on a verse and chorus of Andrae Crouch’s classic, “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power;” and then attempts to blend them all as one.
  
• Amish Fiction Overload Department:  If you can’t get enough of the Amish through the fiction section of your Christian bookstore, you can learn more about them in the popular blog Amish America.
  
• For our cartoon today, we return to the most prolific of the Baptist Press artists, Joe McKeever: