CBS-TV Continues its Ambivalent Relationship with God

After only two seasons, CBS-TV has cancelled the Sunday night Drama God Friended Me. The show will have a two-hour finale this Sunday night, though not the season finale producers envisioned when drafting the master story arc. That episode was lost when production had to wrap up early due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

It’s really just one in a long series of events where the network develops something and then mysteriously chooses to walk away; a series that goes back to the original Charlie Brown (Peanuts) Christmas special more than 54 years ago. The show had no laugh track, there were actual children doing the children’s voices, the soundtrack was all jazz, and finally, there was that pesky extended reading from the Gospel of Luke.

So as we noted in this article, the network decided to just take a tax writeoff on the entire production. Fortunately, the story ends differently.

Perhaps in more recent memory, there was Living Biblically, a weekly sitcom, which was produced by Johnny Galecki of The Big Bang Theory. As we noted in this article, in order to be sensitive to two different religions’ approach to what Christians call The Old Testament, there was both a Christian pastor and a rabbi on the set while they were filming.

CBS cancelled the show after only one season.

Then in Fall 2017 it was deju vu all over again, as the network introduced God Friended Me, in which the God wouldn’t necessarily be the God of Evangelical American Christianity, and the ‘friended’ wouldn’t necessarily be Facebook. We wrote about the series in this article, and also reviewed the first episode, which I compared, quite accurately looking back, the detailed script writing to the series Lost.

Fans using the hashtag #GodFriendedMe are simply shocked as to why the wholesome series would be deleted, especially “now, when we really need it.” Others are suggesting another network swoop in and save the show, with The Hallmark Channel leading a list of suggestions that also includes FOX-TV and The CW.

One writer notes that the lead character, Miles, will receive “one last friend suggestion;” though it’s unclear if this is in the content which will air on Sunday or in the master arc final episode left unfilmed.

Although Miles is an atheist in the story, Christians resonated with his search for God. His father is portrayed as an Episcopal Bishop in New York City. But some felt the series lost its Evangelical following when a lesbian couple was introduced later this season.

Another writer noted that the cast were equally surprised by the cancellation. The actor who portrays Cara, Miles’ partner-in-crime trying to track down “who is behind the God account” while at the same time helping the people it sends as friend suggestions, resigned herself to the news, “Unfortunately this is the end of the road for the God Squad. We found out yesterday that our show will not be continuing for a third season. I’ve been so humbled by all of the messages I’ve received from all of you throughout these last two years, about how much these stories have impacted your lives and helped you through some tough times.”

Again, it amazes me how these networks invest in the development of these series only to pull the plug if ratings aren’t superlative. Many feel the show suffered by frequent broadcast delays due to sports programming running overtime, but the network contended it was comparing to other programs which have had to deal with the same issue.

Is God still alive and well at CBS? Yes he is, in the form of the occasional editorials by outspoken Roman Catholic and Late Night host Stephen Colbert. Hopefully he isn’t being told to tone down faith-focused references.

I’d like to see this show survive on another broadcast network, just as conservative comedian Tim Allen’s sitcom Last Man Standing did when it moved from ABC to FOX. There are precedents for this sort of thing, and I believe God Friended Me still has much longevity.

 

Review: God Friended Me

Back on August 27th, I told you about a new series beginning this fall on CBS-TV, and last night, after a 13-minute delay due to NFL Football — you’d think God would have that game under control — the series God Friended Me launched.  Miles Finer, the main character is the son of a minister turned atheist following the death of his mother, and is now an aspiring podcaster hoping to have his faith-focused program picked up by Sirius Radio.

The producers had said that “When we say ‘god,’ it’s the general — we’re not focusing on one religious figure or portrayal;” yet what was shown last night leaned more toward a Judeo-Christian God, probably due to the need to solidly introduce the main character, well-played by Brandon Michael Hall.  

So while the premise is multi-faith — “In the cast, Violett [Beane]’s character is Jewish, Miles (Hall) is an atheist, Suraj [Sharma] is Hindu.” — the execution of the pilot episode was more one-sided by necessity. That will may shift in future scripts.

If I have any takeaway from the show, it’s the extent to which individuals at large have their God-picture shaped by circumstances. One of the many comments on Twitter compared the show to Early Edition, and there are certainly a number of story vignettes involving characters in the right place at the right time, except that here the characters are connected, their stories are intertwined well beyond the realm of coincidence.

For some reason, I was reminded of Lost in the sense there is probably more backstory to the characters than we’ve seen — plus new ones which can be introduced at any time in future episodes through friend requests — and due to the story’s quest; in the case, the Holy Grail being finding out who is behind the “God” social media account.

All that to say that our view of God — even among those of us Evangelicals who contend that the object truth about God is clearly stated in the scriptures — is often subjective.

The pilot’s treatment of both belief and skepticism is respectful. Though the tension is certain there in the father-son dynamic, both viewpoints are given equal credibility.

And for all the Calvinist/Reformed people in the audience, Miles doesn’t confirm the friend request the first time around; God has to keep pursuing him. (But for all the Wesleyan/Arminian viewers, Miles can also unfriend God.)

The show’s downside on broadcast television is that CBS consistently stacks the commercial breaks on all its programs with more clutter promoting other shows than any other network. –“Blip-verts, anyone? — so there is also wisdom in waiting for the Season 1 DVD, though the show needs viewers now for that DVD to happen. 

One review concluded: “Should You Accept a Friend Request From God? I guess that depends on whether you’re still even active on Facebook. If God were smart, he’d pivot to Instagram and connect with the teens via dank memes and absurdist humor. He’s already on Twitter, but that site’s a good approximation of hell.”  You decide. 

The show airs Sunday nights on CBS at 8:00 PM, or, with the football season in full swing, more accurately “After 60 Minutes.”

God is Back on CBS-TV

After dumping the series Living Biblically after only one season, God returns to the CBS network in the series God Friended Me, this one a one-hour long comedy/drama, or if you prefer, fantasy/drama which first airs at the end of September. (Airing in Canada on CTV.)

Wikipedia has this short summary:

God Friended Me is described as a humorous, uplifting series that explores questions of faith, existence and science. It centers on Miles (Hall), an outspoken atheist whose life is turned upside down when he is friended by God on Facebook. Unwittingly, he becomes an agent of change in the lives and destinies of others around him. Violett Beane will play Cara Bloom. Confident, compelling and quick-witted, Cara is a leading writer at an online magazine. Under pressure for her next big story, her life takes an interesting turn when she meets Miles—thanks to God’s friend suggestion.

The network has been in talks with Facebook to settle the question of how the social media giant is portrayed and we’re told there will be some real-world Facebook accounts which will tie in to the program.

The website Deadline.com notes:

CBS’s new series God Friended Me is not Highway to Heaven or Touched By Angel, executive producers wanted to make very clear to TV critics at [Television Critics Association]. That, though both NBC’s Highway and CBS’s Touched were quite successful long-running series. Both those shows featured angels; this series does not. “There is nothing supernatural about our show,” [Executive Producer] Bryan Wynbrandt said.

At TV Guide (owned by CBS) we learn more about the “God” of the series:

CBS’ new heartfelt comedy-drama hybrid God Friended Me … probably conjures up the image of an old man with a long flowing white beard sitting on a cloud on his iPhone 5 (he’s old, remember) looking at recipe GIFs or cat memes, you know, the classic image of the Christian/Catholic God doing his thing when he’s not giving someone the flu when they say his name in vein.

But good news, all you other religious denominations — this “god” in God Friended Me is all gods, according to the producers of the show.

“When we say ‘god,’ it’s the general — we’re not focusing on one religious figure or portrayal,” executive producer Bryan Wynbrandt told reporters Sunday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. “In the cast, Violett [Beane]’s character is Jewish, Miles (Hall) is an atheist, Suraj [Sharma] is Hindu.”

So if God is present, what about Satan? The article continues,

… [T]he question of whether an opposing powerful force came up, but producers wouldn’t say if one would be in the show. But they did offer up this one bit of information.

“The devil would probably be on Twitter,” Wynbrandt said.

Weekend Link List

Weekend List Lynx – The lynx is considered a national animal in Macedonia where it is featured on the five denar coin

I wanted to call this “Long Weekend Link List” but there was a built-in ambiguity. Is it referring to the long weekend, or the production of a long list? Covering both meanings would be ideal, but that would involve actually providing a long list… 

…Our image above is titled “Manners Without Borders” and is from This Is Indexed. Click to read at source.

• Always remember the Prime Directive; and the presumed values and ethics behind it. NASA certainly did, and in 2014 awarded $1.1 million to The Center for Theological Inquiry, an organization “rooted in Christian theology. So why is an atheist organization just noticing?
• Essay of the Month: When we started making changes to worship, we didn’t stop at one or two, the revisions have been sweeping, to the point where nobody sings anymore.
• The New York Times looks at the very unique situation with Canada’s warm welcome of Syrian refugees.
• Church Websites (1): A look at why they are so very important.
• Church Websites (2): A look at where the process often breaks down.
• In a somewhat downsized event, member stores and suppliers in the Christian Bookseller’s Association met for their annual convention a few days ago in Cincinnati.
• The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a previous ruling by the law society in that province, denying accreditation of the law school at Trinity Western University.
• Tim Challies is doing a major reading challenge that would see him finishing 104 books by year-end. The year is now half over. You can join in for the last six months of 2016 as well, in reader categories labeled light, avid, committed and obsessed.  (He also receives hundreds of review books a year, but I happen to know book shelves aren’t a problem since he lives near an IKEA.)
• The headline congratulates Matt Maher on winning BMI’s Songwriter of the Year award (presumably in a Christian/Gospel category) and goes on to discuss his career. But in a couple of places, there are brief mentions that Maher’s award was a tie with Chris Tomlin…
• …Video of the Weekend: ♫ Ryan Stevenson’s In The Eye of the Storm has been out a few months, but is tracking high at Praise Charts. (Reminds me of Josh Garrels.)
  
• Putting something in “scare quotes” (see what I did there?) can change the meaning. Be sure to also check out the parable at the end.
• We’re ending with a double link to the same site and reproducing the second link in full here, meaning this might be a “long” weekend link list after all, since it’s a long list. What got our attention first, was Rob Jacob’s idea of Purpose Driven as a platform. (I might have used the word network, since “church network” is a thing, but I know some are already rebelling against that phrase.) …
• …But then a few days later Rob presented some insights he gained from the conference, and since we didn’t get to be there, we decided to steal some (or all) of them. But you can still send him some link love by clicking through for the full article.

25 Leadership Thoughts from the Purpose Driven Conference

1. Three things build trust in a leader. Compassion, Competency, and Consistency
2. If you depend on Man you get what Man can give. If you depend on God, you get what God can give.
3. The creators of culture are entertainment, sports, and business. It should be the church
4. Never confuse prominence with significance
5. Nobody likes big churches except pastors
6. Don’t ask God to use you greatly if you are not willing to be hurt greatly.
7. If you don’t take risks, you don’t need faith.
8. What is it in your ministry and life that cannot be explained other than for the supernatural power of God?
9. We should imitate the faith of others, not their style
10. To be a leader, you must have a message worth remembering, a lifestyle worth living, and a faith worth imitating
11. Bigger churches are not better. Small churches are not better. Better is better.
12. The greatest barrier to God’s work in me and through me is myself
13. It’s not what you achieve but who you become–who you become like
14. Spiritual growth is habitual. We grow by developing good habits
15. After asking IF your church should change, ask if you’re the right leader who should be leading the change
16. He has not called us to be original. He has called us to be effective. Sometimes imitation beats innovation
17. It’s easier to slow down a race horse than speed up a turtle. I hire race horses on my staff.
18. Never fight a battle that you won’t gain anything by winning
19. Leader…when you define the vision you are choosing in effect who will leave the church.
20. My goal in coming into a new leadership was not to be efficient but to be transformative
21. Pastor, when bringing renewal to the church, start with your dreams and not your problems
22. One of the secrets to success is to outlast your critics!
23. It takes unselfish people to grow a large church—love compels us to grow.
24. You have to build trust to earn the credibility to share the truth.
25. If you don’t measure it you can’t manage it.

Well, we don’t want to shortchange those of you who read to the bottom for the weird and humorous — like the postcard at right — so…

• A Las Vegas wedding chapel has facilitated the nuptials for a man who married his smart phone. 
• Only they’ve been at it longer: What The Babylon Bee is to Evangelicals, Eye of the Tiber is to Roman Catholics.
  

If you see an advertisement below this space, we didn’t put it there, and don’t know who it’s for (but feel free to tell us).

Sitcom Bait and Switch

At first I wasn’t going to watch. My broadcast television viewing — beyond the 6:30 newscasts — is limited to a couple of sitcoms which are basically time to de-stress. Besides, I have to justify owning the monster in the living room. Then I decided I’d give it a couple of episodes after all.

Billed as “an Irish-Catholic comedy,” The Real O’Neals is a mid-season replacement that joins a rather huge stable of ABC family-centered sitcoms such as Last Man Standing, Blackish, Fresh of the Boat, The Middle, The Goldbergs, Modern Family, etc. Only Dr. Ken is primarily workplace-centered.

Make no mistake, there is an Irish element and a Roman Catholic element to each episode. As a religion writer, that’s what drew me in. How would they portray the family? The mom, played by Martha Plimpton — who is somewhat of a carbon copy of the mother in The Goldbergs — had a bit of rant at the beginning of the episode broadcast Tuesday that sounded more Evangelical than anything. And the cross — definitely not a crucifix — in the background of one scene looked like someone in set design missed a detail. At least they got the Bingo Night part right.

Oh, and Jesus appears in each episode, but only one family member can see him.

But make no mistake, The Real O’Neals is the story of gay teenager’s coming out as gay to his family, to his girlfriend, and then to the community at large. Noah Galvin plays Kenneth “Kenny” O’Neal and his character is, in my view, the central one of the show. If anything, Kenny is a role model for gay teens and the program is thereby a “How To” manual for youth in a similar position.

Some in the gay community may feel the show kept a safe distance from some issues, but I’m sure that high school students, gay or straight, would give this a more positive review.

In a way, the show parallels the British/American co-production, You, Me and the Apocalypse. Despite the presence of a priest or two and a nun, and frequent scripture citations from Revelation in the first few episodes, any religious elements in the plot generally take a backseat to the action, adventure, suspense and intrigue.

There is the element of people claiming that the impending impact on earth of a giant meteor is actually the second coming of Jesus Christ but the key priest, Father Jude, played by a chain-smoking Rob Lowe, who must deal with Messiahs and rumors of Messiahs, is really part of a larger purpose and his clergy status is almost incidental as the series progresses. The show is really about the convergence of four very disparate people and plot-lines

Full disclosure: I bailed after four episodes. My wife watched the whole series — it has already aired in the UK — and filled me on the six scripts I am missing. I found the show terribly dark and have no idea why it aired at 8:00 PM in the U.S.

…With both The O’Neals and Apocalypse, I think the producers are playing on the American interest in all things spiritual while in fact furthering a different agenda. It’s not that Christians are misrepresented, but that the religious element is almost secondary to the larger plot.

 

Wednesday Link List

Our pastor drew this on Sunday morning. Any guesses? I know it cleared up everything for me.

It appears that all my news gathering algorithms were no match for the slow news cycle of a Memorial Day weekend. Nonetheless, we have a great list for you, but our deal with PARSE is that you need to click through to their site and then select the story you want to see. Click anything below to link.

• Worship leaders of all makes and models convened at Calvin College last week to sort out the music of the last six decades.
• Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen and T. D. Jakes were among the authors caught in last week’s showdown between Hachette Book Group and Amazon.
• Richard Dawkins: “I would describe myself as a secular Christian in the same sense as secular Jews have a feeling for nostalgia and ceremonies.” The author was presenting the first volume of his memoirs and made the remark in response to a comment from an American minister.
• Interview of the Week (1): How important is reading to the development of spiritual life? Can you be illiterate and be a faithful Christian?
• Interview of the Week (2): The InterVarsity Fall 2014 Catalog is remarkable for its omission of authors of color.
• Last week an opinionated blogger suggested that the meditation practice known as Lectio Divina was “dangerous.” Here is an informed response.
• Did a church experience leave you or someone you know abused or burned out? They could be suffering from Post Traumatic Church Syndrome or PTCS.
• Clobber Verses Department: A rather good attempt at balance in the Leviticus prohibition against homosexuality.
• Essay of the Week (1): Despite their preponderance online, the New Calvinism movement must contend with some serious problems.
• Essay of the Week (2): When navigating your church through times of transition, there is a big difference between change and transformation.
• Essay of the Week (3): The honest, painful story of a couple who made the decision to terminate a pregnancy.
• Despite losing two sons in an Arkansas tornado, a mother affirms the goodness of God.
• If rush hour commuters are taking a short cut through your church parking lot anyway, why not install a prayer box?
• Apologetics Alley: When people you know are hung up on alleged Bible contradictions, here are ten principles to keep in mind when formulating your response.
• After years of silence followed by coming out gay, singer Jennifer Knapp is telling her story in a book releasing through Howard Publishing.
• The cover story of a UK Evangelical magazine proclaims that one’s stand on homosexuality has become the new litmus test for orthodoxy.
• The blog, Just a Thought continues its Five Questions series with a survivor of the worst disaster in U.S. Navy history.
• “The fact that all five of the greatest men in the Bible failed so miserably gives me incredible hope and encouragement.” The common denominator among Bible greats.
• Recurring Discussion Department: Why American Christians might want to reconsider reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
• For some visionaries, it seems that every time they have a great idea, it only takes nanoseconds for the leadership to say ‘No.’
• Here’s a double-header for a pastor whose blog I’ve been following for a long time: Keeping volunteers on message and avoiding the tendency to ‘fix’ people.
• If you’re considering “the ministry,” keep in mind that it’s not all glamor. Instead, it’s mostly nuts and bolts and odd hours.
• Here’s a book review that intrigued me. Mission Drift deals with Institutional Drift, which happens when organizations become distracted.
• In Canada, the Province of Quebec is re-introducing its controversial euthanasia legislation.
• The last remaining major newspaper reporter dedicated to religion news has had her position terminated after 27 years.
• Okay, admittedly he doesn’t update it very often, but infrequently Ed Young still posts at his Pastor Fashion blog.
• The choices may be a little biased, but if you want to balance out all the contemporary bloggers and Tweeters in your day with some classic writing, try The Old Guys.
• Hillsong’s “Oceans” (“You call me out upon the waters…”) has cracked a record set by MercyMe in 2003 for the longest run on the top of the Billboard Christian Songs Chart.
• CBN News profiles NHL veteran and Stanley Cup Champion Matt Cullen.
• Booked your Christian music festival for the summer? I love the website for June’s AtlantaFest 2014. Find an event near you at the Christian Festival Guide.

Got a suggestion for next week’s links? Find the contact page at Paul’s blog, Thinking Out Loud or via @PaulW1lk1nson and make some noise by noon on Monday.

Save Me from Save Me

Just a little over a year after ABC-TV gave us Good Christian Bitches  which got abbreviated to GCB at the same time as the Southern Baptist Convention offered an alternative name Great Commission Baptists; NBC-TV is just days away from the launch of the four-week miniseries Save Me. The series stars Anne Heche as a woman who, after nearly choking to death on a sandwich, takes on a prophetic role as a direct pipeline to God. Sitcoms Online reports the series will air for four weeks, as of now, from May 23 through June 13.

And so it begins again. Lately the hallmark of mainstream media’s portrayal of Christianity has been slightly more accurate in terms of theology, or at least in terms of what we could term megachurch culture, with shows like Sisterhood blurring the distinctions between drama, comedy and reality TV. But the characters all tend to be slightly over-the-top representations, and many times the humor is at the expense of those who seem to be afflicted with faith. A two-minute preview of Save Me reveals a show that is mostly uses a religious framework to advance a script that might have developed just as well without dragging God into it.

Still, we don’t wish to judge a program we haven’t seen so we’ll have to wait for  May 23rd at 8:00 PM Eastern. But we couldn’t resist the post header above. Truly, I hope we’re not saying “Save Me” in the first five minutes.  Watch a preview on YouTube. (Language issues.)

Wednesday Link List

And you thought I would take the day off, didn’t you? Well, the link list crew worked all New Year’s Day to bring this to you.

• Russell D. Moore has a unique observation post from which to consider the decision by the Russian government to suspend adoptions of Russian children by Americans. I think his two Russian born children would agree with his summary.
• Hi readers. Meet Matt Rawlings. Matt read 134 books last year. How did you do? 
• And here’s another Matt. Matt Appling has put together an amazing essay on why the concept of shame is ripe for a comeback.
  
• David Murrow has an interesting idea in which popular TV pastors are a brand that is a type of new denomination. He also has other ideas about what the church will look like in 50 years. (Or read the Todd Rhoades summary.)
  
• Some readers here also blog, and if that’s you, perhaps you do the “top posts” thing. (I don’t.) But if you had a post-of-the-year, I can almost guarantee it weren’t nothin’ like this must-read one.
• “This is the most egregious violation of religious liberty that I have ever seen.” Denny Burk on what is largely a U.S.-based story, but with justice issues anyone can appreciate: The case of Hobby Lobby.
• Can some of you see yourself in this story? “It’s really hard for me to read God’s word without dissecting it. I like to have commentaries and cross references. I like to take notes. I like to circle, underline, rewrite. And then my time with God turns into another homework assignment.” I can. More at Reflect blog.
• This one may be sobering for a few of you. David Fitch offers three signs that you are not a leader, at least where the Kingdom of God is concerned.
• “We put people into leadership roles too early, on purpose. We operate under the assumption that adults learn on a need-to-know basis. The sooner they discover what they don’t know, the sooner they will be interested in learning what they need to know…At times, it creates problems. We like those kinds of problems…” Read a sample of Andy Stanley’s new book, Deep and Wide, at Catalyst blog.
• So for some of you, 2013 represents getting back on the horse again, even though you feel you failed so many times last year. Jon Acuff seems to understand what you’re going through.
• Dan Gilgoff leaves the editor’s desk at CNN Belief Blog after three years and notes five things he learned in the process.
• More detail on the Westboro petition(s) at the blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars; along with our get well wishes to blog proprietor Ed Brayton, recovering from open heart surgery.
  
• Rachel Held Evans mentioned this one yesterday: The How To Talk Evangelical Project.  Sample: “If Christianese was a language, evangelical was our own special dialect. A cadence. A rhythm…” Click the banner at the top for recent posts.
• Not sure how long this has been available, but for all you Bible study types,  here’s the ultimate list for academically-inclined people who want to own the best Bible commentary for each Bible book. (And support your local bookstore if you still have one!)
• Bob Kauflin salutes the average worship leader, working with the average team at the average church. Which despite what you see online is mostly people like us.
  
• Flashback all the way to September for this one: Gary Molander notes that the primary work of a pastor is somewhat in direct conflict with the calling they feel they are to pursue. He calls it, Why is it So Stinkin’ Hard to Work for a Church?
• Nearly three years ago, we linked to this one and it’s still running: CreationSwap.com where media shared for videos, photos, logos, church bulletins, is sold or given away by thousands of Christian artists.

USAToday Scales Back Religion Coverage

At a time when other media outlets are stepping up coverage of religion-based or religion-influenced stories, USAToday, which led the way in this area for several years, is scaling back. Cathy Lynn Grossman reports at the soon-to-be-discontinued blog, Faith and Reason*:

After four years of spirited conversation… Faith & Reason and its accompanying reader-led Faith & Reason Forum are shutting down.

USA TODAY is celebrating 30 years with a massive redesign of all publishing platforms…

…Several digital subject-area pages, including the online religion page, will vanish as stories are mainstreamed into News. If you read on a smartphone or tablet, you won’t notice any change. But if you read religion coverage at USATODAY.com on your laptop, these stories will be running in News, Nation and Politics, just as they already do in print…

But then this note:

…so many posted at the Faith & Reason Forum it became the most successful forum at USATODAY.com by a mile.

So why end it now?

I have been meaning however, to note here at some point how much the general media pages devoted to religion have been dominated by coverage of Roman Catholic people and events. Perhaps others have noted that as well, and it’s led to this decision. And the CNN Belief blog is often dominated by commentary instead of news, and one particular writer especially. There’s a place where I would have preferred to see the winds of change blow.

Faith and Reason at USAToday was very much appreciated.  Cathy, I tried to leave a comment only to find it had become a Facebook-members-only forum — perhaps that was not such a good idea — and since I’m not sure if you got it, here it is:  I’ve truly appreciated your insights and your perspective, and you’ve alerted me to many news stories I would have missed.  I’ll look forward to seeing your byline in other sections of USAToday.

*obviously this link may not last long

Wednesday Link List

WLL #99, but who’s counting?  Besides they existed before the name became uniform each week. 

• Fine artist Thomas Kinkade died over the Easter weekend. He chose to highly commercialize his art rather than sell in galleries; and after becoming a Christian many of his works were faith-focused.
  
• Many local churches are discovering how to do what we call The Lord’s Supper or Communion in something closer to its original context as a meal. Alan Knox shares how that happened in combination with an Easter Sunday gathering.
  
• You may have seen the Google predictive search results for phrases beginning with “Christians are…”  Matt Stone tries Google searching the same phrase substituting other religions.
  
• An Ontario school board wants to ban the distribution of Bibles, and now board members are receiving threats which are not coming from the Gideons.
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) ran a report on Easter Sunday on how technology is impacting various world religions. Bobby Gruenewald of livechurch.tv was interviewed, and there was a brief shot of Craig Groeschel, but otherwise, Christian representation was limited to file footage of Billy Graham et al.
• The American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) wandered down the same road on the same day with an interview with Rick Warren, who hasn’t done much media lately.  Don’t miss the part on page five of the transcript where he affirms that dogs and cats go to heaven. Yes, he said that. (Video not available outside the U.S.)
  
• And speaking of heaven, Time Magazine revisits the concept four years later.  Here’s a link to their coverage then and now; the ’08 article is available in full, the current article will cost ya.
  
• The Russian Orthodox Church went to a lot of trouble to airbrush a photo showing Patriarch Kirill I wearing a $30,000 wristwatch, but while they got they watch removed, they missed its reflection in a highly polished table.
  
• Peter Rollins publicly denies the resurrection. But before you quote me on that, better watch the video.
  
• Yesterday at C201 we tapped into a series from Mike Breen’s blog wherein a British pastor reflects on the differences between the church in North America and the church in England.
• A graduate student in theology and support staff worker at Randy Alcorn’s Eternal Perspective Ministries gives a short Christian response to The Hunger Games franchise.
  
• Rachel Held Evans spoofed her own Sunday Superlatives — the equivalent to this Wednesday Link List — on what happened to be April 1st. Too bad; some of the articles looked promising.
  
• Blogger John Shore participated in a “Burning of Resentments” ceremony on Easter Sunday. Apparently in 2013 this is going to take place across religious lines in San Diego County.
• What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him is a new collection of essays from author Byron Forrest Yawn. Check out the book trailer.
  
• 

  The character in this Motts for Tots packaging looks really familiar, but shouldn't that be tomato juice instead of apple juice?

  Jefferson Bethke, aka the “I hate religion but I love Jesus” guy, is interviewed by Trevin Wax on the topic of Student Ministry.
  
• The old church annual report is never the same once it goes digital.  Here’s an analysis of the one from Elevation Church (Steven Furtick) which includes video links, infographics and humor.
  
• Want to take your church service online?  Check out Church Online Platform and also 316 Networks.
  
• It’s been ten months now, and this post about regulations at Perry Noble’s church still draws a lot of comments from both sides.
  
• The Worship Song links in the sidebar at Christianity 201 have finally been updated, and the blogroll here is in the middle of some serious editing. Only blogs with posts within the last 30 days are listed, though some do return after disappearing.
• Christianity Today now requires a subscription in order to read selected articles online. If you find a link here to what is now paid article, let me know and it will be deleted.