Thursday Link List

It’s a great weather day where I live, so for some of you, these are the only links that matter.

A few things seen the day after I would like to have included yesterday. Some of the items below are perhaps of greater interest to people in vocational ministry, but I chose things that I think all of us can connect with. If you missed the bigger list yesterday, click here.

• Canada’s John Stackhouse guests at Lorna Dueck’s website and looks at the composition of the Willow Creek church board and how the choosing of board members can influence outcomes in situations like the one the church just faced. “From what I could read … the website indicates that the Board of Elders of this large, globally influential church features eight impressive people who are long-time members of Willow Creek and who bring a range of gifts and experiences to the Elder Board. All well and good. Collectively, however, they list not a single year of theological education. Nor do any of them have experience in pastoral ministry.”
• Egalitarian in theory, but not in practice: Canada’s Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada — the country’s direct equivalent of the Assemblies of God — has been at the forefront of ordaining women and even having women as senior pastors. But it doesn’t always translate into actual positions being granted with what the denom would like to see. So, at this year’s annual conference in Victoria, BC, they affirmed their stance: “Two decades later, we recognize that although our accepted, official position is one of equality between men and women, that position has not translated to reality. Women continue to be vastly underrepresented both as vocational pastors and in governing roles at District and National levels, despite female students consistently attending our Bible Colleges in significant numbers. There is a gap between our official position and our lived reality.”
• Following up on a link from yesterday, we listened to the most recent John Mark Comer sermon online. If nothing else, listen to the first 5-10 minutes. We also linked yesterday to a piece about “data dumping” where pastors simply unload a great volume of information in a non-academic, church environment. With that in mind, check out how this is done in Comer’s sermon. It’s a friendly, unthreatening approach with an admitted theology “nerd” sharing what he learned and recognizing some people may temporarily tune out. I think however, it’s also the degree of sermon prep which attracts people to his church.
• Andy Stanley has been the most recent target of the label Marcionite, because of a sermon in the “Aftermath” series wherein he spoke of the first generation church ‘unhitching’ itself from the Old Testament way of doing things. Peter Enns addressed this a few months back, noting that God’s so-called “split personality” isn’t just apparent along the OT/NT divide: “Different portrayals of the one God are self-evident, not simply between the two Testaments but within each Testament. Israel’s Scripture does not present God in one way, but various ways—depending on who is writing, when, and for what reason. Same with the New. This is what keeps theologians so busy, trying to make that diversity fit into a system of some sort.”
• Staying with the OT for a minute, what is the last book of the Old Testament? Did you say Malachi (the Italian prophet)? “The Bible that Jesus was familiar with, what we now refer to as the Old Testament, did not end with Malachi. In fact, it wasn’t even a single volume book. Rather, it was a collection of separate scrolls that were made to be read as a unified collection, and the book designed as the concluding crown jewel was 1st and 2nd Chronicles! Your favorite book of the Bible, I’m sure.” We don’t know how the change happened but we do know the “The general picture we get from the book is that the long years of Israel’s exile did not fundamentally change the hearts of the people. They’re still in rebellion against God, the temple is corrupted, and it leaves the reader waiting for some kind of resolution.”
• An Arminian website offers “Five Biblical Texts that Calvinists Can’t Wiggle Out Of.” The outline parallels TULIP, and at the end, they admit their strongest case is made with “L” — an argument against limited atonement.
• Still continuing with the number ‘5’ an article by a lawyer at Christianity Today offers five things your church should purchase before adding a coffee bar, or making another such purge. (This article may be pay-walled soon.)
• Got an hour to think about comedy? We listened to this over two nights. Christian stand-up Jon Crist was the guest on The Wally Show (WAY-FM) and they left a camera running in the studio as they recorded the segments.

Wednesday Link List

Foxtrot circa 2003

Been away all summer? In July the Wednesday Link List was the victim of a corporate takeover…. to see the version of this containing the links, you have to click over to Out of Ur, a blog of Leadership Journal, a division of Christianity Today.

• Why should the devil have all the good parties? An expert in block parties suggests that Christians should host the best street events.
• It’s hard to find a place where fracking isn’t a hot environmental issue. What if your church could register claim to the mineral rights underneath the church building?
• Duck Dynasty star Jase Robertson is kicked out of the Trump hotel when it’s assumed he is a homeless man, in another case of “facial profiling.”
• Dara Maclean’s video for “Wanted” is powerful both musically and lyrically, but the critics think the glamor/fashion element is overplayed.
• We’re not sure if it’s a King James Bible or just a generic Bible, but by 2015 you’ll be seeing .bible as an internet domain name.
• Last year over 13,100 churches participated in a growing national movement and on average saw a 38% increase in their attendance on Back to Church Sunday.
• Much of the week’s news focus was on Egypt, where the Defense Minister vows to rebuild damaged churches.
• What if we saw the Bible less as a prison sentence and more like a permission slip? Check out a 2-minute sermon highlights video where Steven Furtick takes a fresh approach to financial giving.
• When it comes to role of women in the early church, one author believes that part of the story has been “airbrushed from history.”
• What’s a former Saddleback worship leader doing in a Canadian jail? It could have something to do with things allegedly found in his luggage.
• Alise Wright drives nearly an hour to attend a church where, by her own admission, she doesn’t fit in.
• With great regret, in the wake of the loss of his wife and publishing ministry partner on May 8th, Keith Brenton announces the shuttering of Wineskins Magazine.
• Rick Warren is raising awareness, but one Canadian blogger thinks the church is generally skittish when it comes to mental health issues.
• A popular devotional blog provides some background to the forthcoming book Dying Out Loud by Shawn Smucker, the story of missionaries Stan and Ann Steward.
• When viewers phone in to respond to a Billy Graham television program, they don’t know where the calls are being answered. A call center might actually be a transformed Savannah, Georgia chiropractic clinic.
• The former Crystal Cathedral, now Christ Cathedral — home of the world’s 4th largest church organ — begins $53 million in renovations to bring it up to Catholic standards, I’m guessing.
• You may call them board members, or even, as one church in my area does “The Directorate.” But there’s still good application in this article about the ordination of elders.
• On the other side of the pond, it’s not just Presbyterians, but Anglicans who have trouble with that verse in In Christ Alone. [Note: BCP = Book of Common Prayer]
• The more the merrier: By the time you read this it’s already eight days old, but Phil Vischer Podcast #64 with Sara Groves and Todd Groves ranks as one my favorites.
• Worship Department: First, we followed the CCLI Top 25 song charts by country; but now there’s also the Praise Charts chart. (Not a typo!)
• A Chattanooga, Tennessee pastor offers five reasons why discipleship should take place in small groups.
• Not sure how long this will be there, but the full 70-minutes of Nick Vujicic’s Life Without Limbs video is currently available to watch online.
• Church History Department: Yes it was his real name. Pentecostal pioneer Smith Wigglesworth passed away in 1947, but like many classic authors his books still sell and he is still tweeting.   (C. S. Lewis tweets several times a day!)
• Ask the Doctor: A flashback to last year, where Dr. Russell Moore answered, Should a Christian wedding photographer shoot a same-sex marriage ceremony?
• Who needs videos of cute cats when you can join 600,000 people online and watch an Oklahoma pastor’s sermon where he takes a strip off some of his congregants by name.

Well, we could just keep on going, but we might lose some of you around link #50. The action stays here at Thinking Out Loud the rest of the week, or you can always join my rather anemic group of followers on Twitter.  And again, in case you missed it, the links are active at Out of Ur.  A final graphic — one of last week’s links — from Sacred Sandwich:

No Women Bishops in the C. of E., For Now

There are probably more female clergy in the Church of England and its north American counterparts — The Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church in the U.S. — than in many other Protestant denominations. But a glass ceiling formally exists preventing women from rising to the rank of bishop (literally ‘overseer’ in scripture).

Superficial media reports suggested that the recent attempt to change the rules failed because the two-thirds majority required for change wasn’t attained, but that’s an oversimplification of how the vote took place.

In fact, what was required was a two-thirds majority in each of the three “houses” that are represented at the annual conference: Bishops, clergy and laity.

The bishops themselves — by definition all male — were actually the least opposed to the idea. If it were just an overall popular vote needed to carry the resolution for change, their overwhelming majority support would have been enough to reach the two-thirds needed.

The clergy weren’t so overwhelming but also supported the need for change.

It was — and this is the under reported part of the story — in the “house” consisting of lay people appointed to the General Synod where the two-thirds majority failed.

The House of Bishops voted 44 in favour, with three against and two recorded abstentions. In the House of Clergy, 148 voted in favour, 45 against and there were no abstentions.

But in the House of Laity, 74 voted against, compared to 132 in favour with no abstentions.      ~ BreakingNews.ie

Honestly, I would have expected the three votes to be the other way around; the rank and file pushing for a more progressive situation, and the powers that be wanting to maintain the status quo. But what do I know about Anglicans?

At least one traditionalist, who ought to be happy with the outcome, is still upset that the vote happened.

And the Huffington Post, never wanting to miss out on sensationalism said the church “faces growing pressure to rip up its rulebook to allow the ordination of women bishops.”

The newly appointed archbishop feels it’s just a matter of time, and expects to consecrate a female bishop during his term of office.

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.

Canadian Evangelical Denomination Ready to Ordain Women

I held back on this story for more than a week expecting to see a larger outpouring of commentary online, but outside of people who attended the General Assembly of the Canadian wing of the Christian & Missionary Alliance (C&MA), or people who were following the events, the interwebs have been strangely silent. Suffice it to say they voted to permit the ordination of women.

Blogger and PhD candidate Jon Coutts presents an exhaustive “History of Gender Roles in the C&MA” in which he obviously sees the present announcement as 130 years in the making.

There’s also an excellent article online (in .pdf form) written by the newly elected president of the denomination, which uses the example of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, a denomination whose connection to the C&MA I often refer to as “doctrinal cousins,” to make a case for ordination of women.

What is probably most significant about this, is that while some evangelical groups sanction the participation of women in leadership on various levels, there has been very little movement on this in Evangelical circles up to this announcement.

While the C&MA is not well known among all U.S. Evangelicals, it is proportionately more visible in Canada, especially in the western provinces where some of the country’s largest churches are Alliance. Among its membership is Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The denomination began as a missionary-sending agency in its early days with a “fellowship” establishing itself along a parallel track. In that sense, there are similarities between the C&MA and the Salvation Army, the latter also having in its history a ‘parachurch organization’ type of beginning which quickly expanded to include offering its own Sunday worship services.

Ordination of women as elders is a contentious issue in some C&MA local churches. As someone who has been a part of one — with a brief interruption to attempt a non-denominational church plant — the most recent vote for change in our congregation had more than 50% support, but the bar had been set previously as “a two-thirds majority.” To compound matters, there are families who do not hold membership — and therefore could not vote — because they don’t support the church’s refusal to have women ordained as church board members. That’s a “Catch 22,” or in the case of a two-thirds majority, a “Catch 33.” 

The change in policy at the denomination happened largely because of serious discussion as to what ordination constitutes. Undoubtedly, there are women in many local churches who are already “set apart” in leadership roles; this simply confers official status on what God is already doing in their lives.

Wednesday Link List

Hark how the links, sweet silver links, all seem to say, “Throw cares away!”

• Gonna do something I’ve done here before and make the first link one from this very blog.  I’m getting a ton of hits for a piece I wrote here last year dealing with the burning question, Should Audiences Still Stand for the Hallelujah Chorus?  But with only eleven comments, there’s still room for yours, and it will get viewed many times over the next few days.
• Just when think you’ve seen all the weird churches in the world, you discover this one, which has major parking problems, not to mention severe access issues.  Check out this mini photo essay from our old friend Abraham Piper at 22 Words.
• It’s rare in the Christian blogosphere that you see someone give a Christian book a really bad review. Perhaps that’s what makes this review at the blog Supermoms Are Fake, in some ways, so refreshing.
• Some of you remember Hermant Mehta at the blog, The Friendly Atheist, from his book I Sold My Soul on E-Bay.  Sometimes I check back to see how he’s doing, whereupon I found this one: Why Are This Many Atheist Scientists Taking Their Children To Church?
• Leaders are readers. So begins a concise, 7-point piece by Dave Kraft at Leadership from the Heart, I Would Love to Read More, But…
• Music video department: Enjoy a free taste of fourteen updated hymns at Indelible Grace III – For All The Saints.
• …which got me poking around YouTube where I ended up listening to this updated version of Jesus I Come (which I know as Out of My Bondage) by the Shelly Moore Band.
• Christianity Today music guy Mark Moring talks to Chris Tomlin aka the “worship song machine.” Tomlin just doesn’t see himself writing any other kind of music. Which I suppose suits us just fine.
• Philanthropy meets good business sense as a Toronto group puts together winter survival kits for the homeless.
  
• Canadian Charismatic Evangelist Todd Bentley is in the UK, but a Member of Parliament is telling Brits to beware the tattoo preacher.   The Sunday Express reports. (HT: Rick and Bene.)
  
• The newest blog at Alltop Christian is called Slow Running Honey, another blog which seems to exist for the purpose of promoting a book. That’s fine, I guess, but the Christian blogosphere didn’t start out that way. (Though it got there quickly.)
  
• Newest blog at Alltop Church is Nate Fietzer‘s which is a KidMin blog, meaning children’s ministry and leadership.  It’s him we also thank for the Life graphic below. Did you design that, Nate?

• I think Justin and Tricia attend Pete Wilson’s church; I know Justin filled in for Pete once during the summer. Here’s an article that could revolutionize your marriage, and the concept is so simple, it revolves around one little three-letter word.
• After a few days in Sick Bay, Rev. Billy Graham is now back home.
• Okay, so you go to a church where women don’t teach, but they do scripture readings. But isn’t the public reading of scripture a type of teaching ministry? Or is it? What about soloists? Jesse Johnson wades into a thorny topic.
• Sounds of the season: Drummer Sean Quigley is the latest to offer a fresh take on a classic, in this case The Little Drummer Boy.
• Lots of videos this week, but you don’t want to miss this one: Bethlehemian Rhapsody, which was actually posted in 2009, but is still being discovered. (The sheep steal their scenes each time!)
• Like all good link lists, we have another t-shirt for you. This is from Amanda at Faith in The Journey a tumblr blog packed with great graphic ideas. The shirt is from zazzle.com