7 Ways to Get to Christ in the Old Testament:

You see Jesus himself is the great theme and story of the Bible; all other stories point to him! I want to share seven ways to get to Christ from the Old Testament. Hopefully these will help you avoid the mistake that I (and others) have made as you study the scriptures.

Catacomb Christianity and Cathedral Christianity:

The catacombs, of course, are the legacy of a tiny persecuted band of believers, meeting in their graveyards to escape the all-seeing eye of imperial Rome. The cathedrals represent a very different turn in church history: a church that not only could grow in size but could, in fact, outgrow and outlast the Empire itself. The catacombs represent simplicity and earthiness; the cathedrals transcendence and wonder.

We need both, somehow.

HHS Doesn’t Speak for Me, Or Many Women:

Tens of thousands of thoughtful women are wondering why — at a time of national economic crises, and with contraception as cheap and widely available as it is — the government has chosen to pick a fight with the religious institutions employing and serving the most vulnerable people in the country, and is doing so under the banner of women’s rights.

The 50 Best Author vs. Author Put-Downs of All Time (HT):

Yes, hell hath no fury like one author gleefully savaging another author’s work.

And, lucky for us, there’s plenty to be had where that came from.

Cast your eye on these, the 50 most memorable author vs. author put-downs (in no particular order; though if you’ve got a favorite, by all means, comment on it, below).

Your Greatest Contribution:

Have you ever considered that your greatest contribution to the cause of Christ just might be the time you spend in intercessory prayer for your children and others we consider to be part of this “next generation”?

What a Comedian Taught Me About Parenting:

Some parents are permissive and lazy. Others are over-bearing kill-joys. Sadly, many of us manage to be both. I say: keep them safe, keep them away from sin, give them the gospel, and let the good times roll. Hey, I wouldn’t mind being five again. So why make the five year-old miserable because she likes being five too. Kids are kids. And we’d be better and happier parents with better and happier kids if we allowed that sometimes the joy in their silly, childlike hearts is worth more than the paint on our precious parent-like walls.

Too Catholic to Be Catholic:

My Protestantism, my reformed catholicity, isn’t at all in conflict with that passion for church unity.  There is no tension at all.  On the contrary, it’sbecause I am so passionate to see the church reunited that I, not grudgingly but cheerfully, stay where I am.  My summary reason for staying put is simple: I’m too catholic to become Catholic or Orthodox.

Is Church Growth Always Good?

There seem to be two extremes with proponents and opponents of church growth, however. One extreme is overly captivated with growth. The other is overly cautious of growth. I don’t think either is the right course of action.

If Christ is Lord, Everything Matters:

What then does it mean to live in the light of eternity? It begins with recognising that the “all” in the statement above refers to the whole of created reality. This is where the root of the problem often lies, for many Christians have a narrow view of creation that does not go beyond the physical stuff that we can see and touch. But creation includes the whole of our creaturely existence, the norms and laws and structures that God has woven into the fabric of reality that guide and give shape to our life on this earth.

The Gospel is Offensive. Nothing Else Should Be.

Pastors, continue to preach the unfiltered gospel. Run the risk of offending people with their sin and shocking them with the unending love of Jesus. But equip your people to set the table in such a way that nothing else offends them. Seek to create the kind of environment where your guests will say, “I don’t necessarily agree with what I heard, but I can’t argue with how I was treated.” That environment will eventually turn cold hearts warm and lead people to the gospel.

Deep Roots Library:

Deep Roots Library exists to serve the Church by  making writings from Christian history accessible, readable, affordable, and searchable. We believe that there is great value in fellowship among believers, even if they are centuries removed from where we are today.

Technology has made it possible for the first time ever to have immediate access to thousands of books, devotionals, commentaries, and sermons, Deep Roots Library exists to make sure that this opportunity isn’t wasted, that believers around the world can access solid Biblical teaching, all for free.

Don’t Confuse Knowledge and Success with Maturity:

Ministry success is always more a statement about God than about the people he uses for his purpose. I had it all wrong. It took credit that I did not deserve for what I could not do. I made it about me, so I didn’t see myself as headed for disaster and in deep need for the rescue of God’s grace. I was a man in need of rescuing grace.

Jefferson Bethke: 10 Things You Have to Do if You Want the Next Generation to Listen

I’ve noticed the biggest thing my generation wants is just someone who tells it how it is. They just want someone who lays it all out there and has firm convictions about what they believe. My generation just wants authenticity.

Ronald Reagan’s answer to a boy who asked for federal funds to clean his room

Ed Stetzer’s daughter is home from the hospital. But those in the southeast ought to be on the look-out for tick-borne illnesses, as this story in The Tennessean shows.

““Everyone has heard of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but I had no idea how serious this was,” Stetzer said. “You are having conversations about mortality rates and everything else. We’ve been pretty worn out, but right now we’re just relieved.”

Dunn said it is not unusual for one or two deaths from a tick-borne illness to occur in Tennessee during the spring to autumn period, but he is not aware of any this season. Although a tick bite by itself is not a reason to seek antibiotics, he said, anyone who gets a fever after a bite should seek treatment from a medical provider.

The Fruit of the Spirit and Your Work:

We so easily miss that. It’s easy to think of the fruit of the Spirit and other Christian virtues as applying to some abstract realm, rather than being the character qualities we are to manifest every day, in all areas of life — which includes our work.

The fruit of the Spirit, in fact, have a massive application in our daily work, if you think about it.

How to Smartly Engage with the Young Doubters in Your Midst:

One of the concerns young people commonly voiced in the study is that church feels unfriendly to doubters. This particular critique has less to do with a polemical topic—be it sex or science—and more to do with whether the church welcomes dialogue in the first place. It encompasses all other concerns by asking the question, is there even a safe context for us to talk about doubts?

Love Covers a Multitude of Sins:

The Bible gives us two: lovingly overlook that sin or lovingly address that sin. The question is, when are we to overlook and when are we to address?

Why the Leadership Movement is Leaving Your Church Leaderless:

Are our development programs about releasing leaders to the missional frontier? Or, more likely, are they about recruiting volunteers to keep the machine of the church running? To be sure, we should attend to the organization of the church, for it is a significant thing when the scattered church gathers. But as the Church stares precipitous decline in the face—as we look to re-embrace the missio Dei—we must learn again the art that Jesus exhibited: the task of multiplying missional leaders and releasing them into the cracks and crevices of society where there is little-to-no Gospel presence.

J.D. Greear on asking Jesus into your heart:

My concern is not on what words we might use to express our faith, but that we understand saving faith and how we can gain assurance that we have it. Many Christians see salvation as a transaction one conducts with Jesus (signified by “inviting Jesus into your heart” or some equivalent) rather than the beginning of a posture they take toward the finished work of Christ.

3 Reasons to Say “You” More Often in Your Sermons:

Saying “you” in sermons has become uncomfortable for preachers. Like third grade teachers who switch from red to green pens, many preachers are afraid of coming across too strong.

What I mean by saying “you” in a sermon is that the preacher uses “you” to make it obvious that his exhortation is aimed directly at his people.

From one of my favorite Wesleyans, Timothy Tennent – Robust Christianity in a Post-Christendom World:

The great project of our generation is to reclaim biblical Christianity as the Church. This will inevitably involve standing up and articulating with far more precision exactly what Christianity actually is.  It has become almost a trite statement in recent years that our culture has abandoned the Christian faith.  This actually is not my greatest concern.  My greatest concern is that those of us who are pastors and leaders have ourselves forgotten the gospel.

Rescued from Isolation:

Pastor, I’ve got good news for you: you are not alone! By God’s grace there are other pastors just like you on the other side of town, and profound blessings await if you simply make a habit of meeting together for lunch. That obvious truth is easy to overlook. I certainly ignored it for too long.

Reality TV and Religion Give Birth to Top Baby Names:

“Celebrity naming is just about the exposure and about everybody hearing that name at the same time,” Wattenberg said. “It’s not about the fame, it’s about the name.”

Religion continues to have a big influence on baby names, but with a twist.

Jon Acuff Misses Sunday School:

Dear Sunday School,

Wow, where do I even begin? It’s been so long since we last talked. Fifteen years at least. I used to go see you in college on the Sundays I would go to church. There you were, faithful and true. No jumping around during the week for you. Like an old friend, you were always waiting for me in the same spot each week. At church, spooning right up against the service.

I could double dip.

I could knock out both at once. Church and Sunday School were the perfect team, like chocolate and peanut butter, frog and toad, Kim Kardashian and a professional athlete/Kanye.

9 Tips for Eating Christianly:

Nine tips/suggestions for how me might approach our consumption of food more thoughtfully and Christianly…

Consternation over Ben Carson, Evolution, and Morality:

If Emory University professors want to argue that evolution has no ethical implications, they are free to make that argument. (I wonder how many of them actually believe this.) But, if they do, they need to recognize that they are not just arguing against “benighted” anti-evolutionists, but they also are arguing against many of their cherished colleagues in evolutionary biology, including Darwin himself.

7 Marks of a Good Theologian

What’s a Homemaker Really Worth?

Allow me to suggest two simple reasons why homemaking isn’t esteemed by our culture. First, there is a general ignorance of what homemaking entails. And second, more importantly, we don’t value children.

Must Baptism Precede Church Membership? Of course!

I hope it’s clear why I would say that baptism should precede church membership. Baptism is a public identification with the Trinity. That’s what Jesus means when he speaks of being baptized “into the name” of Father, Son, and Spirit. When you are baptized, you are saying, “I’m with them!”  You are putting on the team jersey.

The 4-Question Meeting: You Can’t Be Brilliant Alone

A successful meeting ensures the right people are invited and the material is presented as effectively and judiciously as possible. It is respectful of your time and enables you to contribute in a meaningful way or makes you smarter. Too often this is the exception than the norm, which put me on a quest to identify a quick process to improve the odds.

Lenin’s Death Remains a Mystery: Doctor Suspects Stalin

Dr. Lurie said Stalin might have poisoned Lenin despite this assurance, as Stalin was “absolutely ruthless.”

Dr. Vinters believes that sky-high cholesterol leading to a stroke was the main cause of Lenin’s death. But he said there is one other puzzling aspect of the story. Although toxicology studies were done on others in Russia, there was an order that no toxicology be done on Lenin’s tissues.

So the mystery remains.

Same-Sex Marriage Makes a Lot of Sense:

Same-sex marriage makes sense if you assume that the individual is the center of the universe, that God—if he exists—is there to make us happy, and that our choices are not grounded in a nature created by God but in arbitrary self-construction. To the extent that this sort of “moralistic-therapeutic-deism” prevails in our churches, can we expect the world to think any differently?

Perhaps because of President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage yesterday, this post of mine from last fall has jumped to the top of my page views again. “How I Wish the Homosexuality Debate Would Go”

Just once, I’d like to see a TV interview go more like this:

Host: You are a Christian pastor, and you say you believe the Bible, which means you are supposed to love all people.

Pastor: That’s right.

Host: But it appears to me that you and your church take a rather unloving position when it comes to gay people. Are homosexuals welcome to come to your church?

How to Win the Public on Homosexuality:

Political strategy and tactics alone don’t explain such a pronounced shift in public sentiment, especially among younger generations of Americans. Indeed, regaining the ground Christians have lost on homosexuality will require widespread repentance, painful self-examination, and new resolve to pursue self-denying holiness. Most of all, we need the life-giving power that comes from Jesus alone.

Tell Your Soul Who’s Boss:

Most of us, including me, live a bit enslaved to our emotions. After all, when you’re sad, you’re sad, right? Yes and no. It is extremely helpful for me to look through the Psalms, a very emotional book in the Bible, and see time and time again the writers telling their soul who’s boss

4 Reasons to Preach through Whole Books of the Bible:

A number of practical considerations as to why our preaching ministries would benefit from taking up this practice. Here are four that I found particularly helpful…

Leo Tolstoy: Youth Group President?

Tolstoy pursued perfection in his own strength and energy apart from the grace of God. He constantly lived under guilt and shame, and he died a miserable vagrant. He never enjoyed the Christian life because he missed the essence of Christianity.

Here’s Why Google and FaceBook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years:

Social companies born since 2010 have a very different view of the world.  These companies – and Instagram is the most topical example at the moment – view the mobile smartphone as the primary (and oftentimes exclusive) platform for their application.  They don’t even think of launching via a web site.  They assume, over time, people will use their mobile applications almost entirely instead of websites.

We will never have Web 3.0, because the Web’s dead.

Tom’s Targum - Robert Gundry reviews N.T. Wright’s translation of the New Testament

So KNT’s similar combination of translation, paraphrase, insertions, semantic changes, slanted interpretations, and errant renderings—all well-intentioned—works beautifully as a targum. Which apart from the question of truth in advertising isn’t to disparage KNT.

The Story of Ian and Larissa. Powerful video.