Linkathon 7/7
I’d like to introduce a new blog to you – Half A Bridge from Mike DeLong. Mike blogs about faith, religion, culture and politics; topics he’s writing about include his experiences as a student at Liberty University and about atheist author Gina Welch.
Skye Jethani on Apple as a religion and religion as a brand.
Greg Laurie: Christians and non-Christians both are “just no good at evangelicalism” (HT: Todd Rhoades).
A few items from the latest IXMarks Journal: Deepak Reju on discipling men versus discipling women; Jonathan Leeman on why complementarianism is crucial to discipleship; and C.J. Mahaney interviews Greg Gilbert about his new book What Is The Gospel?.
Albert Mohler looks back on his radio program.
Mark Driscoll’s seven counterfeits of repentance.
Michael Patton on misfits in the church; the silence of God; and Christian conduct online.
A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God is this month’s free download from christianaudio.com.
Mike Foster asks what causes us to be jerks.
David Hayward on Charles Darwin.
Ed Cyzewski: Ministry means getting your hands dirty.
Kathy Escobar on drinking the company kool-aid in the church.
Chaplain Mike Mercer on Genesis and his post-evangelical wilderness.
Michael Spencer’s Soli Deo talks.
Doug Phillips on Ephesians 4:29 in the age of Facebook.
Steven Furtick on why Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the worst verses in the Bible.
William Black says mandated tithing is heresy (HT: Bill Kinnon from Google Reader)
What J.D. Greear learned about evangelicalism from the Catholics and liberals.
Dan Phillips says don’t waste your feeling really yucky.
I tried to get to Mike DeLong’s site and it didn’t happen…
Look forward to reading his blog…he’s a bright guy.
Alex, sorry…I’ll fix that right away.
Good articles Big Guy!
The one on drinking the KoolAid, Sam had a good ending for his comment – “The only real solution is to refuse to drink their funny kool-aid. Be forewarned – doing so does tend to really upset the guys passing out the kool-aid.”
Papias, you know as well as I do how that manifests itself across the board…the kool-aid of the new church-building method, the new way to run a ministry, the pastor with the ‘new’ ideas whose books and DVD everyone is buying, the new way to write worship songs.
Thanks Big Man…appreciate it (and you).
Mike DeLong started really well…I hope he keeps writing.
We dispensationalists don’t abuse Jer 29:11 😉
On the Kool-Aid post. I checked out the names of those we present to the body as ‘leaders’ and found a 50/50 split male and female…not counting the pastors. I know we always support female missionary trips just as equally as male trips – so I think if that poll was conducted around our place the numbers would ring quite high.
I also get a little concerned when drinking the Kool-Aid is equated to some degree with being taught the Bible from the Pastor. Obviously, the pastor should encourage questions if someone has them. But frankly, there is a point when you need to trust the man who has devoted his life to the study of the texts ABOVE what your “gut” tells you.
And in all cases, if the Kool-Aid offered is raspberry, please turn it down! Yuuck! 😉
I love raspberry!
Futrick played a little bait and switch there. “Worst” verse should have been, most often “misused”. That little stinker. All in all, good for him for checking context.
Hi everyone,
I hope all is well with all of you at PP.
My new website is now online. http://www.understandingscripture.com
So far, I have 5 articles posted.
One of them is on the Rapture and if anyone is interested they may view it at http://www.understandingscripture.com/Rapture.htm
Civil comments are welcome. It is fine if you disagree with me, but please disagree in a charitable manner and also give me your reasons why you disagree with me instead of simply condemning my writings.
🙂
Marie, good to see you! 🙂
Look forward to some more discussion.
Thank you, Believe. 🙂
I like Chaplain Mike’s article more than I should…
I hope Jethanis article gets some traction…I don’t agree with much of what he says, but his conclusion and thought track are worth consideration.
Why, Michael?
(regarding Chaplain Mike)
BrianD,
Because I’ve come to the point in my journey where I truly believe I need the rest of the Body of Christ and their traditions to understand my faith and my God.
It is easy and comforting to be dogmatic in every area of the faith…but it’s also dishonest as hell to me.
Just read Chaplain Mike.
Isn’t his position on being an outsider to the “fad fights” just as dogmatic as participating in the fights he doesn’t like?
Re: Mike Foster.
What causes us to be jerks? Theologically, sin. Specifically, self-centeredness.
Hmm…not quite long enough to be a blog post. 🙂
we need to be strong in the Lord if we’re not strong by nature – but either way, we’d better be humbly, fearfully in subjection to Him
i wish that i could say that i overlooked the dogmatic, condemning church crowds of the 60’s and 70’s. – because in retrospect, i can cut them some slack because of the times; there were so many good people who did their best to take a stand for Jesus and the Word. If they were dogmatic, at least they stood. “I believe it, i believe it, i believe…”
On the other hand was the evil of hateful condemning that creeped into the church under the guise of taking a strong stand for Truth as they saw it (the right and only truth – theirs)…i remember Bible Science (a Lutheran pastor from Boise poured his heart into it) which plowed the ground early on and then, got plowed under by the big bucks and arrogance of Creation Research and, heaven help us, along came that horrible compromising Reasons to Believe.
Today, right or wrong, i love anyone who loves the salvation that is ours in Jesus and i really, really want to smack those who say to the Body: “my way or the highway.” 🙄
I love to read statistics (I had three different statistic course in college) so when I read Barna, or any other pollster, I tend to ask questions about how the stats were gathered.
The link on women in church caught my ear, especially this one.
“6. 70% say that the media has little influence on their decision-making”
Here is what I have found over many decades in church and life at least 90% of all people are affected by the media in their decision-making process.
In this Barna poll I would say the remaining 30% are the most honest of the bunch.
If you don’t think media influences your decision making look at what you are reading this blog from. Yep, the internet is probably the most influential media there is today. With Facebook getting old friends and high school sweethearts together, MyPlace asking the questions about s*xual preference for all to see, Twitter drawing all sorts of electronic disciples and even Craig’s List, where people advertise the swinging life we are influenced so much we aren’t even aware of it.
Hey look I even looked up the Linkathon to find a post I agree with.
Yep, the internet probably has more influence on Christians than the Bible and maybe even Jesus.
“Genesis and My Post-Evangelical Wilderness”
…is brilliant! I so totally resonate with the things he says.
Here is a link to Rick Joyner spinning the changes in his staff since Todd Bentley came in…www.morningstarministries.org/Media/Player.aspx?media_id=1000017598&fullpage=True
http://www.morningstarministries.org/Media/Player.aspx?media_id=1000017598&fullpage=True
It doesn’t bother me when leaders stumble.
What that causes other leaders to rejoice – that kills me.
I notice that Rick only applies his theology of pruning to other leaders…
dansk, #26 amen!
FWIW – i should have put quotes around my comment on Reasons to Believe as i have a high regard and support them
Michael
And the tired geese are not the old geezer … just his companions…
Pretty obviously a cash flow issue in the Carolinas…
Hello all, good to be back, great linkathon. A few observations First Dr. Mohler discusses the end of his radio show, which I liked to listen to, even though I almost always disagreed with him. He spoke of “1. Christians Are Starved for Intelligent Christian Conversation”. He recently spoke at “Ligonier” in a message “Why does the Universe look so old”. It was the standard YEC position and it seemed to be lacking in my opinion, though he did not try to employ scientific research or position, because there is none. I know that makes people angry when I say that, and I may well be wrong, I hope I am, I want to be wrong, corrected, rebuked etc. I guess my point is we live in the 21st century, we need to deal with it. Look I am not a scientist, never claimed to be, but I am not the one flying in the face of observed facts I E speed of light, etc. Dr. Mohler is correct we are starved, and are still unfed.
http://www.christianity.com/ligonier/?speaker=mohler2
Please go listen and then think about it. The second post about Darwin was touching, Darwin was not portraid as the satanic evil filth that many Evangelicals present him as being. We got much of our modern biology from evolution, I know I was told I dont know much about biology and should not post on it, to that I say, amen I dont know much, but I have read, and am still reading, about the subject. Vaccines, Anti biotics etc come from modern biology which is in many ways based on evolution. Again I could be wrong, but from what I have seen it seems true, so please dont tell me Im wrong, just post a link, I will read it, study it, look forward to being corrected, repenting etc.
We have sought there to be honest, I cant be any more honest, there were times when mental illness was seen as Satanic possession, when seizures were seen as demonic activity, we still see people believe in possession and their answer to it in many countries is to abuse the accused child in many cases with some type of psychopathic response, for example driving a nail through some kids head to get rid of Satan. That is why we need to make sure we stay away from a belief in magic. Trust me its magic, on par with voodoo dolls and runes.
Personally I hope no one trusts me I am just blowing off ideas while I claw at the abyss to hold onto my faith.