From the site: “I am Second is a movement where signficance in life is shared.”
The website features a collection of videos featuring well-known people, like former US Presidential Candidate Muck Huckabee, Brian Welch from Korn and The Biggest Loser’s Michelle Aguilar, but also regular people from the cities and suburbs of the USA. These people have struggled with a variety of issues; abuse, affluence, addiction, trauma, racism, war and more.
In extremely well-produced video clips, (darkened room, sitting on a couch, a post-modern piece to camera) they share their struggles, their disappointments and ultimately, the hope found in Jesus as he met them in the various situations of their lives.
Well worth a visit, and also great to recommend to friends struggling with all kinds of issues.
If you’re interested in church planting, you’re quite possibly aware that the Church Planting Center at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York has launched a blog.
The RCPC Blog, currently labelled as “beta,” is home to reflections from Tim Keller, Scott Sauls and others from the Redeemer staff team as well as members of their church planting network.
In one of Keller’s first blog posts, maybe even his first, he brings John Frame’s tri-perspectivalism to bear as a tool for analysing the phenomenon that is Willow Creek Church. (Incidentally, I have Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, sitting on my desk which I’ve started reading about 5 times and never managed to quite get through it!) It’s an interesting read, although I think that viewing tri-perspectivalism as the silver bullet with which to harmonise the various threads of broad evangelicalism is probably misguided. That said, I don’t think Keller is saying it is the silver bullet, but others around the blogosphere seem to.
My invitation to World Vision’s “An evening with Brian McLaren” arrived in the post today. The nicely recycled-looking brochure didn’t do anything to alleviate my surprise at the partnership between this organisation (of which I happen to be a former employee) and McLaren, the “speaker, thinker and activist.” I think I was at least expecting some acknowledgment of his position on the fringe of Christian orthodoxy, but none was made.
It is helpful to hear from people from outside our own “stable.” We appreciate it when people are well-read and able to see past our own cultural blind-spots. And as someone preparing to plant a church and seeking to engage the community around me with the gospel of Jesus, the opportunity to hear from one of the leaders of the Emerging/Emergent Movement definitely has some appeal. As a pastor though, I believe there are good reasons for me to politely decline the invitation. It’s my privilege to spend my time with people who wrestle daily with all sorts of issues, including many which are staple fare in McLaren’s writing and speaking.
I love Facebook.
I love Twitter.
I love Facebook and Twitter on my iPhone no matter where I am in the world (almost)!
But I’m a little worried. To tell you the truth, I’m a lot worried. I’m worried about what’s going to happen to a whole generation of young people when Facebook catches up with them. If you’re under 20, you’re a member of the iGeneration, who along with us GenXers, could also be called the Facebook Generation.
If you use Facebook, I wonder how much thought you’ve given to what impact the information you post on your profile and on other people’s walls will have on you later in life. Remember last week when Facebook asked you “What’s on your mind?” and you wrote that funny comment (or so it seemed at the time)? Just because that comment has slipped off the bottom of your wall, doesn’t mean that it’s gone forever. In fact, it almost certainly hasn’t. Think also of your comments on other people’s walls or photos; even if you close your Facebook account and formally request Facebook to delete your page, these comments will remain, since they are information that you have “shared with third parties.”
There are some books that just keep popping up around the place. Soul-Winning Made Easy by C S Lovett, published in 1959, is one of them. Every few months I see another reference to it, someone selling it (eBay has multiple copies currently listed), or someone describing it in words like these “This book represents everything that was wrong with much of the evangelism training of years gone by”!
Tim Challies, over at Challies Dot Com, has posted some amusing illustrations, two of which are linked at right.
Here’s a section from page 78.
You have just said to your prospect . . . “Jesus is waiting to come into your heart. Will you open the door? Will you let Him come in?” He makes no reply. Great forces are at work inside him. His soul is a battlefield. The Holy Spirit and Satan want his decision. You wish you could jump into his heart and help him, but you can’t. So you do the one thing you can do . . . press him to make a decision . . . one way or the other.
Once upon a time I subscribed to the New York Times. I don’t any more. I decided I couldn’t justify the getting the Paper of Record posted to me every day! I still use the website a lot and noticed that Ross Douthat has now joined the NY Times team as a contributor. Douthat is the film critic for the National Review and joined The Gray Lady only last month.
It will be interesting to see how his view on American Life is received by the Times’ readership. Douthat’s latest opinion piece Dan Brown’s America pokes some holes in the current fascination with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons (along with the slew of copy cat pseudo-historical-religious-conspiracy-revisionist-thrillers those works have inspired).
His sharp assessment of Dan Brown’s approach to novel writing is clear:
Worldliness; Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World, edited by C J Mahaney, has been sitting on my desk for a few weeks. I decided that since it’s a collection from a number of authors, I’d take it chapter by chapter, rather than review the whole thing. Chapter 1, Is This Verse In Your Bible, by C J Mahaney establishes the premise for the entire book.
“Today, the greatest challenge facing American (read “Western”) evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world.”
Quoting a Charles Spurgeon sermon from 1860, Mahaney demonstrates that the greater the distinctiveness between the church and the world, the greater the church’s witness. When the church and the world are indistinguishable, the church tends to fail in its mission.
The recent two talks on evangelism are now available to download in PDF and MP3 format.
How do we see evangelism the way God sees it – as part of his mission in the world that he graciously draws us into? And how do we make the most of the opportunities we have to share the good news of Jesus?
This is not a book review, as much as a notice of intended reviewing!
Voddie Baucham’s new book What He Must Be: if he wants to marry my daughter doesn’t seem to be available in Australia yet since it was only published 3 weeks ago. With the poor state of the Australian dollar I’m reluctant to buy too many books online at the moment, so I’m keeping it to the bare necessities from Amazon, B & N, ChristianBook.com & Monergism Books!
Anyway, being that I’m a father of a daughter, the title of this book grabbed my attention instantly. (OK, so Heidi is only 3, but I like to be prepared!). I’ve listened to a talk by Vodide Baucham about this topic (in fact, with this same title) and his assessment of what’s wrong with much of how relationships are established today is very sharp. He doesn’t shy away from pointing out the dangers and pitfalls in common relationship patterns and behaviours, likening the exclusive intimate relationships between teenagers and young adults to going shopping without any money – “either you’re going to leave frustrated or take something that doesn’t belong to you!” I’m pretty sure I’m going to like the book!
No doubt you’ve seen the comments in the media about the advertising campaign supported by the British Humanist Association and others, announcing “There’s probably no God.”
I think one of the wisest reflections on these attempts to deceive the public comes from the British theology thinktank Theos. Their spokesman said, “Telling someone ‘there’s probably no God’ is a bit like telling them they’ve probably remembered to lock their door! It creates the doubt that they might not have. “
Anyway, if you want to have a go at making your own mock bus ads to combat the efforts of the Humanist Association, you can now do it on this site, just for fun!
Who are you? Really? Come on a journey through the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and get to the bottom of your real identity!
Basement Camp 09 is for students in years 8 – 12 at school and costs $140 per person.
Please make sure your registration form is returned with your money by Sunday April 12.
See you at Encounters Conference Centre, Victor Harbor at 1:30 PM on April 20th!
If you’re learning our memory verses with us, you might like to use the computer desktop images we’re producing to help keep the Bible passages in front of you
Our first passage is Philippians 4:8. Download the desktop image for your computer below.
My copy of Ancient-Future Time was given to me by Lyndon Sulzberger, Rector of Christ Church, North Adelaide. I think Lyndon was politely trying to suggest my education in matters such as the ecclesiastical calendar is somewhat lacking!
Robert E. Webber (who died in 2007) was Emeritus Professor of Theology at Wheaton College and seems to have been motivated in his writing by the conviction that contemporary Evangelicalism is impoverished due to its insufficient rooting in early Christian traditions. Indeed, it was this conviction that led him to take part in issuing “The Chicago Call” in 1977 stating that evangelicals had lost touch with church’s liturgical roots. Here he seeks to take Christian spirituality back to its origins in Jewish spirituality which he feels will enrich the life of the modern Christian; “For the Jew to commemorate the past is not merely to recall it as a past event but to commemorate it in such a way that it gives the present new meaning.” The book is therefore a call to what Webber calls “Christian-year” spirituality, where God’s saving action is presented to us time and time again through the practices of the Christian year celebrated by the church in its first centuries; in Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost. The discussion of each of these historical events concludes with a prayer from one of the Church Fathers or the Book of Common Prayer.
This picture is really just a way of directing you to our friend Nathan Tasker’s blog. He posted this picture last month, but his blog is actually quite serious!
Nathan is a singer songwriter based in Nashville, but has lots of friends at Trinity Hills. He’s helped us celebrate lots of great occasions; Christmas services, special public events and the launch of a new gathering.
If we are actually speaking truth … why isn’t anyone listening?
I’ve been reading Branding Faith by Phil Cooke. To some in the church, the idea of branding is anathema, but I suspect this is mostly due to misunderstanding the concept. Branding is part of the reality within the church exists. Cooke quotes a study which found that one in four babies, speaks a brand name as their first word! This study, by British Market Research Bureau is also quoted in a slightly alarming 2003 article in the SMH.
At the heart of the challenge laid out in the book is Cooke’s distillation of the definition of marketing: The art of surrounding a product, organisation or person with a powerful and compelling story. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a powerful and compelling story, we don’t need to find it, or create it, just tell it! The task seems to me to be local churches finding answers to the question, “how do we tell the powerful and compelling story of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our communities?”
In one of Keller’s first blog posts, maybe even his first, he brings John Frame’s tri-perspectivalism to bear as a tool for analysing the phenomenon that is Willow Creek Church. (Incidentally, I have Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, sitting on my desk which I’ve started reading about 5 times and never managed to quite get through it!) It’s an interesting read, although I think that viewing tri-perspectivalism as the silver bullet with which to harmonise the various threads of broad evangelicalism is probably misguided. That said, I don’t think Keller is saying it is the silver bullet, but others around the blogosphere seem to.
