10 ways to minister to your minister
March 6, 2009
Warren Vanhetloo, Sharper Iron
‘What happens online is connection—not community,’ says blogger Anne Jackson
February 24, 2009
Jackson also talks about her ‘Facebook fast’ at Out of Ur
How to minister to the church’s widows
February 6, 2009
Carla Rolfe talks about her own experience as a young widow
Church partners with local Hooters to help hurricane victims
February 3, 2009
‘Do Hard Things and People Will Follow’
December 17, 2008
At Boundless: The Line, Motte Brown tells how two families at his church – the Schwabs and the Thompsons – helped inspire him and his wife to adopt:
“There’s really nothing extraordinary about their circumstances that uniquely qualifies them to adopt so many while already having so many. They’re not rich and I don’t believe they received a special call from the Lord. I suspect that, mainly, they were just willing.”
See the Browns’ blog, which discusses their recent adoption of four Ethiopian children.
Weekend Walkabout: December 6, 2008
December 6, 2008
26 posts from the week that escaped mention (almost!):
- Afterlife in the Old Testament: The Scholarly Consensus? - Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth
- Bible Memorization Worksheet 2009 - Triablogue
- Converging the Web and Desktop - ChurchCrunch
- Different Isn’t Wrong … - Justin Wise
- Encouragement for Trans-Racial Adoption Anxiety - Vitamin Z
- Fox News Conservative? - Russell Moore
- Grand Duke Henri’s Last Stand - Rod Dreher
- Hate Your Enemy? - Greg Gilbert, Church Matters
- Innocent Suffering - DesiringGod blog
- J.K. Rowling’s Fairy Tales for Wizards (and Muggles) - Sherry Huang, Idol Chatter
- Korea - 1 Day Left - Let’s Start Right - Human3rror
- Lay Worship - The Sacred Sandwich
- My Two Cents #123 - Osama Bin Lego and other Islamic fare - Daniel G. two or three
- No Food, Drink or Levity Allowed in the Sanctuary - Motte Brown, Boundless
- Our Problem with the Old Testament - Justin Taylor
- Pithy Pre-pastorate Pastoral Pointers - Dan Phillips
- Quantum of Follies - Dayo Olopade, Culture11
- Russian Patriarch Dies - Susan Wunderink, Christianity Today liveblog
- Short Saturdays - Who needs our money? - Stuff Christians Like
- Things we should be doing - Amy Scott
- Ultimate 80’s Medley - Denny Burk
- Video of My Sermon on the Bible - Adrian Warnock
- Wanted: Kindness - Carla Rolfe
- 20 EXcellent Free Rich-Text Editors - Webdesigner Depot
- Yes, the terrorists targeted Jews - Daniel Pulliam, GetReligion
- Zacharius Ursinus - Theopedia article (Z’s are always hard to find … but it will be worth your while to learn something about Ursinus, a contemporary of Martin Luther)
What if?
December 4, 2008
What if folks in the church really related as servants, according to Jesus’s teaching? Jan Lynn thinks our conversations might sound a little different:
“‘Pastor Mike is our serving teacher.’
‘The next two weeks we’ll focus on recruiting small group servants.’
‘Who’s the servant of that ministry?’
‘That’s Bill. He serves the Men’s ministry’ …”
Who says you can’t have community in a big congregation?
November 25, 2008
Thabiti Anyabile challenges the notion that small groups are necessary for biblical community, at the 9Marks blog.
New Christian forum
November 20, 2008
Gene Aptaker, author of the Endtimes Disciples Weblog, has teamed up with two other Christian bloggers to open the Faith Defenders Forum:
“Those who are even close to a clear vision of what the Body of Christ is supposed to be and do are becoming more of a minority almost by the day; and they are having a much more difficult time finding true fellowship and encouragement. … Our desire and prayer for Faith Defenders is that it will be a place where such believers can come; meet others of like mind; begin to forge genuine relationships; and spur one another on to truly live out the reality and purposes of our awesome Lord and Savior.”
Mark D. Roberts on spiritual gifts (update)
November 19, 2008
“Little is more important for the health and growth of the body of Christ than the power of the Holy Spirit manifested in what we call spiritual gifts. Through such bits of grace, the Spirit builds the body of Christ. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far off the mark to say that the Holy Spirit is a bodybuilder. …”
(update 11/7) Part 2: “The Abuse of Spiritual Experiences in Corinth . . . and Today“:
“We have seen what might be called an outbreak of ‘Corinthianism’ in the last fifty years. Positively, millions of Christians began to discover the power of the Spirit through spiritual gifts. Negative[ly], this often caused division in the church … Let me supply a bit of history that places our conversation of spiritual gifts in context …”
(update 11/10) Part 3: “The Ministry of the Spirit in ”
(Update 11/11) Part 4: “Defining ‘Spiritual Gifts‘”
(Update 11/13) Part 5: “Spiritual Gifts as ‘Momentary Empowerments’ for Ministry”
Part 6: “When and How Do We Receive Spiritual Gifts?”
“Although there are benefits to the ‘discover and use your gift’ model, it only takes you so far in ministry …”
(Update 11/17) Part 7: “All Gifts Matter to the Body of Christ”
“As it turns out, most churches in today’s world, whether overtly or implicitly, value some spiritual gifts while devaluing others.”
(Update 11/19) Part 8: “Practical Instruction on the Use of Spiritual Gifts, Part 1”
Part 9: “Practical Instruction on the Use of Spiritual Gifts, Part 2”
“So far we have seen that if we want to receive spiritual gifts, we should focus, not on the gifts or on our experiences, but on loving others and building up the body of Christ. Spiritual gifts come in the context of ministry done for the sake of love and edification.”
“The Illusion of Community” (update)
November 10, 2008
A series of posts by Brad Abare just launched at the Church Marketing [Stinks] blog:
“I have serious concerns with online social networks. I take issue even more with Christian online social networks. I am all for redeeming technology, using it for good, and leveraging its potential to deliver the good news of Jesus. However, and I know I’m going to get flack for taking this position, but I am really concerned that too much emphasis is being put on building community online as a substitute for building community offline.”
Read Part 1.
Part 2 is now up (update 10/28):
“I believe that until we get our thinking to change from church being something we go to as opposed to something that we are, we will never understand the call to community and communion.”
Part 3 (update 11/5):
“I recently spoke at a conference about online marketing and communication. The audience for this particular event was centered around doing ministry on the web so you can imagine their surprise when I suggested that perhaps they shouldn’t be online in the first place …”
Part 4 (update 11/10)
“One of the unfortunate things that keeps happening in this pursuit of building community–online, offline, or both–is that we continue to get our value proposition backwards. We must continually ask ourselves how we add value to people and not how people add value to us.”
About Brad Abare.
[So much for that 'First United Church of Facebook' idea I had. - HC]
Smiley happy people
November 3, 2008
From the mind of Jon Birch:
More on the question: ‘Is Christian blogging dead?’
October 31, 2008
John Schroeder reflects on a recent story by Ed Stetzer, who alleges that Christian blogging has affirmed believers don’t listen to one another very well:
“Blogging is not what it used to be, but is it dead? I don’t think so, “matured” is a more reasonable description. What is dead, but was really a false hope to begin with, is blogging as community. …”
Read the rest of “Blogging Gone Bad.”
Being needy can be a good thing
September 29, 2008
Suzanne Hadley writes on the merits of depending on others in the Body of Christ.
