Christianity Today has a good article giving multiple views on short-term mission trips, specifically those that are travel-intensive. I like getting the multiple views. As someone who has participated in and even led mission trips that were “travel-intensive,” I would suggest that leaders and organizers should give serious attention to these evaluations. Don’t take just…
Some time back I wrote a post titled Witness without Being a Pest. There are a number of things that make Christians pests when they witness, but I think the most important is when we think witnessing is a separate activity that we “do” as opposed to something that happens when we live. If you…
No, I don’t mean this in the very literal sense, but either in the spiritual sense or in terms of affiliation. One of the defining experiences of my life involves crossing the street in this sense. I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist. That involves quite a number of things, including keeping the Sabbath (Saturday)…
My company Energion Publications is offering five free copies of The Jesus Paradigm by David Alan Black. All you have to do is comment on the post and you’re on the list from which five recipients will be selected.
I’m one of those people who tend to sit in or near the same place every week. In fact, in one church I attended, when I consciously decided to move, someone jokingly told me that I shouldn’t have moved, because they used to find their pew by seeing where I sat, and then sitting a…
Walter Brueggemann suggests how we might avoid getting tangled up on secondary issues: (HT: Allan R. Bevere)
“So, in a spirit of Christian solidarity, I decided to help these churches expel young people once and for all.” This is too good! Read the rest.
The tragedy of the American church is that we have the greatest resources ever in the history of Christianity and for the most part we’re sitting on them, doing nothing. When we are doing something, most of what we do is for ourselves. The question, I’m told, is what we should be doing and how…
Dave Black warns us today against the cult of the speaker. (With permission I’ve extracted the relevant portion as a post at JesusParadigm.com since Dave’s blog doesn’t allow linking to a specific post.) Considering what we’ve heard recently about megachurches creating satellite campuses that receive the message from the senior pastor on the main campus…
I think she has two excellent points, the first about the danger of thinking of oneself as a celebrity (evangelical or not!), and the second about the value of structured prayer. I’d add a note on the value of structured Bible study, which also forces one to leave one’s comfort zone and one’s own desires…