worst tip ever

Good Reads

• Always Mardi Gras and Never Easter: A cross-shaped Christianity might leave behind those seeking a civil religious cover for their wild Bacchus worship or their rigid Stoic legalism. But it might prompt a world gorged on riotous living to seek the more permanent things instead.

• Religion for Everyone: The decline of religion in the West has brought a decline in community spirit. Could the secular world draw useful lessons from religious life? Alain de Botton offers new ways to find shared meaning.

• Love Your (Theological) Enemies: I find it hard enough to love the people I agree with. So how can I love someone on the other side, especially when the things that divide us are theological principles that really matter?

• An Open Letter to Praise Bands: It seems to me that you are often simply co-opted into a practice without being encouraged to reflect on its rationale, its “reason why.” In other words, it seems to me that you are often recruited to “lead worship” without much opportunity to pause and reflect on the nature of “worship” and what it would mean to “lead.”

Good Reads

• The Forgotten Influence of Martin Luther: At the time of his death he left a world turned upside down. There were lifetimes of work left to be done, but Luther would have to leave it to be finished by those who would follow after him and carry on what he had started. Today, 466 years after that stroke, the voice of Luther still rings through the church.

• When Should a Leader Leave?: I would never pretend to know the will of God for leaders. Indeed I am reticent even to suggest these reasons lest someone grasp one or more and leave his or her position of leadership prematurely. Nevertheless I interviewed dozens of leaders I respect. One of the simple questions I asked them was: How did you know it was time to leave your previous position of leadership?

• Miracles in the Bible and Today: Most stunning to me on a personal level were sincere eyewitness claims from people that I or my wife have long known and trusted, including everything from cures of blindness to restoration from apparent death.

• The True Story of the First Crusade (NYT): That story, and the papal authority it underlined, shaped the next 500 years of European history. Even today, the idea at the center of the crusades, that religion has long been at the heart of the East-West divide, drives foreign policy from Washington to Islamabad. But the real story is much more complicated, and much more earthly, than most people recognize.

Picky professor is picky.

Good Reads

• The Jeremy Lin Problem (NYT): We’ve become accustomed to the faith-driven athlete and coach, from Billy Sunday to Tim Tebow. But we shouldn’t forget how problematic this is. The moral ethos of sport is in tension with the moral ethos of faith, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

• The Pastor as Counselor: During eras when church life has been vibrantly responsive to Scripture, pastorshave counseled well and wisely. They haveunderstood that their pastoral calling includesa significant ‘counseling’ component. The faithproclaimed and practiced in congregational lifealso finds a natural home in conversational life.Pastor, you are a counselor.

• The King Jesus Gospel: A Conversation with Scot McKnight: Why do you point to John Piper as one of the most poignant examples of a “soterian” in our day? Are you suggesting that John Piper doesn’t rightly define and present the gospel?

• 3 Ways Smart Leaders Prepare for the Unknown: If we could predict the twists and turns in life, we’d never be confronted with the unknown. But things like cancer, death, or a sudden job loss are often beyond our control—they thrust us into an unknown world with little or no warning.

Good Reads

• A Lost Generation?: Fewer young women are practicing their faith: How the church can woo them back.

• A Love Note to the Workaholic: Many of us have spent the majority of our adult lives in jobs that train us to outrun and outsmart the experience that underpins love and connection – vulnerability.

• From the Pulpit and in the Pew, the Knicks’ Lin Is a Welcome Inspiration (NYT): The children of Asian immigrants, like Lin, account for a sizable part of the explosion of theologically conservative churches — catering largely to young, college-educated professionals — in New York City. Many attend what might be labeled second-generation Asian-American churches that have spun off from congregations with worship services in Chinese or Korean.

•  The Faithfulness Fallacy: In logic an ad hominem attack is when you criticize a person rather than their idea. What I find fascinating in both of the above cases is that the defence being used is actually ad hominem. In other words, rather than defending the actions or ideas of the person which have drawn the scrutiny, the defenders of these individuals have resorted to speaking about the men themselves. But who the men are and what they have done in the past was never the issue.

Good Reads

• My Thoughts after Writing ‘Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus’: All in all these past few weeks have been a quick lesson and reminder of where my identity is. Is my identity in my failures? Nope. Is it in my successes? Nope. Is it in how many views I get on YouTube? Definitely not. My identity is in the Cross of Jesus, and His resurrection. I’ve had to anchor myself in that truth every morning, because the voices of the world are incredibly powerful.

• What does it mean to “Act like Men” – 1 Cor. 16:13?: Personally, I do not see anything in the biblical context or the usage of the word that requires a male orientation….But whatever it nuances may be, it is certainly a call for a mature courage, and that is always a good word.

• M.I.A. Shouldn’t Have Apologized (New Yorker): television viewers were submitted to ad after ad that likened women—negatively—to sofas, cars, and candy. Mr. Winter didn’t have anything to say about that, so I’d like to raise both of my middle fingers to him and anyone who thinks profanity is somehow more harmful to our children than images of violence and misogyny.

• Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor (NYT): Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.

Good Reads

• Earliest Manuscript of the New Testament Discovered? The papyri have confirmed various readings as authentic in the past 116 years, but have not introduced new authentic readings. The original New Testament text is found somewhere in the manuscripts that have been known for quite some time.

• A Puritans ‘War Against Religion’ (LA Times): Roger Williams, the Puritan who founded Rhode Island, insisted on the state refraining from intervening in the relationship between humans and God.

• Churches Go Less Formal to Make People Comfortable (USA Today): Comfortable is a theme that’s becoming common among churches taking advantage of new, non-traditional spaces. Across the country, churches are springing up in unexpected locations: movie theaters, skating rinks, strip malls and old warehouses, among others.

• How We Got Here: The Evangelical Trinitarian Milieu: Evangelicals have a peculiar relationship with the doctrine of the Trinity. Defined nearly as much by the way they hold their values and beliefs as the beliefs themselves, evangelicals value the Bible as God’s distinct self-revelation. They are people of the Book, and therefore, if it’s evangelical, it is usually going to be biblical. And yet, the formulation of the creedal doctrine of the Trinity that came down from Nicaea isn’t stated in the Bible.

The official Dark Knight Potato Head toy

Good Reads

• The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World (Newsweek): We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.

• ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and Its Sci-Fi Heroine: It may be simplistic to suggest that reading science fiction will lead women to pursue careers in chemistry and quantum physics and information technology. But then, how many female authors say they were inspired to become writers because of Jo from “Little Women”?

• Prayer Is Your Spiritual Cardio Work: When we pray we are massaging our hearts with the pressure of God’s eternal perfections and subsequently producing in us the enduring praise to the glory of his grace. Prayer both prepares and sustains affections.

• 10 Reasons to Believe in a Historical Adam: In recent years, several self-proclaimed evangelicals, or those associated with evangelical institutions, have called into question the historicity of Adam and Eve. It is said that because of genomic research we can no longer believe in a first man called Adam from whom the entire human race has descended. (You should also read James McGrath’s response, “Ten Really Bad Reasons to Believe in a Historical Adam.”)

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None Shall Pass!

Good Reads

• Six Reasons Young People Are Leaving the Church: Six in 10 young people will leave the church permanently or for an extended period starting at age 15….For church leaders, the question is, what will we do about it?

• What I Wish My Pastor Knew About…The Life of a Scientist: Like many of the most complex human endeavors — parenting, farming, becoming a Christian — the life of a scientist is not just an “occupation,” something that occupies us for a while and might then be followed by something entirely different. Being a scientist is as much about being as doing, as much about a particular way of being formed as a person as it is a set of activities or even skills.

• We Can’t Go Back to the Garden: Critiquing Evangelicals’ Over-Ruralized Eschatology: We have pictured heaven in these terms, rather than making room in our imagination for good (read: God-honoring) cultural developments and the beautiful complexities (read: shalom) of life in the society of others as the context of our future existence.

• 9 Academic Freedoms of Not Having Tenure: We all know the challenges of not being tenured or on the tenure track. Making a life of teaching or research outside of the tenure path is particularly difficult. But there are some great things about working in academia and being non-tenured.

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Good Reads

• Leading from a Distance: We all work from home. It’s our lifestyle choice. Everyone works the way they want, at the time they want. It gives us all lots of freedom, but it also requires a tremendous amount of focus—and great leadership skills from me. I’m learning as I go.

• I Could Be a Great Leader if It Weren’t for the People: Every leader knows frustration. Every leader has been discouraged. All leaders have moments where they wish they could change the circumstances in which they find themselves. And many of those desired changes involve people.

• Back to (a Theology) of Work We Go…: Why the church must talk about “vocation” and not just “mission” if it hopes to engage young adults.

• 5 Reasons Teenagers Act the Way They Do: For everyone who is or was a teen, here are some scientific explanations for why they behave that way Continue Reading…

Good Reads

• There Is No War on Religion: It’s true that Christianity is losing some of its appeal among Americans, but that is a religious, not political, matter.

• How the Elephant Room Is Redefining the Pastoral Office: By lifting up men with minimal theological commitments as examples to pastors, the Elephant Room is proclaiming, perhaps unwittingly, that a rigorous concern for sound doctrine is not essential to the pastoral office.

• Hell, Hades, Gehenna, and the Realm of the Dead: Hell is a slippery concept; and no, I’m not talking about recent debates. I am talking about what the word ᾅδης means.

• What the Bible Teaches about Capitalism: More than any other nation, the United States was founded on broad themes of morality rooted in a specific religious perspective. We call this the Judeo-Christian ethos, and within it resides a ringing endorsement of capitalism as a moral endeavor.

(By the way, in case you’re not aware, I’m not necessarily endorsing a post just because I link to it. I list posts that offer interesting perspectives on important issues. Whether I agree with them is something else entirely.)

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