Good Reads

• Dear Worship Pastor: It’s Not about You: And then it happens. The worship “leader” raises everything an octave, starts launching off into the musical stratosphere, and suddenly he’s the only one singing. No one else can sing that high. So everyone stands there watching. They’re no longer participating in worship together; they’re observing a vocal performance. And those who really want to sing are completely thrown off.

• Five More Myths about Bible Translations: There’s always something lost in translation. It’s like saying in French, “don’t eat the fish; it’s poison.” The word ‘fish’ in French is poisson, while the word ‘poison’ is, well, poison. There’s always something lost in translation.

• Amnesia and the Self That Remains When Memory Is Lost: When I saw Tom, something fundamentally Tom was still there. Some of us call it personality, or essence. Some call it the “soul.” Whatever it is, the tumor that took Tom’s memory had not touched it.

• The Danger of Theological Novelty:  You see, in theology, for many people “in the know,” once something becomes mainstream, it becomes disqualified. Once it becomes too popular or normal, it becomes naive. Once everyone thinks it is correct, it is no longer qualified to be anything but a foil for the correct. We become theological swingers whose end is not to find the truth, but simply to swing to the next partner.

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Good Reads

• My Top 10 Theology Stories of 2012: So consider my list an admittedly foolhardy attempt…to discern the most important theology stories 0f 2012. Consider it a challenge to generate your own list and pray that God might bless his church with the faith and vision to see the world as he does. (See also CT’s Top 10 News Stories of 2012 and Ed Stetzer’s Top Religion News Stories of the Year.)

• Three Is the Loveliest Number: Why ‘that Trinity stuff’ is not a philosophical headache but a captivating picture of the Good and Beautiful.

• Deliver Us from 21st-Century Blindspots: All we need is the Bible,” they say. How does a Reformed evangelical argue with that!? The simple answer is: what we actually need is the Bible understood in the way the original authors intended. And as soon as we say that, we need a whole bunch of tools—linguistic and theological, as well as historical—to help us cling to Scripture alone.

• God’s Surgeons in Africa: In countries where many are performing surgery without any formal training, a Christian organization is educating surgeons who stay around despite little pay or prestige — sometimes despite real danger.

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Good Reads

• 10 Symptoms of an Unhealthy Organization: In churches, there is so much focus on the Sunday service experience that we neglect the health of the ministry organization where relationships and discipleship really happen.

• Amazon Is Ripe for Disruption: Whilst I don’t anticipate any sort of overnight coup d’état, there are start-ups with the potential to nibble away at Amazon’s dominance over the next 12 months.

• Christianity ‘close to extinction’ in Middle East: Christianity faces being wiped out of the “biblical heartlands” in the Middle East because of mounting persecution of worshippers, according to a new report.

• Jesus, Death, and Zombies: We have dismissed the Jewish and Christian hope of eternal life as superstition offensive to reason, but instead, we find ourselves trapped in a recurring nightmare. We know that we will die, but (as Woody Allen said) we don’t want to be there when it happens

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Good Reads

• The Callous Theology of James Dobson: Some Christian conservatives seemingly cannot help themselves.  They have to try to find some deep theological explanation for the evil we witness in places like Newtown, Connecticut.  But often in doing so, they injure the very faith they seek to represent.

• Does God Hate Westboro Baptist Church? Before Westboro Baptist Church shows up in Connecticut with signs that read “God hates you” – perhaps they should consider the possibility that God hates Westboro Baptist Church.  Before they go and preach for people to repent, perhaps they should practice what they preach.  Before they scream out to crowds of people to fear God’s coming judgment, perhaps they should fear God’s coming judgment.  Self righteousness is a powerful trap – and one that entraps many people.

• 5 Ways to Lead Your Family through the Christmas Chaos: Meditating on the wonder of the Advent of Jesus is just as important as meeting with family and friends. As you filter your priorities through a schedule, plan both for socialization and solitude.

• Women in the Matthean Genealogy: Enjoy this excellent poem celebrating the women of Matthew 1.

Other Info

• Why Did NORAD Start Tracking Santa? 

• The Scientific Reason Why Reindeer Have Red Noses

• The 10 Best Sports Infographics Of 2012

• The Best Astronomy Images of 2012

 Just for Fun   

• Cat Bounce. The name says it all. And make sure you “make it rain” before you leave.

Good Reads

• Did Jesus Have a Fallen Human Nature? We are not to imagine that Christ blissfully waltzed through life untrammeled by the suffering, sorrows, and pains of fallen human experience. The Gospels present Jesus as one who was hungry, tired, thirsty, grief-stricken, and even morally tempted and vulnerable to conflicting desires.

• Why “Just Telling Your Story” Is NOT the Best Way to Share the Gospel: I understand why this method of what we used to call “witnessing” is popular. Well-meaning pastors realize that people are scared to tell people about Jesus, and they want to find an easy method that they can use to teach their congregation how to share their faith without actually having to ask them to do anything—at least anything hard. The problem with this method is that it doesn’t work—at all.

• The Power of Church Programs?: for nearly two thousand years the chief activity of the church has not been programs but preaching. Somehow, in the last few decades, we have lost sight of the power of preaching and put our faith in programs, as though preaching is insufficient to bring about change.

• Got a Ph.D. in Theology? Go Work for a Church: I’ve argued before that churches need more ministers who are deeply theologically trained–not so they can re-state the old theological positions so much as think creatively and contextually and help their congregations to do “local theology” together as they collectively respond to the impulses of the gospel in their lives. (Or, you could save some money and just do a Th.M. instead!)

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Good Reads

• Are the Metro-Evangelicals Right? Andy Crouch (or his headline writer) coined the catchy term “metro-evangelicals” to describe the growing urban resurgence within American evangelicalism.

• Looking Ahead to 2013: What Should the Church Expect? If you do not make assumptions about the future, then you are not leading. Good leaders constantly assess the cultural climate. In other words, they do research. Good leaders are also willing to change their assumptions. In other words, they are flexible.

• We Wait Too Long to Train Our Leaders: Practicing anything mildly important, like say skiing or golf, without training is inadvisable. The fact that so many of your managers are practicing leadership without training should alarm you.

•  Five Things You Should Know about Pastors’ Salaries: In many churches, the pastor’s salary is a quiet issue. There is a sense of discomfort from both the pastor and the members when the topic is broached. Such discomfort is unfortunate, however, because a number of churches will not seek every year to make certain the pastor is paid fairly.

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