Archive for the ‘Missiology’ Category
Best Links of the Week
The End of Church Planting? Interesting article that isn’t as provocative as the title. Definitely worth a read and a place at the table for missiological theory of church planting, challenging the dominant paradigm of the entrepreneurial paid pastor/planter.
How to use rewards/frequent-flyer credit cards to create a self-fulfilling profit loop (buy certain gold coins, get rewards/miles, deposit gold in bank, pay off credit card with gold deposited into bank).
Third Millennium Ministries has its own iPhone and Android apps. The content of ThirdMill is truly top shelf. I am of the opinion that Third Mill is probably one of the most important ministries of our time and all on a shoestring budget. If you care at all about the Gospel and the future of the church you ought to donate to them. I am thankful that there are actually some forward thinking strategists that are creating excellent scalable content capable of penetrating that glaring lack of theological training of pastors worldwide.
The Decline of the Nuclear Family. Some pretty staggering statistics and commentary on the status of family in the U.S.
Mayim Bialik (Blossom, Amy Farrah Fowler) of Big Bang Theory is actually a PhD and published in Neuroscience (HT: BL)
Mortgage companies are still ‘robo-signing’
Centrist Tom Coburn has an interesting debt proposal – I was definitely not expecting a proposal from one of the ‘Gang of Six’
77 year old Congressman confronts gun wielding intruder
An interesting piece giving some provocative thoughts regarding the Cosmological Argument
There are several layers of awesome to this Pepsi ad (coming from a staunch Coca-Cola fan):
Best Links of the Week
Click picture for higher resolution image (HT: JT)
Parents, Don’t Dress Your Daughters Like Tramps
Front Porch Hack – Brilliant idea about turning your garage into your front porch for the purpose of creating intentional Gospel inroads into your neighborhood (HT: JT)
Tax compliance costs $.30 on every taxpayer $1
In order to balance our current budget we would have to tax at the following rates: Corporate 88%, Highest Income 88%, Middle Bracket 63%, and Lowest 25%. Some of our precious entitlements have to go, this is insanity. The sad part is that this would only balance the budget for this year and not even touch the $14,000,000,000,000.00 debt and trillion in compounding annual interest.
S+P says 33% chance they will downgrade U.S. debt from AAA
Mubarak has a heart attack during questioning
Wisconsin man finds live bomb in the wall of his own home
Best University ROI – Glad to see University of Florida yielded a 14.6% ROI.
U.S. Navy tests laser weapon on boat
iPhone keeps log of everywhere you go
You couldn’t pay me enough to do this job:
RC Car powered by soda can rings:
Best Links of the Week
“Advice for Theological Students” and “More Advice for Theological Students and Pastors” are both absolutely fantastic gems gleaned from Kevin DeYoung.
“Developers Trying To Treat Houses Like Copyright; Want A Cut Of Every Future Resale” and even worse than this, the financial firm pushing this garbage is in the process of securitizing these hidden ‘resale contract covenants.’ No offense, but it is greedy morons like these guys who got us into the whole sub-prime mess. I am all for free-market economics, but I really hope the free-market (particularly the hedge funds) decides to vote ‘no’ with their feet.
“A List of Important Sermons and Articles Worth Reading” (HT: JT) – this is an excellent excellent list. There are a good number of these that I have not read. I am particularly excited about those that I have not read that have multiple commendations.
Nancy Pearcey dissects the affect of secularism on America and its’ disability to provide a cogent response to radical Islam.
Here is also a really good interview with Nancy Pearcey on her new book “Saving Leonardo.” Coincidentally she also weighs in on James Daveson Hunter’s new book (see next link)
James K. A. Smith’s review of James Daveson Hunter’s “To Change the World”
Excellent article in The Atlantic from Jeffrey Goldberg analyzing the likelihood and aftermath of an Israeli preemptive strike against the Iranian nuclear program.
Typewriter robot art… very Philip K. Dick-esque
Self-assembling biological photovolatics
Canadian PhD student creates human powered aircraft with large flapping wings. One of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.
Pacman with 111 human pixels:
Best Links of the Week
Some cogent thoughts on church planting by Ed Stetzer (see video above)
Tim Tebow Documentary coming out soon: Trailer Here
Excellent piece in Vanity Fair by Michael Lewis entitled, “Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds”
WSJ article on Obama pushing for a tax cut and a tax hike?
Further Seems Forever reuniting with Chris Carabba. I am hope that the new music is substantive and layered.
HDR video using two Canon 5D Mark ii‘s
Very-well written piece utterly dissecting Lady Gaga (and by corollary the generation that has made her famous) in an article entitled, “Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex.”
Interesting debate in Israel over daylight savings time and theology.
Tennessee Volunteer football coach has to coach up players on how to take a shower properly after a series of staph infections amongst players.
Popular Science gallery on 30 Awesome College Labs (classes).
Stanford creating seriously peer-reviewed rival to Wikipedia.
Infographic on who is in the blogosphere. (HT: Challies)
“How to block abusive or unfriendly email on Gmail”
Fidel Castro reportedly saying publicly that Cuban model of government and economics does not work… then states he misspoke and meant to say “capitalism doesn’t work.”
Really strange soccer goal (HT: Uri)
Why the Chinese economy is expanding – efficient production. Note – the video has not been sped up
Best Links of the Week
Typhoon Class Russian Submarine
Much greater activity by Russian submarines in the North Atlantic. By the way, The Hunt for Red October, is one of my favorite books and movie.
Famous man-caves. My favorite is Frank Lloyd-Wright’s man-cave.
Russia-Asia/Pacific pipeline begins development. This is probably the most important and substantial piece of news this week or month but it will not even make a blip on the radar of any major news outlet. This pipeline will substantially change the path of Russian oil from the Europe to Asia. Russia is very very well positioned for the future. This move is smart, strategic, and sound. It ensures that neither Indo-China nor the EU will give Russia any major political problems, while it also ensures a steady cash flow to their already commodity rich economy. Water, food (mainly corn), oil, lending, and parity make the world go round. If that sentence makes no sense to you, then you don’t grasp globalization yet. Politics and economics are two sides of the same coin whose fiat is power. In my opinion, Vladimir Putin and the Russian technocratic government are wicked brilliant. If the United States wants to be relevant in the 22nd Century we need to return to sound fiscal policy and streamlined government.
Russell Moore brings needed clarity to Glenn Beck’s rally in Washington D.C.
GMail now introduces priority inbox: “Incoming email gets separated into sections: important and unread, starred, and everything else. Don’t like these? Customize them.” This is super helpful as I have been already doing something like this with a system of marking unread and color coded stars (superstars GMail plugin). It will be rolled out throughout this week and has yet to been offered in my account yet, but I cannot wait.
Carl Trueman has a great piece on pastors actually knowing the people in their church.
“Why ∏A = gUG + min(k-g, (1-g)(1-r)) equals low airline fares”
A really really thorough post on how to completely extricate your online footprint… complete with ungoogling, social networking deletion, down to much more minor minutiae.
Stormpulse is a really nice weather and hurricane website I discovered this week.
Ridiculous between the legs tennis shot by Roger Federer:
Best Links of the Week
Eric Metaxas has a great longer piece that is really worthwhile entitled, Cultural Elites: The Next Unreached People Group. I am curious for some of you who have reach Culture Making and To Change the World, how you might respond to Metaxas.
In a very sad story, a priest in Moldova drowned a baby during an infant baptism.
Solid interview with Robert Duvall from Christianity Today. Duvall has some good insight; he remarks that Hollywood does not merely have disdain for Christians, its’ main disdain is for the heartland of America. Interesting thought.
Michael Bell analyzes recent pew forum study along with a helpful info-graphic. (HT: Kevin DeYoung)
Nine old Nintendo Games that can be played straight from the internet with no download required.
Best Links of the Week
"I believe that God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. When I run, I feel His pleasure..."
WSJ Article: How Missionaries Lost Their Chariots of Fire and Why They Should Add the Gospel Back to Their Good Works. In this vein Desiring God had a great series re-thinking short-term missions as well as the Chalmers Center.
“White House Spent $23M of Taxpayers’ Money on Fight to Legalize Abortion in Kenya”
Man squatting foreclosed home tells judge in his defense that he “bought it from Yahweh.” You can’t make this stuff up.
Someone else has finally put into words the frustration of the script of the USPS mandatory upsell.
Man attempts to smuggle 18 monkeys through security and onto plane by hiding them under his shirt.
Ed Stetzer has an insightful post at Challies on “rockstar” pastors.
Black parents give birth to blond haired and blue-eyed baby.
How to win at Rock-Paper-Scissors.
Some of the craziest pools in the world.
Old Spice Voicemail Generator.
The man claiming ownership of 84% of Facebook may actually have some merit.
ESPN mocks itself and the ridiculousness of the “Lebron Decision” special with the help of Steve Carell and Paul Rudd:
HT: Kevin DeYoung
Best Links of the Week
Adding a third dimension to the debate over video venue churches is hologram technology. The technology now exists and is being marketed to the 3000+ video venue churches so that the Pastor can preach at other venues in 3D. Your thoughts?
New Military underwear to monitor heart rate/vitals and administer drugs/pain meds.
A 52 year old California construction worker was arrested in Northern Pakistan on one man mission to kill Osama bin Laden. He had a 40″ sword, night vision goggles, and a pistol. He was confident of the success of his mission because, “God is with him.”
Some interesting scenarios of the coming mega-conferences in NCAA sports.
Here are some wordles for common church names in the U.S.
The U.S. finds $1,000,000,000,000 worth of metals in Afghanistan. This substantially complicates the future of Afghanistan.
The Euro to reach parity with the Dollar in 2011.
Some interesting thoughts on the impact of technology on missions.
Some thoughts on God and Soccer.
Nice interview with Stephen Prothero on Religion and Pluralism.
WSJ analysis of economic pitfalls in 2011.
Saudi Arabia gives green light to Israel to use airspace in strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Publishing company places disclaimer on the U.S. Constitution saying, “might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”
Is the internet making us impatient and compulsive?
Lego re-creations of famous photographs.
114,000 Apple iPads compromised by AT&T. (HT: Greg)
USA Today: “Protestant Pastor in the Job Hunt? Good Luck in this Market”
Some amazing photos of baby animals inside the womb.
Please don’t ever do this at your church:
HT: A Little Leaven
My Two Caveats for the Missional Church
I recently attended the Advance 2010 conference on Contextualizing the Gospel in the New Urban South. The content of the conference was excellent and the speakers were Gospel-centered and Christ-saturated. In the interest of full self-disclosure, I would willfully self-identify as being a part of the missional church movement. While steeping some of the teaching receieved, I am left with two potential pitfalls for the missional church movement.
I think the obituaries have already been written and the eulogies given for both the church growth movement and the emergent church. Hence, my first concern for the missional church movement is that it will just be another fad within evangelicalism. I’ve chronicled before the very fickle fadish-ness nature of American evangelicalism. We have the strong inclination to let our pendulums swing wildly, rarely finding any semblance of balance. If history is any predictor of the future, the missional church movement will gain steam, others will jump on the bandwagon, then the movement dies because many identified with the movement not for its intrinsic principles, but rather for its pragmatic ends. Nothing will kill a movement like the evil trinity of inauthenticity, superficiality, and pragmatism.
My second concern for the missional church movement is actually legalism. This may actually come as a surprise of anyone who saw/listened to any of the Advance 2010 material. Rightly so, Tyler Jones, Tullian Tchvidjian, Ed Stetzer and others railed against the quaint moralism (or think of Michael Horton’s, moralistic therapeutic deism) of the South. Here is how legalism could creep into the missional church movement… and it is really subtle and nasty. In your call to missional movement and mindset, create an implicit caste system within your church. In this caste system reward those who are ‘more on mission’ vs. those who are ‘less on mission.’ In this caste system the way to earn God’s favor is by doing the works of the mission of God. I don’t know if this kind of legalism is better/worse than any other form of self-salvation. Remember that legalism is one of those nasty sins like pride, that can literally manifest themselves in even the most counter-intuitive or even contradictory places (ie. one can be proud in one’s humility). We must be careful to still remind ourselves and others that our standing with God is not changed by even our greatest Gospel efforts or lack thereof.
In my view, we must guard the missional church movement from those who would see it as the next “it” way to grow your church (after shaving their soul patch and ceased showing movie clips). We must also guard against guilting people into being on mission. They must desire to be the church because of the Gospel not because it is the new way to rise in the legalistic caste system in your church.
Your thoughts?
Modern Pensées 