1. I’ve mentioned Access Partners before, but I want to point you to a moving video that outlines what they do. Really exciting to see Christians developing new ways to push the gospel. 2. Connie Dever of Capitol Hill Baptist Church has published an exceptional children’s ministry curriculum called Praise Factory. The website is now up. Churches can get the whole program for a donation of $150. 3. Over the Rhine, a group making beautiful, God-glorifying music, has a haunting... Read more
A friend of mine hipped me to an insightful article on how families are migrating out of cities–including Chicago–at unusually high rates: “Since the 1990s virtually all the gains made in the New York economy have accrued to the highest income earners. Overall, New York has the smallest share of middle-income families in the nation, according to a recent Brookings Institution study; its proportion of middle-income neighborhoods was smaller than any metropolitan area, except for Los Angeles. Much the same... Read more
But don’t take my word for it, take W. Robert Godfrey’s: “Many approach Calvin first of all as a theologian, and he certainly was a great theologian. But his theology emerged out of his own spiritual journey and struggles. In the first part of the book I focus on that spiritual pilgrimage of Calvin, because his experience and his reading of the Bible are critical to understanding his vision of Christianity. In the second part of the book, I follow... Read more
Found this brilliant quotation in Al Mohler’s essay “Modern Theology: The Disappearance of Hell” in the noteworthy book Hell Under Fire, edited by Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson: “Modern secularism demands that anyone who would speak for God must now defend him. The challenge of theodicy is primarily to defend God against the problem of evil. The societies that gave birth to the decades of megadeath, the Holocaust, the abortion explosion, and institutionalized terror now demand that God answer their... Read more
1. Caught a great cultural insight in Anthony Lane’s hilarious New Yorker review of the new Star Trek movie: “[J. J. Abrams] is the perfect purveyor of fictions to a generation so easily and instinctively jaded that what it craves, above all, is a storteller who—with or without artistic personality, and regardless of any urge to provoke our thoughts or trouble our easy dreams—will never jade.” Now if that’s not a call to Christians to promote the “non-jading” gospel, tell... Read more
9Marks Director of Communications Jonathan Leeman has a highly provocative article up on the 9Marks site that anyone interested in church life should read. It’s called “The Alternative: Why Don’t We Plant?” and it is chock-full of probing questions and nicely distilled thought. Leeman is a very gifted writer. His text is chunky, full of deep thinking, yet he writes in a lively, direct style that’s easy to follow. He doesn’t waste words; he gets right to the point. See... Read more
A new story from the Washington Post reports that unwed mothers birth four out of every ten babies born in the US: “More than 1.7 million babies were born to unmarried women in 2007, a 26 percent rise from 2002 and more than double the number in 1980, according to the report from the National Center for Health Statistics. The increase reflected a 21 percent jump in the rates of unmarried women giving birth, which rose from 43.7 per 1,000... Read more
New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote a noteworthy article, entitled “The Harlem Miracle”, about an inner-city organization that has wrought considerable change in the lives of its students. The Harlem Children’s Zone, run by Geoffrey Canada (a Bowdoin alum, like myself), is doing crazy things: “The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student... Read more
1. Just heard about the Girls Gone Wise website. I think from Tim Challies. Looks like a terrific resource. Anything Mary Kassian has going on is beneficial for women, I find. I once sat in on a radio show she did with Al Mohler and was impressed with her wisdom and comportment. It’s no small thing being in the booth with RAM… 2. Malcolm Gladwell, professional geek/writer, has a fun article out about what happens when “underdogs break the rules”. ... Read more
From the Christian Vision project with an assist from the Books & Culture page: “God has a small-and-large gospel. We must always let the largeness be God’s. His grand story makes our individual stories bigger as they take on meaning in his kingdom. Our efforts at evangelization must always build his kingdom, not ours. Our plans for church growth must always follow his yeasty patterns of growth, not the driven growth of corporate-style goal setting. God’s mission must always enlarge... Read more
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