Welcome to this week’s list. Remember, you don’t want to know what’s on the internet, you want to know what else is on, and this week that was quite a lot!
- Okay, it doesn’t rank up there with A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 but in this case, an architect looks at the $130 million worship center that is First Baptist Church of Dallas.
- Or how about a youth specialist looks at teens and peer pressure.
- The Pope orders a statue of himself taken down to avoid a “cult of personality.” Strong words were exchanged between Francis and the priest responsible. “Get that thing down, immediately,” the Argentinean newspaper Clarin reported. With that attitude, he’d never make it in North American charismatic circles.
- In 2009, Christianity Today published, “The Case for Early Marriage.” Now exactly four years later, a writer challenges that thesis at another CT website.
- Randy Alcorn’s Heaven is out in a new format, but some Christians are uncomfortable with the graphic novel genre.
- The Jesus People movement reached it’s peak in 1972? Hey, it was just getting started then. If you’re a relic from those hippie Christian days, check out this review of God’s Forever Family.
- An Evangelical seminary with 4,500 students from 100 denominations has certified an LGBT student club.
- Depending on the weather and the waves, Lynne Hybels is planning to kayak 36 miles across Lake Michigan and there’s $10,000 on the line.
- At last, a quote that gives me some hope: ‘If you have no particularly discernible talent, then you have the gift of leadership.’ Erwin McManus at Q.
- A New Mexico ministry now has the Bible on audio in 733 languages which collectively represents a potential outreach to more than 5.7 billion people in more than 189 different countries.
- For pastors: A description of how one minister stays intentional about sabbath.
- My home and native land’s contribution to Christian culture this week: The Heaven is for Real movie adaptation is shooting in Manitoba.
- Worship leader and recording artist Matt Redman talks to the Grammy Awards people about a pop song that greatly affected him.
- Doctrinal Differences Department (hey, it’s alliterative): 5 reasons one writer rejects unconditional election. (Do I have to give equal time next week?)
- If your musical roots include listening to four guys from Liverpool, you might listen to this and imagine you’ve heard it somewhere before.
- In 2000 British Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced academies, a new class of school. Now, the Church of England is to oversee this school system.
- Here are five significant trends in modern worship. (Sample: #2 –A significant interest in locally produced music over against production company-generated music.)
- Essay of the Week: Philip Yancey looks at Christian radicals he has known, from the ’60s to today.
- If you’re new to the Christian sector of the internet, singer Shaun Groves thinks you missed some of Christian blogging’s best days.
- It costs $108,000 per year to incarcerate a youth, but for a quarter of that Cora Jean’s Old Skool Café in San Francisco can provide them with life and job skills, community, self-confidence, and the support that keeps them out of prison.
- From our fashion department: Soul Surfer Bethany Hamilton goes shopping for a wedding dress. Actually we don’t have a fashion department feature.
- Samuel Adams beer drinkers are “endowed by their Creator” with the right to drink beer, but the Creator isn’t mentioned in their advertising.
- Christian rapper LeCrae responds to rumors he is signing with mainstream rapper Jay-Z.
- A rant erupts at one blog over the comedy This is the End in which actors play themselves post-rapture. (Note, at this blog the phrase “the director” refers to the writer’s son, not the movie director.)
- You can do crowd-funding in Canadian dollars, too; as The Toronto Mass Choir embarks on securing $40,000 CDN for a live worship album.
- A Christian poet looks at a couple of people who suffered from clinical depression, and one who had a name for it.
- Photographers and graphics types: Here’s a different blog for you, The Photo Faith Challenge…
- …But that blog is tame in comparison to the goings on at Hogwarts Seminary. (There should be some kind of advisory for this one.)
After doing link lists like this one at Thinking Out Loud for several years, Paul Wilkinson repented of his spiritual imbalance and started Christianity 201, but now finds himself updating two blogs each day instead of one.
