Welcome to Paul Wilkinson's freshly redesigned link list! Without further ado, here's a smorgasbord of web-treats you're bound to enjoy. Look for more on Friday. -Paul
Seeker Hostility – I once heard someone say that the problem in the Church today is not the congregations that embraced the seeker sensitive model, but the number of churches that are seeker hostile. On the weekend Thom Rainer did a Twitter poll which led to his Top Ten Ways Churches Drive Away First-Time Guests. After it went viral, he was back on Monday with a follow-up, affirming that the 'meet and greet' time we think is such a great programming element is actually working against us.
Losing the Plot – They started out as mission-focused parachurch ministries. But as time went on, their focus shifted to something which while humanitarian, ceased to be Christ-centered. While we tend to think that this could never happen to the organizations that you and I support, we have to be careful that these institutions don't suffer from mission drift.
When the Communion Elements are Poison – For people with food allergies, Gluten-free bread is a necessity, not an option. In the UK, they've worked this out more uniformly than in North America, where there is no church-wide standardization. From someone for whom it matters, here are seven tips for churches. (Maybe this belongs with the item on seeker hostility.)
20 Minutes into the Future – I make a point of regularly checking in with Christian news and opinion sites in the UK partly because they take our focus away from North America (i.e. ourselves) briefly and partly because the secularization there is just a few steps ahead of where we are heading here. For example, I offer this story at The Christian Institute where the Department for Education is compelling Christian schools to teach gay rights.
She Gave All She Had – Unless you've got people dropping pennies noisily in your collection box, the Bible story we call "The Widow's Mite" may seem anachronistic. But last week Miley Cyrus donated $500,000 to AIDS research (and trust me, finding a link that didn't contain a problematic photo wasn't easy) at the same time that activist Malala Yousafzai donated $50,000 to rebuild damaged schools in Gaza. Yes, the former gift was ten times larger, but the latter represented the entire proceeds from Malala's Nobel Peace Prize. Sometimes less is more.
