I spent a lot of the week listening to Christian radio stations from around the world on DeliCast.com; so the temptation was to make the entire list this week simply links to all the wonderful stations I found. However, reason prevailed …
- So as to not keep you in suspense, we'll kick off with the news that religious liberty lives in East Tennessee for snake handling denominations. Church motto: There's an asp for that.
- Shortest. Church. Service. Ever. I hope nobody drove any distance to this church.
- This December article at 9Marks also appeared at Gospel Coalition offering some interesting insights into the sharing of pastoral leadership authority in the local church.
- Open Doors USA has released its latest World Watch list of the most dangerous places to be a Christian, including some changes from last year's list.
- Explaining the confiscation of three Bibles from a commercial bookstore, a spokesman for the Agency for Religious Affairs in Kazakhstan said, "The Kazakh state must defend our citizens from harmful materials." Twelve icons were also seized. Asked if they were harmful, he replied, "We have experts to check icons."
- Compassion has assembled an infographic which illustrates some rather shocking economics related to human sex-trade trafficking.
- One observant writer sees Perry Noble's New Spring College as simply an inversion of their apprenticeship program: Instead of paying students, students pay them.
- Changes to the Church of England liturgy for infant baptism now lets parents and godparents off the hook for dalliances with the devil.
- James Dobson says he'll shut down his current ministry organization before he'll comply with new U.S. health care requirements for employers to cover abortion products. I have no doubt he's serious.
- The latest volley in the Mark Driscoll plagiarism discussion suggests that in addition to whatever authors were involved, Driscoll also plagiarized himself.
- Randy Alcorn is scheduled to preach a Sunday morning service, but moments before it starts, the pastor has other plans.
- Provocative suggestion of the week: "John Piper's doctrine is not Reformed, not even Protestant, but pre-reformation Roman Catholic!" Read more here.
- I deliberately omitted this article from last week about conservative fundamentalist men who engage in what we might call "wife discipline" encounters of the corporal punishment kind. This week, I decided it's something to be aware of.
- Using an internet example we all can relate to, here's a refreshing discussion on why the Bible translation process involves more nuances than we might think.
- Which is a good place to mention that College Park Church in Indianapolis, Indiana—weekly attendance: 4,000—raised $1 million in a single pre-Christmas offering for Wycliffe Bible Translators.
- Meanwhile, if you're an average American, I am 90% sure you own a Bible, and 85% sure you don't read it.
- At my own blog this week, more details about DeliCast, the radio portal I mentioned in this week's intro; and my encouragement to megachurch pastors to follow Greg Laurie's lead and consider crusade-style outreach.
- So … that story about the Adventist pastor who wanted to live like an atheist for a year? Well here's a surprise, he lost his job as a seminary professor. Who better to pick up the story than Hemant Mehta aka The Friendly Atheist. And you won't believe this twist.
- There are some things about children's and youth ministry I remember well, and others I'd like to forget ever happened.
- Just in case you need it, Todd Rhoades offers pastors seven things to include in your resignation letter.
- Or, if you're on the receiving end of a resignation letter, eight tips on how to respond.
- Here we go again: This time seven children were removed from a Texas home over the parents' right to home-school them. At the time of the article four had been returned.
- I didn't recognize the titles, but someone took the time to assemble a list of the worst Christian book covers of 2013. (You'll like #1.) (Here's last year's list, too.)
- Parenting Place: One of the challenges of parenting in today's world is that often kids feel a sense of entitlement.
- Question of the Week: If you regularly attend movies and listen to popular music, is what we term as "engaging the culture" just a sophisticated way of justifying worldliness?
- Still in weather recovery? An economics professor used his snow day off to build a church.
- A devotional thought: Now that "selfie" is in the Oxford Dictionary, what does it say about our culture?
- Someone tries to prank a Christian TV show, but the host turns it around, perhaps unwittingly.
Paul Wilkinson writes from Canada (Motto: Home of the Polar Vortex) and blogs at Thinking Out Loud and edits Christianity 201, a daily devotional.
Posted January 15, 2014