Is the Task of Missions Forgotten? I Pray Not

A World of Nice People is Still a World That Needs Saving

C.S. Lewis:

We must not suppose that if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world.

Making Connections

Steve McCoy writes compassionately and practically about how you can reach out to those around you, how you can make friends with strangers without much work at all. His ideas?

1. Always have church invite cards on hand (to those in my church, we have THOUSANDS that you can get from us).

2. Keep a tennis ball on hand and play "hotbox."

3. Keep extra ______ on hand to give to others.

4. Make sure you have a camera handy.

5. Be courageous.

See the whole thing for descriptions of each. Really good.

Seeking Shia?

Mark Moring of CT Movies quotes Shia LaBeouf (of the Transformer Movies) from a recent interview:

-Sometimes I feel I’m living a meaningless life, and I get frightened.

-I don’t give a damn about the money anymore. I used to.

-In my parents' generation, rebellion was pop culture. It's not anymore. You can see it in something as simple as where their music was at and where ours is now. If you look at our Billboard Top 100, a lot of those songs on there are from Christian country artists. A lot of rappers, too, are very Christian. The fact that [religion] is even still talked about is kind of wild to me.

-The good actors are all screwed up. They’re all in pain. It’s a profession of bottom-feeders and heartbroken people.

-I have no answers to anything. None. Why am I an alcoholic? I haven’t a damn clue! What is life about? I don’t know.

-I don't handle fame well. Most actors on most days don’t think they’re worthy. I have no idea where this insecurity comes from, but it’s a God-sized hole. If I knew, I’d fill it, and I’d be on my way.

Churches are Made Up of Shoppers

From CT's Go Figure:

49% New church attendees who have transferred from other congregations, according to Protestant pastors.

32% New church attendees who were unchurched.

19% New church attendees who were children born to adults attending church.

The 49% figure is crazy to me. We have work to do.

Good News vs. Good Advice

This is a paraphrase of a Doug Wilson sermon illustration on what good advice is compared to good news, as relayed by John Piper.

Good advice is a teacher standing in front of her class and preparing them for a test. "Study hard, memorize your paradigms, do you homework and get it in every night, and you'll do fine on the final exam." That is very good advice. Well, come test day the teacher makes her way up and down the rows of students as they work, but notices that one student has a blank page before him; he hasn't even started writing. Good advice is the teacher coming up to him and urging him on, "You can do it, just take your time and concentrate, it will come." That is very good advice. Good news is the teacher sitting down at the student's seat and taking the test for him.

His Wrath Will Be Always Upon Them

What is God's relationship to those who are in hell? JP answers:

Church is About Gaining Christ

Michael Horton, in Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, p. 228.

The church has a very narrow commission. It is not called to be an alternative neighborhood, circle of friends, political action committee, social club, or public service agency; it is called to deliver Christ so clearly and fully that believers are prepared to be salt and light in the worldly stations to which God has called them. Why should a person go through all the trouble of belonging to a church and showing up each Sunday if God is the passive receiver and we are the active giver? It's like being expected to look forward to Christmas when you are always giving but never receiving any gifts. Answering Simon's complaint against the woman who anointed Jesus with costly perfume, Jesus said, "He who is forgiven little, loves little." Then he turned to the woman and said, "Your sins are forgiven" (Luke 7:47-48). When we regularly hear and receive Christ's forgiveness, we are filled with love for him and for others.

On Learning from Unbelievers

Spurgeon says you can learn much from unbelievers. I totally agree. From Lectures to My Students, p. 211:

I have seen very much of my own stupidity while in conversation with seeking souls. I have been baffled by a poor lad while trying to bring him to the Saviour; I thought I had him fast, but he has eluded me again and again with perverse ingenuity of unbelief. Sometimes inquirers who are really anxious surprise me with their singular skill in battling against hope; their arguments are endless and their difficulties countless. They put us to a non plus again and again. The grace of God at last enables us to bring them to the light, but not until we have seen our own inefficiency. In the strange perversities of unbelief, the singular constructions and misconstructions which the desponding put upon their feelings and upon scriptural statements, you will often find a world of instruction. I would sooner give a young man an hour with inquirers and the mentally depressed than a week in the best of our classes.

Missional Living, Simplified

Jonathan Dodson has some great suggestions on how you can be missionaries to your cities, communities, and place of work:

1. Eat with Non-Christians
2. Walk, Don't Drive
3. Be a regular
4. Hobby With Non-Christians
5. Talk to Your Co-Workers
6. Volunteer With Non-Profits
7. Participate in City Events
8. Serve Your Neighbors

Click here to read descriptions of each.

Deborah Has No Idea Who Victoria Beckham Is

You can see the rest of the segments on YouTube.

HT: JH

SoulPancake

A friend pointed out a new website called SoulPancake. What is SoulPancake, you ask? Rainn Wilson, of The Office, explains:

We want to make discussions about Spirituality, Creativity, and Philosophy cool again. Were they ever cool? I have no idea. But it seems like a good idea. We want to engage the user to “Chew on Life’s Big Questions”™. (I was kidding about the ™ symbol; you can use that phrase however you want. Even to sell frozen taquitos.) Where do you go on the Interwebs if you want an irreverent, fun, and profound take on God and Art and the Soul and Faith and Beauty? Fox.com? Maybe. But maybe also here at SoulPancake.com.

We provide some rockin’ content (interviews, blogs, challenges, contests, features, and more), but it’s really all about having YOU—the SoulPancake community—bring this site to life. Say what’s on your mind. Be real. Talk about WHY WE’RE HERE. And if I say something that offends you, let me have it.

Just remember: Life is a rich, weird, difficult experience. So join us as we go on the spiritual and artistic journey that is SoulPancake.

Sounds pretty cool.

No Yearning In Me Unmet

From the interview posted below, David Plotz discusses his own religious views and the need of a savior:

You say you started as an agnostic. Have your religious views changed by reading the Bible?

I guess I'm one of these agnostics who is becoming closer to atheism now because I am so upset by the picture of the God there. I am so disturbed by the God that I found there. The most disturbing part of this whole journey for me was, how do I as a Jew cling to a God who seems to be so unmerciful so much of the time and so cruel so much of the time? That's very troubling. Do I want such a God to exist? I don't know that I do.

As Jews, we don't have the comfort of the New Testament to fall back on.

You wrote in your conclusion, 'I am a Jew. I don't and can't believe that Jesus died for my sins.' Christians will say, 'Of course you can.'

I certainly have had many Christians of whom I have loved who have told me that. I just know it's not a need that I have. I can live a good and happy life without finding the comfort of that I know that other people do find. I guess my emotional and intellectual and theological state doesn't have the urgency which might make me perceptive to having a Jesus-like figure. There's not a yearning in me that is unmet.

Penn on Christianity v. 2

A few moths back I posted a video from Penn Jillette and his ruminations on an encounter he had with a "proselytizer." See that video here. Here is his follow up to that (warning: he uses some strong language):



Man, I love this guy's honesty. True tolerance, I say.

HT: Z

Chinese Underground Church Principles

Posted by Doug Groothuis from a sermon by Brother Yun:

1. Always pray.
2. Always be ready to witness for Jesus.
3. Always be ready to suffer for Jesus.
4. Always be ready to die for Jesus.
5. Always be ready to escape from prison for Jesus.

Granted, we Americans are not under immediate threat of losing our lives. But perhaps we should all think that way. Christians in persecuted countries tend not to worry about details or get bogged down in issues us Americans tend to get bogged down in. They have laser like focus. Simply, it is all about Jesus.

Are you Willing to be Hated for Speaking the Gospel Truth?

Randy Alcorn wants to know.

Flying Gospels to North Korea

Ok, I have at least one post today that isn't about Roe v. Wade. From CT, so cool:

Christian activists in South Korea sent hundreds of thousands of gospel tracts over North Korea's closed border in November using helium-filled balloons. Equipped with a time-release mechanism, each balloon carried 10,000 leaflets that tell the story of a 1907 Christian revival in Pyongyang, and compare Kim Jong-Il to Nebuchadnezzar. The effort is part of a resurgence of balloon launches, used for decades by political and religious groups to send propaganda past the North's information blackout. Such launches worsened relations between North and South in 2008. In response, North Korea's government further restricted travel and communication between the two countries.

Though it could have a negative effect on relations between the two countries, it seems that the risk is worth it.

Penn on Proselytizing

HT: Z

Evangelism and Church Size

Cited in CT's "Go Figure":

53% Attendees in large churches (1,000+members) who say they shared their faith with strangers in the past month.

35% Attendees of small churches (less than 100 members) who say so.

Why?

Suffering Leads to Evangelism

John Piper recently responded to some Q&A on suffering at the Together for the Gospel conference. Listen to him talk about suffering and how it leads to evangelism:

I don’t think Christ is glorified anywhere more than when suffering people rejoice in him as their treasure. If everything is going rosy for all my people, the possibilities of us making a name for Jesus in the city is smaller than if things are going hard for our folks. Then the possibility of making a name for Jesus is greater. What the world wants to see is not for you to tell them, “Jesus makes things go well for me.” Things are going well for them, too, probably better than for you, and it is money and doctors that are doing it for them. So that argument has teeny-weeny effectiveness.

Rather, when neighbors know that the baby in your womb has a liver outside his body, no spinal column, and you have carried this baby to the end and they watch you, the possibilities of making much of Jesus are staggering.

Read the whole thing here.