Links to Your World--Tuesday Oct 2

• “We continually face a choice: will we seek to establish ourselves by being cool, or we trust that God has established us in Christ? It really is that simple. . . . In Christ, God has revealed his death-defying love for sinners. When I prefer to be cool, I nonchalantly let him know that I’d prefer the love of a fickle mass of opinion jockeys instead.” (The Heresy of Cool)

• Facts you didn’t know about Chuck Norris, such as: “Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.”

• In “Trusted Guides,” learn how Texas Baptists want to help immigrants become citizens. Richard Land, president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, applauds the ISAAC initiative to help churches: "This sounds as if what they're doing is providing guidance, counseling, and resources to enable people to make their way through the maze of the immigration process, which is pretty difficult."

• Sickness, Poverty and Hardship Gospel Not Catching On.

• When Teddy Roosevelt entertained diplomatic guests at the White House he would take them to the back lawn at the end of the day and invite them to gaze at the night with him. He led his guests to share in the magnificence of the nighttime sky and then would say, “I believe we are small enough now. Let’s go to bed.” To get small enough, go to NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day every now and then.

• Paul’s four-letter words.

• “Think some people can get vicious toward athletes and coaches? Just look at the heat pastors so often receive within their own congregations. And though the purported reasons vary, often they boil down to the same one generally cited in sports: Failure to win enough.” (“The Boo-Birds”)

• When Terry Mattingly interviewed Time's David Van Biema, he asked him, "What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?" Van Biema's answer: "It’s not a story, really, but the difference between outsiders’ definition of “evangelical” and insiders’. I’m inclining toward your point that it’s becoming meaningless, but what does one substitute?"

• 'Dead' Man Wakes Up Under Autopsy Knife: A Venezuelan man woke on the autopsy table when examiners cut into his face.

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I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve;
And all my sour-sweet days
I will lament and love.
"Bitter-Sweet" A prayer poem from George Herbert (d.1633)
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• Demographics for your ZIP code. Check out 78759, the church’s ZIP Code.

• “Knowing Coldplay lyrics might be important avenues for talking about kingdom matters, but let’s not kid ourselves. We connect with sinners in the same way Christians always have: by telling an awfully freakish-sounding story about a man who was dead, and isn’t anymore, but whom we’ll all meet face-to-face in judgment.” (Russell Moore, complaining that too many people are missing the point of Paul at Mars Hill in Acts 17)

• This guy serves as pastor to a bunch of clowns. Yeah: been there; done that.

• How Much House Can You Afford?

• 51 Ways to Expand Your Comfort Zone

• GQ’s snarky coverage of Christian rock.

• Take a Sabbath from Technology--except Get Anchored of course.

This is pretty funny, from Vintage21. Borrowing from the popularity of creating new silly voiceovers for old movies, these guys have created a picture of Jesus that too many churches present to the world: a Jesus who is obsessed with trivial minutia. Understand, they're not mocking Jesus; they're mocking the portrayal of Jesus found in too many churches. This is, in their view, the message of Jesus that the world hears from too many of us:


Have you read the previous posts this week? They include the "Song of the Week" ("Stuck in the Middle" by Mark Heard), some articles to help you understand Islam, news on Network for Life, and a great photo from our Connection Campaign. To keep up with the journal, sign up for e-mail updates or assign the feed to your news reader or Google Personalized Home Page.