Blog-sweep

Some Critical thinking needed.

A rock band and a choir may be a perfect combination.

If you have $4500 and want to pay for me to go TEDGlobal in Oxford I can shuffle around my schedule!

Does Grace grow best in Winter?

Top commentaries on every book of the Bible.

Treasure Jesus

(H'T/ Provocations and Pantings)

One for the ipod: Ask seek knock

We just had a great cross-denominational leaders meeting to hopefully birth some plans. We discussed this talk and so I have posted it and it is one for the ipod. It has the best introduction to a sermon I have heard in quite a long time.

Blog-sweep

A brief selection today.

Get some crazy love for your ipod and for your life for FREE.

How Driscoll got men to pray and find out about his new book. ( I used his Death by Love recently in helping someone understand the gospel so if you don't have this do get it)

Someone choosing to grow outward.

45 books they are reading at Desiring God.

What is your sub culture?

Jonny Baker has some resources you might want to explore.

A friend recommended this album by Starfield. Here they are singing I will go.

Hope you all survive the heat. Liquid levels people...... Watch the liquid levels......:)

Feel

Recently, I listened to this (one for the ipod) about the heart and have since taken on a little study of people's thoughts. 

I have been reading Feel.

'First, we have made our relationship with God more about fulfilling our duty than expressing our passion. We make our spiritual lives into a list of dos and don'ts. We pursue this list actually more than we pursue Jesus. And this lead to a life that eventually becomes tired, numb, devoid of feeling, dead'

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The problem may be bigger than we realize

I share a couple of things people said to me yesterday. 

Two secondary school boys witnessed a big church event (to the C of E not as you will see to the assembled throng) in their school and thought it was: 

"The most boring thing we have ever had to do at school"

Later in the day, a man who has started coming to our church was telling his friend of his church-going

Here is his friend's reply:

"Gosh, do people really still go to church?"

Oh dear me.

The task may be even larger than I imagined

Blog-sweep

One man calls the things he finds on the net 'Awesomeness'. Have a click around.

What Michael Jackson really wanted.

Jim Collins has some observations and suggests a 'stop-doing list'.

Supported from utter despair.

Tips from Lincoln on sermons (H/T M.Stanley)

Some wisdom from Tozer.

True but not for me

Finally, ten theology books for the beach bag

I am second

A wonderful reader (you know who you are!) really enjoyed watching the stories told at I am second and thinks you will too.

I have been passing How to ruin your life by 40  around to a few of the new Christians in our church and they have enjoyed it.

They stayed

I recently read 'The Monkey and the Fish' by Dave Gibbons and it was worth reading just for this section on Page 100:

Historian Rodney Stark, in his great book, The Rise of Christianity, wonders why the Christian movement grew so rapidly in the first few centuries after Jesus' crucifixion. Its adherents were a small band of social outcasts. What transformed this ragtag groups of zealots into a global movement at such a spectacular pace?

Stark's inquiry concluded that surge in growth of Christianity was rooted in the response of early Christians to a wave of great pandemics. At least two plagues wracked the developing world in the first three centuries after the death of Christ, and Christians did something no one else would do. They stayed. They helped. And many gave their lives in doing so.

In Stark's book, Dionysius, the bishop of Alexandria, described in a letter how believers responded to a deadly plague that killed an estimated five thousand people a day in the Roman Empire sometime around 260AD: "Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ., and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected  by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of the neighbours and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead....The best brothers lost their lives in this way"

A couple for the ipod

I have listened to a couple of good talks for leaders and preachers that we would all do well to listen to. One on how to communicate the gospel and the other about humble pastors.

Blog-sweep

Some thoughts on Michael Jackson

The art of gleaning

Do books hold your hand in solitude?

Our greatest need.

A good beach read

The greatest worship leader possibly of all time.

I have been studying Psalm 19 all week. 'Willful sins' are always sad but confession like this is very powerful.

The internet monk has some views on Mark Driscoll

Some learning from Singer

Saturday smile