[Culture Week] How do we engage our culture with the Gospel?
We're talking about culture this week, and thinking about one of the most basic and important...
Lost and the Struggle between Good and Evil
After happily avoiding Lost for the better part of five years, I caved last year and started...
Today's devotional: pouring your life into the streets
I like my privacy. My Myers-Briggs test results indicate that I'm some sort of super-introvert. I...
Today's devotional: Are you influencing society, or is society influencing you?
Are you familiar with the concept of "structural sin"? It refers to sin on a national or cultural...
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Book review: Foreign to Familiar - A guide to Understanding Hot- and Cold-Climate Cultures, by Sarah Lanier
Weather shapes our different national cultures more than we realise. A cross-cultural worker with wide experience, Lanier explains the vital differences between hot- and cold-climate cultures. This is not just of passing interest, because it dramatically affects how we communicate the gospel within different cultures. In a cold-climate culture, social life is lived primarily within the home. In a hot-climate culture, community life and relationships are conducted outside. Hot-climate cultures are far more relational, much less task-oriented.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/foreign-to-familiar.php
Book review: Culture Making - Recovering Our Creative Calling, by Andy Crouch
Crouch is a leading Christian analysist of culture, and in this ground-breaking book explains what culture is, how to understand it, and then how Christians can ‘make culture’. He gives believers tools for cultivating and creating culture by helping us to make sense of the world around us.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/culture-making-recovering-our-creative-cal...
Book review: Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey
Pearcey brings remarkable scholarship and perceptive insights to this vital book. She demonstrates the importance of worldview; how different worldviews have impacted Christians and the proclamation of the Gospel; and how we have often yielded ground to secular worldviews because we have not attempted to understand them.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/total-truth-liberating-christianity-from-i...
Book review: Focus: The Art and Soul of Cinema, by Tony Watkins
Most people in most cultures spend a considerable part of their leisure time in the world of story – films (cinema and TV) and books. Using culture as a way in to the Gospel therefore seems almost essential. In this vital book, culture-watch guru Tony Watkins, of Damaris.org, writes about cinema with great insight and clarity. He divides his writing into three ‘reels’.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/focus-art-and-soul-of-cinema.php
Book reviews: Don Richardson books - understanding redemptive analogies
Don Richardson defined the concept of redemptive analogy in his books Peace Child and Eternity in Their Hearts. He explained how, embedded in any culture, there is usually some practice or understanding which can be used to demonstrate the Gospel. Findings these sometimes unexpected keys is has been called a gorilla moment.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/eternity-in-their-hearts.php
Book review: Pop Goes the Church: Should the Church Engage Pop Culture? by Tim Stevens
Tim Stevens makes an inspiring case for leveraging pop culture to reach out to people in the language of their lives, with compelling biblical backing for this approach. He offers a new perspective that give relevance and impact to the church by using popular culture – stories from movies and music – to point people to the gospel. He encourages us to get out of our comfort zones and look people in the eyes, meeting them wherever they are.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/pop-goes-the-church.php
Book review: Tell Me a Story: The Life-Shaping Power of our Stories, by Daniel Taylor
“You are your stories. You are the product of all the stories you have heard and lived – and of many that you have never heard. They have shaped how you see yourself, the world and your place in it. Your first great storytellers were home, school, popular culture, and, perhaps, church. Knowing and embracing healthy stories are crucial to living rightly and well. If your present life is broken or diseased, it can be made well. Or, if necessary, it can be replaced by a story that has a plot worth living.” Taylor, a professor of English, writes with great insight into how and why God uses story. Wisely, he has also created a book that is very accessible to not-yet-Christians.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/tell-me-a-story.php
Book review: The Shaping of Things to Come, by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch
The message of Frost and Hirsch is vital for the 21st century church. In essence it is this: we in the West no longer live in Christendom – societies that have a broadly Christian worldview. Instead, we are in the same situation that most missionaries encounter in a non-Christian culture.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/shaping-of-things-to-come.php
Book review: The Church of Facebook, by Jesse Rice
Our new ‘digital communication culture’ is changing everything. And the social media, especially Facebook, have become a major driver of this change, creating new approaches to community and relationship. With great clarity, Rice explores the human need to belong, social networking and how it impacts our culture and the church. He covers a wide range of issues that any of us who use, or wish to, Facebook for evangelism, ministry or networking with friends and church members. Despite the title, this book does not address the vexed question of whether or how there should be ‘online churches’.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/the-church-of-facebook.php
Book review: The New Media Frontier, by J Reynolds and R Overton
This valuable handbook features sections from 14 contributors, each expert in their fields, and actually covers more ground than the title implies. Its main purpose is to help us understand the digital media and how they are changing communication for ever. Blogging, podcasting, apologetics, evangelism, and the Christian academic world are all examined critically. There’s a helpful section on the development of distance learning. Journalism and ethics are explored too.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/the-new-media-frontier.php