[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: Persuasive Technology - Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do by B J Fogg
This secular book gives an excellent and readable understanding of how computers communicate. Professor Fogg’s research offers many insights that also relate to Christian use of the Internet. His concept of ‘website credibility’ is very important for Christian web ministry.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/persuasive-technology.php
Book review: The Millennium Matrix by M Rex Miller
Miller's compelling thesis is that the church has been located in four different communication cultures over the last 2000 years, and that each one has profoundly influenced the entire fabric of the church - the way it is organized, relates together, and communicates to the outside world. For the first 1500 years until the invention of the printing press, society lived in an 'oral communication culture'.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/millennium-matrix.php
Book review: Flickering Pixels - How Technology Shapes Your Faith, by Shane Hipps
This is a very significant and strategic book because it explains the way that electronic media, especially computers and the Web, are changing our culture. As we use them, they are in fact using us, in ways we may not realize.
For 500 years, Western culture has been a 'left-brain' print-based communication culture, where we could express everything in 26 alphabetic characters. The way we preached the gospel, structured our Christian activities and systematized our theology - all have been completely shaped by print. But now technology is rapidly changing this print culture. When the medium changes, the message is changed too. Effective evangelism must take account of these changes.
http://internetevangelismday.com/bookreviews/flickering-pixels.php
Spiritual Snowmen - #6127
When we let the heat of an out-of-control, spiritually uncaring world keep melting us down, making us soft, pretty soon there's nothing left but spiritual mush. If you belong to Jesus, your life is supposed to offer a choice, not an echo for a lost and dying world. We have to stand our ground. Or lose the very things that make a Jesus-follower the light of their world.
http://hutchcraft.com/a-word-with-you/your-hindrances/spiritual-snowmen-6127
Should Christians Read Non-Christian Books?
Despite visual media’s best attempts to kill off reading, people still really like books. Between libraries, online bookstores, Google Books and devices like the Kindle, it’s almost trivial to find any book we could ever want.
http://gospel.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/04/should-christians-read-non-christian-books/
It's Blurry Without Your Glasses - #5851
One of the reasons we're so spiritually lame and powerless is that we mix our faith with a lot of garbage from Egypt and Canaan. So we end up seeing our faith more through our culture than seeing our culture through our faith. And there are lots of cultures people are or have been a part of, each with its own values, its own lies and its own distortions about life.
http://hutchcraft.com/a-word-with-you/your-personal-power/it-is-blurry-without-your-gla...
Level Ground - #5808
The culture of money and power and fashion and social groupings is supposed to stop at the door of the Church of Jesus Christ. I hope it does at yours. None of that stuff matters to Jesus. The world has its "power elite" and its "insiders and outsiders." Don't let that cancer infect your church.
http://hutchcraft.com/a-word-with-you/your-personal-power/level-ground-5808
Missions Motivation from Jesus! - Into Thy Word Ministries
Jesus is the quintessential model of faith and our practice of missions that we are to follow. We do not have a Lord who sits aloof in Heaven, with no firsthand idea or comprehension of what it means to be a human or to serve out in the field. Our Lord served and taught, just as He calls us to go to serve and teach.
http://intothyword.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=46735&columnid=3881
The Quintessential Missionary - Into Thy Word Ministries
Does fear still have a hold on you? Are you so busy looking for opportunities you cannot see anything else? In Matthew 10: 27-33, after Jesus gave the disciples their training and their project of being sent out for the first time on their mission, He further encouraged and warned them.
http://intothyword.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=46734&columnid=3881
Motivated for Missions? - Into Thy Word Ministries
Now, perhaps you are wondering how can I become more obedient and faithful when I just cannot see the road ahead? Perhaps, you have tried hard in our motivations or support development or your service on the mission field and feel frustrated?
http://intothyword.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=46733&columnid=3881