StaffSeptember 01, 2010
Tim Challies has written a helpful piece on the positive benefits, but also the cautions, of utilizing Facebook as a tool for one's ministry. His comments are well balanced and there is a general encouragement from Challies to use Facebook with caution, as with any social networking tool.
Here is a helpful excerpt that highlights this:
As you consider using Facebook in your ministry, or as you consider how you are already using it, spend a few minutes thinking about what Facebook hasreplaced. It is generally true of new technologies that they do not just add something to life, but that they also replace something that is already there. In the case of Facebook, it may well be that it is replacing real-world face to face ministry. Facebook builds social connections and in some ways enhances them; but it can just as easily diminish them as it replaces offline life with online. There is always the temptation to take the easy route (Post “Happy Birthday” on someone’s wall instead of calling him; Send an email instead of meeting him for lunch). Be sure that you are not allowing Facebook to be an easy way of getting around difficult ministry. And make sure you are not using it to disincarnate yourself, to remove your physical presence from people’s lives.
Jeremy M. MullenAugust 27, 2010
Recently Robin Marantz Henig wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine entitled “
What Is It about 20-Somethings?” In the article, she explains the trend of adults in their 20’s who are taking longer (or failing altogether) to reach various milestones of adulthood – along with the concern that many have about the trend.
The bulk of the article, however, focuses on the work of Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychology professor, who has written extensively on “emerging adulthood” (as he calls it). Arnett has been pressing for the recognition of this period as a distinct developmental phase, also implying a new set of societal considerations for them. Then, drawing upon the research of others, she points out that there are still some changes going on in the brain throughout the 20’s – especially the pruning of synapses. She comes to this startling conclusion: “Maybe it’s only now, when young people are allowed to forestall adult obligations without fear of public censure, that the rate of societal maturation can finally fall into better sync with the maturation of the brain.” In Henig’s defense, she does point out that Arnett has his critics, but she comes back in the end to present this discussion as a full of promise: “…if this longer road to adulthood really leads to more insight and better choices, then Arnett’s vision of an insightful, sensitive, thoughtful, content, well-hone, self-actualizing crop of grown-ups would indeed be something worth waiting for.”
Having just left my 20’s this past year and working full-time with college students, it’s not that I disagree that contemporary 20-somethings haven’t met some new challenges – or even that the period labeled “emerging adulthood” doesn’t exist. The problem is that Henig has present an ethical question in the flattest manner – as if nice biological coincidences conclude the matter. There are other details which need significant exploration. For instance, the freedoms that have become a hallmark of the contemporary American 20-something do have profound impact. The rise of STDs among this age group, the emotional toll of abortions, the physical and social cost of routine substance abuse, and so on profoundly impact the shape of subsequent life. Even in the biological terms by which Henig presents the discussion, reproduction – especially for women – would be much easier if it occurred in the teenage years. Yet none of us are prepared to conclude that in 21
st century America, teenagers ought to be having children. Additionally, it might be worthwhile for those who are optimistic about this cultural shift to read the anonymously written
Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student,
[1] which recounts just how profoundly disturbed many university students are becoming by exercising the freedoms Arnett promotes.
Henig’s article reveals just how complex many ethical questions are – and how flat much of our public ethical discourse has become. The question of how we treat those struggling through “emerging adulthood” does require an ethical stance, but such a stance is forged through acknowledgement of the complicated details not the glossing over of them. For the Christian, it requires that we reflect upon the gospel – “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”
[1] New York: Sentinel, 2006.
StaffAugust 24, 2010
This upcoming fall, Claremont School of Theology will be being the "University Project," which will integrate the education of ministers, rabbis and Muslim religious leaders.
Time magazine recently published an article describing this initiative.
Here is an excerpt from that piece:
The project hatched naturally from Claremont's desire to engage southern California's religiously diverse population. "We're trying to catch up with the practical reality of how congregations, synagogues, and mosques are already trying to create some rapport among themselves," says Jerry Campbell, president of California's renowned Claremont School of Theology. Not only will the project offer comprehensive multi-faith classes, but also it hopes to establish the first accredited imam-training institution in the U.S.
StaffAugust 20, 2010
An interview done by FRONTLINE/World reporter Evan Osnos with Zhao Xiao, a prominent Chinese economist who has gained attention for arguing that China’s economy would benefit from the spread of Christianity.
Interestingly enough, just recently, China was reported to have surpassed Japan as the 2nd largest economy in the world.
StaffAugust 20, 2010
Mike Emlet, counselor and faculty member at CCEF, writes a succinct article about how counseling from a gospel-centered framework is not disregarding principles and commands, but rather reinforces them.
Here is an excerpt from his article:
If we don’t ultimately view the Bible as an unfolding, cohesive story of God’s redemption that comes to completion in Jesus Christ, our use of Scripture in ministry situations has the potential to miss Him—and so will our hearers. Those we minister to need more than commands, principles, examples, and systematic theological categories per se. Rather, they need to be connected in vital relationship with a Redeemer. Because the Bible tells the story of God’s rescue mission that centers on the Redeemer Jesus Christ, wherever we are in Scripture we want to ask the questions, “How does this passage fit into the broader story of redemption?” “What difference does the death and resurrection of Jesus make for the way I would understand and apply this passage to my brother or sister?”
StaffAugust 18, 2010
Listen to music samples from this CD on www.citylifemusic.com and you are able to pre-order your CD today!
StaffAugust 18, 2010
Brett McCracken recently wrote an article for The Online Wall Street Journal regarding how certain churches are trying to be more "cool" for the purpose of engaging their people.
Here's McCracken's conclusion:
If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it's easy or trendy or popular. It's because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It's because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It's not because we want more of the same.
StaffAugust 16, 2010
Dane Ortlund tells the story behind a great hymn, O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.
StaffAugust 12, 2010
Could there be a link between the quality of a marriage with religious preferences? See this article from The Washington Post.
Jeremy M. MullenAugust 12, 2010
Recently two items reminded me of the importance of distinguishing the gospel from various socio-political agendas.
First, Amy Greene recently wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times entitled “
Campaigning to the Choir.” She talks about the invocation of Christian belief in the Tennessee gubernatorial race. But she recalls her own upbringing in the church (in Tennessee) and bemoans the manner of reduction faith undergoes in the political sphere. What had once been a rich, rooted source of identity that defied simplistic sloganeering had now become a farce – a kind of merit badge for politicians.
Second, in Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead, the narrator recalls an argument between his father and grandfather – both ministers (the latter retired). The grandfather had led the men from his Kansas church away to fight in the Civil War. Even before the war, he had been a militant abolitionist – apparently involved with John Brown’s Pottawatomie Massacre. But most of the men from his congregation died; and he was left with bitterness as his congregation died off, and the Southern states were not (in his estimation) dealt the hand of judgment they deserved. Here’s their exchange when the grandfather turns up on Sunday evening after he leaving during the father’s sermon:
He appeared at the house after dinner. He walked into the kitchen where my mother and I were clearing things away and cut himself a piece of bread and was about to leave again without a single word to us. But my father came up the porch steps just then and stood in the doorway, watching him.
“Reverend,” my grandfather said when he saw him.
My father said, “Reverend.”
My mother said, “It’s Sunday. It’s the Lord’s Day. It’s the Sabbath.”
My father said, “We are all well aware of that.” But he didn’t step out of the doorway. So she said to my grandfather, “Sit down and I’ll fix a plate for you. You can’t get by on a piece of bread.”
And he did sit down. So my father came in and sat down across from him. They were silent for some time.
Then my father said, “Did my sermon offend you in some way? Those few words you heard of it?”
The old man shrugged. “Nothing in it to offend. I just wanted to hear some preaching. So I went over to the Negro church.”
After a minute my father asked, “Well, did you hear some preaching?”
My grandfather shrugged. “The text was ‘Love your enemies.’”
“That seems to me to be an excellent text in the circumstances,” my father said. This was just after somebody set that fire behind the church that I mentioned earlier.
The old man said, “Very Christian.”
My father said, “You sound disappointed, Reverend.”
My grandfather put his head in his hands. He said, “Reverend, no words could be bitter enough, no day could be long enough. There is just no end to it. Disappointment. I eat and drink it. I wake and sleep it.”
My father’s lips were white. He said, “Well, Reverend, I know you placed great hope in that war. My hopes are in peace, and I am not disappointed. Because peace is its own reward. Peace is its own justification.”
My grandfather said, “And that’s just what kills my heart, Reverend. That the Lord never came to you. That the seraphim never touched a coal to your lips –”
My father stood up from his chair. He said, “I remember when you walked to the pulpit in that shot-up, bloody shirt with that pistol in your belt. And I had a thought as powerful and clear as any revelation. And it was, This has
nothing to do with Jesus. Nothing. Nothing. And I was, and I am, as certain of that as anyone could ever be of any so-called vision. I defer to no in this. Not to you, not to Paul the Apostle, not to John the Divine. Reverend.”
[1]
The scene bristles with anger masked by formality. Here the gospel was not reduced; rather, it was filled with a complex set of hopes which had only some distance relationship to the hope of the gospel. If the current Tennessee gubernatorial race is a farce, this gospel is a monstrosity. It could not be simply mentioned in passing. It stirred the soul of those who bought into it, and for that reason it was much more dangerous form. Tangential values had been brought into the center of the gospel and hitched to entities which could not possibly bear the weight of the infinite and eternal.
[1] Marilynne Robinson,
Gilead (New York: Picador, 2004), 83-85.
