After a bit of a hiatus over late December I’m back with the somewhat weekly installment of three great articles/blogs/videos/etc. As many of you know I posted a link carnival of sorts every week for over two years. For the sake of discussion and only putting out what I see to be high quality content I narrowed it down to three. As always feel free to let me know via email/Twitter/contact page if you have something you’ve seen or read that should be included here.
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1. Justin Bieber recently shared about his Christian faith and lack of church attendance. In an interview he said, “A lot of people who are religious, I think they get lost. They go to church just to go to church…I’m not trying to disrespect them…but for me, I focus more on praying and talking to Him. I don’t have to go to church.” I find Bieber’s stance to be quite common in Christians, especially younger Christians and I appreciated Dan Kimball’s response to this:
“We aren’t Christians based on whether we go to a church meeting or not, that is based on our faith in Jesus. So I agree with him there, but having faith in Jesus then means we should then be functioning in a local church according to the guidelines of Scripture. It would be sad thinking of a Christian living out their faith on their own without being in a faith community.”
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2. Adam McHugh’s blog is one I bring up quite often. He’s an author who has done a wonderful job of continuing to discuss topics covered in his book on his blog. As a more introverted person I constantly struggle with how to successfully navigate church ministry with people. I want to value people and also remain true to myself, something that isn’t easy to do. A post he wrote this weeks gets at this bias toward extroversion as what being a good Christian looks like.
“It is bad enough when people in the church criticize our introversion as unfaithful or closed, but it is extra painful when the extroverted bias of our culture leads nonbelievers to consider believing introverts to be bad models of faith, even to be turned off to the gospel because of our temperaments.”
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3. Bobby Gilles does a lot of writing, and because of my season of life this post on writer’s block was helpful to think through. There are plenty of different spaces to do writing in. I tend to prefer writing out of my home because I have all my resources available and I also have a quiet space to think in. Bobby does a good job of looking at the pros and cons of various spaces to write in.
“Compare your productivity at home with elsewhere. And this is what it comes down to, no matter which setting you’ve used till now or which you prefer. Where do you write more? And where are you more apt to write the good stuff? The stuff that makes you say ‘This is why I’m a writer. I’ve hit my mark here.'”
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Have a great weekend friends.
