Weekly Once-Over (10.23.2014)
Evolution Of A Missional Community Vision: Are you allowed to change your missional community vision? Not only are you allowed, but your missional community vision should change if you are truly seeking to follow God.
How Do I Describe My Missional Community To Others: When your co-worker or your neighbor asks you what you’re doing tonight, how do you answer when you’re gathering with your missional community/community group/life group/city group/small group unicorn?
When Dad Doesn't Disciple The Kids: Three kinds of “single moms” exist in the church: the literal single mom who is raising children on her own, the mom whose husband is an unbeliever, and the mom whose husband professes belief but does not partner in the spiritual nurture of the family. For the true single mom and the mom married to an unbeliever, the task is clear: train your children in the Lord because no one else will. For the wife of the believing father guilty of spiritual absenteeism, the lines are blurry. She lives in the tension between wanting to honor her spouse and wanting to spiritually equip her children. All three “single moms” desperately need the support of the church, but in this post I want to focus specifically on the third mom, a woman trapped in a dilemma.
6 Costs To Real Friendships: Do you know how your “friends” are doing? How their hearts are? The spiritual condition of their soul? If we have no idea how our “friend” is doing in their walk with God, what difficult times they are going through, or the sins they struggling with, we have a superficial acquaintance, not a friendship. Maybe friendships are in low supply these days because of the cost of being a friend. Let’s take a moment to count the cost of friendship.
Sin Is Worse Than Hell: For some, the doctrine of everlasting punishment in hell feels like a divine overreaction. Take Clark Pinnock as an example: “How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been?”
The Most Honest Atheist In The World: What a refreshing blast of humble and honest air! You cannot but admire such a sincere, transparent, and honorable atheist. But the article ends on a painfully sad note, which may partly explain Sartwell’s atheism, and maybe even his humility.
70 Years Ago Today: The Conversion Of J.I. Packer: Packer states simply, “I had given my life to Christ.” He also recounts, “When I went out of the church I knew I was a Christian.” Packer went back to his room at Corpus Christi and wrote his parents to tell them what had happened. More than half a century later, Packer could attest regarding his conversion that “I remember the experience as if it were yesterday.”