Big post coming on Thursday! Stay tuned!
Archive for March, 2007
News Coming Thursday
Wednesday, March 28th, 200710 More Christian Blogs You Should Be Reading
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007A couple of months ago, I posted 20 Christian Blogs You Should Be Reading (link here), and it made a splash in the blog community. Well, here is an addendum to that list, with 10 more blogs you have to subscribe to today. Here we go.
- LifeChurch.Tv’s Swerve It was too new last time, but by now this blog is great. There are, expectedly, a lot of commenters, leading to great conversations about Craig and Bobby’s posted topics. Readers also get a behind the scenes look at what is going on at LifeChurch, one of the country’s most innovative churches hands down.
- StevenFurtick.Com Steven Furtick is a young pastor in the Charlotte area that is just blowing it up at Elevation Church. He shares passion with the likes of Perry Noble, sometimes ranting off at the mouth for a post or two on things he doesn’t like. It’s really good insight into a pastor’s mind, and is definitely worth your subscription.
- DesiringGod.Com Blog John Piper blogs here. ‘Nuff said.
- Reformissionary by Steve Mccoy Steve is a great writer, and covers culture well from a Reformed perspective. Good, regular postings, and good reads from around the Church world.
- JayHardwick.Com by Jay Hardwick Jay is pastor of a North Point affiliate in South Carolina, and blogs about his experience. They are about to head to weekly services, so it’s going to get exciting around JayHardwick.Com, I can tell that. They are about to to an extraordinary Easter event and it’s encouraging to read his story.
- ShawnLovejoy.Com by Shawn Lovejoy Shawn Lovejoy is a church planting “expert” (there’s no such thing), and blogs about his experience in pastoring. Very interesting read and church.
- ScottHodge.Org by Scott Hodge Yet another name-based domain, but yet another blog worth reading. There’s great commentary on the church here, and a lot of resources to boot.
- JimmyBritt.Com by Jimmy Britt A pretty good blog by a pastor a whole lot people haven’t heard about, but should’ve. He’s also a pastor in Charlotte.
- My Weblog by J.D. Greear If you haven’t read this one, you have no excuse. JD is pastor of the Summit Church in Durham, NC and the church is exploding with growth. Keep an eye out here. He’s got great writing ability, and tells very good stories that evoke emotion, including the passing away of Jason Ray this past week (Jason Ray was the Tar Heel mascot for the last 3 years).
- Acts29 Blog by Various Maybe a little biased here, but Acts29 has great resources for church planters. Their blog has church profiles within the network, interviews with leaders in the network, and just great links and books for planters. Definitely worth checking out.
Who I Wish Would Frickin’ Blog
Ed Stetzer (I know he has a Resurgence blog, but it’s not the same)
Rob Bell (I don’t agree with him, but he’s a good writer, and it’d be interesting nonetheless)
Erwin McManus (Enough said. An emerging leader with a Gospel-centered head on his shoulders.)
If you know something I don’t about these guys, please send me a link!
Resources for Monitoring Culture
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007As Christians, we’re in the business of redeeming and creating culture for the glory of Christ and the advance of His Kingdom. In order to redeem culture, and bring out the truth in it, we have to understand where it is prior to our intervention and reclamation. We are to be monitors of culture. We have to keep tabs of what is going on in the cultural and social environment around us so that we are informed to the point of being able to redeem that environment. From art to music to literature to film to family structure and overall belief systems, we have to keep ourselves informed and knowledgable about what is going on around us. So how do we do that?
Here are some resources that I use (and some I should) to dissect the general culture in America:
Magazines
Books
- The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
- The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
- Anything and everything by Malcolm Gladwell
Websites
- Digg
- Various news sites (CNN, MSNBC, BBC)
- del.icio.us popular
- YouTube
- Amazon (especially the bestsellers list and what people are buying)
- Wikipedia
By far the most valuable resource would be the magazines: they give the most diverse range of cultural influence on a regular basis (usually monthly). Books may be obsolete by the time you’ve read them (not those I mentioned, but some others more than likely), and websites are usually geared for a specific audience. Digg is becoming a little more diverse, but not much. YouTube is diverse, but it’s hard to extract cultural nuggets from a collection of videos. If I had to pick three resources to stick with, it’d be Wired magazine, Paste magazine, and the Digg website. Hope these resources help you a little dissect the general culture in which we live.
Any I missed, any suggestions, or any recommendations that you yourself use?