This Weekend on the Web
For those of us who spend time on the web over the weekends, consider using at least some of your time to grow in your knowledge of God’s Word and His world. Here’s a brief, curated list of videos and articles that I found helpful this past week. Enjoy!
We Must Find a Better Way to Talk About Race
Pastor Kevin DeYoung helps us think carefully and critically about the current race dialogues in America right now. This is a very important and helpful read.
PBC is a church that spends significant time in prayer every worship gathering, and most (if not all) of these prayers have been planned and edited to best serve the congregation. This is a helpful and beautiful feature of these corporate prayers, but it should not be the only way we pray. This article is a good reminder that sometimes we need to pray unedited prayers.
Sometimes a little perspective can be helpful. This story about a French Huguenot named Marie Durand helped remind me to be grateful for what we still have, rather than focus on what we've lost.
The longer the Covid-19 pandemic continues, the more concerned I become about the Christian duty to move towards those in need. Evangelize the lost. Disciple the saved. Help the vulnerable. Visit the sick. These things, which are part of the evidence of genuine faith (cf., Matthew 25:31-46), simply cannot be done well (if at all) while we remain in quarantine.
This article gives a brief yet helpful tutorial on how to visit the sick, even in a Covid-19 world. Consider these words: “The world would like us to believe that there is an ever-increasing untouchableness about all of us. Perhaps now more than ever, we need to be willing to care for the body of Christ, as Christ ministers to His body, through our physical bodies as well.”
3 Ideas to Involve Church Members in Congregational Care
Just a few simple ideas for how you can be involved in caring for the local church. What would you add to the list?
Trevin Wax writes: "When a sizable segment of the population says that political affiliation matters more than religious identity, we’re witnessing something greater than mere polarization; we’re watching the transmutation of politics into religion. For many Americans, it’s not that politics supersedes religion, but that politics is their religion.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that traditional religious practices and doctrines have been abandoned. Many of these Americans happily attend church or go to the temple or adopt disciplines meant to better their lives. But at the fundamental level of orienting and ordering their lives, for many people political convictions have replaced religious belief. Politics has a stronger and wider effect than religion does."