Gospel.com Blog

A hearty welcome to Spanish World Ministries, the latest ministy to join the Gospelcom Alliance! The heart and focus of SWM is the Spanish-speaking church, and to that end they’ve gathered quite a few resources to help those churches evangelize the lost and disciple believers.

To get a feel for their ministry, take a look at their list of missionaries in the Spanish-speaking world and read about the Fourth National Missionary Conference they hosted last year in Buenos Aires. They also have a strong radio and literature ministry that reaches all throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Not for the first time in recent memory, Pat Robertson several weeks ago ignited a storm of controversy with his statements tying tragedies to God’s wrath. Does Robertson speak for all evangelicals? If not, is there anybody who does… or is evangelicalism simply too broad to be adequately represented by any one person? In his latest column, Terry Mattingly takes a look at the challenge of finding a suitable “spokesperson” for the evangelical world.

If prayer is a crucial part of the Christian life, it should be an important part of a church’s life–but organizing regular prayer meetings isn’t easy. How do you go about starting a prayer group at your church?

Richard Brewes has written a helpful overview of the process at the Pocket Bible Thoughts website. He offers plenty of good advice about keeping your prayer group excited and focused over the long term. If you’re interested in forming a prayer group at your church, it’s a useful read. While you’re there, take a few minutes to check out Brewes other church leadership articles as well.

If you’re not familiar with Steve Brown of Key Life Ministries, you’re in for a treat–he’s one of the most interesting Christian teachers online, and you can catch his insights each day on his daily broadcasts. Steve’s messages are now available via podcast as well, so plug his podcast feed into your favorite podcasting program and enjoy!

Steve also does a weekly broadcast called Steve Brown Etc. On this Friday’s program, as End of the Spear opens in theaters, he’ll be interviewing Steve Saint, the son of one of the slain missionaries, as well as the producer of the film. Stop by on Friday at noon to tune in to Steve’s live interview.

The date has been set: May 6 is Internet Evangelism Day 2006!

If your church or study group wants to get involved, the IED website has many resources you can use to raise awareness of the importance of internet evangelism–there’s advice on planning IED activities, strategies for improving your church’s web outreach, and more. It’s a great opportunity to help fellow Christians better understand the internet and its potential for Gospel outreach!

Got questions about the Christian faith? QuestioningFaith.com is a good place to take your questions, doubts, and concerns. You can submit questions for discussion, or read through the many past discussions that have taken place. The site’s resident expert is Ruth Tucker, author of Walking Away from Faith: Unraveling the Mystery of Belief and Unbelief.

To get an idea of the sorts of questions and discussions that take place here, try these for starters:

• Why isn’t God answering my prayers?
• How do I relate to my unbelieving son?
• What should I do about a friend’s use of offensive language?

Many more good discussions where those came from. QuestioningFaith is brought to you by the fine folks at InterVarsity Press.

Why did the American church so enthusiastically endorse The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia, but pay so little attention to equally-relevant spiritual films like The Gospel and Woman, Thou Art Loosed?

Hollywood Jesus blogger Mike Furches explores the question in a recent post. Is there a rhyme and reason to the church’s choice of films to endorse, or is the church simply overlooking many opportunities to highlight spiritually-relevant movies?

Christmas is behind us, and with it the usual “Christmas wars” over public holiday displays and greetings. But now might be a good time to think about how we can avoid this seemingly inevitable, and increasingly tiresome, squabbling twelve months down the road.

In his latest column, Terry Mattingly talks about Rutherford Institute President John W. Whitehead’s thoughts on the age-old Christmas debate. Lots of good ideas and thoughts there. Rutherford jokes at one point:

What they could do in 2006, he said, with a laugh, is put signs under their big public trees that proclaim, “Formerly known as a Christmas tree.”

Then everyone would get mad — with good cause.

Good reading, if you can stand a bit more discussion of the holidays!

Looking to study the Bible in its original languages? In the past, doing so online hasn’t always been easy. Zhubert.com, a new member of the Gospelcom ministry alliance, is out to make it easy to read and study the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek.

They boast a wide range of features and study tools, although the first thing you’ll likely notice are the Bible texts themselves, with each word tagged with grammatical information to help you work your way through the Greek or Hebrew.

Combine this with the Bible Gateway, and there’s not much more you could ask for as far as Bible study tools go!

Along with a complete redesign, several much-requested new features have been added to Gospelcom’s daily cartoon! It’s the same everyday irreverent humor you know and love, but with some new goodies that readers have asked for: rating cartoons is easier and quicker; you can now receive an end-of-the-week email digest of the week’s cartoons; and finding and downloading the cartoons you want is much easier.

So stop by and let the Reverend know what you think!