Gospel.com Blog

Is your church ready for Internet Evangelism Day this Sunday? It’s not too late to check out some of the great discussion-starting resources at the IE Day website, where you’ll find tools and ideas for talking about online evangelism with your church or Bible study group. Take a tour of the IE Day site by clicking on the image below!

It’s Friday, and time for another film roundup from Past the Popcorn:

It’s a pretty decent week for competent filmmaking, and leading the pack of new releases is a thoroughly spiritual and contemporary tale called Hidden Secrets. Released by PureFlix for a one-day opening on Monday, April 30 (no fooling!) on 200 screens, it’s a tale of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Greg Wright calls it an “idealistic, gentle, somewhat cloistered, but genuinely moving little film.”

On the mainstream, adult-ish front, Jeff Walls finds the action flick The Condemned “a not-so-subtle condemnation of our modern voyeuristic society,” and enjoys it for what it is. And in that voyeuristic vein, Kathy Bledsoe finds Vacancy to be “masterful,” if nightmare-inducing, filmmaking. Meanwhile, Mike Brunk finds enough plot holes to drive a truck through in Next, though calling the film “a good option for a mindless action flick.”

If noise and violence don’t attract you, Diggers might do the trick–but don’t expect sanctity here, either, or much of a conventional story. A slice of life in a clamming community, this small (but very adult) film is what Mike Brunk calls a “recipe” with all “the right ingredients in the proper proportions.”

Southern boys Chris Wyatt and Keith Solomon serve up some tasty reviews of Toby Mac’s “Portable Sound” and Dustin Kensrue’s “Please Come Home” in their debut review for Youth Ministry Exchange, Southern Fried Boys: Meal #1. As youth workers and worship leaders, their perspective adds some fresh perspective on the music and artists. Like any good dish, these reviews are full of flavor and worth checking out.

Here’s the latest film roundup from Past the Popcorn:

Almost every week of late, there’s been something new on screens for teenagers, at least, if not for the whole family.

Not this week. The closest thing to suitable for young audiences is In the Land of Women, which Kathy Bledsoe advises is unlikely to be appealing to anyone under 25. She recommends it to adult couples, nonetheless, for its ability to celebrate “a purpose and a plan behind the fact that we need each other.”

On the R-rated front, Greg Wright finds Fracture to be “entertaining” enough but just a little too smart in the pants for its own good, suggesting that director Gregory Hoblit went fishing for an R. Elsewhere, Wright finds Hot Fuzz to be “a salty-tongued, faux-violent, but otherwise raunch-free R-rated buddy-cop comedy”–one which he “enjoyed thoroughly.” Salty language also earns an R for The TV Set, which Wright calls “the slightest, most insubstantial whiff of entertainment” he’s seen in years. And even though The Wind That Shakes the Barley is unrated, Wright calls this IRA drama “fine and accomplished,” though it is “as gritty as the soil from which the barley springs–and it’s intended to shake you to your core.” Meanwhile, on the Danish front, Mike Smith calls After the Wedding a “nearly perfect” and “redemptive” film.

Finally, to bring things back to PG-13, we have Year of the Dog, which Jenn Wright describes as “rather weird.” Still, she thinks there’s something more going on here than just some shaggy dog story, seeing it as a metaphor for overwrought zeal in general.

If you’re a regular reader of the Buzz, you know that we’re big fans of Strangely Dim and The Online Pulpit, two blogs from InterVarsity Press about faith, leadership, and all other manner of topics. It’s exciting, then, to see that IVP has added three new blogs to their blogging family:

• Andy Unedited by IVP editorial director Andrew T. Le Peau, about “how publishers do their work and how they can do it better.”
• Addenda & Errata, about the process of publishing and editing at IVP.
• Behind the Books, about issues and trends in the publishing industry that relate to what IVP is doing.

They look great so far–it’s nice to see discussions about writing, editing, and publishing in a Christian environment. Add ‘em to your bookmarks or RSS reader!

As the story of yesterday’s massacre at Virginia Tech slowly takes shape, several more Alliance ministries have put together online resources responding to the tragedy. We’ve added them to the resources we mentioned yesterday and have gathered them all on our Responding to the Virginia Tech tragedy page. If you or somebody else is struggling with grief and difficult spiritual questions in the wake of the attack, take a look at these resources.

News reports are still filtering in about today’s school shooting at Virginia Tech. As the details emerge and as Gospelcom Alliance ministries respond to the shootings and the spiritual questions being raised, we’ll post them here. Here are some early responses to the Virginia Tech tragedy, as well as related materials posted in response to school shootings in the past:

• There’s a discussion of the shootings going on at the Youth Ministry Exchange forums.

• Youth Specialties has some excellent web resources on youth violence.
• Jim Watkins has some good links about dealing with school shootings and coping with death and grief.
• Peggie Bohanon has put up a devotional responding to the Virginia Tech tragedy.
• Bruce Narramore wrote the essay “Why Teenagers Turn to Violence” in response to the Columbine shootings, and it’s still relevant today.
• Violence: Is There a Way Out? was written primarily about Columbine, but has some excellent insights into the nature of school violence and the steps we can take in response to it.
• Columbine Redefined is a short Our Daily Bread devotional that challenges us to think differently about tragedies like Columbine and the Virginia shootings.
• In the aftermath of Columbine, Terry Mattingly wrote about spiritual questions and dimensions of the violence.
• Stuart McAllister wrote the essay The Gravity of Our Disconnection in response to school violence, and discusses the real reason that terrifying violence like this happens.

Today’s film roundup from Past the Popcorn:

Yes, it’s the slowdown in the lead-up to the Big Summer Blockbusters–and there’s little to get excited about this week. The best of the crop is probably The Hoax, which just now goes into wide distribution. The circuitous story of Clifford Irving’s bogus Hughes biography, the film may be “artistic and competent,” but Greg Wright anticipates that, like Breach and Zodiac before it, “the ticket-buying reaction” will likely be “Lived There, Still Have the T-shirt.”

The B-grade thriller Disturbia, meanwhile, strikes Jeff Walls as “a fun, entertaining thriller,” if little more than a “remake of Hitchcock’s Rear Window.” That’s a far more charitable assessment than Greg Wright’s opinion of Perfect Stranger and Pathfinder, though. In the former case, Wright finds Halle Berry’s latest thriller a “pathetic” R-rated exercise in “prurient thrill,” and in the latter calls the much-delayed Viking yarn a reinvention of “The New SUVs: Stupid Unbelievable Vikings.”

Jenn Wright, though, finds great value in a mostly-gentle unrated foreign picture, Grbavica. A portrait of the women and children who survived Bosnia’s civil war, the film is “a dark picture that refuses to be depressing while still effectively showing the world that the fight isn’t over yet.” Wright gives it a strong recommendation.

In other features, Greg Wright records a bit of the roundtable interviews he sat in on with the creative minds behind Hot Fuzz, due out next week. The excerpts demonstrate how the team can call their own film “bombastic” and “ridiculous”–without being the least bit down on it!

Few figures from modern history are so universally recognized as Albert Einstein, whose scientific genius shook the entire world. But what did the brilliant scientist think of God–did his love of science get in the way of belief in a Creator? GetReligion posts some interesting highlights from an NPR piece that delves into Einstein’s humble and difficult-to-pin-down thoughts about God, Jesus, atheism, and the “unattainable secrets” of the universe that science cannot always illuminate.

James Watkins turns ten today! Well, James isn’t turning ten, but his website, JamesWatkins.com, is celebrating its tenth straight year of publishing Jim’s often amusing, always insightful commentary. This week, he’s talking about the latest news and cultural developments–he offers his thoughts on the Imus scandal, on the roots of the violence currently plaguing Iraq, and the Duke Lacrosse team controversy. If you’re not acquainted with Jim’s unique take on current events, stop by and see what he has to say!