Gospel.com Blog

Summer is right around the corner! If you’re a youth pastor or minister, summertime means more access to the youth and greater freedom for ministry trips and excursions. On the other hand, once that initial summer rush is over, ministry can really bog down even as pressure from the church community increases. In an article over at Intersect, Steve Argue and Dave Livermore talk about the inevitable summer church/ministry blues, and what to do about it:

Our hopes and goals are high: Read that book that’s been sitting on the shelf, start that exercise program, take time out to pray for an extended period of time once a week, take that family vacation that always gets put off, or just s l o w d o w n a bit.

Sounds great. But our experience is that summertime nirvana lasts for a very short time. Like the slow moving roller coaster ascending before making that fatal turn that hurls us to mach speed, are the summers that many of us experience.

Somewhere between early summer nirvana and frenetic fall insanity we suddenly find ourselves in a spiritual and emotional ICU. People surround us wondering if we’re going to make it while simultaneously and often unintentionally asking us to run harder.

Read the whole thing.

Last week, it was Spider-Man. Next week, it’s Shrek. The week after… don’t you know?

So we’re taking the chance this week to squeeze in an interview with director Michael Landon, Jr., who’s currently promoting the DVD release of The Last Sin Eater next week. He graciously agreed to talk with Managing Editor Greg Wright not so much about Sin Eater, but about art, the Church, and film criticism.

We’re also high this week on The Hip Hop Project, a redemptive documentary about a former New York street punk who now devotes his time to helping others who, like himself before them, have things to say but little in the way of constructive outlets or assistance. Mike Gunn compares the film to Born Into Brothels and Rize, and says it “brings out the sublime in humanity.” Still, it’s Hip Hop–so expect rough language.

Several other good small films open this week. Jeff Walls finds the late Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress “bittersweet” and “charming.” He also finds the Alzheimer’s drama Away From Her a “wonderful character study” though he doesn’t recommend it for the “younger, attention-span deprived-audience.” Mike Smith calls the Iranian soccer politicomedy Offside “clever and insightful.” By contrast, Mike finds the “graphic language and frank discussion in Georgia Rule “a chance for us to confront the “real uncomfortable truth about the result of child molestation.”

But we’ll just skip talking about The Ex…

It’s the most natural thing in the world for a parent to want to stick up for his or her child–after all, isn’t it part of a parent’s job to protect their kid from harm? To be sure, there are times when you need to stand up for your child, but there are also times when you need to let them face the music on their own. In a recent article at Winning at Home ministries, Dan Seaborn talks about the challenge of knowing when to step in, and when to stand back:

One of the most difficult aspects of parenting is figuring out when it’s best to let go in order to let your kids grow up a little. This is a question of apron strings: When should you intervene? And when, despite all your protective instincts, should you not intervene?

Let’s say your child gets caught cheating at school. Do you make them accept the consequences, or do you make excuses for them? Do you let your child face punishment and shame, or do you call the teacher and try to explain everything?

As in many things, it’s easier said than done–but Seaborn’s essay is good food for thought if you’re facing this issue in your family.

Have you ever served with a group of people–a church committee, a website design group, a leadership team–that was tasked with planning out a major project? If you have, you know that it’s sometimes hard to keep everyone focused and friendly while you try to navigate everyone’s individual ideas and opinions. A new essay over at StudentSoul.org offers some concrete suggestions for making sure your group gets along well during the planning process.

The article is written with InterVarsity groups in mind, but is perfectly applicable to any sort of committee planning process. Whether the group in question is the church council or the youth group leadership team, see if these tips can help make committee meetings more productive and less painful.

How do you use the Bible Gateway? The Bible Gateway has been a staple of Gospel Communications’ online ministry for over a decade, and now we want to know what you’re doing with it! Has the Bible Gateway made a difference in your devotional life, helped you share the Gospel with somebody, or made it easier to study Scripture? We want to know!

Tell us your Bible Gateway story via email, audio, or video, and you’ll be entered into a drawing to win an iPod Nano and the audio Bible of your choice. Winners will be selected on June 8, so stop by the Bible Gateway story page and let us know how you’re using the Bible Gateway!

update: the Bible Gateway contest has ended. You can read some of the entries we received at the Bible Gateway blog. Thanks to all who participated!

Time for another movie roundup from Past the Popcorn:

Yes, it’s the movie that kicks off the summer season–but didn’t we just get done with Spring Break? Nonetheless, films like Spider-Man 3 tells us that summer is upon us, and in a big, expensive, flashy way. From that perspective, Spidey delivers, says Greg Wright, and it offers “a boatload of mercy, redemption, and even forgiveness–qualities we seem to have forgotten these days in our global quest to become superheroes.” Still, Wright finds “four villains (including Spidey himself) about two too many, and Topher Grace, among others, is wildly miscast.” If Spidey is normally your thing, you probably won’t be disappointed.

In other releases, Mike Brunk finds Lucky You’s romance to two cards or so shy of a flush, and Jenn Wright finds Civic Duty to be “an unfortunate addition to the psycho-terrorist-FBI-thriller genre,” calling it “tedious and annoying.”

On the arthouse circuit, Greg Wright calls The Valet “a pretty chaste comedy even by American standards”–which might be saying something, considering it’s a French romantic comedy. Meanwhile, Mike Smith finds the R-rated humor in Everything’s Gone Green “quintessentially Canadian”–that is, “irony-laden” and “understated.”

Finally, Mike Gunn sits down for a talk with Kazi Rolle and Matt Ruskin, star and director of next week’s The Hip Hop Project.

Youth Ministry Exchange has created a four-part series of articles to help youth workers minister to survivors of rape. In part one, Amy Sondova walks readers through the initial urgent response. Other articles includes a firsthand account from a rape survivor, recognizing signs that a student has been raped, and a biblical perspective on rape through the eyes of Tamar.

Jonalyn Fincher, of the Soulation apologetics ministry, has recently published two new articles:

• The Curse of Eden at Radiant Magazine, about what she calls the “woman curse” in Genesis. Was the Genesis curse the beginning of the gender wars? Are men and women cursed to continually struggle for dominance over each other–and is there any way out of that curse?
• Tipping Toward the Trinity at Fullfill.org, about the question of loyalty. Can Christians devote themselves entirely to Christ while also giving their loyalty to a country or church? With the relationship between church and state regularly debated today, it’s a challenge for Christians to re-evaluate where their true loyalties lie.

After you’ve read the above articles, stop by Soulation website and learn more about the ministry work of Jonalyn and her husband Dale.

Apologist Ravi Zacharias has written an essay reflecting on last month’s tragedy at Virginia Tech, and on the way we as a society have responded to it. Events like this raise countless questions about God and evil, he notes–but are we serious about finding the answers? He has some sobering thoughts about the spiritual health of an American society that has yet to come to grips with the existence of moral evil. From his essay:

The greater tragedy may well be ours. How we as a society, claiming to be well, put question marks on whether there is such a thing as evil or not, whether individuals bear any instigating responsibility or not, and whether life is just a temporal thing or not. Putting question marks to which God has already given names and categories is precisely the reason we mourn and weep with no answers because we wish to re-name and redefine God’s order. That is the tragedy that leads to atrocities. Jesus said to the self-righteous that the man with physical blindness had an advantage. He knew he could not see. The one with spiritual blindness that doesn’t know he is blind is truly the one bereft of insight, truth, and reality. That may be our biggest danger at this hour.

Read the full piece for the rest of his thoughts.