Gospel.com Blog

The latest issue of Lausanne World Pulse is online! The focus of this issue is the “Global South,” and the unique shape that missions and evangelism work has taken there. There are over a dozen articles to check out, but here are a few you might start with:

• A Theology of Evangelism in the Global South—how have local evangelists in Africa, Asia, and South America gone about the task of missions in the midst of exceedingly diverse cultures and often-turbulent social situations?
• A Mission Voice from Latin America—something amazing is happening in the Protestant church in Latin America, and it ought to get the global church thinking freshly about poverty, evangelism, and missionary work.
• The Paradigm is Changing—on the challenge and importance of Bible translation in the southern continents.
• Where is the Church in Europe Going?—is the Christian church in Europe alive and well? Here are three possible futures for evangelicalism in Europe.

As always, the LWP is a great source of information and insight into contemporary global missions, so if missions or the Global South in particular interest you, stop by and take a look!

Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens. We’re a few days late with this latest roundup—our apologies!

It’s not a banner week for new releases. The best of the bunch is the new Saturday Night Live alum flick Baby Mama, in which Tina Fey stars as a single businesswoman who hires a surrogate (played by Amy Poehler) to carry her child. It’s a PG-13 SNL-type effort in which “the humor never comes across as mean-spirited,” says Michael Brunk. “While it has its rude, crude moments, I never felt it was gratuitous or thrown in for shock effect. Not all of the jokes work, but in general it’s consistently witty and funny.”

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Are you a gamer, or the parent of a gamer, who looks at the vast array of video games on store shelves and wonders which ones are worth playing? There are countless video game reviews available around the internet, but it’s tougher to find reviews that talk about the moral aspects of popular games.

Al Menconi Ministries has a team of game reviewers who don’t just ask if a game is fun to play—they also ask if it’s a morally good way to spend your time. In April alone, they’ve reviewed nine games, including:

• Turning Point: Fall of Liberty
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl
• Need for Speed: Pro Street
• Lost: Via Domus

…and many more. If you’re worried about the type of moral content you or your kids will run into in the latest games, AMM’s reviews are worth checking out. Take a look at their grading criteria and browse their large archive of reviews (over 300 reviews, going back to 2002!).

We have two items from Answers in Genesis for you today:

1. They’ve recently released a media player on their website. You can catch the back catalog of their audio and video presentations there.

2. And in keeping with our Earth Week, here’s part of an article from AiG called, The ‘greenness’ of God:

In an effort to link Christianity with the conservation movement, some people portray God as the ‘Original Greenie’ whose chief concern is the preservation of the natural environment. But is God green? What does the Bible have to say about the greenness of God?

The Bible consistently teaches that God created all things by virtue of His own power and wisdom (Revelation 4:11). Everything He made was good and gave Him pleasure (Genesis 1:31). To this day His eternal power and divine nature are plainly evident in His creation (Romans 1:20).

Now if God created all things, and declared them to be ‘very good’, it stands to reason that He is concerned for their preservation. This concern is plainly expressed at various points in the Bible. For example, He commanded the people of Israel to avoid wanton destruction of fruit-bearing trees during warfare. He told them that when they besieged a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, they ‘shalt not destroy the trees thereof by wielding an ax against them … thou shalt not cut them down’ (Deuteronomy 20:19).

God also set rules for the protection of nesting birds. If the Israelites chanced to come upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother sitting upon the young or the eggs, they were not to take the mother with the young. They were to let the mother go (Deuteronomy 22:6,7). God is concerned about the conservation of His creation.

God’s concern for His creation is not business-like, but fatherly; not general, but particular. The Bible reveals that He knows and cares for the least of His creatures. For example, He hears and feeds the young ravens when they cry out for food (Psalm 147:9). Likewise, ‘The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God’ (Psalm 104:21). At God’s altars even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, ‘where she may lay her young’ (Psalm 84:3). Indeed, Jesus tells us that God is aware of every small bird that falls to the ground (Matthew 10:29).

Well, then, is God green?

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Read more over of the article over at the AiG site.

Gospel For Asia wrote in to tell us about an upcoming conference they’re putting on called Renewing Your Passion:

What could inspire hundreds of North American Christians to return to their homes and churches “on fire” for Jesus and ready to change the way they live their daily lives? What could motivate a young person to spend a year as an unpaid intern helping reach the lost of Asia with the Gospel?

It’s the Gospel for Asia Renewing Your Passion Conference. It is returning to Dallas, Texas, July 11-13, and you are invited to experience it! Join us at the Hilton Anatole Hotel for three days of worship, prayer, fellowship and gripping, firsthand testimonies from the field.

What does it mean to be stewards of God’s creation? It’s a hard topic to discuss these days. The question of how to care for Creation has been all too often co-opted by partisan politics and extremist activists.

The Genesis account of Creation makes it clear that humans live in relationship with the Earth around them—not in the New Agey “Mother Nature” sense, but in the sense that God places man in a position of authority over Creation. From Jesus’ example, we know that Biblical leadership involves an attitude of service… so how do we apply that attitude of servant leadership to our environment?

Earth Day is as good a time as any to think on these questions. We’ll be pointing out a few resources about Christians and ecological stewardship this week, but for starters, here are some excerpts (both in PDF) from two recent books that address the issue in depth:

• The opening chapter of Living the Good Life on God’s Green Earth, “Christian Theology and Creation Care,” talks about how caring for Creation fits into the Christian call to discipleship. (The chapter begins on page 9 of the PDF. Learn more about the book here.)
• The introduction to Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation talks about the important role that every believer—no matter how “important” or “small”—has to play in the grand task of Creation care. (Read more about the book here.)

These two excerpts should get you started thinking about (or re-thinking) how environmental stewardship fits into the Christian life. This week, put aside your stereotypes about environmental activists or political extremists, and ask yourself: how does God want us to relate to the world around us?

Currently, I’m sitting in a lawn chair on my porch with my sleeves rolled up taking in the sounds of the neighborhood. Every once in a while a bird will wander close enough to see what’s going on with the human near its tree. The grass is green and there are flecks of yellow on some of the bushes across the street. A white butterfly is testing its wings against the light breeze.

Life is good because God’s creation is awesome.

For Christians this should be the impetus for celebrating Earth Day. There are plenty of reasons why people make this day special, and a lot of them are political; however, today I don’t really care because the sun is sneaking out behind the clouds and making my day bright.

‘Hallelujah’ just doesn’t seem like a good enough word when I think of the scope and bredth of what God gave us.

You’ll hear a lot about stewardship this week, and that’s a good thing because for the most part we could all stand to live a little more intentionally when it comes to loving and serving one another through the proper care of our resources. But today after all the hype and festivities, I urge you to go outside (even if it’s raining) and worship God for what you see in front of you.

Praise the LORD, my soul.
LORD my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

The LORD wraps himself in light as with a garment;
he stretches out the heavens like a tent

and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind…

Read all of Psalm 104

University of Minnesota (Morris) associate biology professor and raconteur P.Z. Myers makes a prominent appearance in the new documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. In a sequence intended to demonstrate an anti-religious agenda amongst opponents of the Intelligent Design movement, Myers likens religion to knitting. “What we have to do is get it to a place where religion is treated at the level it should be treated,” he tells his interviewer. “It’s something fun that people get together to do on the weekends and really doesn’t affect their life as much as it has been so far.”

Whether he deliberately set out to become the focus of the ire that the clip is likely to produce amongst Christian audiences, he certainly isn’t known for being shy and retiring. When he disrupted a private telephone press conference with Expelled‘s star and producers to level charges of deception and lying on March 28, journalists were in shock. There he was, on the speakerphone, living up to the very image portrayed in the film.

Before he checked out of the press conference (after three or four minutes of mutually confused banter), he offered journalists who were listening in the opportunity to contact him directly to hear his side of the story. Past the Popcorn Managing Editor took him up on that invitation, and had a very pleasant twenty-minute conversation with him.

What follows is a full transcript of the part of that conversation that touched on Myers’ feelings about religion, and what he thinks Christians should be paying attention to.

Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

The film that everybody is waiting for this week is Expelled: No Intelligence allowed. Like the movie itself, even a review barely does the topic justice. But Greg Wright gives it stab: the movie, he says, “certainly provides proof of bias, in both intentional and unintentional ways. And the vituperative response from detractors who haven’t even seen the film proves that, yes, there is a much larger war going on out there. On the entertainment level, the film comes in at about a B. When it comes to its subject matter, though, Expelled fumbles the ball quite a bit. At the end of the day, I don’t find that the film makes a compelling case. Yes, I am inclined to believe that the opposition fights pretty dirty; I simply don’t think those folks are really the same cabal that Expelled.” If the filmmakers are really right, Wright says, they simply playing too nice to catch the culprits “red-handed.”

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The last place most people read the stuff that falls under the banner of ‘literary’ is in college, which is a shame because the contemporary small press publishing scene has never been more robust. If you’re in the small percentage of people that read literary poetry, fiction, or non-fiction nowadays, you might be interested to know about WordFarm:

WordFarm is an independent literary press begun in 2002 by a group of Chicago-area writers, editors and designers who have between them more than fifty years of publishing experience. WordFarm publishes collections of poetry, short fiction, essays, and single works of fiction or literary nonfiction. WordFarm’s mission is to discover and promote outstanding literary works by both new and established writers.

On a personal note, a few years ago I enjoyed John Leax’s Tabloid News: Duck Hunters Shoot Angel, which WordFarm publishes.

If you’re looking for high quality books full of the kind of deep thinking and rich thought that exemplifies how we should strive for excellence I’d urge you to check out WordFarm.