Gospel.com Blog

Even if you aren’t a student of church history, you may have heard of the preacher and author Charles Spurgeon—his Morning and Evening daily devotionals have stood the test of time and remain extremely popular today.

While Spurgeon was quite serious about the Gospel message he preached, he was also known for his wit and sense of humor. While browsing through the article archives at the Evangelical Press Association website, I came across an interesting article about the great value that Spurgeon placed on humor in his life and ministry:

Spurgeon laughed as often as he could. He laughed at the ironies of life, he laughed at comical incidents, he laughed at the amusing elements of nature. He sometimes laughed at his critics. He loved to share wholesome jokes with his friends and colleagues in ministry. He was known to tell humorous stories from the pulpit. [...]

Spurgeon considered humor such an integral part of his ministry that a whole chapter in his autobiography is devoted to it. Humor permeates his sermons and writings, often woven into the fabric of his messages. It’s one reason among many why he is still so readable today.

You can get a feel for Spurgeon’s wit by reading some of the many sermons and devotionals he wrote. There’s the Morning and Evening devotional mentioned above, and if you really want to get to know your Spurgeon, there are over 700 sermons by Spurgeon awaiting your perusal over at SermonIndex.

The last few years have seen a great deal of renewed attention given to the claims of atheism—and enough charismatic spokepeople for atheism have come forward with books and articles that many observers have taken to calling the movement “new atheism.” One of the main objections that atheists have to Christianity is Christianity’s claim that true morality is possible only if God exists.

Do they have a point? Can one make moral judgments or behave in a moral fashion in a universe without God? Apologist J.M. Njoroge (of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries) tackles this question in a recent article about New Atheism and morality. He doesn’t think that this point is a winning one for atheists—read the full article to learn why!

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

Well, there’s no mistaking it: the big news of the movie-going summer appears to be WALL-E, the latest from Pixar… and arriving just in time for some great buzz over the 4th of July holiday. (more…)

It’s a good time to be a student: school’s out, and you’ve got a couple months to go before you have to start thinking about homework again. There’s no better time than summer to relax with a good book, and the folks at StudentSoul.org can help you pick out a few particularly worthwhile ones: read their top five must-reads for the summer. Lots of good suggestions there, and if you’re hungry for even more, check out the excellent and much more extensive summer reading list from Student Leadership Journal. Everything from fiction to theology and even a few movies thrown in for good measure. Enjoy!

What does real, genuine revival look like? What can we learn from past revivals in history, and how would we recognize revival when we see it today? Those are among the many questions posed to Greg Gordon of Sermon Index by interviewer Paul Arthur. If you follow Greg’s ministry at all, you know that he has a tremendous heart for revival and is always willing to speak his mind about revival trends both positive and negative. Here’s the first clip of the interview (Greg is introduced about three minutes into the clip); in it, Gordon talks about what we can learn from the history of revival in the Christian church:

The entire interview is available on Youtube in short clips, or you can download the entire show from Sermon Index.

There’s a new article by Kelli Woodard at Youth Ministry Exchange about a disturbing, confusing, and surprisingly common phenomenon among young people: self-mulitation, or “cutting.” It can be hard for a parent, youth minister, or other adult to understand why a teenager would hurt themselves; and if medical resources about self-mutiliation are scarce, resources exploring the spiritual side of cutting are even more so. But cutting is a serious issue and a symptom of very real emotional problems that must be addressed.

Woodard’s article is a good primer on the cutting phenomenon, and offers practical guidelines to help you respond appropriately if the issue ever crops up in your family or youth ministry.

We’ve mentioned Al Menconi Ministries in the past as a good place to go to for game and music reviews from a Christian perspective. Here’s a quick roundup of some of this month’s reviews. First, on the game front:

• The latest Turok game for the XBox 360
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2, the ninth (!) installment in the Rainbow Six series
• Mario Kart Wii, the ever-popular Mario racing game

And on the music side of things:

• Capital Lights’ This is an Outage
• Amy Courts’ These Cold and Rusted Lungs
• Seventh Day Slumber’s Rescatame

Beyond reviewing specific games, Al Menconi writes a lot about the challenge of understanding pop culture and developing Biblical standards for the cultural artifacts we read, watch, and listen to. Take a look through his frequently-updated essay archives—there’s a lot of great advice there, especially for parents who want to help their kids live moral lives in a faith-challenging culture.

For two thousand years, the cross has been a universally recognized symbol of the Christian faith. But despite the structural simplicity of the cross itself, artists throughout history have portrayed the cross in countless different ways, each rendition emphasizing slightly different things and glimpsing the Resurrection symbolism from a different angle.

The Billy Graham Center Museum in Wheaton, Illinois has a new temporary exhibit running through August 10 that showcases many different takes on the Cross of Jesus Christ. There’s a short article and a few accompanying images on their website showcasing the exhibit; to see the full exhibit, you’ll need to visit the Museum itself. The brief sampling on the website is certainly intriguing.

We’re talking about culture this week, and thinking about one of the most basic and important questions that Christians ask today: how do we engage and challenge our culture with the Gospel of Christ? Society around us is saturated with false and destructive ideas, memes, and values; how do Christians bring the Gospel message to bear in such an environment? (more…)

Quick: how many comics are sold in Japan each year?

2.1 billion

How many in copies of Korean comics Kai Hua Roh and Mahasanook are sold each month?

Over 8 million copies.

Those are huge numbers and translates into Comics being one of the most widely read and consumed mediums. That’s why COMIX35 “helps ministries and individuals produce effective Christian comics as part of an evangelism strategy and/or discipleship program for their own people.”

You can read more on their Why We Do What We Do page.

Right now they’re busy at work collaborating with people across Africa to create a comic to reach non-Christians in Africa. Right now they’ve started collecting art work and have the date of the end of 2008 to publish. Check out the main page for more information on this initiative.

If you’re at all interested in comics and evangelism, check out the different ways in which you can get involved.