Gospel.com Blog

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

What do you do between Hancock and The Dark Knight? Check out the raft of smaller films that are making their way to the multiplexes this week… and it’s really a pretty decent batch.

Leading the pack in a family way is Journey to the Center of the Earth, the first in a pair of Brendan Fraser summer vehicles this year. This one is decidedly more kid-friendly than the Mummy series, though. Says Jennie Spohr, “the movie is fairly wholesome, with a positive family-friendly message that people are more important than things… a fun adventure story that parents will be able to take their pre-tweens to without worrying about too much violence, sex, or other such blockbuster fodder.” (more…)

No one can tell XXXChurch they lack passion. It’s a ministry wholly devoted to the cause of helping people get out of their sexual addictions, and to that end they’re planning on taking a big step.

Recently, Craig Gross announced that XXXChurch is no longer going to be solely an online community only. They’re going to setup shop on the strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. He explains the reasoning and calling in this video:

Read more at Craig’s blog or the PDF outlining the plan.

[HT Think Virtue!]

On May 28, Nepal’s government became a democratic republic after over 200 years as the world’s only Hindu monarchy. It’s an important change in the history of Nepal, but for the Christians living and ministering there it could mean an end to much of the violence perpetrated against them.

Mission Network News reports on the situation:

Through the years, Christians in Nepal have paid a heavy price — threats, beatings, ridicule and even imprisonment — for choosing to love and follow Jesus. Now much of Nepal — Christians included — is hopeful at the news of this new government.

During recent months, a Maoist leader initiated a meeting with Nepal’s major Christian leaders, expressing that the Maoists would guarantee religious freedom in Nepal and vowing not to harm Christians. The Maoists have also made verbal promises to work toward peace in the nation.

For more on Nepal click on the map above or read the wikipedia article.

Ever find yourself troubled by spiritual questions you’re not sure how to answer? Questions like:

• How persistent should we be in praying to God—if a prayer isn’t answered, should we keep praying, or interpret God’s apparent silence as a “no”?

• How can we distinguish between God’s will for our lives, and our own personal desires?
• Is God a matchmaker? Is there a specific person singled out to be my spouse?

Chances are you’ve asked yourself at least one of these questions in the course of your life. They’re the sort of questions Christians are sometimes good at carefully stepping around without really addressing the spiritual issues behind them. But for years, Blaine Smith of Nehemiah Ministries has been posting his “Nehemiah Notes” essays, which deal with difficult and sometimes uncomfortable questions about the Christian life. Blaine started his ministry as a way to help the many Christians he encountered who were seriously confused about understanding God’s will for their lives, and over the years he has written about a huge variety of topics. There’s a massive archive of Nehemiah Notes essays—over 100 in all. New essays are posted every other week.

That’s a lot of reading material, and if you find it helpful, you might also take a look at some of Blaine’s books, which address topics ranging from marriage to overcoming shyness. (I’ve read a couple of his books myself and found them quite helpful.)

Blaine’s ministry also calls to mind another organization in the Gospel.com community—Bruce Narramore’s Psychology for Living website. Bruce has also written a large number of essays addressing tough questions, with a special focus on relationships and emotional issues. Both ministries are well worth exploring; both have a lot of content to help you get through the spiritual and personal questions you’re bound to bump into in the course of everyday life.

Ever wondered what the day to day operations of a camp are like? The people over at Forest Glen Camps have been blogging about their summer camps over at Camp Good News.

You can catch up on everything from the food they’re eating:

Lunch followed with corn dog, tater tots, pineapple with a salad bar. It’s always fun to see who can eat the most corn dogs at camp. And we just gotta love those tater tots! After our bellies were all full, the campers laid their little heads down for rest so that they could re-energize and then head to canteen.

To what God is doing:

God is really doing some awesome things at camp this week. There are some really cool bonds that are forming and relationships that will last a life time! We pray that this will continue outside of camp and on! Thank you for letting your kids come to camp and experience something new!

Personally, I’d hate to see the aftermath of a corndog eating competition! Camp is a wonderful thing, full of oddities and intense spiritual experiences. We’re looking forward to hearing more about what the summer has in store for Forest Glen Camps.

What does your church’s online presence look like? Hopefully your church has a website, at least—and hopefully it’s one that communicates your church’s message clearly, and not a website that looks like it belongs in the past decade. But even if your church’s website needs some serious help (and even a well-designed church site needs periodic review and updates), here are a few tools to help you, all from the Internet Evangelism Day website.

• First up is a very thorough 55-question church website quiz you can take to find out how your church website is doing. The quiz isn’t meant to be a list of set-in-stone guidelines—you might disagree with a few items, or some of them might not apply to your church’s site—but walking through this quiz is a great way to make sure you’re thinking about all the right questions. Notice that plenty of the questions are strategic rather than technical; these are questions to talk through with your entire church leadership, not just with the person who designed/is designing your site.
• A good follow-up to the quiz is IED’s list of 70+ tips for effective church websites. Lots of good discussion-starters, covering both technical and strategic aspects.
• It’s important to get your church’s website working effectively for your ministry. But it would be a mistake to assume that just having a website covers all of the necessary bases of your internet presence—what about social networking, blogging, and mobile devices? The IED site has a good overview of how to incorporate social networking sites like Facebook into your church’s ministry, as well as corresponding pages on ministry blogging and mobile devices.

Don’t let your church settle for an ineffective online presence—read through these resources and see what you can apply to your church’s website and internet ministry.

One of the things I take for granted in this life is the ability to go to the faucet, turn it on, and drink what comes out. It’s just an automatic process for me, but for many people on this earth getting clean water isn’t quite so easy.

Mission Network News reports on how Living Water International is combating this problem and changing people’s lives:

This year, Living Water International is rehabilitating more than 100 wells in Sierra Leone, where many open wells are contaminated by surface water during the rainy season.

Sierra Leone’s sanitation is poor, and its water table is high. So surface water transports all kinds of filth and debris into the wells. As a result, many people contract diarrhea and cholera – often fatally. Water-related disease is the single largest killer of infants in developing countries. Sierra Leone, according to UNICEF, is one of the worst places on earth to be a child.

Life is changing, however, in places like Calaba Town. Dr. Charles Kimbe, community health officer of Calaba Town, diagnosed 50 cases of cholera in 2007. In 2008, the town has not had a single case of cholera!

Read the rest of the article here.

Each year we at Gospel Communications run something called The Internet Ministry Conference (IMC). We consider it part of our ministry to mobolize and train those that are interested in internet ministries.

Last week Brian Atkinson visited Willow Creek and interviewed Ray Pelletier and Sam Haist for the IMC blog. Ray works as the Emerging Media & Ministry Specialist at Willow and Sam is working as an intern.

Their discussion ranged from online discipleship, to social networks, to how the church should use technology. Well worth a listen if you’re interested in how the internet is being used for the Kingdom of God:

In yesterday’s post, we looked at an article arguing that Bible study was an integral part of any healthy Christian church. Hopefully your church already incorporates Bible study into its worship and congregational life—in sermons, in Sunday school, in Bible study groups, etc. But there’s another practice that is both a means by which your church can become more effective, and a basic reason for a church’s existence in the first place: communal prayer.

The Bible Prayer Fellowship is a ministry centered around (you guessed it) prayer, and one thing they’re especially passionate about is getting congregations to come together and pray as a community of Christ-followers.

So… what’s the big deal about community prayer? Why not just have everybody pray individually, on their own, in their own homes? That’s the big question tackled in Oliver Price’s article Who Needs Prayer Meetings?

“I never cease to be amazed at the church’s neglect of true, heartfelt, corporate prayer.” says George Verwer, director of Operation Mobilization. After visiting thousands of churches around the world, Verwer concludes that most churches essentially have no prayer meeting. Some have canceled midweek services for lack of interest. Others have shifted to Bible study or activities, allowing only a brief five or ten minutes for prayer.

Yet a few are attempting to overcome the general neglect of corporate prayer with encouraging results. They see signs that the praying associated with the early church may be revived. What can we do to help?

First, we need a fresh understanding of the purpose of corporate prayer, its priority in the church, and the moral and spiritual power it provides. Prayer meeting can be one of the most satisfying and attractive meetings in the church.

Price goes on to explain why prayer and prayer meetings are absolutely critical to the health of any church community—community prayer brings a congregation together, it’s tied to evangelism, and it inspires a bold spirit. Once you’ve read through that introduction, take a look at these follow-up articles that explore the how’s and why’s of church prayer meetings:

• Why Pray Together?—a thorough survey of Bible verses that tell us how and why a church should be praying together.
• A Church Praying for Revival—the story of one church and its experience praying together for revival.
• When Jesus Comes Into Your Prayer Group—a short reflection by Oliver Price about the presence of Christ in our prayer meetings.

Not convinced yet? There are a lot more articles about the power and importance of prayer at the Bible Prayer Fellowship website. Read through some of these and ask yourself if your church is practicing Biblical, community prayer.

What causes a church to grow? And if your church or ministry is considering “planting” a new church, what will cause it to take root and flourish?

Those are big questions, and the answer certainly involves a lot of prayer, strategic planning, and wise leadership. But on a more fundamental level, there is a critical relationship between church growth and the Bible. An article at the Lausanne World Pulse argues that whether you’re a church worker or a missionary, it’s important to understand that there is a strong relationship between church growth and the Bible:

To plant or grow a congregation, two basic things must repeatedly occur: people must come to know Jesus and they must become members of his body. The first step can happen in an evangelistic instant. It is the miracle of faith born during a gospel presentation. What follows is most effectively accomplished through an intentional program of Bible study. House churches, cell groups and small groups are used to incorporate new believers. At the center of each one is a time of Bible study.

The article goes on to list seven specific ways that a program of Bible study strengthens a church and helps it expand. Certainly something to keep in mind—the questions of logistics, money, and leadership are all of obvious importance in growing or planting a church, but at the heart of your church’s success lies the Bible, and the willingness of your church to delve into it.