Gospel.com Blog

Have you ever wondered what kind of thought and planning goes into choosing the songs you sing (and sometimes play) in a worship service? If you’re a worship leader, do you have a solid, Biblical system for thinking through and choosing music pieces that fit each church service?

The process of selecting worship music will be different for each individual congregation and worship style, of course. But to help you think through your music choices, FarsiPraise has collected some thoughts on the matter from a variety of church and worship leaders (both are in PDF):

• An essay by Paul Oakley (of the Church of Christ the King in Brighton, England) that walks through seven steps for considering and choosing worship music.
• A second collection of short mini-essays by seven other church leaders explaining how they choose music for their churches.

If you’re a church leader struggling to pick the right music, these thoughts from other leaders might help. And if you’re a congregation member who’s always wondered who chose the music and why, they might give you some insight into an important part of weekly worship planning!

I first ran a across Gary Wheeler’s name when I was asked to review the film Final Solution for Hollywood Jesus in 2003. Wheeler produced that film for Messenger Films, but I did not speak with him then—instead interviewing Gerrit Wolfaardt (on whose life the film was based), South African actor Jan Ellis (who played Wolfaardt in the film), and Executive Producer A. C. Green. I later ran into Cris Krusen, the film’s director, at the 2004 CBA convention, and became part of the prayer circle for his teenaged son Daniel, who at the time was institutionalized for schizophrenia. Last fall, the record of that prayer circle was published in Krusen’s memoir Let Me Have My Son.

So I’d heard plenty about Wheeler for a good long time, and followed his work in my editorial capacity at Hollywood Jesus. I was intrigued when Wheeler’s first theatrical film, The List, went into limited release—but it did not screen in Seattle, so I didn’t get a chance to see it.

The film was recently released on DVD, however; and when a press release came out announcing that the film had won three Crown Awards—Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Drama—at the International Christian Visual Media convention in Orlando last month, I jumped at the opportunity to speak with Wheeler about his experiences.

As the eyes of the world are on the Olympic Games in Beijing, there are plenty of amazing success stories on display: incredible athletic achievements and tales of triumphant underdogs. But athletic competition is not the only challenge facing Olympic athletes—and one ministry is highlighting the spiritual victories of six Olympic athletes as part of a ministry to the Middle East.

The organization is SAT-7, and a recent Mission News Network story describes the way they’re “>using the inspiring stories of six Olympians as a way to reach out to the Arab world with the Gospel message:

“The model of Christianity in this region is often that Christianity is only for the weak, for those who are simple and have no other options,” says SAT-7 Acquisitions Manager George Makeen. He says that these stories are important to tell in the Middle East and North Africa.

“Athletes in the Arab world are stars, and people really look up to them,” Makeen said. “So it’s important, especially for young people in this area, to see athletes who are famous and successful and are still followers of Christ.”

Read the full story for more details, or visit the SAT-7 website to see what else the ministry is doing.

The 2008 Olympics were kicked off today in Beijing!

Here in the Gospel.com community, our friends from Sports Spectrum are providing ongoing coverage of the Olympics at the More Than Gold news blog. They’ve got several podcasts up already in which they discuss the sports and athletes on display in Beijing. See recent podcasts that talk about soccer and gymnastics at the Games, and another that tells the inspiring story of Lopez Lomong, Sudanese refugee and US flag bearer at the opening ceremony.

If you’re an Olympics fan, it’s worth adding the More Than Gold RSS feed to your news reader. We’ll point out particularly noteworthy updates here on the Gospel.com blog as the Olympics progress. Now, go enjoy the Games and have a great weekend!

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

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, says Mike Smith, is the rare beast: a sequel that improves on the original. The secret? More mature actors, he says… and a director that really gets the material. “Call me sexist,” Smith writes, “but Sanaa Hamni gets the chicks. Sorry, Mr. Kwapis—you’re a guy (like me), which pretty much prevents us from really ‘getting’ the psyche of the target audience convincingly. The original enjoyed some success, but I expect the sequel will outdo the first—it is simply the better film.”

Meanwhile, three of this week’s releases begin with the letter B. (more…)

One of the more interesting consequences of the Olympic games being held in China has been the Chinese government’s slight loosening of religion restrictions within its borders.

Granted, there’s still much persecution and government intervention when it comes to religion, but something like this would have been unheard of 40 years ago:

China will provide 10,000 free Chinese-English bilingual Bibles to be distributed in the Olympic Village where the Olympic athletes and media are housed, as reported by the China Daily newspaper. The bilingual Bible text will include the CUV (Chinese Union Version) and the ESV (English Standard Version), appearing in two side-by-side columns per page. The CUV Bible is the most widely distributed Chinese Bible in the world, and the ESV Bible has recently become the fastest-growing English language Bible in the world.

In addition to the 10,000 bilingual CUV-ESV Bibles, 30,000 New Testaments and 100,000 bilingual editions of the four Gospels will also be made available at the Olympic Games.

Because cultural and academic leaders in China are seeking to understand the influence of the Bible on the worldview and culture of the West, there is a growing interest in Chinese-English bilingual Bibles in mainland China. “We are especially grateful,” Crossway President Dr. Lane Dennis notes, “that the ESV was selected by Chinese Christian leaders for publication with Chinese CUV Bible, through our partnership with the British and Foreign Bible Society. Since both the CUV and the ESV are ‘essentially literal’ Bible translations, they are ideally suited for a side-by-side comparison of the two languages. What a wonderful thing it would be if thousands of people would learn English—and Chinese!—by reading the Bible in side-by-side bilingual editions.”

Read more over at the ESV Bible Blog.

This month, one sporting event will demand our attention above all others: the 2008 Olympics. Here at Gospel.com, we’ll be pointing out a few people and organizations in our community that do sports ministry: outreach to sports fans and athletes.

Does it seem strange to imagine a “sports ministry”? It might sound odd at first, but consider that athletics is an activity held in esteem by nearly every culture around the world, today and throughout history. Whether you like your football in the American or European variety; whether you run a marathon or swim the English channel—athletic achievement is recognized all over the world as a way to explore our own humanity.

Which means that it’s a natural and universal way to talk about the human condition… and that’s why evangelists going all the way back to the Apostle Paul have used sports as a metaphor for the spirtual life:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. —Hebrews 12:1

We’ll take note of specific sports outreaches and ministries in the next few weeks, as the Olympics play out. But it seems appropriate to start out with a short reflection on Paul’s use of the language of sports to talk about spiritual truth. Ron Hutchcraft has a devotional message (in text and audio) that examines what Paul means when he talks about running the race and carrying the torch, with an Olympics twist:

Now, Paul must have enjoyed the ancient Olympic Games. He made several references to them. As he writes his letter to his spiritual apprentice, Timothy, you can almost picture Paul as a torch bearer of the message of Jesus Christ. Writing from a prison cell, he’s on his last lap before he is going to collapse into the arms of Jesus. But right now he’s concerned about who will carry the torch from here.

Read the full devotional for more—and check back later this week as we look at sports ministries here in the Gospel.com community!

Mission Network News reports on the AIDS pandemic:

Approximately 2 million people died from AIDS in 2007, down from about 2.2 million deaths in 2005, UNAIDS reported on Tuesday.

However, Gary Schneider, President and CEO of Every Orphan’s Hope, warned that the battle is far from over. The report also showed that some 2.7 million people worldwide were newly infected in 2007, bringing the total number of people infected with AIDS to 33 million.

“We have seen tremendous progress being made on the fight against HIV/AIDS, but I think even to applaud those numbers might be a little bit premature,” Schneider said. “We see that there’s still 2 million people a year who are dying from HIV/AIDS, and the total number of people receiving new infections each year is still continuing to rise.”

Every Orphan’s Hope ministers to orphans impacted by the AIDS crisis in Zambia, the home of about a million orphans. It comes alongside the Zambian church to care for about 400 children on a monthly basis and to reach a total of several thousand children every year through its Camp Hope Bible camps.

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Read more over at Mission Network News.

Will God send another great awakening? Can revival still change nations? These were among the questions addressed at last year’s Revival Conference, which featured many different speakers on the topic of revival and was attended by over 1,000 people.

If you missed the 2007 conference, you’re in luck—the Revival Conference 2008 is coming to two different places: Atlanta, Georgia (October 21-23) and Greenock, Scotland (November 25-27). The Revival Conference is a different kind of conference than you may be used to: there’s no charge to attend, no materials for sale there, and no big bands or flashy entertainment. Just a great lineup of speakers and thousands of other people committed to spiritual revival.

To get a feel for what the Revival Conference is like, you can browse the archives from the 2007 conference. If you can’t make it this year, the conference will be broadcast live online, so you won’t have to miss it entirely. So mark your calendar and plan to attend, either in person or over the internet!

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

One of the funnest films of the summer, says Greg Wright, is a gentle political satire… starring Kevin Costner, of all things. Swing Vote, going into release today is “a skewering of lax parenting, national politics of all stripes, political correctness, blue-collar stereotypes, and network news,” says Wright. “If you’re at all apathetic about voting, or if you’re at all fed up with the state of politics in America—and you don’t mind a little hayseed stuck between your teeth or up your shorts—get out and see Swing Vote. I’m very glad I did.” (more…)