Gospel.com Blog

William Vanderbloemen recently posted on his blog about the issue of pastoral care and social networking:

While in the middle of working, I saw my parishioner was online, on Facebook, while sitting in ICU. We had a brief visit via chat, and a nice interaction.

I left the chat wondering: does this count as pastoral care?

On the one hand, nothing replaces face-to-face interaction…On the other hand, I’m currently six states away, they are in ICU round the clock, where cell phones are prohibited, and Facebook gave me a great way to supplement my care for them given our realities.

He goes on to ask: is using social media in pastoral care acceptable? Is it even valid to call it pastoral care?

I think few would argue that tweets or wall posts should fully replace face-to-face interaction. But few would argue for an outright ban on pastoral social networking. As one of the commenters on William’s post points out, “Can you do pastoral care by telephone? By letter? By email?” The issue is more the intent of the users than the medium they employ.

In some ways, connecting to parishioners through social networking is the next logical step for our increasingly digital lives. It’s not uncommon for a pastor to live in an entirely different neighborhood or community than the people in their church. So, if there’s little opportunity for face-to-face interaction throughout the week, it’s only natural for pastors to find ways to immerse themselves in the virtual communities that their congregation is spending so much time in.

What about you? Do you think that true pastoral care can happen digitally? Should we call it something different entirely?

At least several times each year, a Christian leader or politician makes a major, and public, moral mistake. And each time it happens, Christians around the world wonder aloud (or ask on their blogs): what happened? Why wasn’t there a supportive Christian community in this person’s life to identify the moral problem and shepherd them away from sin before it consumed their life and career? Where was the Christian support network?

I wonder if Christians in modern American society feel the tension between accountability and individuality more acutely than our predecessors throughout church history did. Few societies have placed as much value on individuality and personal freedom; and while few of us would call those bad things, they do tend to push us away from the Biblical concept of accountability to the community of believers.

Most of us aren’t public figures. But most of us are vulnerable to the same temptations that bring down high-profile pastors and politicians.

Recent scandals have generated some discussion of accountability groups in Washington, D.C. that aim to help public figures avoid career-ending moral pitfalls. But the concept of an “accountability group” or “accountability partner” can be found in our local church communities. Ed Stezer has a recent post with lists of accountability questions that Christians from John Wesley to Chuck Swindoll have used to try and hold themselves accountable to God and the church. The Church Relevance blog picked up on these accountability questions with some commentary.

What about you? Do you consider yourself accountable? To yourself? To God? To other people in the church? Have you ever, on your own initative, decided that you needed to be accountable to somebody else, and went out and found yourself an accountability partner?

And whether you have an official “accountability” relationship with somebody else or not, what do you do on a regular basis to hold yourself accountable to the Christian faith?

For Pastor Chandan, the sentence “if you build it they will come” ended with the phrase “and tear it down.”

His calling was relatively simple: build a church in the tea fields of Sri Lanka to serve the people there. But the reaction he got was rather unexpected. A gang of anti-Christian extremists organized and destroyed his church, damaged his home and even physically attacked him. According to a Gospel for Asia report, the church building was destroyed five times.

But what makes this story really interesting is that some of the same people who antagonized Chandan and his ministry now worship at the church every Sunday.

Few things are as inspiring as a person who overcomes trials and obstacles to do what they know is right. We all know that accomplishing great things often means living through significant pain and tribulation, but the grinding reality of what this missionary endured is still sobering. Stories like his make even the most arduous church-planting experiences here in the West seem simple by comparison.

At the Gospel for Asia site, you can see a slideshow of pictures of Chandan and his church, as well as donate to their cause.

Looking for a good Bible study curriculum for this fall? Officers’ Christian Fellowship has just posted a series of free Bible study guides on the book of James that would be perfect for a small group that wants to tackle one of the Bible’s shorter but more interesting books.

The book of James focuses on growing in maturity in the Christian faith; there’s a lot packed into its five chapters. In addition to the OCF study guides linked above, you can find some additional useful background and thematic information on James at Biblica’s outline of James and Into Thy Word’s two-part introduction to James. Between those three resources, you should have plenty to kickstart a great Bible study.

Sunday’s Words of Hope Radio Program walked through the book of Jonah, asking a question: do we care about people like God does?

Here are a few excerpts from the transcript of Jonah and the Whale:

You probably can remember Jonah’s story. God called him to be a prophet, to proclaim his word and call people to repentance. But unlike the other biblical prophets, the Lord didn’t send Jonah to preach to the people of Israel. He sent him to Nineveh. Now there were two very large reasons why Jonah didn’t want to go there at all. One was that the people of Nineveh were foreigners, gentiles, pagans. Why should they listen to the word of Israel’s God? The other reason was that those people were the enemy. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and Assyria was the big bad bully living on Israel’s block. [...]

God’s heart of love is moved with pity for people who don’t really know what they are doing, who, like those Ninevites, “do not know their right hand from their left.” God cares about the countless people in the world who live from day to day without a thought about eternity, or the state of their souls, or even about God himself; people who live like dumb beasts, with never a concern about anything higher than their own physical comfort or pleasure; people who don’t even know that they don’t know the only one in whom there is life and hope — the Lord Jesus Christ. God has compassion for all such. He pities them. And he wants to break through to them, to reach them with the message of his love and mercy.

Read the entire transcript, or listen to the broadcast.

Several weeks, there was much chatter on Christian blogs and news sites about the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the earliest ancient copies of the Bible. The excitement centered around news that the Codex Sinaiticus had been put online in its entirety. (You can take a look for yourself at the Codex Sinaiticus website.)

Now that the story has had some time to settle down, the folks at the Get Religion blog are looking back and analyzing the way the Codex Sinaiticus story was reported in the media. It interesting to see a number of errors (some of them perhaps understandable, given the somewhat esoteric nature of the story) highlighted in retrospect, and there’s plenty of evidence to support Get Religion’s ongoing thesis: that when it comes to religion stories, despite its best attempts, the media often misses out on some important details.

Whether it’s a time of trouble or a time of celebration, there’s no substitute for friends that know you.

A recent article at InterVarsity Press tells the story of four men who met and supported each other in college—and beyond. Before they moved away from each other at the end of their time at Duke, they made a covenant with each other to remain accountability partners and friends for the rest of their lives:

“In college, Christian fellowship is handed to you on a silver platter; plenty of fun activities, Bible study and prayer, and really cool Christians are just down the hall or a short walk across campus,” reflects Peter Ahlin. “For me, the hardest part of leaving Duke was being geographically separated from my closest Christian friends and having to try to find fellowship that was even remotely as exciting and fulfilling as that which I enjoyed in college.”

Knowing they were facing a huge transition in life that would take them away from their college support network, these four guys were encouraged by their pastor to make a serious commitment to stick together—not just as friends, but as accountability brothers. Under the framework of a covenant, Jeff Donnithorne comments, “we felt like we needed to be in each others’ lives in an intentional way. Good intentions are not always enough and accountability really does require an extra level of commitment.” So these four guys created a written document on the day before graduation that “added a level of importance and seriousness when we put our names on it.”

Read more about their inspiring friendship.

There’s no theological topic more important to the Christian faith than the doctrine of salvation. The question of how we are saved from sin continues to be actively discussed and debated even today, and one theologian who has brought a new angle to the age-old topic is N.T. Wright. He’s championed what some call the “New Perspective” on the writings of Paul, and in particular the doctrine of justification.

It’s a complicated subject, but you can read some of Wright’s views in his 2003 essay on Paul. Wright’s perspective on justification is not without its critics, including the respected theologian John Piper, who disagrees with Wright’s take.

Why bring up an ongoing theological debate here? Because InterVarsity Press recently published Wright’s latest book Justification, in which he responds to criticisms of his ideas. IVPress has put the first chapter of the book and an extensive Q&A with Wright about Justification online. To read Wright’s full take, of course, you’ll have to pick up the book, but between the free chapter and the Q&A, there’s a lot of fodder for reflection and discussion.

The influential preacher William Carey was certainly a unique individual. In his own terms he was “merely a cobbler,” but he was also a pastor and one of the great missionaries of the Christian faith.

Carey combined a fierce desire to preach to the unreached with a servant’s heart. During his ministry to India, he opened a college and planted a botanical garden, as well as worked on translating the Bible into several languages.

The Christian History Institute recently published his article An Inquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen.

Here’s an excerpt:

As our blessed Lord has required us to pray that His kingdom may come, and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven, it becomes us not only to express our desires of that event by the word, but to use every lawful method to spread the knowledge of His name. In order to do this, it is necessary that we should become in some measure acquainted with the religious state of the world. As this is an object we should be prompted to pursue, not only by the gospel of our Redeemer but even by the feelings of humanity, so an inclination to conscientious activity therein would form one of the strongest proofs that we are the subject of grace and partakers of that spirit of universal benevolence and genuine philantropy, which appear so eminent in the character of God Himself.

You can read the whole article and learn a bit about Carey here.

What are your spiritual gifts? All of us have unique abilities and talents, given to us by God, although not everyone recognizes their own gifts.

Blaine Smith of Nehemiah Ministries has posted a good article on recognizing your spiritual gifts and learning how they fit into God’s plan for your life. He challenges us not to dismiss our gifts by comparing them to other people’s, and to keep alert for opportunities to sharpen our talents in the service of God.

Most of us are “one-talent” persons. We are not going to be another Billy Graham, Mahatma Ghandi or Mother Teresa. When we see ourselves falling short of the accomplishments of certain renowned individuals, we can lose the motivation to take our own potential seriously. Each of us without exception, however, has significant gifts–and opportunities to invest them for Christ that vastly exceed our expectations.

What this provision amounts to specifically varies greatly from person to person. But God wants each of us to begin with the a priori assumption that he has endowed us with important ability to meet vital human needs, and that he will open all the doors necessary for us to be productive. This attitude of faith will help us take meaningful steps toward fully understanding our gifts and the opportunities Christ provides us to make a difference.

Smith has written other articles about using your spiritual gifts and related topics. And if you’re interested in exploring the idea of gifts and calling further, the Christian Career Center has a number of articles on finding your calling (although with a career focus).