Gospel.com Blog

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

When the worst movie released on a given week is merely an uninspired romantic comedy starring Patrick Dempsey, you’re not doing too bad.

Leading the pack, of course, is the much-anticipated Iron Man, a comic book superhero PG-13 adaptation starring Robert Downey, Jr. Michael Brunk was wholly won over. “If Iron Man is any indication of what we can expect this summer,” he says, “I think we’re in for a great time.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The Navigators celebrate their 75th year of ministry this year! They serve in over 100 countries with the goal of creating new disciples of Jesus Christ. 4000 people of 64 nationalities comprise the Navigators.

Impressive numbers don’t equal spiritual success though. The Navigators are still around because of their heartfelt mission and devotion to strategically influence people for Christ across a broad range of people. For more on this read their direction page and their mission page.

I really like the story of how their ministry got started:

The ministry of The Navigators began in the 1930’s through the call of God to a young Californian blue-collared worker, Dawson Trotman. Dawson caught a vision to teach discipleship principles he found fruitful in his own life. He began to teach high school students and local Sunday school classes. Then in 1933, he and his friends began to extend their work among sailors in the U.S. Navy.

Dawon taught sailor Les Spencer the principles of Christian growth. They spent many hours together praying, studying the Bible, and memorizing Scripture. When one of Spencer’s shipmates asked him the secret of his changed life, Spencer brought the man to Trotman. “Teach him what you taught me,” Spencer said. “You teach him!” Trotman responded. And that was the beginning of The Navigators.

Spencer did teach the sailor, and soon the two men were meeting with others. Eventually, 125 men on their ship, the U.S.S. West Virginia, were growing in Christ and actively sharing their faith.

Read more about it here.

If you’re looking for more information on The Navigators, you can check them out on the web in a few different places:

US site

UK site

Canadian site

Since 1952, The National Day of Prayer has been a day set aside for the citizens of the United States to come together to pray regardless of their faith. Today is a great reminder for Christians of what they’re to do every day, which is to be in communion with God through prayer.

The following video from the National Day of Prayer Task Force’s website is of Tony Dungy talking about prayer:

The gospel.com community has a number of ministries that have posted prayer calendars. If you’re looking for somebody to pray for today (and in the future), try these ministry prayer calendars:

Mission Possible

Nurses Christian Fellowship International

Arab World Ministries

Life Action Revival Ministries

We’re very happy to have you here at Gospel.com!

Over the past few months we’ve been slowly transitioning Gospelcom.net resources over to our new web home, Gospel.com. We’ve also added a number of exciting features to help you connect with the ministry partners that comprise the Gospel.com community.

If you’re looking for a way to search the bible, hop on over to our other main site, biblegateway.com.

Here’s a little bit more information on the three main sections of Gospel.com:

The Topics page let’s you explore the bookmarked content on gospel.com by viewing only the material that’s relevant to your current interest. For a good example, check out the topic page for Jesus. Additionally, each week at Gospel.com we focus in on a specific part of the Christian life and look at resources that you might have missed.

The Ministries page is a catalog of our ministries. You can visit the websites of each of the ministries and also view what information they’ve bookmarked on Gospel.com. This list is constantly changing, so please check back every few months.

The Gospel.com blog is a continuation of Gospelcom.net’s Buzz blog. In it we highlight resources and news from around the community.

Check out our about page for even more information or if you have any additional questions, get in touch with us at info@gospel.com.

We hope you have fun exploring Gospel.com!

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.”

Read the rest of this entry »

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?

…

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?