Monday Whatnot

Something to think about: I think one of the most spiritually dangerous practices today is encouraging people—in small groups or in front of the church or even in print—to talk about how God has transformed them.

***

Narcissistic Personality Disorder, brilliantly deconstructed.

***

From Tim Keller's newly re-launched church-planting website, Redeemer City to City, I pluck this Kelleresque gem:

The basic concepts of the gospel -- sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife -- are becoming culturally strange in the west for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to 'think like a missionary'--to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian western culture.

How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic 'mental furniture' to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?

***

Michael Spencer: If Christianity is not a dying word to dying men, it is not the message of the Bible that gives hope now.

***

In the church I now attend the "worship leaders" are off to the side. I like it that way. It doesn't feel like a concert. I don't know that having the band in front it's really an encouragement to idolatry, but the "language" and practice of concerts begins to blend with and debase the language and practice of worship. Something very valuable is sliding away from us, that's what I think. Read Liam Kinnon on same. [HT]

***

What she said.