Daily Links 2-5-14

In today's post: the value of a church having multiple pastors, Teddy Roosevelt's rules for reading, some thoughts on Gimmie Shelter, and more.

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Thom Rainer makes some excellent observations on the value of a church having more than one teaching pastor. I have been fortunate to be part of a couple of churches that had more than one teaching pastor and I can affirm everything Rainer writes in this article.

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For baseball fans, a rare color photo of Ty Cobb. Spring training starts next week. We don't have too much longer to wait.

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Teddy Roosevelt's ten rules for reading. These are some interesting guidelines to follow when selecting books to read.

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Gimmie Shelter explores the world of young women who are getting pregnant, end up on welfare, and those who seek to minister to them. It seems like unusual subject matter for a major Hollywood film. (Hat tip: Re: News)

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Is religion losing ground to sports?

While teams and fans are building powerful, cohesive communities — think Red Sox Nation or the legions of University of Alabama faithful who greet one another with “Roll Tide” — churches are losing followers. According to a 2012 survey by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and Duke University, 20 percent of Americans “claimed they had no religious preference,” compared with an unaffiliated population of 8 percent in 1990. Roughly two out of three Americans, a 2012 Pew report noted, are under the impression that religion is losing influence in the country. 

Sports are on the opposite trajectory. Fifty years ago, just three in 10 Americans considered themselves sports fans. By 2012, that proportion exceeded six in 10. Tens of millions of U.S. viewers tuned in to regular-season National Football League games last fall, with the most popular match-ups attracting upwards of 30 million viewers. Nearly 3 million people watched the National Basketball Association’s Christmas Day games. And for devotees of these and other sports, lifelong loyalty to a certain city and team is de rigueur. “Once you choose a team,” sports commentator Bill Simmons says, “you’re stuck with that team for the rest of  your life."

Simmons was half-kidding, but sports are clearly attracting strong adherents as religion is shedding them. This raises the question: Are Americans shifting their spiritual allegiances away from praying places and toward playing places? 

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A free online study on learning leadership from film.

Daily Links 1-31-14

In today's edition: Common Core and reading, faithful thinking, Sherlock and male friendship, ditching social media, and more.

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Lost in the debate over Common Core standards is that they inhibit teachers' ability to instill a love for reading in students:

How did you develop a love for reading?

Ask George Saunders, Barry Hannah, or Andrea Barrett. For each of these writers, their love for reading was realized in a K-12 classroom. For Maya Angelou, it’s thanks in part to Miss Kirwin, a “brilliant teacher” at the George Washington High School in San Francisco. For John McPhee, it’s thanks in part to Olive McKee, an English teacher he had for three years. Of course, you don’t have to look to lauded authors. Most readers, writers, and book-lovers can point you to a moment in their educational journeys where a love for reading was inspired in them by a passionate K-12 teacher. 

However, the ability of schools and teachers to foster a love for reading in students is under assault in today’s educational climate. We live in a time of high-stakes accountability, where quantifiable metrics, namely standardized test scores, are used to judge students, teachers, and schools. Now, we are faced with the Common Core, new standards in Math and English Language Arts that are sweeping the nation. Incentivized by billions in federal grant dollars, 45 states are adopting the Common Core, with some states rolling out their implementations over the last two school years and other states waiting until next school year. 

With these new standards come new tests, namely the Smarter Balanced assessment and PARCC, which are expected to take up to 10 hours for students to complete every year, starting in third grade. These tests will dominate students and teachers’ lives and turn many engaging classrooms into test prep zones. This myopic focus on testing places an extraordinary burden on students and teachers — such an extreme focus detracts from students’ educational experiences and greatly impedes schools and teachers’ ability to foster a love for reading in all students.

This should matter not only to students, parents, and teachers, but to publishers, writers, readers, and booksellers across America. If we want reading to flourish as a pastime and a serious pursuit, schools must be able to devote the necessary time and resources toward reading for pleasure.

Hat tip: Book Riot

The problem with putting so much emphasis on standardized tests as a measure of educational progress is that curriculum then is tailored towards teaching to the test rather than actually educating the child.

The other major flaw in such programs is the inherent desire to treat students as a homogeneous group. As we have discussed here before every student is different and so it should not be unreasonable to think that their education should be tailored to the needs and the learning style of the student.

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Seven observations on church discipline from Thom Rainer. These are some good thoughts on an important topic.

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Sherlock as an example of male friendship. The author is probably overstating it a bit that it's the best example ever but it is certainly a very good example of what male friendship should look like.

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A collection of unique town slogans you are unlikely to see anywhere else.

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Dr. Albert Mohler on developing a Christian worldview:

A robust and rich model of Christian thinking—the quality of thinking that culminates in a God-centered worldview—requires that we see all truth as interconnected. Ultimately, the systematic wholeness of truth can be traced to the fact that God is himself the author of all truth. Christianity is not a set of doctrines in the sense that a mechanic operates with a set of tools. Instead, Christianity is a comprehensive worldview and way of life that grows out of Christian reflection on the Bible and the unfolding plan of God revealed in the unity of the Scriptures. 

A God-centered worldview brings every issue, question, and cultural concern into submission to all that the Bible reveals, and it frames all understanding within the ultimate purpose of bringing greater glory to God. This task of bringing every thought captive to Christ requires more than episodic Christian thinking and is to be understood as the task of the church, and not merely the concern of individual believers. The recovery of the Christian mind and the development of a comprehensive Christian worldview will require the deepest theological reflection, the most consecrated application of scholarship, the most sensitive commitment to compassion, and the courage to face all questions without fear. 

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Secrets of creative success: an interview with Cheers writer Rob Long.

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Food for thought: quitting social media. These are all valid points to consider. Like anything else, you need to be wise in how you use it (if at all). 

Daily Links 1-13-14

Good morning! Here is a collection of links to help start your week off right. In today's edition: Brothers Grimm fairy tales come to life, redesigning World War II London, school wasn't canceled in 1882, and more.

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A neat collection of photographs that make you think you've stepped into one of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales:

Photo by Kilian Schönberger 

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Buyer beware: 17 ways stores make you spend more money. Good stuff to keep in mind while shopping.

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Neat History: how wartime London was redesigned to fool German bombers during World War II.

This lamp post was repainted black and white (among other things) to fool German bomber crews.

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10 pieces of cool Jane Austen swag.

Jane Austen coasters

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A story from Laura Ingalls Wilder's These Happy Golden Years (second to last in the Little House series) proves that we have all gone soft when it comes to dealing with cold weather. (Hat tip: Challies)

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Point-counterpoint: Thom Rainer offers 7 tips for introvert leaders while Ed Stetzer responds with his own 3 tips for extrovert leaders.

Daily Links 11-12-13

Your daily roundup of interesting items from the web. In today's edition: the disappearance of the gentleman athlete, choosing a study Bible, ending the worship wars, and more.

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Emily Esfahani Smith argues that the gentleman athlete has disappeared (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds).

On a related note, Bobby Jones is another very gifted athlete that also epitomized what it meant to also be a gentleman athlete. His story is wonderfully documented in Mark Frost's excellent book The Grand Slam. Jim Caviezel also portrayed Jones in the movie Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius which is one of my favorites.

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Aaron Armstrong is encouraging folks to get serious about Bible study. The first place to start is picking the right Bible. More specifically, picking a study Bible. There are lots of good tips here on how to pick the right Bible for you.

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Thom Rainer believes there are signs that the worship wars are coming to an end. I especially agree with his second point regarding the resurgence of hymnody.

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What Shark Tank can teach us about capitalism. While I don't get to see this show often the few times I have watched it I have found it compelling television.

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Is all sin the same to God? According to Tim Challies, the answer is yes and no.

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Here's a handy chart of kitchen weights, measures and more.

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Kevin DeYoung offers ten errors to avoid when talking about sanctification and the gospel:

With lots of books and blog posts out there about law and gospel, about grace and effort, about the good news of this and the bad news of that, it’s clear that Christians are still wrestling with the doctrine of progressive sanctification. Can Christians do anything truly good? Can we please God? Should we try to? Is there a place for striving in the Christian life? Can God be disappointed with the Christian? Does the gospel make any demands? These are good questions that require a good deal of nuance and precision to answer well. 

Thankfully, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The Reformed confessions and catechisms of the 16th and 17th centuries provide answers for all these questions. For those of us who subscribe to the Three Forms of Unity or to the Westminster Standards this means we are duty bound to affirm, teach, and defend what is taught in our confessional documents. For those outside these confessional traditions, there is still much wisdom you can gain in understanding what Christians have said about these matters over the centuries. And most importantly, these standards were self-consciously grounded in specific texts of Scripture. We can learn a lot from what these documents have to teach us from the Bible.

Daily Links 10-22-13

Churches are too busy, churches aren't preaching the Bible, C. S. Lewis' marriage, and more in today's roundup of links.

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Last week's Strange Fire conference caused quite the stir if my Twitter feed is any indication. People on both sides of the spiritual gifts issue were weighing in on the conference. Since I haven't studied the issue thoroughly I haven't taken a position. In fact, I spent the last several days wondering why this was being made an issue at this particular time and whether John MacArthur had committed a serious error in hosting this conference. Tim Challies offers his observations from the conference and I have to say that while it has not really helped me settle on a position on the issue of spiritual gifts it does at least shed some light on why this conference was so important and so timely.

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Most churches are too busy, according to Dr. Thom Rainer:

Most churches—more than eight out of ten—are busy. Too busy. These churches need to slim down their plethora of programs, activities, and ministries. They need to go on a busyness diet.

Dr. Rainer goes on to outline seven reasons churches need to reduce their busyness. If you are a church leader you would be well served to read the entire article and consider how your church can reduce its level of activities.

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Dr. Albert Mohler wrestles with the question of why so many churches hear so little of the Bible:

“It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out.” That stunningly clear sentence reflects one of the most amazing, tragic, and lamentable characteristics of contemporary Christianity: an impatience with the Word of God.

The sentence above comes from Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today in an essay entitled, “Yawning at the Word.” In just a few hundred words, he captures the tragedy of a church increasingly impatient with and resistant to the reading and preaching of the Bible. We may wince when we read him relate his recent experiences, but we also recognize the ring of truth.

Galli was told to cut down on the biblical references in his sermon. “You’ll lose people,” the staff member warned. In a Bible study session on creation, the teacher was requested to come back the next Sunday prepared to take questions at the expense of reading the relevant scriptural texts on the doctrine. Cutting down on the number of Bible verses “would save time and, it was strongly implied, would better hold people’s interest.”

As Galli reflected, “Anyone who’s been in the preaching and teaching business knows these are not isolated examples but represent the larger reality.”

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Politically charged social media interactions can hurt your witness for Christ:

You can't blurt at a people and reach a people at the same time. This is true no matter how satisfying it feels to add your voice to the political rants on social media.

In the current political climate in our nation, with shutdowns and blame, I have watched the volume grow and the civility shrink.

I believe in the importance of civility for civility's sake. Yet, I think it goes even further than that if you are a Christian who wants to reach those disconnected from the church. In other words, I believe the way we handle political issues has a missional implication. So a few days ago, I posted this thought to Facebook (and a shorter version on Twitter):

"Statistically, the unchurched lean heavily Democrat. So—and I know it's just me talking crazy now—if you want to reach the unchurched, maybe constant Facebook/Twitter posts about how stupid Democrats are might be a bad idea."

The post was shared hundreds of times on both social media outlets and appeared to draw a largely positive response, so I thought it may be appropriate to elaborate a bit on this idea and why it's so important.

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A new biography of C. S. Lewis paints an inaccurate picture of his marriage to Joy Davidman according to this article. 

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