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You never want to waste a good crisis. That is true in politics and religion and any other field that values ideology, that values one thing over another or one thing in place of another. As Christians we know that the Lord often uses times of crisis to call people to himself, that when people are weak, he remains strong and reveals himself as strong. Of course if God uses crisis, so must Satan. In those times of intense difficulty we may be more aware than ever of the cosmic battle that wages around and inside us.

I have been thinking of the value of crisis as I have watched Americans grapple with President Obama’s recent mandate that demands that almost all employers and health insurance companies provide free contraceptives, up to and including contraceptives that cause (or can cause) abortions. The outrage to this mandate is multi-faceted. On the one hand it forces employers and insurance companies to violate conscience in providing contraceptives for those who are opposed to all forms of birth control, or abortifacient birth control for those who have no objection to preventive contraceptives. In either case, it ignores the separation of church and state that is so integral to America; with this mandate government forces violation of religious conscience.

This is a true crisis and I feel great sympathy for Americans as they wrestle with the implications and call for this bill to be abandoned. I would do the same if I lived south of the border.

As my friends to the south deal with this crisis, I want to offer a word of advice or encouragement: Please do not forget that there are many people who will seek to take advantage of this crisis in order to advance their agenda. Please keep fighting against this injustice, but do be careful how you fight and who it is you fight with.

So how many people go to your church?” That’s a question just about every pastor faces at just about every conference he attends. It usually doesn’t take long for a conversation to progress to that point. For the pastor this can be a moment of great pride or great humility, great freedom or great shame. Regardless, it is a question that always seems to come up. And it comes up for those who are not pastors as well; you begin to talk about your church and your friend inevitably asks that same question.

Today I’d like to make a two-part proposal: Let’s stop asking, “How many people go to your church?” And when someone asks us that question, let’s stop providing a direct answer.

We all pay lip service to the reality that we cannot necessarily measure the health of a church by its size. We all know that some of the biggest churches in the world are also some of the worst churches in the world. After all, the history of the church has long-since shown that it is not all that difficult to fill a building with unbelievers by just tickling their ears with what they want to hear. We also know that the Lord is sovereign and that he determines how big each church should be and we know that in some areas even a very small church is an absolute triumph of light over darkness. And yet “How big is your church?” is one of the first questions we ask.

Why is this? I don’t know all the reasons but I’d suggest at least three. First, I think our question betrays us and shows that in the back of our minds we equate size and health. Somewhere we make the connection between big and healthy, between big and blessing. We exacerbate the problem when we ask and answer this too-easy question. Second, we just haven’t taken the time and made the effort to form better questions. Instead, we gravitate to the easy one. Third, we are lazy and don’t really care. Asking “How big is your church?” is like asking, “How’s it going?” Neither one is a question that asks anything meaningful. If you are really interested in how a person is doing or how a church is doing, you will ask better, deeper, more meaningful questions.

In early 2006 I became the owner of Discerning Reader. Some may remember that before I owned the domain name, it was a bookstore and one that shut down and disappeared under strange and sudden circumstances. A few months after the store closed, the domain went up for auction and I purchased it. In April of 2006 I relaunched it as a book review site dedicated to discerning reviews of books that are of interest to Christians. (The real old-timers around here may remember that I had an existing book review site that I folded into Discerning Reader.)

My hope was that the site would fulfill several functions:

• It would become a place where a great group of reviewers would review books that Christians were reading or considering reading.
• It would become a place where we would be able to link to other discerning reviews from across the Net, building a “meta” site for reviews.
• It would become a valued part of the blogosphere, sharing information about new books, upcoming books, and so on, thus making it a hub for Christian readers.
• It would become a place that would resource churches and ministries, helping them to spread the news about worthwhile books.

Sadly, Discerning Reader has never been able to become all that I had envisioned. With all of my responsibilities in life, it was never able to get the first or best attention; with all of my financial responsibilities in life, it was never able to get the infrastructure and staffing that it required. What saddens me is that I know there is still a place for Discerning Reader and that each of these four functions, if done with excellence, would make it a valuable resource for Christian readers.

I still believe in the vision I had for Discerning Reader, but I am increasingly convinced that I will not be able to get it there. Thus it saddens me to say that I am planning on shutting down the site. There are several options I am considering:

A couple of days ago my Bible reading took me to Acts 9, the story of the conversion of Saul. You know how it goes I’m sure. Paul, a vicious enemy of the early church, is on his way to from Jerusalem to Damascus so he can begin a whole new wave of persecution against the Christians there. But somewhere between the cities a sudden light shines from heaven and Saul has an unexpected encounter with Jesus. Jesus told him to continue on his way to Damascus and to wait to be told what he must do.

Paul obeys and continues to Damascus, blind now, and having to be led all the way. For three days the blindness continues and for those three days he fasts from all food and drink.

As Paul waits, prays and fasts, we are introduced to a disciple named Ananias. The Lord appears to him in a vision and tells him to go to Saul and to heal his eyes by laying hands on him. I’ve always gotten a strange joy out of Ananias’ “Um…God” moment. Having been told to go and visit this man Saul, this man whose name is synonymous with persecution, Ananias seems to say, “Um…I know you’re omniscient and all, but maybe you haven’t heard about this Saul guy. So let me tell you about him…” (I’ve written about this here)

Eventually faith and reason prevail. Ananias finds the place Paul is staying and goes on in to see him. And as I read (actually, listened to) the account this time two words stood out to me: “Brother Saul.” Ananias enters that house, lays his hands on Saul and says, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

There were some good responses to my Martyn Lloyd-Jones quote about whether Christians in vocational ministry are somehow more religious than those who aren’t. One commenter on the post raised a question that seemed worth pursuing further. He stated, and then asked,

We get it—God doesn’t want everyone to be a pastor or a missionary and we all should be Godly. But now what? Can you, as pastors, offer no guidance beyond that? Is there no difference between the intrinsic value of the work of a Godly trash collector v. a Godly social worker? Is there no difference between the intrinsic value of the work of a Godly lawyer v. a Godly administrative assistant?

That got me thinking. But instead of trying to answer this one myself (I usually know when I’m out of my league), I thought I’d ask Matt Perman if he would take a shot at it. Matt blogs at What’s Best Next and is currently working on a book by the same title, What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done (set to release in August). You might have also seen the recent video interview he did with Collin Hansen on the doctrine of vocation.

Needless to say, Matt has been doing a lot of reading and thinking about vocation from a biblical perspective and has some great things to say about it. He graciously agreed to consider the question above, and here is his very helpful answer.

It would not be my preference to begin this way, but I guess I need to say it up front: R.C. Sproul Jr. and I have some significant theological differences, and not only that, but we have differences in areas in which we are both rather vocal. Though we disagree on these things, he and I have often shared cordial emails expressing mutual love and respect even in the midst of significant disagreement.

However, though I wanted to offer that by way of context, I am not writing today to discuss the nature or manner of such theological disagreement. Instead, I am writing to tell how R.C. Sproul Jr. has been an encouragement to me as the Lord has called him to pass through this darkest hour. Just a few weeks ago, after a 9-month battle with cancer, his wife Denise went to be with the Lord, leaving behind Sproul Jr. and their eight children. Through the Ligonier Ministries blog, Sproul Jr. has been steadily writing about the long journey from diagnosis to death and now life as a widower and single parent. These articles have been a great source of challenge and encouragement to me.

My Better Half teaches me to appreciate what Christ has formed in the marriage relationship. Sproul Jr. reminds me that the one-flesh metaphor used to describe husband and wife may be a little bit more than metaphor. “We are not commanded to live as if we were one flesh. Instead we are told that such is the actual truth. The one-flesh reality means that I haven’t just lost the love of my life, but half of me. … It isn’t quite accurate to say that when she drew her last breath a part of me died. Instead, half of me died.” But even in the middle of such pain there is hope:

The good news, however, is the same. Half of me has died, and is with Jesus. Half of me has no melancholy, but only joy. Half of me cries no more. Half of me sins no more. Half of me loves me, and the children, with a perfect love. Mourning, over the coming weeks and months, will move to dancing, as this half of me begins to more deeply believe the blessings I have in my better half.

I love Denise all the way to heaven and back. She in turn loves me all the way from heaven and back. And Jesus loves us both as the great bridge that not only brought us together, but keeps us together. May these gospel truths give me gentle sleep tonight.

I cannot imagine the pain of enduring the trials he has endured, but he gives me hope that the Lord would extend the same grace to me to endure with joy and hope even in pain. And he calls on me to love my wife with even more intensity for the God-given gift she is to me.

As I’ve been reading blogs and news articles lately, I’ve seen quite a few articles on the subject of breastfeeding. That’s kind of a strange observation, I know, but I’ve seen it as a recent theme in the media. I guess society is still negotiating whether or not it is appropriate to nurse a baby in public. This reminded me of an article I once saw in a Florida newspaper where the author discussed a fascinating situation involving Victoria’s Secret.

Victoria’s Secret became the target of breast-feeding activists this week after women in Racine, Wis., and Quincy, Mass., went into the popular women’s lingerie store and were told they couldn’t breastfeed their children on the sales floor.

It’s hard to imagine that Victoria’s Secret, of all places, could be anti-breast—or at least squeamish about the partial exposure of a woman’s breast amid the racks of revealing peekaboo attire on sale.

But it happened. The result: Victoria’s Secret was the target of a nationwide ‘nurse-in’ protest this past weekend called for by a group of angry breastfeeding women.

You can’t help but note the irony: Victoria’s Secret, a company that has done so much to commodify the breast (along with pretty much every other aspect of a woman’s body), refused to allow women to breastfeed on their premises. As the article says, “Victoria’s Secret, after all, is all about partial, and more-than-partial exposure of a woman’s body.” The company’s advertising shows a lot more exposed breast than you are likely to see when a woman nurses her child. And what’s wrong with a woman feeding her child in public?

Until about eleven years ago I had never thought much about breastfeeding. My mom, with still a little bit of hippie in her blood (you should see those early photos of her as a mother), raised five children and each of us nursed for at least a year or two. I was the second child to be born into the family and so, for at least five or six years of my life, I saw little sisters nursing. I thought nothing of it; it was as natural as breathing. Babies needed to eat, so mom fed them. If they needed to eat at home, mom fed them at home, and if they needed to eat when we were out, mom fed them in public. She was discreet about it, of course, but was certainly not ashamed to fed us when we need to be fed. There was nothing complicated about it.

Back in 2005 I wrote about the seeming arbitrariness (but not the unimportance) of celebrating the birth of Christ on December 25. But even if that date wasn’t the actual calendar day of Jesus’ birth, it’s still interesting to understand why we have come to commemorate it then.

A few years ago Elisha Coffman posted a short article on Christianity Today’s Christian History site about how December 25th became the day. Here’s a good summary of what determined it:

December 25 already hosted two other related festivals: natalis solis invicti (the Roman “birth of the unconquered sun”), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian “Sun of Righteousness” whose worship was popular with Roman soldiers. The winter solstice, another celebration of the sun, fell just a few days earlier. Seeing that pagans were already exalting deities with some parallels to the true deity, church leaders decided to commandeer the date and introduce a new festival.

Western Christians first celebrated Christmas on December 25 in 336, after Emperor Constantine had declared Christianity the empire’s favored religion.

Elisha ends with a helpful thought addressing the concern that too many Christian Christmas traditions are “just paganism wrapped with a Christian bow.”

Reports of the blogosphere’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Another year has come and (just about) gone and the blogosphere continues to be an integral means of communication, and this despite many predictions that blogs will soon go the way of the dinosaur (or the newspaper, as the case may be). 2011 was a great year for blogs, at least here in the Christian blogosphere. Before the year comes to an end, I want to point to a few of my 2011 blogging heroes.

Here are seven of them, in no particular order.

Practical Shepherding - When I speak to people who are considering blogging, I always talk about the importance of identifying a niche and then filling it. It is far easier to gain authority in a niche than it is to gain authority broadly. The example I always use is Brian Croft and his Practical Shepherding blog. Brian identified his own passion and gifting and then found that there was a void in the Christian blogosphere that he could fill. He has done a great job of doing just that. Writing primarily to pastors, he humbly offers advice or teaching that is both practical and biblical. It’s a must-read for any pastor.

The King’s English - 2011 marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible and Glen Scrivener decided to mark the occasion by looking at hundreds of phrases coined by the King James translators that have since passed into modern parlance—phrases we now take for granted: “labour of love”, “beast of burden”, “wits’ end” and “scapegoat”; and also phrases that perhaps should be a bit more popular, like “filthy lucre” and “gird up thy loins”. He did a phenomenal job of it. I am looking forward to seeing what he does in 2012 and beyond.

The Cripplegate - The Cripplegate is a new blog produced by a team of writers connected by their association with [John MacArthur’s] Grace Community Church. It offers a place for “like-minded Christians and pastors to share their thoughts about ministry, theology, and issues that affect the church today, in a way that will bring encouragement and clarity to those that read it.” The writers have done a good job of addressing current events while also writing about issues relevant to ministry or just being part of a church. I appreciate their willingness to be blunt when bluntness will help a conversation progress.

Farhad Manjoo recently wrote a provocative article for Slate in which he argued that we shouldn’t support our local independent bookstores. According to Manjoo, “buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you.” Those are fighting words!

You may have heard of Amazon’s recent promotion. If you walked into a retail outlet and used Amazon’s app to buy that product through Amazon, they would give you a 5 percent discount. That was good for Amazon, but bad for everyone else—especially the salesperson who used some of his time to tell you all about that product. Not surprisingly, this promotion generated a lot of anger.

This caught Manjoo’s attention and got him thinking about local bookstores. He looks at a New York Times op-ed penned by Richard Russo and says this:

Rather than focus on the ways that Amazon’s promotion would harm businesses whose demise might actually be a cause for alarm (like a big-box electronics store that hires hundreds of local residents), Russo hangs his tirade on some of the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized local establishments you can find: independent bookstores. Russo and his novelist friends take for granted that sustaining these cultish, moldering institutions is the only way to foster a “real-life literary culture,” as writer Tom Perrotta puts it. Russo claims that Amazon, unlike the bookstore down the street, “doesn’t care about the larger bookselling universe” and has no interest in fostering “literary culture.”

Manjoo goes on to show how much Amazon has done for readers, writers and publishers: “As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books. … Compared with online retailers, bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience. A physical store—whether it’s your favorite indie or the humongous Barnes & Noble at the mall—offers a relatively paltry selection, no customer reviews, no reliable way to find what you’re looking for, and a dubious recommendations engine. Amazon suggests books based on others you’ve read; your local store recommends what the employees like. If you don’t choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?”