A La Carte (June 9)

Sales & Deals

Today’s Kindle deals include a very strong collection with titles from Jerry Bridges, Ben Sasse, Tom Schreiner, and others. As Amazon heads into their Prime Days, they are putting lots of general market titles on sale, so do keep an eye on those as well. (I’ve updated my Amazon Storefront with many of these deals as well.)

If you prefer print books, then Westminster Books may have just the thing: They’ve got the excellent ESV Expository Commentary series on sale. It’s an ideal introductory commentary for any passage.

Recommended Reading

Thawed Embryos, Reproductive Rights, and the Grey Marshlands of Ethical Ennui. This is a strong and sad piece of cultural analysis from Stephen McAlpine. “Callaghan has a dilemma. Her dilemma is that as she pops into a medical centre, – having been told that the embryos will soon be disposed of if she doesn’t collect, – she senses there must be ethical certainty about her decision. Yet to her dismay she can locate none within herself. Or without. She lives in the aorist tense, constantly searching for a fixed location, but finding it just beyond her.”

14 World Cup Stars Who Follow Jesus. I haven’t yet decided whether I will follow the World Cup, though Aileen is quite eager to, so I probably will. On that note, Christianity Today recently listed 14 stars who profess faith in Christ. I didn’t look into these players to see what kind of churches they are attending, but it’s at least encouraging to know that some of the men on the field will be serving the Lord as they do so.

Gather a Group for the 2026 Missionary National Conference: The Lord Who Sends. Sacrificial obedience to the One who sends is what it will take to reach every language. Gather your church, missions team, or small group to worship Christ and search God’s word together for what it means to serve the Lord who sends. Register your group by August 15 to save. (Sponsored)

The God of Small Churches. I have heard it said that God must love small churches since he created so many of them. This article from The Churchman’s Quill pushes back on the idea that bigger churches are necessarily more faithful. “Most of us have a picture in our minds of what a successful church looks like. It is large. It has a full parking lot. The worship team is polished. The children’s ministry is bustling. The pastor is well known. We absorb this picture from our culture without even realizing it. Attendance becomes the metric. Size becomes the measure of success. And small churches, almost by default, begin to feel like failures. I want to push back on that.”

When Culture Trumps Strategy. Dan Steel offers some challenging thoughts on church culture and strategy. “For Paul, the church isn’t just a vehicle for mission; it is far more than that, it is the message made visible, grace incarnate. Every part matters. Every part is needed. And every part must be cared for. To plant a church is to participate in forming that body, which means we cannot treat people as interchangeable or expendable. Launching the body of Christ while neglecting the parts of the body is not just inconsistent; it’s incoherent.”

Fasting and Feasting. This article from WORLD reminds us that sometimes the simplest and most obvious solutions are the best ones. “I recently had lunch with a new college graduate who went to my school and now attends my church. He is also a great dude. His generation is much maligned for producing shiftless, jobless, relationship-less, directionless, phone-addled zombies. During the lunch he said something that shocked and challenged me with its simplicity. It also made me proud.”

How a Critical Theorist Influenced the Sexualization of Everything. I always find it fascinating to see how ideas—and especially very bad ideas—go from obscurity to acceptance. That’s the case with Herbert Marcuse and the sexualization of everything. “With the confusion about what it means to be a boy or man and what it means to be a girl or woman, with numerous boys and men having surgeries to become girls and women, and with numerous girls and women having surgeries to become boys and men, we see the ghost of Marcuse haunting—perhaps even ruling—the twenty-first-century landscape.”

New Book Releases

New Christian books tend to be released on Tuesdays. That’s true for these ones:

• Jesus Will Meet You There by Kristen Wetherell & Sarah Walton. “Through personal stories and biblical wisdom, the award-winning authors of Hope When It Hurts remind us that weakness isn’t the end of our story—it’s the very place Jesus meets us.”
• Becoming a Disciple of the King by Jonathan Pennington. “In this volume of the New Testament Theology series, scholar and pastor Jonathan Pennington explores the key theology and themes of Matthew to help readers gain a clearer understanding of both Scripture and Jesus.”

Flashback

Am I Sanctified or Am I Tired? Continue to wage harsh warfare against the least presence of sin in your life, knowing that none of us is entirely immune to any sin on this side of the grave.