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A La Carte (May 11)

thursday

It was a tremendous honor to learn that Seasons of Sorrow has received the annual Christian Book Award for biography & memoir (from the The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association). You can see the winners in other categories here.

There are a few new Kindle deals that are worth considering.

The Inner Circle

“It’s all who you know,” they say. Yet, as Seth Lewis says, “the trouble is that most of us were not born into powerful families. We don’t naturally rub shoulders with people in influential positions. Which means that if you want to get ahead professionally, socially, or any other way, you have to start with the people you already know, and work from their circles of influence into the more powerful circles above them.”

A Response to an Employer’s Request for Pronouns

This aptly shows one way employees can respond to requests for pronouns. Unfortunately I don’t expect that all will meet with the same level of success, though.

Confronting those who sin against us

We know there are times when we must confront other people for their sin. Yet we all learn that “we can ‘go and tell’ or ‘rebuke’ others and end up making the situation far worse than it was before by doing these things in an unhelpful way. We can further damage the relationship, and we can even make the prospect of reconciliation less likely than ever by ‘telling’ and ‘rebuking’ in ways that hurt rather than heal.”

We may need to re-learn the basics

“There are some basic things in churches that we can neglect to do for a whole host of reasons. Not doing them for some time can lead us to forget how to do them altogether. Worse, as we forget how to do some of these basic things, they may have a knock on impact on everything else we might hope to do.”

In Secret

Derek Thomas reminds us that “according to Jesus, it is what we do in secret that matters most.”

The Valley of Humiliation is Green

“Few things strike our sensibilities quite as harshly as humiliation. To be brought low, to fall down, to struggle, to run out of answers, to become weak and poor—this is a hard place to fall into. But what if I told you the ‘valley of humiliation’ is really green?”

Flashback: The One Sure Mark of Christian Maturity

…spiritual maturity is better displayed in acts than in facts. You can know everything there is to know about theology, you can be a walking systematic theology, you can spend a lifetime training others in seminary, and still be desperately immature.

Not going to God because your faith is weak is like not going to the doctor because you feel sick.

—Steve Fuller

  • Prayer

    The Reward They Longed for They Received

    Jesus, who knew what was in the heart of men, warned of the hypocrisy of those whose prayer life is only ever public. “When you pray,” he said, “you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    Weekend A La Carte (May 17)

    A La Carte: Generalizations are not stereotypes / Hospitality and reaching the dechurched / Essential lessons for pastors / The rise of Islam and the resilience of the church / Gossip and godly church / Fear takes you where grace has not yet gone / and more.

  • Planted in the Word

    Planted in the Word

    There are a lot of Bible study guides out there. However, the need is not nearly saturated because there are also a lot of Bible readers, many of whom study the Word carefully and repeatedly throughout their Christian lives. For that reason, we cannot have too many guides to assist in reading, understanding, and applying…

  • A La Carte Friday 2

    A La Carte (May 16)

    A La Carte: The role of dance in Christian worship / A community for broken homes / Our reason for missionary risk / The longings of the human heart / I’m not a handyman / Affluence, regret, identity crises / Kindle deals / and more.

  • A La Carte Thursday 1

    A La Carte (May 15)

    A La Carte: The clever move of Leo XIV / People expect church to be churchy / Don’t let TikTok disciple your kids / Playing God with children / Overcoming barriers to hospitality / Real men sing / and more.