Grace and peace be with you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Dark, Enduring Legacy of Friends
With a new Friends special getting lots of attention, Jonathon Van Maren writes about the show’s dark, enduring legacy. “TV sitcoms tell stories; stories have storytellers. The cast and crew of Friends wanted to push the envelope, knowing that TV is a frequently a feedback loop that not only reflects culture but also drives, shapes, and informs it.”
A Tale of Two Poohs
It’s quite a good comparison, this. “I grew up with Winnie the Pooh, but I also grew up with the Christian faith. In some ways, the two were very similar, quiet, understated (at times, I think childhood church was actually in black and white!) and English. We were the inheritors of historic Christianity (we had the history books to prove it) and we sent missionaries out to the rest of the world to spread the faith to the rest of the world.”
Why Are There So Many Versions of the Bible?
“Why are there so many different translations of the Bible? Go into any Christian bookstore, and you can find an entire shelf—sometimes an entire section!—of different Bible translations.” Greg Gilbert offers an answer here.
See John Piper *LIVE* AT RMC21, JUNE 23-24
June 23-24th at Bethlehem Baptist Church Radius International will host their annual missiology conference. John Piper, Mark Dever, Wayne Chen, Harshit Singh, Brooks Buser, and others from the Radius world will be live and in-person to teach on the Great Commission in today’s world with free books from 9Marks, Banner of Truth, and Desiring God. (Sponsored Link)
Technology and the Future of Virtual Biblical Counseling
It seems to me (and to Eliza Huie, based on this article) that biblical counseling will be forever changed by the pandemic and the move to online meetings. “A year ago almost every biblical counselor had a decision to make–namely, how and when to continue to provide counseling under imposed government regulations. As biblical counselors we may have wondered if a day would come when the government would stop the work that we were doing. None of us, however, could have predicted what actually happened.”
Please, Talk to the New Person
Yes, please do!
He Has Written
Chris Thomas says, “it should not surprise us that our God is portrayed as a writer.” And he explains why.
How Did John Calvin Die?
David Strain recounts the final days, death, and burial of Calvin.
Flashback: The Five Things You Want Your Church To Be
Realistically, we have to know that while our greatest needs are met perfectly in Christ, all our other desires are met imperfectly through imperfect people. We have to learn to find joy in this imperfection and despite this imperfection.
The death of the body is easy when the soul is dead to sin.
—Adelaide Rodham
