Weekend A La Carte (April 22)

I am once again grateful to Children’s Hunger Fund for sponsoring the blog this week. “Across the US and in 29 countries around the world, faithful pastors and church volunteers from Children’s Hunger Fund church partners have dedicated their time to serving children and families in desperate situations.”

(Yesterday on the blog: The Gospel of Jesus)

Political Life Begins in the Church

Patrick Schreiner has an important article about the church’s primary (though not necessarily sole) political witness to the world.

Trusting God with The I-Don’t-Knows

“A mysterious curtain hangs just beyond this immediate present moment shielding our gaze from endless I-Don’t-Knows. Those I-Don’t-Knows are numerous, quite humbling, and often painful.”

Moses, the Mountain, and a Mass of Email

“Christians and non-Christians alike constantly talk about the need for ‘self-care’ these days. I wonder if farmers, working 80 hours a week in 1950s America, thought about ‘self-care.’ That is a rhetorical question.” Of course it is!

Once More, Church and Culture

There is a lot to ponder in this long article about the relationship of church and culture. “To ask about the church’s place in society while living in Christendom is redundant. The question answers itself. The question is genuinely new, however, when posed after Christendom.”

Freedom from the Burden of People Pleasing

Susan Narjala: “As a child, I learned to colour inside the lines. I do not mean just in art class, but that nature and nurture moulded me into a rule-follower.” She goes on to discuss how we can find freedom from people pleasing.

Could AI replace my pastor?

“The latest iteration of the chat bot can apparently produce sermons. You tell it your passage, how many points you want and point and shoot and away it goes. What you end up will be grammatically correct and may read well, though I think it comes across as a bit sterile. But to think that it is a sermon is to think wrongly about what preaching is.”