Weekend A La Carte: No Contact, Sorrow, Evangelicals, Myths

Good morning. My gratitude goes to Ligonier Ministries for sponsoring the blog this week to ensure you know about the new Grow app. It’s a free download and offers a lot of great content.

Sales & Deals

Today’s Kindle deals include a variety of deals spanning a bunch of different eras and genres.

Recommended Reading

Jessica Lee writes about the growing no contact movement in which people sever their relationships with people they find toxic or problematic.

I think of the young women I mentor who are flooded with reels, encouraging them that the best way to deal with the strained relationship with their mom is to put up higher boundaries that limit contact, or to cut off contact altogether. Even if they don’t take these drastic measures, they cannot help being influenced by the ideas, and neither can we. We are steeped in a therapy culture that talks a lot more about self-care than self-sacrifice, and we would be naive if we didn’t acknowledge the formative influence it has on us. And so, when relationships (whether with a parent, sibling, or friend) get hard, as they inevitably will, our first impulse is often toward self-preservation (putting up higher boundaries) and not self-sacrificial presence and faithfulness.

Read: Going No Contact?: Ruth and Faithful Presence.

Madeline Livingston has been going through a time of deep sorrow, and from that perspective writes a meditation about grief and glory.

In my grief, I can turn to a Savior who has known human frailty and deep suffering, a Savior who in his most desperate moment prayed, “Let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). I can trust in the goodness and provision of a Father who did spare his own Son, but gave him up to rescue us and make us his own (Romans 8:32). I can rest in the compassion of a Maker who collects all my tears in his bottle (Psalm 56:8), a Good Shepherd who carries me safely through the lowest valley and restores my soul (Psalm 23).

As Sorrow and Suffering take me by the hand, they invite me to run to the solid ground of God’s promises made yes and amen through Christ. They urge me on to seek solace in the only place it can truly be found, in a arms of a Father who is my “refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).

Read: When Sorrow & Suffering Take You by the Hand.

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra did a lot of interviews to try to arrive at some best practices for churches that are evangelistically effective. Her article offers a lot of food for thought.

Thirty years ago, evangelical churches leaned on programs like Evangelism Explosion or Continuous Witness Training to deliver evangelistic focus and training, church leader Thom Rainer said. Those structured initiatives fit well in a culture that was more Christian and more institutionalized—it took an average of 20 church members to reach one person for Christ per year.

Today, it takes 50, Rainer said. “Evangelism efficacy, evangelism effectiveness, has definitely diminished.”

That trend is likely to continue. As social media and AI fill our time and increase our social anxiety, even relational evangelism is growing more difficult.

Read: Best Practices from Evangelistically Effective Churches.

Like Darryl Dash, I’ve been hearing and reading a lot of doom and gloom lately, much of it related to the rise of AI. But also like Darryl, I don’t feel particularly alarmed.

I read quite a few predictions of doom over the weekend, including some from self-professed tech optimists. Supposedly, some infrastructure in the United States is under attack. The idea is that AI is becoming too powerful and will overwhelm whatever safeguards we have in place to protect things like our water systems and electricity.

The proposed solution is to prepare for the disaster by buying generators, solar panels for generators, and stockpiling water and other basic supplies. However, the authors acknowledge that there is little we can do to truly protect ourselves from the danger.

Are the threats real? I do not know. But I do know that Christians do not need to worry for two reasons.

Read: Why Christians Don’t Have to Fear the Collapse.

Here’s an interesting piece from Carl Trueman, as he considers the label “evangelical” and whether it really has any useful meaning.

The controversial publication, withdrawal, and then republication by Christianity Today of an article suggesting Elisabeth Elliot was bisexual, amid a wave of layoffs and resignations that has stripped the evangelical magazine of half of its staff, have raised numerous legitimate questions about its attitude to journalism, the wisdom of its editorial policy, and its future. I don’t subscribe to it and have rarely read it, so I have no personal interest in the debacle, although the feckless strategy after the controversy broke would seem to confirm the best way to handle media storms: Never apologize, never explain, to paraphrase an adage favored by the late Duke of Edinburgh.

The chaos also raises an important, though rarely asked, question: Does evangelicalism really exist? Certainly it exists as a whipping boy for critics who treat the sins of any one evangelical organization as the sins of all. It also gives others a platform: With no formal leadership, evangelicalism can be claimed by anyone with a social media account. But does it exist as anything more than a label?

Read: Does Evangelicalism Exist? (Also consider Clint Humfrey’s Trueman On Evangelicalism)

With Reformation Day coming tomorrow, it’s probably a good time to consider some Reformation Day myths. R. Scott Clark covers whether Luther really nailed his theses to the door on October 31, whether the theses were about justification by faith, whether he intended to break with Rome, and so on.

Read: Reformation Day Myths.

Reader Recommendations

I like to solicit recommendations for things readers are reading, listening to, watching, eating, or otherwise experiencing. Here’s what you sent along:

Andrew recommends Roy McDaniel’s Enacting Atonement: The Narrative Logic of Sacrifice and Sonship in Leviticus. “If Morales’ work on Leviticus connects biblical study with biblical theological categories, McDaniel bridges biblical study with systematics in a very fruitful way.”

John says, “For the past 3 years I have used a Leuchtturm1917 ‘Some Lines A Day’ 5 Year journal to write a brief daily note to my daughter. Over the course of 5 years I reckon this will amount to some 100,000 words, just for her. It serves as a daily summary of our day and a deliberate habit of recording memories and gospel truths for her. I have a journal for each of my daughters and a third soon to begin for baby on the way!”

Peter has “resumed the habit of listening to an audiobook before I go to sleep. I’m almost finished with The Deerslayer, chronologically the first book in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, set during the French and Indian War.”

Adele recommends A Praying Life and A Praying Church by Paul Miller. “Both books convict, provoke, and inspire to stop depending on human effort and to start relying on the Holy Spirit.”

Geoff recommends William Inboden’s The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. “The book focuses on Reagan’s foreign policy, particularly as it concerns the threat of war and relations with the USSR. However, it is also interesting to see how Reagan’s core beliefs influenced his policy and the compromises that were sometimes required.”

Bill enjoyed Sinclair Ferguson’s new Ligonier teaching series My Joy and Crown: Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.

Karin recommends “Tie-Dye Heart,” a story of God’s grace in foster care and adoption, told from the perspective of a young woman whose parents took in 13 foster children during her growing-up years.

Brad recommends three sites: Gospel-Centered Discipleship, Core Christianity, and Doxology & Theology. (TC: I link to all of these from time to time!)

Lisa says, “One of my most frequent recommendations for Bible study and teaching is BiblePlaces.com for visual resources (geographical photos, maps, and museum items) organized verse by verse through almost the entire Bible. Todd Bolen and the team at BiblePlaces is also partnering with Jason Wolin at BibleSlides.app for more presentation tools for Bible teachers and pastors.”

Jim is almost done reading Arnold Dallimore’s George Whitefield: God’s Anointed Servant in the Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century (the condensed paperback). “Wonderful history. Regardless of one’s end time view, it should cause one to pray for revival.”

Another Jim recommends Tommee Profitt’s Christmas album The Birth of a King. “Do yourself a favor—but maybe wait until at least November!—and give it a listen. Carols like you’ve never heard them, described as cinematic.”

Holly recommends the podcast Room for Nuance. “I like to listen while I am walking because I find them fascinating and because they are so lengthy, I get a good solid walk in!”

Mike recommends the Bible Talk podcast, “which features brilliant hosts having lively conversation about Biblical Theology delivered in a thoroughly enjoyable and accessible manner.”

Nicole says September McCarthy’s Raising Daughters “was a refreshing help to me in my pursuits of fostering deep understanding and connectedness with my daughters. Much of the book is geared toward teenage years and fledglings, and it is shaping my long term view of not just raising young girls right now, but raising future best friends.”

Michele recommends “reading Dust to Dust (Jen Wilkin’s book on aging biblically) in community with a book club, preferably with steaming cups of tea and a solid commitment to progressive sanctification.”

Flashback

We Are All Cultists On the Inside. The inner cultist tries to convince us that life would be better, relationships would be easier, the church would be safer, if only everyone was the same—the same as me.