Links to Your World, Tuesday May 21

More than half of the world's population lives within this circle:

 

I had to laugh at the name of the app--"Yelling Mom"--but I bet it's effective.

 

"Erotica is written to titillate, the Canticles to celebrate....Solomon teaches us that the most ravishing beauty is a consequence of the most desperate love, that the beloved is so beautiful precisely because she is so loved." A good article on the erotic writing in the Song of Solomon.

 

Christians who tithe have healthier finances.

 

"Learning to pray is not mainly about how often we pray, or the techniques and elements that go into prayer. It is about how to need the right things, and how look in the right direction for what you need. What is the Lord’s Prayer asking for? What are the Psalms asking for? What about God comes into view in the Lord’s Prayer and the Psalms?" David Powlison

 

Every recurring joke on Arrested Development in chart form. By the way, if you interrupt my Memorial Day binge on the new Arrested Development episodes, you will have made a huge mistake.

 

A Gosnell case in Houston? Stay tuned.

 

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Winning Ways: Elevating Vision

Ding.

The elevator at Seton Hospital chimed as the door opened at the ground floor. Knowing I'd lose my cell phone signal on the ride up, I quickly wrapped up my call.

"Jami, I'm at Seton about to visit Lucille," I told my assistant. "I'll be back at the church in 45 minutes."

As I put the phone back in my pocket, the man who stepped into the elevator next to me said, "Church. You must be a pastor."

"Yep," I said to the man, "Hillcrest Baptist Church." Another ding, the door opened on the first floor to let off the other passengers, leaving the doctor and me alone for the ride up to the eighth floor.

"So, my brother says he's started to attend church," the man said, staring at the floor numbers over the door, "He's in Phoenix."

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it sounded like church wasn't part of his own routine.

And it sounded like an invitation.

"Oh?" I said, "Has that made you think about that step yourself?"

"Well, my brother seems to be pretty high on it."

"Good for him!" I said, grinning. "You should come check out Hillcrest. Our priority is to be a church where people can find and follow Jesus together."

I admit it sounded a little canned, but the elevator was passing the third floor, so I pushed on. "That means that whether you want to investigate faith or grow in your faith, that work is best done with others instead of by yourself. We want to be a place where spiritual investigation and spiritual growth can take place together. On our best days, it's wonderful to hear the conversations that take place as honest seekers and humble believers build relationships with each other."

He nodded, thoughtfully. I was hoping my image of Hillcrest was giving him the confidence to brave a visit to this unfamiliar country called "church."

"I expect a lot of churches in Austin have that same vision," I added, "but what I like about serving Hillcrest is we're deliberately multigenerational in that work. Some churches are good at targeting those who are older or those who are younger, but we just think there's some good in all the generations learning from each other. I like the Sundays when I can do a baby dedication and recognize a 50th wedding anniversary at the same time."

He laughed, "Not the same couple I hope!"

I laughed, too. I wanted to add a comment about Abraham and Sarah, but I wasn't sure he'd catch the reference to the biblical story.

"Do you have some time for coffee?" I asked.

"Not right now," he said, but added, "Do you have a card?"

I took out my wallet and pulled out a card with my contact information. I wrote down "Sundays @ 10." There are, of course, a lot of entry points to invite people into Hillcrest, but our one Sunday morning worship experience is still the Number One entry point.

"Thanks," he said. "Maybe you'll see me there."

"I bet your brother would like that," I said, smiling.

Ding.

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Links to Your World, Tuesday May 14

"What on earth does a tattoo historian do, I had wondered. The answer is much the same as an ordinary art historian, except the canvas is living (or dead) human skin." Fascinating article.

 

What a week of groceries looks like around the world.

 

I've had Jake Shimabukuro on my iPod for years. Glad he's getting critical recognition.

 

"I am not here to represent the Bible Belt's political interest to a post-Christian culture. I'm here to help equip churches to signal the coming kingdom of God." Russell Moore, new president of my convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, at OutofUr.

 

"The Civil War proved a turning point. 'Before the war, it was said the United States are,' the late historian Shelby Foote said. 'After the war, it was always the United States is, as we say today without being self-conscious at all. And that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an is.'" In an Atlantic piece that wonders about the significance of Obama's use of "these United States" in speeches--a reference he uses nearly as much as President Reagan did.

 

"This is Water." Here's the commencement speech for the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College by the late David Foster Wallace, creatively rendered:

 

James Taranto explains how pro-choice rhetoric infantilizes women.

 

 

 

 

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"Pick the person that has the right habits"

"Just imagine you could be given 10 percent of the future earnings of one person you know." Would you pick the smartest person? The fastest runner? No. "You're going to pick the person that has the right habits."

Good advice from Warren Buffett in this interview.

 

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LeaderLines: Beware The Lure of Busyness

If I’m not watching myself, I can let busyness pass for business.

Busyness gives you the satisfaction of action while robbing you of any real production. It’s finishing the news magazine article when you should really be writing your report. It’s organizing your to-do list when you should really be punching things off it. It’s even found in doing something that you hired office staff to do just so you can avoid what you were hired to do.

In The Phantom Tollbooth, Milo comes across the Terrible Trivium, a "demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit." Milo and his friends find themselves moving a huge pile of sand from one place to another, using a tweezer to grasp each grain, as they fall under the Terrible Trivium's spell:

If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you’ll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won’t have the time. For there’s always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing….

Are you in liege to the Terrible Trivium? The iDoneThis blog collected the advice of several time management consultants into 4 steps to freedom:

1. Do an "attention audit." Across a week or two, write down the amount of time you actually spend on various tasks. The vague sense that you're misspending your time is not enough to provoke change. Change is possible only when you see the gap between what you want to accomplish and what you're actually doing.

2. Change your language. Laura Vanderkam says:

Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: “I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.” “I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.” If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently.

3. Press pause. Brené Brown recommends letting go of “exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth” and thus discovering what matters:

[W]hen we make the transition from crazy-busy to rest, we have to find out what comforts us, what really refuels us, and do that. We deserve to not just put work away and be in service of someone else. What’s really meaningful for us? What do we want to be doing?

4. Do less and feel more joy. The opposite of the fear of missing out, according to Anil Dash, is the joy of missing out. Isn't that a liberating thought? Pay attention to what’s in front of you, and you’ll gain control and find joy.

Don't let the Terrible Trivium win today!

__________________________________________

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Winning Ways: Messed-Up Momma!

"I dread Mother's Day."

That comment from a woman surprised her pastor. He asked if she had lost her mother, since the day often brings grief to the surface for those who no longer have their mother around.

"No, no, my mother is still alive," she said. "I dread Mother's Day because the sermons always go on and on about some ideal I will never be able to live up to."

The pastor who wrote about that for a church leadership journal said the conversation was a wake-up call for him. His well-intentioned sermons that extolled the virtues of motherhood weren't being received as complimentary. Not by the frustrated moms who rarely had a day where they felt they were getting it right.

Well, we won't be looking at "Supermom" this Sunday! We're going to look at an Old Testament queen who was one messed-up momma. Her name was Athaliah, the mother to King Ahaziah. The Bible says of her: "His mother encouraged him to act wickedly" (2 Chronicles 22:3 NIV). Moms can look at her as an example of what not to do!

When your family asks what you want for Mother's Day, tell them your favorite present will be to have them sitting in church with you. See you and your family Sunday @ 10!

Every Generation Counts! The first Sunday of our May Music Series was well-received. We're taking the four Sundays of May to feature the music of four generations of composers: Bill Gaither (in his 70s), Twila Paris (in her 50s), Chris Tomlin (in his 40s) and Phil Wickham (in his 20s). This Sunday we'll be singing the music of Twila Paris. "He Is Exalted," "The Joy of The Lord," "How Beautiful"--you already know these songs and more. Since this is Mother's Day we'll even feature a mother's prayer that Paris composed for her son.

Do You Have a Spare Bedroom? On Thursday, May 16, the 145-student University Choir and Orchestra from the school of music at California Baptist University will be in concert at Hillcrest! For more information, go online to www.HillcrestAustin.org/CBU. We need you to provide housing on May 16 as well as breakfast and a ride to Hillcrest the following morning before you go to work. Contact my assistant, Jami, at 345-3771 or jami@hbcaustin.org.

 

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Links to Your World, Tuesday May 7

In studies, atheists who were told to simply read a statement daring God to do something unpleasant to them were found to be as emotionally provoked as believers reading the same dare. The researchers state various possible conclusion, and all are worth exploring. I do think, however, that the studies show that disbelief is a willful act of suppression, and that suppression isn't always effective. This is what we find in Romans 1.


For your good cry of the day: WaPo's "A Father-Daughter Dance--In Jail."


A job-hunter's prayer.


Good intro to hip-hop theologians in CT.


"While evangelicals receive plenty of attention and frequently positive coverage from local media, on the national level the coverage is disproportionately unfavorable. In one study, The New York Times was found to be twice as negative in its coverage of evangelicals as local newspapers in Atlanta and Dallas. This is, of course, not entirely surprising. Elite journalism is closely allied with elite academia, as fresh ranks of journalists spring every year from academic programs and many top journalists retain close affiliations with universities. On such campuses, according to a 2012 study from the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, faculty harbor far more negative attitudes toward evangelicals than they do toward any other religious group. Worse, evangelicals are overwhelmingly identified with political conservatism, and political conservatism is rarely loved in journalism's most exclusive precincts." Michael Cromartie's "Faith Angle Forums" is trying do something about that.


Why the PC(USA) Rejected “In Christ Alone” for Their Hymnals: "Its second stanza contained the lines, 'Till on that cross as Jesus died / the love of God was magnified.' In the process of clearing copyrights for the hymnal we discovered that this version of the text would not be approved by the authors, as it was considered too great a departure from their original words: 'as Jesus died / the wrath of God was satisfied.' We were faced, then, with a choice: to include the hymn with the authors’ original language or to remove it from our list." If you can't see the difference between these two versions, call me and let's talk.


Live Action has released 3 undercover videos to show that "Gosnell is not alone. Videos document the blatantly inhuman and barbaric acts of abortionists leaving crying babies to die, or even killing the newborns themselves." (report)


"Today 12% of websites are pornographic, and 40 million Americans are regular visitors—including 70% of 18- to 34-year-olds, who look at porn at least once a month, according to a recent survey by Cosmopolitan magazine (which, let's face it, is the authority here). Fully 94% of therapists in another survey reported seeing an increase in people addicted to porn. It has become a whole generation's sex education and could be the same for the next—they are fumbling around online, not in the back seat. One estimate now puts the average age of first viewing at 11." (WSJ)

 

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