“Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders”:

Evangelical Protestant leaders who live in the Global South (sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and most of Asia) generally are optimistic about the prospects for evangelicalism in their countries. But those who live in the Global North (Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) tend to be more pessimistic.

The so-called “optimism gap” is the top-line finding of this survey, but the whole report is worth a look.

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“New York’s Dangerous Churches—in Schools.”

However, this ongoing conflict is evidence that many New Yorkers are spooked by the thought of people — especially evangelicals — worshipping in spaces created for secular education. The bottom line: What if believers dared to pray for the students and teachers who occupy those spaces on school days?
In a New York Times essay, activist Katherine Stewart explained why she fiercely opposes having a church meet behind the red door of her local school on the Upper East Side. She also attacked the Village Church by name.

“I could go on about why my daughter’s photo should not be made available for acts of worship, or why my P.T.A. donations should not be used to supply furniture for a religious group that thinks I am bound for hell,” concluded the author of the upcoming book, “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.”

“Maybe it’s just that I imagine that that big red door is about education for all, not salvation for a few. Sometimes a building is more than a building.”

It’s funny that a supposed secularist has such a superstitious view of buildings. On a materialist conception of things, how can a building be more than a building? But, whatever…

Expect more of this kind of anti-religious bigotry in the future. It will masquerade itself as a First Amendment argument against religious rental of public space.

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“A Variety of Religious Composition” argues that churches should employ a variety of worship music genres, not just CCM “pop.”

Contemporary Christian worship songs are often beautiful, exciting, and inspirational. But in my opinion, to ignore all other kinds of music does not reflect contemporary life. Such a practice will not only prevent young churchgoers from recognizing and remembering hymns and other sacred music from the past 500 years, it may even produce in them an underdeveloped artistic sense (“Jesus loves little Johnny who plays a guitar, but forget little Billy who plays the trumpet”). This may also make it difficult for young people to enter and function in a culture that still values intellectual achievement and the art of music in all its guises.

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 “People engage electronic media an average of 8 hours a day. Do they really need more at church?” Good question. “Taming the Image” provides an answer:

In a discarnate age, the only option Christians have for presenting a credible, authoritative, and transformative gospel is to embody Christ. We need to be wary of trying to transmit a message of embodiment through a medium of disembodiment. Stephen Downey writes, “A video-streamed sermon on the Incarnation would be ironic at best and offensive at worst.” And when most people are consuming electronic media ad nauseum, then the primary medium for a countercultural church must be an unplugged one.

Adopting and baptizing the new visual technologies is a losing strategy as well. The church will never do it as well as the culture. If James Cameron can spend $500 million, invent a new camera and new 3D techniques in order to produce the most visually stunning film ever recorded, and you can’t remember a single character’s name, do you really think your church budget is going to somehow do a better job of telling the Jesus story with PowerPoint, YouTube clips, or an internally-generated video? Even if you have the budget and artistic talent within your church to make quality films, because it is an image-based medium, it cannot penetrate the surface the way word-based communication can.

The new media techniques being employed in our churches may distract us from being bored in church for a little while, but beyond that they have no staying power because they have little authority. And they have little authority because they reflect the seen reality rather than the spoken truth. Take a great sermon from a hundred or a thousand years ago. When we read it, the message is still authoritative, and often still applicable. But watch a video of your favorite preacher from five or ten years ago and I guarantee it will be somewhat embarrassing. The visuals will take away from the message. Wow, just look at those clothes! The sincerity and theology is obliterated by the dated look of the fashion of the time. The authority of the word is eroded by the overwhelming power of the visual.

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“I’m Quitting Facebook to Join Faithbook Because My WWJD Bracelet Told Me To.” LOL!

In the New Testament, we’re given a picture of the Kingdom people of God who organize themselves around an alternative king, namely Jesus.  The greatest alternative is not a second-rate imitation of things from the popular culture, but rather a community (many communities in local contexts) who together live in a radically different way – the way of Jesus.

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“Church Congregations Can Be Blind to Mental Illness, Study Suggests”:

“Families with mental illness stand to benefit from their involvement within a congregation, but our findings suggest that faith communities fail to adequately engage these families because they lack awareness of the issues and understanding of the important ways that they can help,” said study co-author Dr. Diana Garland, dean of Baylor’s School of Social Work. “Mental illness is not only prevalent in church communities, but is accompanied by significant distress that often goes unnoticed. Partnerships between mental health providers and congregations may help to raise awareness in the church community and simultaneously offer assistance to struggling families.”

Didn’t Jesus say, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4)? Didn’t Paul say, “mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15)? Didn’t John say, “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4)? It seems like the Church should do a better job in this regard.

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“Liberalism and the decline of a society’s character.” Dennis Prager concludes: “If you want to feel good, liberalism is awesome. If you want to do good, it is largely awful.”

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A Malaysian Muslim group has formed an “Obedient Wives Club.” I tried to get my wife to be obedient to me, but she told me to shut up and take out the trash. And I did.

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“Miss USA Contestants: America in Glamourcosm?”

A rabid fan of both Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom and The Miss USA Pageant (some may know him as Jim Harper) just sent me a link to this YouTube video. In the vid, all the contestants in the just-completed, aforementioned pageant discuss whether the theory of evolution should be taught in schools.

I didn’t tally their responses, but just listening to the contenders it seems their consensus answer represents America in microcosm: Most seem to have serious doubts about evolution, but support teaching it along with other viewpoints. It reflects both the overall split within the American public—40 to 50 percent of Americans are creationists, and roughly the same segment evolutionists—as well as the consensus view on teaching human origins: About 60 percent of Americans support teaching both evolution and creationism in public schools.

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In “The decline of country music,” Mark Judge argues, “It’s time to abolish country music. Just ban it outright. It has become a toxin in American culture, retarding the cerebellum of the body politic.” Why? Because  contemporary country music is oh so self-conscious and anti-elitist: “Love of country music says to the world that you are authentic, that you don’t like learned people, and that your attitude imbues you with a special kind of virtue.” Ironically, Judge—who waxes nostalgic for Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Loretta Lynn—seems to have forgotten the lyrics to Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee”:

I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all.

Talk about self-conscious and anti-elitist!