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John Michael Talbot is one of my favourite American Christian singers. He is also a good motivational speaker.

In the Spring of 2012 while filming his DVD Collection “Nothing Is Impossible” in Houston, Texas, John Michael Talbot delivered a prophetic message of renewal for the Church TODAY. Please watch and share!

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Here is one of his songs: Come, Worship the Lord.

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Rachel Pieh Jones has written for The New York Times, FamilyFun, Literary Mama, Brain, Child, Running Times, Relevant, and EthnoTraveler. She is a regular contributor to SheLoves and A Life Overseas, and she blogs at Djiboutijones.com about being an expatriate, development work, faith, family, running, and writing.

Christianity Today has just published on it’s This Is Our City rubric a very good text written by Rachel, who is looking at some issues related to social justice as discussed and engaged with in the American culture. What makes it special, besides the obvious talent of the writer, is the fact that she looks at it as an American who lives abroad for over a decade.

I have selected here a few quotes, for stimulating your interest in this most intriguing and soul searching article.

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I’m afraid of some American Christians.

I am an American, but I haven’t lived in the United States in a while. I live in Djibouti, a country in the Horn of Africa, and when you pick me up at the Minneapolis airport, I might invite you to coffee and suggest the wrong place—you know, one that doesn’t serve fair-trade coffee. I will arrive wearing the wrong jeans—ones sold by companies that don’t offer fair wages. And I won’t use the right vocabulary—the language used by Western bloggers to talk about social justice.

I’ve spent more than a decade living among the wealthy and the poor and the uneducated and the doctoral students and Christians and Muslims. I’m trying to figure out how to love radically like Jesus and how to be radically in love with Jesus in a place with 60 percent unemployment, where the oldest university recently turned 13, and where 99.99 percent of nationals don’t look like me, talk like me, think like me, or worship like me.

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If my generation cares so deeply about global issues of justice and poverty that they are willing to change eating, clothing, and living habits, where are they? A significant challenge for nonprofits and ministries remains recruiting people who will commit to serve long-term outside the United States.

I know there are a plethora of good reasons that concerned American Christians can’t just uproot and leave the States, from family to health to finances. I know I simplify. But I have a theory about what is partly contributing to the dearth of young Americans willing to spend their lives on behalf of others.

They think they already are.

They think that with their pocketbooks and food choices alone, by sewing their own clothes and purchasing fair-trade coffee, by boycotting Wal-Mart and preaching that as gospel, they have already done their part to address global injustices.

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Buying fair-trade coffee, boycotting Gap jeans, and eating only organic vegetarian foods can be important and valuable decisions. They cost time, money, comfort, and an established worldview. But they cannot be the end of our response to the deeply systemic and complex issues that allow human suffering to persist the world over. They don’t require risk.

But these things do: Moving your family across the nation, to the inner city, or to the other side of the globe. Letting juvenile delinquents play basketball in your church gym. Inviting pot-smokers and pregnant teenagers to Thanksgiving dinner. Letting a homeless man get in your car.

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While remaining passionate and continuing to gently educate the ignorant (like me!) about how our purchases affect the world, we also need to ask whether current trends are becoming a convenient excuse not to delve into the complexities of social justice. We need to ask whether our consumer choices distort the words of Jesus, and whether they help us enter relationships or separate us from others.

As Matthew Lee Anderson notes in his recent CT cover story, Christians begin to fulfill the command to love our neighbor as ourselves “not when we do something radical, extreme, over the top, not when we’re really spiritual or really committed or really faithful, but when in the daily ebb and flow of life, in our corporate jobs, in our middle-class neighborhoods, on our trips to Yellowstone and Disney World . . . we stop to help those whom we meet in everyday life, reaching out in quiet, practical, and loving ways.”

While it is practical and loving to use our purchasing power to make wise choices, let us also consider how to be actively involved with the people in our communities. By laying down more than our fashion and our tastes, laying down more than our judgment of those who eat and dress differently.

By laying down our lives.

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Read HERE the entire article.

 

 

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his short film about Pentecost features the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and others talking about “the big bang of the Church” and its meaning today.

The film, made by Lambeth Palace, features Archbishop Justin; Joel Edwards, International Director of Micah Challenge; the Ven. Jan McFarlane, Archdeacon of Norwich; and Holy Trinity Brompton’s Hayley Bisofsky.

Thanks to Southwark and Coventry Dioceses for pictures of Archbishop Justin’s prayer journey in March 2013.

Special thanks to Nick Clarke for assistance with editing.

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Is God’s presence limited to Scripture?

This is a very important discussion for evangelicals: to what extent do we have direct access to God, or we need some mediation.

It is an age old question, which is framed now in terms of the legitimacy, for evangelicals, of a mystical view of Christian life.

Some (like Tim Challies, discussed here my Rachel Held Evans), unaware of their Enlightenment paradigm, have concluded that a mystical vision is contrary to the basic tenets of evangelicalism, if not even to Christianity itself.

We have had such opinions formulated by Romanian evangelicals of extreme fundamentalist extraction (like, for instance, Dan Paul), but fortunately, very few are taking them seriously, not only because of the virtual absence of arguments, b ut also because of the hateful attitude with which they approach the whole matter.

Anyway, I could not disagree more with them, as the readers of this blog are well aware.

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The recent English online edition of Der Spiegel has published an interesting elaborate article on a very relevant theme: Big Data. Here are a few excerpts.

Forget Big Brother. Companies and countries are discovering that algorithms programmed to scour vast quantities of data can be much more powerful. They can predict your next purchase, forecast car thefts and maybe even help cure cancer. But there is a down side.

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The expression “Big Brother” has become dated. Experts would seem to have reached consensus on the term “Big Data” to describe the new favorite topic of discussion in boardrooms, at conventions like Berlin’s re:publica last week, and in a number of new books. Big Data promises both total control and the logical management of our future in all aspects of life. Authors like Oxford Professor Victor Mayer-Schönberger are calling it a “revolution.” According to Mayer-Schönberger, Big Data, which is also the title of his current book on the subject, will change our working environment and even the way we think.

Reblogged from The Institute of Middle East Studies:

A number of years ago, upon learning of my intention to pursue the academic study of Islam, a dearly beloved relative of mine felt compelled to ask:

“Is Allah God?”

This question took me by surprise, for I felt as though I was being put to the test, as if my evangelical credentials were being put on trail.

However, I have come to understand that this question comes from a place of legitimate concern about moral relativism, compromise, and a desire to be faithful. 

Read more… 1,296 more words

An interesting article of a disputed topic from the blog of the Institute for Middle East Studies in Beirut.

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SBC leader compared to Martin Luther.

This is an obviously overblown comparison.

I have friends who respect very much Paige Patterson. I must confess that I was no so impressed in my few contacts with him in Oradea. He may be a well intended man, but, as we know, the way to hell is paved with good intentions.

The fundamentalist take over of the SBC was not a reformation, but a political coup d’etat – a mundane power struggle, not a heavenly battle won with the weapons of the spirit.

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Inregistrarea video a conferintei tinute la Cluj, ieri, 16 mai 2013 poate fi vizionata pe situl asociatiei Edictum Dei, organizatoarea evenimentului.

 

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Reblogged from Suceava Evanghelica:

Iata si inregistrarea oficiala de la Pradea.

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Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

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My friend Rev. Rusudan Gotsiridze of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, is my favourite bishop. It is worth listening here to her TED presentation.

Bishop Rusudan Gotsiridze, the first female Baptist Bishop in Georgia, discusses the ordination of women and the role of gender in religion. She is a pastor and longtime researcher of women’s ordination practices in different Christian traditions.

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Thanks to Artur Sebastian Rosman for the link.

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Mesajul rostit la Timisoara îl găsiţi aici.

Reblogged from Suceava Evanghelica:

Fratele Yun la Oradea

Fratele Yun la Arad

Read more… 1 more video

Din nou inregistrari cu Fratele Yun.

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Belle voix, belle fille.

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A partnership between Google, NASA and TIME reveal how the Earth has radically changed over the decades.

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Myths about Education.

Very interesting. I wonder if this true only for the US.

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World Vision’s Biblical Undestanding of How we Relate to Creation

Jared Hyneman, Christopher Shore – Natural Environment and Climate Issues

Executive Summary

 

The purpose of this document is to concisely clarify and explain World Vision’s understanding of the

Bible’s foundational teaching on God’s creation, especially as it affects World Vision’s mission. One of our guiding documents, titled our Core Values, declares:

We are stewards of God’s creation. We care for the earth and act in ways that will restore and protect the environment. We ensure that our development activities are ecologically sound.

As a Christian organisation, World Vision has more than practical, historic or development theory reasons for acting. We act because we are informed by and rely on the biblical narrative, church history, and our creeds and doctrines. As World Vision works to protect and serve the most vulnerable, we must consider creation and environmental issues. Only by doing so can all God’s children, especially ‘the least of these’, experience life in all its fullness.

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A warning for using wisely modern social media.

Most of us are on the Internet on a daily basis and whether we like it or not, the Internet is affecting us. It changes how we think, how we work, and it even changes our brains.

We interviewed Nicholas Carr, the author of, “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” about how the Internet is influencing us, our creativity, our thought processes, our ideas, and how we think.

CHECK OUT THE BOOK
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr

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I believe that truth is more likely to be found at the bottom and at the efges of things, than at the top or the center.
The top and the center always have too much to prove and too much to protect.
(Richard Rohr – Adam’s Return. The Five Promises of Male Initiation)

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Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T. S. Eliot

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An interview of Dr. Michael Overman, from Worldview Matters, with Bonnie Wurzbacher, Vice President of Global Accounts for The Coca-Cola Company,

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“Burn it all down” isn’t Christian: A Response to Mark Driscoll.

Indeed, it is not.

Watch soon for a World Vision position paper on care for creation that I will publish here.

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Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Angela Lee Duckworth studies intangible concepts such as self-control and grit to determine how they might predict both academic and professional success.

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In her late 20s, Angela Lee Duckworth left a demanding job as a management consultant at McKinsey to teach math in public schools in San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York.

After five years of teaching seventh graders, she went back to grad school to complete her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is now an assistant professor in the psychology department. Her research subjects include students, West Point cadets, and corporate salespeople, all of whom she studies to determine how “grit” is a better indicator of success than factors such as IQ or family income.

“Angela Lee Duckworth’s research validated and furthered my beliefs in the keys to success for individuals, teams and a business. While intelligence is required, Angela demonstrated that the determining factors for success were perseverance, hard work and a drive to improve.”

Shabbir Dahod, Forbes

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UPDATE: This post has attracted a lot of hate reactions. A text signed Walid Shoebat  was published on multiple Zionist sites pretending to care about persecuted Christians. They accuse Palestinian Christians involved in the Christ at the Checkpoint and Hope for the Holy Land initiatives  of being socialists (these ignorant people, who are using typical neo-conservative brain-washing methods have no idea that socialism was created in the UK by Christians, in support of oppressed workers). They continue their perverse smearing campaign by accusing people involved in these initiatives as being supporters of Hamas.

You may find out HERE more about the Mosad scam called Walid Shoebat.

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Come and hear Lynne Hybels of Willow Creek, Mae Cannon of World Vision, and Sami Awad of Holy Land Trust (Bethlehem, West Bank) share about how the hope of Jesus is transforming the Holy Land!!

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Details:

Orange County and LA

World Vision Chapel and Pastors Luncheon
Wednesday, May 1st from 11:00am-1:30pm

World Vision International Office
800 W Chestnut Ave, Monrovia 91016

(626) 303-8811

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What if Andy Warhol had it wrong, and instead of being famous for 15 minutes, we’re only anonymous for that long? In this short talk, Juan Enriquez looks at the surprisingly permanent effects of digital sharing on our personal privacy. He shares insight from the ancient Greeks to help us deal with our new “digital tattoos.”

Juan Enriquez thinks and writes about profound changes that genomics will bring in business, technology, and society.

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Women in Ministry: One Week Intensive.

Some help from Scot McKnight for those who are struggling with the biblical legitimacy of idea of ‘women in ministry’.

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NOTE: Tomorrow, 11 May, is a special day of prayer for Syria.

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As the civil war intensifies in Syria, Christians are increasingly more vulnerable to the violence. While all Syrians are suffering, Christians in particular are targeted. In the fight for Islam, Jihadi’s from abroad have come to Syria to ‘fight for Islam.’ In some areas of Homs and Aleppo, neighborhoods have been taken over by extremists and are now ruled by Islamic Sharia law.

Contacts in Syria have seen people walking around without hands, presumably punished for stealing. Christians are considered infidels in the eyes of these extremists. Christian refugees told us that they often hear statements that they are not welcome in Syria any longer. A pastor from Tartus shares, “We are second class citizens or we have to convert to Islam.”