Category: Random

Fairy Tales

By confining your child to blameless stories of child life in which nothing at all alarming ever happened, you would fail to banish the terrors, and would succeed in banishing all that can ennoble them or make them endurable. For in the fairy tales, side by side with the terrible figures, we find the immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones; and the terrible figures are not merely terrible, but sublime. 

It would be nice if no little boy in bed, hearing or thinking he hears, a sound, were ever at all frightened. But if he is going to be frightened, I think it better that he should think of giants and dragons than merely of burglars. And I think St. George, or any bright champion in armour, is a better comfort than the idea of police.

—CS Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing for Children

Design

The church is designed. It is not carelessly thrown together. It is not haphazardly planned. The ministry does more than “just happen.” It is thought-out. It is structured. It is designed with care.

—Thom S. Rainer, SIMPLE CHURCH

Christianity Today: Iran’s Persecution Backfires

A very interesting development in the Middle East. Trevor Persaud of Christianity Today reports:

Analysts say [that] Islam is losing credibility after 30 years of theocracy. Resentment against the reigning regime is spreading and deepening—especially since the disputed 2009 national elections.

“Before the [1979] revolution, the clerics were promising that once Iran becomes an Islamic state, it would be utopia, it would be brotherhood, and everything would be fine,” Dibaj said. But since then, Iranians “have seen nothing but war and fighting and international isolation and hatred, [and] they are thirsting for change.”

“The Iranian public basically doesn’t trust the government anymore,” Ghaffari said, “and they don’t trust the Muslim clergy anymore, because they have seen a lot of double standards and hypocrisy.”

Converts in smaller communities still risk persecution from their own families, but tolerance is growing in urban areas and among the younger generation. “In fact,” said Dibaj, “in places like Tehran and more educated communities, if you say, ‘I have become a Christian,’ they will respect you because of your courage and your independent thinking.”

If anything, government persecution has made Christianity much more attractive, said Yegh-nazar. “When government officials are on television telling people not to read the Scriptures, that generates more interest in the Scriptures.”

You can read the whole report here: Public Enemy: Iran’s Persecution Backfires (Christianity Today, June 1, 2011).

Thom Rainer on “Where Have All the Churches Gone?”

Thom Rainer recently posted Where Have All the Churches Gone? at churchleaders.com

Interesting insights from the post and the comments section. Here are the bullet points:

1. The primary metric for measuring church size in 1969 was Sunday school attendance. Today, the metric is worship attendance.

I wonder what caused the shift?

I have yet to read a book that tackles the place of Sunday school prior to the cell church movement and why it was literally phased out from most churches in the late 90s. I started attending church in mid-90s. We still had Sunday school back then but little by little, we just sort of chucked it out from our weekly activities. Now when I hear the word Sunday school, ancient images of flip charts and poorly attended meetings come to mind.

Continue reading Thom Rainer on “Where Have All the Churches Gone?”

Be (Very) Patient

Sanctification is a process—an extremely slow process—for us all. Comprehending truth, applying truth, mortifying indwelling sin, cultivating the fruit of the Spirit—it’s a process that usually takes place by small increments over a lifetime. Normally, people don’t grow dramatically as the result of a single sermon or sermon series. And neither do you.

—C. J. Mahaney