One of the big questions today is the validity of online worship service.  I think that online campuses can be good and helpful but I also strongly believe that it is important to have actual fellowship with other believers, physically worshipping together and partaking of the Lord’s Supper.  CNN has an interesting article on online worship services that you can read here.

I always look forward to the free audiobook download of the month at www.christianaudio.com.  Sometimes I am happy about the selection and other times I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised.  I am very excited about the November selection.  For this month only, they are offering John Piper’s Desiring God.  This is a book I have wanted to read but I have not been sure how to fit into my reading schedule with all my dissertation research.  I am looking forward to listening to this audiobook.  You can download this book for November only here.

Scripture reveals that the great business of life is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. In this paradigm-shattering classic, newly revised and expanded, John Piper reveals that the debate between duty and delight doesn’t truly exist: Delight is our duty.

A number of years ago, I was at the annual assembly of the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec.  The speaker was someone I was not familiar with named Carson Pue.  I was captivated with Carson’s vision of what Christian leadership could look like.  It was not just about the right skills but about the right priorities and the right relationship with God.  Carson is the president of the Arrow Leadership Program and so I decided to look into this program out of curiosity.  Arrow Leadership focuses on “young” leaders, by which they define as under forty.  I was thirty-eight at the time.  It was obvious that this was something that I could not pray about for the next ten or fifteen years.  I applied and was accepted into the program.  The Arrow program takes place through four week long seminars spread over two years.  It also has a heavy mentoring component.  It was a life changing experience, not just for my role as a pastor but my role as a husband, father, and even a child of God.  I highly recommend the Arrow Leadership Program for all “young” pastors.  They also have an executive stream for those that are in the business world.  You can check out their web-site here.

Funny and true!

One of the online resources that I have come to appreciate is LibraryThing.  LibraryThing is an online way to catalog your books.  It shows you how many other members have the same book and has links to reviews.  It is useful for searching your own library (if you have a lot of books) but also provides a record for insurance purposes in case anything unfortunate might happen.  You are able to check out other members libraries and connect with people who have similar interests.  The cost for life-time membership is very cheap and well worth the benefits.  It is time consuming to catalog at first but once it is done it becomes habit to automatically add new books.  You can check me out on LibraryThing at this link.

A few months ago, I read an interesting book called unChristian written by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. It dealt with the perceptions that people outside the church felt toward the church and Christianity. It was a helpful book that both called for greater understanding of those outside the church and some tough soul-searching within the church in order to confront our problems. The authors concluded their book with a call for further conversation on these issues.

Emerging church pastor Russell Rathbun has taken up that challenge with his new book, appropriately titled nuChristian. Rathbun deals with all of the same issues as the earlier book, but from the perspective of his own experience both growing up in a traditional Baptist church, as well as his experience in the emerging church. Sometimes the emerging church is accused of being light on Scripture and yet this book’s strength is the fact that it is solidly biblical. Rathbun reflects deeply on the Bible and the truth that is given us through revelation. NuChristian is much shorter than unChristian and yet it is still very helpful. The short length of the book makes it very readable but also creates some problems. The author makes a quick comment that he does not disagree with homosexuality and yet gives no explanation of how he got there. For this reviewer, that was a great distraction. One of the things that I really did appreciate was the last chapter. As a pastor of a traditional Baptist church, I sometimes struggled with the author’s ideas (although I always valued and respected them). The last chapter is a conversation between the author and his father who is a Baptist pastor. His father expressed some of the issues that some traditional Christians might wrestle with as they read this book. I greatly respected the author for giving voice to those concerns rather than dismissing them. Rathbun asks all the right questions and whether you agree or disagree with them, the issues dealt with are vital to the church’s effectiveness and relevance in today’s society. I highly recommend this book.

If you are interested in theological education but life has taken over and you do not have time for traditional classes, you might find Tyndale College and Seminary’s Degree Completion Program interesting.  It is a way for you to complete a Bachelor of Religious Education in a modular format.  I will be teaching a course on 1 Corinthians in the summer of 2010 for the DCP.

The free audiobook download for October 2009 from www.christianaudio.com is Just Courage by Gary A. Haugen.  For October only, you can download this audiobook here.  It looks interesting and I am looking forward to listening to it.  Here is the description that they give:

International Justice Mission president Haugen has found that “the pathway out of a nearly comatose state of boredom, ineffectiveness and triviality lies in the struggle for justice.” This book describes how to break out of a ho-hum Christian life and see God’s powerful and mysterious ways at work.

I finally got around to reading Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  I had listened to the CD of his First Things First (based on the third habit) and had enjoyed it.  To be honest, I was a little hesitant to read this book.  At first glance, it looked a little like it might be all hype, just another collection of positive thinking ideas aimed at selling more products.  However, that fear was far from founded. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is actually a very good book that is based on solid principles.  The basic foundation of the book is the move from a personality ethic to a character ethic.  Covey, had done extensive research in success literature over the last couple of centuries and found that there had been a movement from the character ethic to the personality ethic.  We have all seen how that has worked.  Covey calls us to return to the character ethic.  The working out of that is the seven habits.  I will not go into detail into each habit (perhaps that will be the subject of future blog posts), but I will list them.

1. Be Proactive: Principles of Personal Vision

2. Begin with the End in Mind: Principles of Personal Leadership

3. Put First Things First: Principles of Personal Management

4. Think Win/Win: Principles of Interpersonal Leadership

5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood: Principles of Empathetic Communication

6: Synergize: Principles of Creative Cooperation

7. Sharpen the Saw: Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal

Stephen Covey is a Mormon but this book is very compatible with a Christian worldview.  I highly recommend it for all leaders as it is very helpful both for church ministry and family relationships.

It is always a challenge to come up with a good small group study.  Sometimes we do traditional Bible studies and sometimes we study a book by some Christian author.  This year we decided to try something different.  We ended up going with the vide series by Rob Bell called Nooma.  These are short videos that look at biblical truths in a creative way.  They are challenging and yet understandable for people with little or no biblical background.  They are good for people from whatever stage of faith journey.  The first study went really well and we had some of our best conversation and personal discussion.  If you want to learn more about Nooma you can go to their web-site here.