LayGuy

Thanks to Adrian Warnock’s blog, today I got the chance to taste the awesome resource known as “The City” – the Mars Hill Church online community building tool.

Turns out the good people at Mars Hill have made available a fully functional version of the The City at The Gospel Coalition.

Adrian Warnock describes the Gospel Coalition as;

“..a growing fellowship of Christian churches, organizations and individuals who are committed to a certain kind of ministry—that which is biblically-faithful and gospel-centered.”

Sounds good to me.  These guys have a tonne of material centred on exulting a biblical view on the Gospel free from some of the modern assaults on its interpretation and application.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, click here for more.

The City was developed by Mars Hill and actually purchased by Zondervan and will be made available for churches in the near future.  Here’s your chance to try it out and also get plugged into one of the best ministries around. Click on one of the options below to join.  No matter where you join, you will have access to all the tools.

For more Gospel Coalition resources, check out any of the following links:

Twitter |  iTunes |  Facebook |  YouTube

Sculptor Neil Mitchell, needs publicity for his pathetic “artistic career.”  You see, this guy and his art suck.  Who wants to be a sculptor anyway?  I mean, it’s not like they contribute to society in any meaningful way.

So in an effort to feel important and for people to look his way, he comes up with a “brilliant idea” – why not exhibit a naked woman on a cross just days before Easter?

Mitchell defends his supposed $40,00 piece of crap “art” by saying..

“It is the duty of an artist to question society’s beliefs in religion and to test people about those beliefs, which this sculpture will do,” he said.”

That’s what I hate about artists – too lazy to go to work like the rest of us, these people place a huge duty on themselves to question anything.  And Christianity is always fair game for these idiots cause they know they strike a raw nerve and get heaps of response and reaction because they slander things which are sacred to millions upon millions of people.

Mitchell, you’re an idiot.  Get a life, get a real job.  Get some talent cause seriously even your “art” sucks.  But most of all, don’t think that you pathetic antics are unknown.

You’re not the first to slander that which is sacred and you wont be the last.  This is your pathetic way to get attention – your five minutes of fame in this fleeting life.  And you chose to mock Jesus to do so.  I seriously pity you.

In closing, if I could be presumptuous enough to quote God’s response to this…

“It’s my duty as your Creator to judge how you respond to what I did for you through my Son.  His crucifixion and your response to it will determine your eternal reality.”

Thanks for that God.  Now if I may, as the LayGuy, continue..

Neil Mitchell.  You’re an idiot.

For more on this, go here.  And check out the glib response from the St Michael’s Uniting Church chief Minister Dr Francis McNab:

“[I do not].. find the work offensive, “but I wouldn’t go to see it.”

C’mon McNab – don’t be so in a hurry to please man.  Seriously.

I’m currently reading my first Ted Dekker novel.  After years of seeing his stuff at the Christian bookstore and wondering how good “Christian fiction” is,  I decided to get over my Tim Lahaye “Left Behind” mentality and dig into this book – albeit after borrowing it from a local library.

What I meant by the Left Behind comment is that Christians sometimes come across as real losers trying to follow a popular trend. When Lahaye came out with the Left Behind series, you were almost outcast if you didn’t read the books and actually like them.

I read a few but soon got over the “let’s stretch out this shocking theology over X amount of books so we can rake in the money” approach – similar to how shows like “Prison Break” and “Lost.”

And to think that end time understanding of millions of people is influenced by such trash makes me wonder who the bigger culprit is:  Dan Brown or Tim Lahaye?  Scary thought.

So that was my mindset as I picked up Adam at my local library.  Surprised to see a Christian author in the library, I read the blurb and decided to have another crack at Christian fiction.  I’m about a quarter through it and love it!

Dekker is an author I resonate with.  He shy’s away from typical cliché one would expect from a Christian fiction writer and delivers in a way where you can admire the research an author has undertaken in order to generate his work.  It’s real, it’s deep, it flows and it captures you.

Ultimately, Adam is a story about demon possession played out in a scientific “CSI” type environment.   To pull this off, Dekker had to do his research and any “hokey pokey christian cliche” would sink this story.  I’m glad to report that so far, this story aint sinking and is actually getting more intriguing all the time.

Have a listen to Dekker himself describe some of the thinking behind the book and then go do yourself a favour and grab a copy from somewhere.

Want a free audio book with no strings attached?  While there might be a few ways to get your hands on some second rate stuff out there, www.christianaudio.com is a great place to check out if you’re into Christian audio books.

One of the cool features of the site is its “First Chapters” podcast where they release the first chapter of a certain book as a podcast.  You get to hear the first chapter and, if you like it, you can go ahead and purchase the rest of book.

But by far the coolest thing about www.christianaudio.com is the free monthly download.  And instead of being stingy by offering titles no-one has even heard of, www.christianaudio.com make available awesome titles.

This month is no exception.  The free audio book is Leonard Sweet’s “So Beautiful” – released on www.christianaudio.com even before the printed version is released!  What a deal!

Leonard Sweet is currently the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School (Madison, NJ), and Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox  University (Portland, OR). He the author of more than one hundred articles, 600 published sermons and thirty books, most recently The Gospel According to Starbucks (2007).

The blurb on “So Beautiful” goes along the lines of..

What is commonly known as DNA today was called “…so pretty!” when it was discovered years ago, and over the course of his ministry, author Leonard Sweet has discovered that this divine design also informs God’s blueprint for the church. In this seminal work, he shares the woven strands that form the church: missional, relational, and incarnational. Sweet declares that this secret is So Beautiful!

Using the poignant life of John Newton as a touchstone, Sweet calls for the re-union of these three essential, complementary strands of the Christian life. Far from a novel idea, Sweet shows how this structure is God’s original intent and shares the simply beautiful design for His church.

And to wet your appetite even more, check out the following short promo..

To download this free audio book, head on over to www.christianaudio.com, create a free account and download to your heart’s content.  Hope you enjoy.