The Sunday Refill – 7 Links for Your Weekend (12/11/17)

Seven up…

1) The Pattern Among Fallen Pastors – Four practical reflections from a study that looked at the lives of 246 people in full-time ministry who experienced moral failure within a two-year period.

2) How to Transform Ministry Disappointment into Hope – You don’t have to be in church life for long before tasting the gut-wrenching feeling of disappointment. An encouraging read from Scott Sauls.

3) My cousin and the bitter cost of drug addiction – A really moving and personal piece that challenges the tendency to respond to addictions by offering cash or colluding with a victim mentality. Really important for anyone working with those struggling with addiction.

4) Children sacrificed to appease trans lobby – Janice Turner has already taken a lot of abuse online for writing this short column in The Times. Well worth reading for what has ironically now become a ‘minority report’.

5) Christmas Outreach in a John-Lewis Age – Tim Thornborough reflects on the trend with recent John Lewis Christmas ads to make us ‘feel and reveal’, and suggests how it might impact how we share the gospel this Christmas.

6) Here’s how porn is changing your brain – A devastating piece in The Spectator, calling out the impact of our porn epidemic. I’m struck by a) how much porn is still taboo amongst Christians, and yet b) has become a ‘normal’ and acceptable behaviour pattern in the culture at large. This article says both trends are impacting us more than we know.

7) A unified theory of Taylor Swift’s reputation – For something a bit different (and given that TayTay’s new album, Reputation, released on Friday), this is a fun and thoughtful piece on how she’s struggling to maintain a sense of intimacy with fans and control how we think of her.

On the Blog this Week:

Why Our Attempts at Solving Biblical Illiteracy Must Move Beyond Telling More Bible Stories