The Sunday Refill – 7 Links for Your Weekend (13/11/16)
Well, it’s been a few weeks, but the Refill is back – albeit with no fanfare – just an inevitable bit of Trump. Boom boom. And just to make up for our absence these past couple of weeks, we’ve crammed in ten links for the price of seven:
1) Ok, so there’s a billion US election articles and posts doing the rounds. But here are three that particularly stood out: firstly, Mike Ovey delves deep amidst all the Trump-rage and asks, “How do we get the leaders we don’t deserve?“; secondly, vicar Stephen Watkinson raises some interesting points as he asks “What should Christians learn from Brexit (and Trump’s victory)?“; thirdly, these are arguably “the best two minutes of TV you’ll watch on the US election“.
2) I can’t be honest – Marcus Honeysett of Living Leadership offers some helpful reflections on two situations he frequently encounters amongst church leaders: feeling overwhelmed and isolated from one’s congregation.
3) Ministry in a Multi-faith Society Means Confrontation – My dissertation supervisor Dan Strange takes a look at Acts 17 for Christianity Today, and shows why it’s a precious guide for how Christians should engage with culture and other religions.
4) Open Bibles, Burning Hearts: A Response to Andy Stanley – This piece by John Piper is intended as a response to fellow-American and fellow-pastor Andy Stanley’s suggestion that, for the sake of our post-Christian context, we need to move beyond using language like “the Bible says…” in our preaching. But it’s actually a hugely thought-provoking reflection on what it means for the Bible to be authoritative and how it is that ‘faith comes through hearing’.
5) Two fantastic resource websites for sharing the gospel: first up, my friend Dan Rackham and 10ofthose have put together Go Chatter Videos which not only offers all of the Go Chatter videos for download, but also collects a whole heap of other excellent short videos from the likes of Christians in Sport, Glen Scrivener and Bible Society. Secondly, Great Commission is a new site set-up by the Evangelical Alliance, full of testimonies, articles and inspiration to get sharing the good news of Jesus. Check them out!
6) A Transatlantic Elegy For An American Hillbilly – Hillbilly Elegy is a New York Times best-seller currently flying off the shelves Stateside. It’s effectively a memoir of growing up in “poor, white America”. In this honest piece Mez McConnell, a pastor on a housing estate on the edge of Edinburgh, offers his own reflections upon reading it, and the parallels with life in the UK.
7) Seems So Long Ago, Nancy – The incredible songwriter Leonard Cohen died this week. One of his most haunting songs is “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy,” about a young woman who takes her own life at twenty-one. Here popular Christian writer and blogger Tim Challies reflects on knowing that Nancy was his aunt.
On the blog this week: