Sunday, May 30, 2004

If you're seriously interested in house church, you might be interested in the National House Church Conference ...

Prowling the House2House website, i found this interesting list of the One Anothers in the New Testament ... one way to view what it means to be church. 


10:29:46 PM #  Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.  comment []  trackback []

It's really frustrating that so many good blogs only have Atom feeds: these are automated publishers, why can't it be both/and instead of either/or?

I have a new list under my blogroll for sites i'd read more often if they just offered RSS ...


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Like Rubén Gómez and Mark Goodacre, i like the simplicity of the Simple Parallel Bible. There's a natural synergy here with the Composite Gospel Index: it would be the proverbial SMOP to hyperlink the pericopes to a display of their passages.


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The Barna Research Group does a great service to the American church by trying to carefully and scientifically assess what the actual facts of Christian behavior are (which don't always line up with our preconceptions or hopes).  A recent study looks at a variety of behavioral questions, segmented along faith lines (evangelical Christian, non-evangelical born again Christians, "notional" Christians, adherents of non-Christian faiths, and atheists/agnostics).

George Barna's summary statement bears repeating:

“The ultimate aim of belief in Jesus is not simply to possess divergent theological ideas but to become a transformed person. These statistics highlight the fact that millions of people who rely on Jesus Christ for their eternal destiny have problems translating their religious beliefs into action beyond Sunday mornings.”

One interesting factoid: those who fall into the Christian but not evangelical categories (non-evangelical and notional Christians) are more likely to purchase lottery tickets.

"Overall, 15% of born again and 23% of notional Christians purchased lottery tickets in a typical week, compared to just 10% of other-faith adherents and 12% of atheists/agnostics."

It doesn't say much about our faith if it isn't strong enough to transform our attitudes about money, particularly the desire to get rich (which Paul describes as a snare, 1 Timothy 6:9), and our trust in God rather than in riches.


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