Dave Gullett

Don Miller:

“If we acquire knowledge before we are emotionally healthy, that is if we are insecure, we are going to use it to boost our own ego and compare ourselves to others. The desire for knowledge will be like a need for a drug, then, pacifying a wounded spirit through comparative associations. Entire theological camps have been built and bolstered by this needy, angry, gluttonous desire for knowledge. But if we have confidence, if we are secure, knowledge humbles us. We realize that we did not invent truth, we simply stumbled upon it like food on a long journey. Knowledge will then produce the fruits of the spirit.”

Knowledge Makes a Secure Man Humble.

“While visiting a village in Masai, Kenya, last summer, Morgan Jackson asked a chief what changes had occurred since his tribe started listening to recordings of the New Testament. “All the people who have been delivered from demons,” the chief replied, citing decreases inviolence and juvenile delinquency.

Audio Bibles have become a big business in the United States, with The Bible Experience and The Word of Promise topping Bible sales charts. But they have also carved out a key place in missions, delivering Scripture across the globe in ways not dreamed of in the 20th century.”

via Audio Bibles Propel Scripture into Remote Regions | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

“There is a danger here too.  Sometimes, “faithfulness” is just a cover word for being a stubborn idiot.  Many people take pride in the fact that their church is small because they are the only ones being “faithful” when what they really need to do is repent for the fact that they have failed to do God’s mission and lead their people in it.”

via Take Your Vitamin Z: People Leaving Your Church Might Be A Good Thing.

From Ray Ortland:

Week One:  Walk into church today and think about how long you’ve been a member, how much you’ve sacrificed, how under-appreciated you are.  Take note of every way you’re dissatisfied with your church now.  Take note of every person who displeases you.

Meet for coffee this week with another member and “share your heart.”  Discuss how your church is changing, how you are being left out.  Ask your friend who else in the church has “concerns.”  Agree together that you must “pray about it.”

Week Two:  Send an email to a few other “concerned” members.  Inform them that a groundswell of grievance is surfacing in your church.  Problems have gone unaddressed for too long.  Ask them to keep the matter to themselves “for the sake of the body.”

As complaints come in, form them into a petition to demand an accounting from the leaders of the church.  Circulate the petition quietly.  Gathering support will be easy.  Even happy members can be used if you appeal to their sense of fairness – that your side deserves a hearing.  Be sure to proceed in a way that conforms to your church constitution, so that your petition is procedurally correct.

Week Three:  When the growing moral fervor, ill-defined but powerful, reaches critical mass, confront the elders with your demands.  Inform them of all the woundedness in the church, which leaves you with no choice but to put your petition forward.  Inform them that, for the sake of reconciliation, the concerns of the body must be satisfied.

Whatever happens from this point on, you have won.  You have changed the subject in your church from gospel advance to your own grievances.  To some degree, you will get your way.  Your church will need three or four years for recovery.  But at any future time, you can do it all again.  It only takes three weeks.

Just one question.  Even if you are being wronged, “Why not rather suffer wrong?” (1 Corinthians 6:7).

“All around the growing piles of dangerous rubble and the squalor of rotting trash in the streets of their capital city, Haitians are living the new normal: In the shadow of a collapsed house, a woman gives a young man a haircut. On the outskirts of a park-turned-tent-city for thousands of displaced people near downtown, a little boy flies a kite made from string and a piece of trash. And near another squalid camp, reeking of trash and human waste, and filled with thousands of homeless people in the city’s central plaza—the Champs de Mars—a man sells basic supplies: small cans of deodorant and cooking oil.”

WORLD Magazine | Haiti’s new normal | Jamie Dean | Jan 22, 10.