Darryl Dash's Blog, page 47
May 28, 2022
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
Navigating the (New?) Negative World
Cultural analyst Aaron Renn marks 2014 as the year when the ground shifted under our feet, and we moved from being a society with a posture largely “neutral” to “negative” toward Christianity.
The Third Way is Dead. Long Live the Third Way!
Here are four points (and an exhortation) to help us understand what the third-way is, what it isn’t, and why, despite everything, I still think it’s a healthy and biblic...
May 24, 2022
Enjoying the Church I Get to Pastor Right Now
As I write this, it’s Sunday.
My mind’s busy with our worship gathering that’s happening soon.
It’s a long weekend. How many of our people will be away?It’s rainy. Will we be able to raise the garage door to allow air circulation?A tree fell out back yesterday in the storm. How will that affect us?Just another pre-service jumble of thoughts and stresses. The same will happen during and after the service. I’ll be so focused on the gaps that I may miss the blessings God has given me to e...
May 21, 2022
Saturday Links
Podcast: I enjoyed interviewing Jonathan Dodson about his book Gospel-Centered Discipleship on the Gospel for Life podcast.
Curated links for your weekend reading:
He turns 90 this month. And this window into his thoughts over 60 years ago reveal the foundation of a life wholeheartedly committed to his Lord.
No ordinary life.
If making disciples is our task, it’s worth considering the consistent pattern of disciple making found in Scrip...
May 17, 2022
Twitter’s Tradeoff
Last week, Ray Ortlund quit Twitter. He offered three reasons:
The good that can be accomplished on Twitter can also be accomplished, far more fruitfully, in real life.He is grieved by the behavior of Christians on Twitter.Twitter consumes time, and he has no time to waste.Tim Challies commented, “Ray Ortlund’s reasons for leaving Twitter sound a lot like my own.”
I saw a few responses that look something like this:
I’m sad about Ray Ortlund getting off Twitter (I completely respec...
May 14, 2022
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
Ecclesial Theology — The Missing Theology in an Age of Individualism
The church in its corporate assembly is a liturgical re-training for all those catechized by the social imaginary of modern individualism.
What was once an outlier culture because it was a city centre – the city centre – is now downtown mall-rat thinking in the backwater towns of not just the USA, but the rest of the Western world.
May 10, 2022
The Relentlessness of God’s Grace
I’m amazed — stunned, actually — at the relentlessness of God’s grace.
In my seven-year Bible reading plan, I’m currently in Numbers. The literary and theological center of the book starts around Numbers 16. It’s not pretty. But it reveals a repeated pattern that shows us the severity of sin and the abundance of God’s grace.
A Repeated PatternA bunch of well-known leaders rebel against both Moses and Aaron.
Read the chapter and you realize how ugly things got. Accusations, defiance,...
May 7, 2022
Saturday Links
Podcast: I enjoyed talking to Jamie Strickland about discipleship in the local church on the Gospel for Life podcast.
Curated links for your weekend reading:
There is one specific kind of undiscerned spiritual pride that I think is not often discussed and is especially hard to recognize—the danger of doctrinal righteousness.
Five Rules for Living Faithfully in the Digital Age
I want to commend five practices that will help us live faithfully in a screen-...
May 3, 2022
Older Saints Wanted
I’d heard him preach and teach before. He’s written books, and his sermons are all over YouTube. He’s not a household name, but he has influence. God has used him.
But the best thing about him isn’t his work. It’s who he is, or rather, who God has made him to be.
Jared Wilson talks about meeting somebody like the man I’m describing, a veteran who seems to keep getting better. “It became very clear that Ray actually knows Jesus. Like, he actually hangs out with him.”
When someone like th...
April 30, 2022
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
In Praise of the Boring, Uncool Church
Maybe a Christianity that doesn’t appeal to my consumer preferences and take its cues from Twitter is exactly the sort of faith I need.
In 45 years of ordained ministry, I’ve never walked with as many weary leaders. So, what do you do when darkness begins to hide the lovely face, voice, and hand of Jesus?
Pastor, You’ll Burnout If Your Idea Of Hard Work Is Worldly
Burning out b...
April 26, 2022
The Life We’re Looking For
Something’s wrong.
We’re powerful. We’re technologically advanced. By most standards, we’re rich. We can get almost anything we want delivered to our door in hours.
And yet loneliness is rampant. The happiness we were promised seems elusive, always out of grasp, perhaps even farther away than before.
The problem, according to Andy Crouch in his new book The Life We’re Looking For, is that the promises of the modern technological world are built on “a false understanding of what huma...
