Aaron Armstrong's Blog, page 59

Weekend reading (12/30)

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Why Our Expectations for Teens in the Church Are Way Too Low

Cameron Cole:

Historically, one of the failures of youth ministry is that kids have not been viewed as potential contributors in the church, and that is a disservice to them and to the church as a whole. We need kids to learn how to be real church members, and we need kids to have good ecclesiology—a good theology of the church.

What Google knows about being human

Jason Thacker & Justin Wester:

Google is ubiquitous in our culture....

How I’m pursuing spiritual health in 2018

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For the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to pay very close attention to warning signs about my spiritual health.1 In 2015, I hit a wall, where I realized I was running on empty due to various circumstances. Throughout 2016, I made a number of changes to my lifestyle, my reading habits, and my writing schedule to allow me space to get healthier.

As one year moved into the next, I wanted to build on the good foundation that had been laid and keep going.

Then 2017 actually happened.

This...

Links I like (12/28)

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2 Ways the Church Can Help Women Who Are Burned Out

Shona Murray:

The church can organize specific times of prayer, when women (young mothers, especially) can come together with child care available—even for an hour, once a week. There, women can gather and have coffee and chat, knowing that for that hour, they can just relax, be refreshed, and then go back home and feel uplifted—not just emotionally and physically, but spiritually as well. The fellowship of other Christian women can certain...

My 2018 reading plan

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Over the last two years, I’ve been working to keep my reading diet pretty balanced. Because I spent a long time reading almost exclusively books by and for Christians—at least for my major reading—and I work in Christian publishing, this is pretty important to me. Reading lots of different kinds of books, whether written by Christians or not, lets me engage with different ideas and hopefully helps me to be a better writer and thinker.

I’m continuing to think about my reading in this regard o...

Links I like (12/26)

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We Will See Him As He Is

This was a great message from R.C. Sproul:

Don’t Be Yourself

Greg Morse:

“Just be yourself,” “keep it real,” and “keep it 100” are life slogans for many in our day. And when they are, authenticity often takes precedence over courtesy, self-actualization triumphs over self-discipline, and the self — whoever it may be — is to be celebrated and never censured.

And subtly, we can adopt this philosophy in the church. Even though every imperative in the Bible protests aga...

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas from my family to you and yours, friends. Enjoy a joyful celebration of the heart of the gospel—Christ’s incarnation.

He mingled among men with scarcely any reservation. Although, through His purity, He was separate from sinners as to His character, yet He was the visitor of all men. He was found eating bread with a Pharisee, which perhaps is a more wonderful thing than when He received sinners, and ate with them. A fallen woman was not too far gone in sin for Him to sit on t...

Christ’s gift to us in the Incarnation

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There’s something that’s easy to lose sight of at Christmas time: the very purpose of Jesus coming into the world, and the gift he gives to us, something Spurgeon reminded me of as I read Christ’s Incarnation recently:

Jesus Christ did not come into the world to help you to forget your sin. He has not come to furnish you with a cloak with which to cover it. He has not appeared that He may so strengthen your minds (as some men would have you believe,) that you may learn to laugh at your iniqu...

Weekend reading (12/23)

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No, Christmas Isn’t Secretly Pagan: A Very Merry D-List Saints Christmas Special (For the Whole Family)

Luke Harrington does a great job with this (although he may need to tone down the “or somethings”):

There are two pagan festivals that are usually pointed to as the origin of Christmas, but the evidence for both is pretty thin. The first choice is usually the Saturnalia, the Roman celebration of the god Saturn, which does pre-date Christmas, but leaves one big, gaping hole in the plot: the...

How Jesus saves Christmas

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Christmas is the time of year when we hear lots of conflicting messages about why we celebrate Christmas at all. Some call it a special time of year, though the “why” isn’t really explored. Others go on the offense, reminding everyone that Jesus is the reason for the season. And then there are the folks who really just want to keep their head down, take a nap, and get through the holidays.1

I know for a lot of people the Christmas season brings up a great deal of interpersonal drama: fears o...

Links I like (12/21)

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Judge: Atlanta Shouldn’t Have Fired Fire Chief over Christian Devotional

Tom Strode:

In Cochran v. City of Atlanta, the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia said that the city’s restrictions on non-work speech, which were used to terminate Cochran, “do not set out objective standards for the supervisor to employ” and do not “pass constitutional muster.”

Church Planters Are Farmers, Not Rock Stars

Tony Merida:

But sometimes we are tempted to want more, aren’t we? In the Unit...