Author: Glen

Do You Geek Out When There’s A New Episode Of Radiolab? Thoughtful Christian Podcasts

Podcast BearI love pod­casts. I lis­ten to them every day as I bike to and from cam­pus. I lis­ten to them in the gym as I work out. I lis­ten to them when­ev­er I dri­ve some­where and there is no one else in the car.
There are a ton of Chris­t­ian pod­casts out there, but most of them are ser­mon­ic. Noth­ing against ser­mons — I preach a lot of them and lis­ten to even more. I even pod­cast my ser­mons. But there are so many ser­mons pod­cast­ed that it can be hard to find some of the oth­er Chris­t­ian gems that are out there.
So if you’re into pod­casts and are into Jesus, here are a few to con­sid­er adding to your list.
Think­ing In Pub­lic with Al Mohler
http://www.albertmohler.com/cat­e­go­ry/­think­ing-in-pub­lic/
Dr. Mohler is the pres­i­dent of The South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. In this pod­cast, he inter­views inter­est­ing peo­ple about the­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al issues.
Unbe­liev­able?
This week­ly radio show from the UK fea­tures Chris­tians and non-Chris­tians in dia­log. They usu­al­ly bring in amaz­ing peo­ple and the host is good at help­ing each per­son put their argu­ments for­ward effec­tive­ly. The episodes feel long to me, but I still come back to it over and over again.
The Andy Stan­ley Lead­er­ship Pod­cast
This one is more min­istry relat­ed. High­ly suc­cess­ful pas­tor Andy Stan­ley explains prin­ci­ples of lead­er­ship in a help­ful way. This is one of my favorites.
This is a round­table dis­cus­sion about the­o­log­i­cal top­ics with intel­li­gent and well-informed peo­ple. Some­times it gets a lit­tle con­fus­ing because their voic­es are hard to tell apart, but it is nonethe­less worth­while.
Research On Reli­gion with Antho­ny Gill
Dr. Gill is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton. This pod­cast is pret­ty aca­d­e­m­ic and can be dry at times, but the best episodes are fas­ci­nat­ing. Two good ones to start with:

Race and Grace in a Broken World

UPDATE 12/4/2014: Last night was our first Chi Alpha gath­er­ing since the Fer­gu­son non-indict­ment — the same day as the NYC non-indict­ment. As a pre­lude to the ser­mon, I gave a more com­pre­hen­sive take on race and the gospel. If you’re inter­est­ed, check out the first few min­utes of xastanford.org/sermons?sermon_id=52

I emailed this to the stu­dents in my min­istry ear­li­er today and they seemed to find it help­ful. I share it in the hope that it will also prove use­ful to you.

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I know many of us are reflect­ing on racism and jus­tice this week. As a fol­low­er of Jesus, I encour­age you to remem­ber that the jour­ney Chris­tians are on is a jour­ney along­side “a great mul­ti­tude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, peo­ple and lan­guage.”

Why should we remem­ber that fact? Because it reminds us that racial uni­ty is one of the out­comes of the gospel. Christ brings peo­ple togeth­er by draw­ing them to Him­self.

So I urge you to think in a Chris­t­ian way about these issues. Here are some resources to stim­u­late you.

IF YOU WANT TO ENGAGE WITH SOMETHING BRIEF

If you are won­der­ing where the church has been in the midst of all of this, the answer is front and cen­ter. I men­tion this because it is fre­quent­ly over­looked:
http://www.getreligion.org/getre­li­gion/2014/11/25/what-role-did-cler­gy-play-dur­ing-fer­gu­son-chaos-if-you-looked-for-them-they-were-there

Thabiti Anyab­wile has some use­ful things to say in this eight minute video. He is speak­ing before the grand jury’s deci­sion was revealed. If you want to read more of him, he blogs at http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabitianyabwile/.

White Chris­tians in par­tic­u­lar will find Ed Stet­zer’s thoughts help­ful —  http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/november/deci­sion-in-fer­gu­son-how-should-evan­gel­i­cals-respond.html

IF YOU WANT TO DIG DEEP

If you have more time this Thanks­giv­ing break and want to go beyond read­ing an arti­cle or two, pick one of these books and dive in:

  • Blood­lines: Race, Cross, and the Chris­t­ian (John Piper) [like many (all?) of Piper’s books it is free on his web­site as a PDF — http://www.desiringgod.org/books/bloodlines )
  • From Every Peo­ple and Nation: A Bib­li­cal The­ol­o­gy of Race (J. Daniel Hays)
  • Divid­ed by Faith: Evan­gel­i­cal Reli­gion and the Prob­lem of Race in Amer­i­ca (Emer­son and Smith) [this book is quite crit­i­cal of the church — it is painful but help­ful read­ing]

May you have a blessed Thanks­giv­ing, and may the Lord con­tin­ue to heal this bro­ken world.

 

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This is the best sum­ma­ry of the issue I’ve seen yet.

Pas­tor Dis­in­vit­ed from Giv­ing Inau­gur­al Prayer Because of Ser­mon on Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty

The mes­sage of reli­gious intol­er­ance being deliv­ered by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, his staff, and many of his sup­port­ers is unmis­tak­able: If you do not affirm homo­sex­u­al­i­ty then you can­not be fair-mind­ed. The m…

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The sec­ond quote is the one to focus on. If you are squea­mish, be cau­tious when order­ing cal­i­mari. For the record, I don’t think this would affect my will­ing­ness to eat arti­fi­cial cal­i­mari.

Fred Armisen hosts This Amer­i­can Life as Ira Glass

This week’s episode of This Amer­i­can Life is about dop­pel­gangers, so they decid­ed to have SNL’s Fred Armisen come on the show and

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Then my kids will receive excel­lent grades. 🙂

Don’t pay for all of your kids’ col­lege edu­ca­tion

…a new study…found that the more mon­ey (in total and as a share of total col­lege costs) that par­ents pro­vide for high­er edu­ca­tion, the low­er the grades their chil­dren earn. The find­ings — par­tic­u­lar­ly…

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Rat — the voice of a gen­er­a­tion.

Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis, Jan­u­ary 17, 2013 Via @GoComics

At its heart, Pearls Before Swine is the com­ic strip tale of two friends: an arro­gant Rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-wit­ted Pig who does­n’t know any bet­ter. Togeth­er, this pair offers caust…

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This is sol­id. Which, you know, is what you ought to expect from D.A. Car­son.

You Asked: How Do We Know if God Is Dis­ci­plin­ing Us?

Easy, for­mu­la­ic answers to ques­tions of suf­fer­ing are invari­ably reduc­tion­is­tic — and they make bad the­ol­o­gy, too.Easy, for­mu­la­ic answers to ques­tions of suf­fer­ing are invari­ably reduc­tion­is­tic — and …

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This is actu­al­ly help­ful to me.

Pen­ny Arcade — Sportz

Print Added. Woo! You’ve just added the print below to your cart. What Next? Go to Check­out Browse the Store · First · Pre­vi­ous · News · Next · New · Share on Twit­ter · Share on Face­book · Sub­scribe t…

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I think I will file this one under “Com­mon-sense obser­va­tion by a judge.” In relat­ed news, see http://i.imgur.com/RtLy8.jpg

Amid Flu Shot Debate, Court Says Veg­an­ism Could Qual­i­fy as Reli­gious Belief: Court refus­es to dis­miss hos­pi­tal work­er’s reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion case after she was fired for refus­ing a flu shot.

At Chris­tian­i­ty Today, we’re con­stant­ly track­ing impor­tant devel­op­ments in the church and the world. Often we use our net­work of reporters around the world (and for that, vis­it our main site). But we …

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Heh.

MAINLINE/REFORMED-FROM-BIRTH CONGREGANT ATTENDS A PENTECOSTAL REVIVAL FOR THE FIRST TIME

MAINLINE/REFORMED-FROM-BIRTH CONGREGANT ATTENDS A PENTECOSTAL REVIVAL FOR THE FIRST TIME