This Week on Trans·formed (8/11)

Featured Articles on Trans·formed This Week

Do You See What I See? Just the other day, I was talking with a couple of students about one of the many contentious issues in theology. And they were both visibly frustrated that the other person just couldn’t understand something that was so obvious to them. Neither wanted to come right out and say that the other person was just being stupid, but I bet they thought about it. If you can’t see what is so obvious to me, there must be something wrong with you.

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The Olympic Power Trip. Who wins at the Olympics?  For the most part, the athletes from the rich and powerful parts of the world triumph over the less powerful.  The more powerful and rich a country is, the better they do at the Olympics.  Case in point, China, who did not field an Olympic squad until 1984 (except for a blip on the screen in 1952), has steadily grown into an Olympic power concurrent with becoming a world power.

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What Hope and Comfort Could a Shepherd Possibly Bring? Later that evening when the phone was no longer busy, the doctor’s call came through. He had received the initial report and suggested they look at the ultrasound together on Monday. The sound of his voice was unsettling. It was Good Friday. Amy and Ryan went to church services acknowledging that the God of the resurrection who “knit us together in our mothers’ wombs” had the ability to form a healthy baby. Amy prayed the Lord would heal any problem with their baby.

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Am I Losing My Faith? The interview/article includes a side note showing the results of a survey of American college and graduate school professors. Only 6.1 percent would affirm that “the Bible is the actual word of God.” The survey found that 23.4 percent of the professors surveyed classify themselves as agnostic or atheist (compared to 6.9 percent of all Americans). In elite doctoral institutions the professors tend to be less religious with 36.6 falling into the agnostic/atheist category.

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Other Posts of Interest from around the Web

• Laypeople and the Mission of God. Every church must have a strategy and a process to equip people for ministry and mission. Thus, they create an environment where people are empowered and enabled to do ministry. Yet, and perhaps this is the greatest challenge in many churches, you have to recognize that there are many factors working AGAINST engaging all God’s people in ministry.

• Why “Leaders” Are Not the Church’s Greatest Need. In our culture, leadership has become a “cult” — in the sense of an obsessive or faddish devotion. And Christians have been initiated into it. Besides the books that sit before me, there are many others authored by big-name pastors — or former pastors, since some pastors have managed to parlay their leadership insights into whole careers. Christian colleges are all about “developing future leaders.” And there’s the famous Leadership Network. And Leadership journal. And on it goes.

• The Five Great Mysteries of the Christian Faith. Are there more than these? Most certainly. But in theology, these are the biggies. These are the big pieces of our puzzle that are missing. Why are they missing? I don’t know. I just know they are. God chose not to tell us. I will ask him when I get there. But I will try to trust him until then. After all, don’t I have to borrow from his morality in order to judge him for leaving the puzzle unsolved? I think I will pass on that.

• Ambassadors of Glory for a Beaten Down Church. I wondered how many pastors were in the same place and had developed the same ministry habits. I wondered how many of them were throwing something together at the last minute; how many sermons were not given the time necessary for them to communicate what needed to be communicated. I wondered how many congregations around the world are plainly and simply being poorly fed by unprepared pastors. I wondered how many sermons end up being boring restatements of favorite commentaries or little more than impersonal, poorly delivered theological lectures.