Things I’ve found helpful on the web
The latest in Tim Challies’ Visual Theology series of diagrams displays the five solas of Reformed Christian doctrine
and the 5 points of Reformed Christian doctrine – often referred as the 5 points of Calvinism.
A few years ago Christopher Hitchens and Doug Wilson organised a series of events around the question Is Christianity Good for the World? Here’s a clip that didn’t make the 90 min DVD, with Wilson showing us what it looks like to make a defence of our faith.
More Visual Theology from Tim Challies. This time the Fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23
Over 700 billion minutes are spent each month on Facebook.
Tim Chester has some wise thoughts on Facebook, the good, the bad and the potentially dangerous here and here.
Below are some of the warning signs that Facebook (and twitter, blogs ….) might have a control on us they ought not to:
Tim Challies has been busy again producing more helpful charts, this time to aid us think more clearly about Our Triune God, and The Tabernacle.
The Tabernacle graphic should be useful as a reference when reading Exodus and Leviticus, but it’s the graphic on the Trinity that’s perhaps most helpful.
Many Christians find the Bible’s teaching on God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit hard to grasp and it’s easy to think that as long as we hold God to be three in some way and one in another way, we can’t go far wrong. That’s a dangerous path that will get us into all sorts of trouble.
The one true God has revealed himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – one God, three persons, and we must relate to our God according to who he is. Far from being a theological riddle or a teaching for advanced Christian only, the Trinity underpins everything else God has revealed about himself and his salvation purposes.
The In a clear way this chart shows us some of the false ideas we can have of God and it should help clarify our thinking of the God whom we worship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Tim Challies’ latest entry in his Visual Theology series can be found here. It’s a graphic representation of Philippians 2:5-11 depicting Christ’s humble serventhood that lead’s to his exaltation to the glory of God the Father.
Samuel Rutherford the 17th century Scottish minister and theologian saw his wife and four of his five young children die through illness in the space of a few years. His response of faith in the face of suffering and loss,
“this loss … divine wisdom devised it and divine love laid it on.”
We won’t be able to respond to suffering with such faith until we understand something of God’s purposes in the trials he brings us. That’s why this list of 36 purposes of God in our suffering by Paul Tautges ought to prove helpful.
In the Great Commission at the end of Matthew 28, Jesus instructs his disciples to “make disciples.” He does not instruct them to make converts who are only later to be discipled. That’s an important distinction with regard to how we view evangelism and something Jonathan Dodson picks up on here.
Many of us now do our shopping online and even for those who don’t like to actually buy things over the Internet, almost all of us spend time researching the items we are going to invest in, in front of our screens.
It’s the same with church.
Unless they have been personally invited by a Christian friend, virtually every new person we welcome into our church services today will have found out about us on the web via the church website. For every person who walks through the doors on a Sunday morning for the first time, how many more have looked at the church website only to invest their time elsewhere?
There’s a good article here from Trevin Wax on what a church website should accomplish.
Rather than just a series of links to news stories and announcements about upcoming events, the website should be a means of revealing your church.
He then lists the following 5 ways how a good website can effectively reveal a church to those who are looking for a place to worship.
1. A clear, easy to find “Statement of Beliefs”
2. Basic boring information – contacts / what’s on / directions
3. Staff and leadership page
4. Podcasts and/or sermon videos
5. Social media buttons
Increasingly the church website is our shop window.
Here’s the next one of Tim Challies’ excellent Visual Theology creations – a visual genealogy from Adam through to Jesus. You can find others here and here.
While printing this one out in a way that’s manageable might prove challenging, it is a great way of accessing (and even memorising?!?) this information.
What I particularly like about it is the way it’s been designed to look like an underground map. The Jesus Line perhaps?
WHATEVER IS COMMENDABLE 