Best of the Week for April 16
In Best of the Week we link to a handful of the best articles, videos, books, etc. that we have come across in the last week. We hope this will point you to some of the right places and give you gospel-rich tools and thoughts for life and mission.
Does Your Heart Run on Hype?
“We will not find any evidence in Scripture that a marked emotional “high” is the normative experience for Christian worship. Will we be moved emotionally, and often? Yes. And hopefully with spiritual affections, not simply natural feelings. Can we depend on a weekly jolt of euphoria? I don’t think so.”
This is a good reminder that the bulk of our life with Jesus and in the church will look “ordinary,” but faithful consistency in the ordinary is powerful, and it’s where lives really change.
Be a Gospel Neighbor
“The aim of hospitality is to forge relationships strong enough to bear the weight of truth.”
This week sort of became the week of mission and hospitality on Best of the Week. It wasn’t intentional, but a lot of what I came across leaned this direction, and it was both pointed and powerful. In a rapidly changing cultural landscape, we will have to learn what it means to be a church on the margins (not in the mainstream of culture) and how to effectively utilize biblical hospitality to earn trust and give people access to our lives to see the profound change the gospel makes.
4 Ways to Practice Missional Hospitality
“When we talk about what it means to be courageous and faithful in the age of unbelief, we have to talk about the Great Commission. That’s our mission. And though it’s always been true, I think it’s more true than ever to say that evangelism is going to look like hospitality.”
This goes a little deeper into the idea of biblical hospitality, and helps us with some practical ways it plays out that we can all go and do.
4 Ways Christians Should Share Their Faith that are Actually Effective
“At the end of the day, we can preach the Gospel with our lives, but words are ultimately necessary. There comes a point where, out of love, we must be bold and courageous to sit down with our neighbor and tell them about the good news of the Gospel. Here are four ideas on how we might go about that as we seek to make disciples amid these new, challenging times.”
With a title like that, who wouldn’t want to read this?! This one builds on the idea of hospitality and goes farther into how to specifically utilize that to engage people with the gospel in conversations.
12 Ways Evangelism is Changing
“Although the essence of evangelism is the gospel—the message that Jesus Christ is Lord—the task of evangelism is our human effort of proclaiming this message. This task used to primarily mean quoting Scripture, or explaining the believability of the Christian faith through clever arguments. Not anymore.”
If you want to take another step deeper into effective ways to communicate the gospel in a rapidly changing culture, this one builds on all the ideas of the previous articles. It’s worth a read, for sure. I found some really helpful points.
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