The Christian Post reports that the dwindling Church of England is using a new book and outreach effort, which centers on The Simpsons TV show, to reach people with the Christian message.
Mixing It Up with the “Simpsons,” a book to be released by the Church of England’s publishing company, will be sent to youth advisers in every diocese across the country next week, the Sunday Telegraph reported, with the hope of showing how Christianity is relevant to life today through issues tackled in the popular U.S. TV cartoon series. Clergy will be urged to show episodes of “The Simpsons” that focus on Christian themes such as love and punishment.
The book’s author, Owen Smith, is a youth worker in the Kent Diocese of Rochester and insists the cartoon series is filled with biblical references. He looks to illustrate this in the book with quote comparisons.
Smith told the Sunday Telegraph: “’The Simpsons’ is hugely moral, with many episodes dealing with issues and dilemmas faced by young people. The willingness of the show’s writers to deal with questions of both morality and spirituality makes the program an ideal tool.”
The book traces the development of a baby girl through the sequence of trimesters. Her physical development is breathtaking in its beauty. But the biggest surprise for most readers may well be the revelations about fetal behavior. Babies are learning to sleep, taste, smile, cry, and suck their thumbs—all while in the womb.
. . .
The development of these sophisticated imaging technologies is reshaping the abortion debate. Once these images are seen, they can never be forgotten. For the first time in human history, this generation has been given the gift of seeing inside the womb. Once these images are seen there is no way to deny what we see—the miracle of life.
. . .
In the Womb, the book, is based upon In the Womb, the television documentary. The documentary is also breathtaking, and it offers the additional benefit of seeing these unprecedented images in motion. The book and the DVD together represent a scientific education of sorts. Parents will want to watch the DVD and read the book with their older children.
I would strongly suggest that parents read the book and watch the DVD, and then share these with their children, allowing for generous discussion and parental instruction. These images and photographs hold the promise of helping children and youth to understand the miracle of life in a whole new way. That is exactly what the pro-abortion movement should fear.
As I see it, the church has four options when it comes to engaging culture: 1) ignore it, 2) imitate it, 3) condemn it, or 4) create it. And each option leads in polar opposite directions.
We can ignore culture, but the byproduct of ignorance is irrelevance. The more we ignore culture the more irrelevant we’ll become. And if the church ignores the culture, the culture will ignore the church.
We can imitate culture, but imitation is a form of suicide. Originality is sacrificed on the altar of cultural conformity. If we don’t shape the culture, the culture will shape us.
We can condemn culture, but condemnation is a cop out. Let me just call it what it is: condemnation is spiritual laziness. We’ve got to stop pointing the finger and start offering better alternatives. If the church condemns the culture, the culture will condemn the church.
Those three options will lead the church down a dead-end road to irrelevance, but there is another option–the only option if we’re serious about fulfilling the Great Commission and incarnating the gospel. We can compete for culture by creating culture.
In the immortal words of the Italian artist and poet, Michelangelo: criticize by creating.
At the end of the day, the culture will treat the church the way the church treats the culture. And we’re not called to condemn. We’re called to redeem.
I’m not sure that these are the only four options. Certainly more nuacing is necessary. Culture is not monolithic, but consists of good, bad, and perhaps neutral elements. Should not our response to some expressions of culture be different from our response to other expressions? It seems that the correct view of culture must involve a combination of some of these.
Al Mohler comments on the recent rise in infanticide in Germany.
A spate of murdered babies has shocked Germany in recent weeks. The Times [London] reports that at least 23 babies have been killed this year, “many of them beaten to death or strangled by their mothers before being dumped on wasteland and in dustbins.” German officials believe the total number of babies killed this year to be even higher than what has been reported.
He makes a solid connection between infanticide and abortion, showing the inconsistency of objecting to infanticide but not abortion.
The rise of infanticide is shocking, but hardly surprising. After all, in many societies these babies could be safely aborted almost up to the time of their delivery. The logic of infanticide is just the logic of abortion pushed beyond the moment of birth.
The fact that Germans have responded with outrage over this spate of infanticides is comforting in one sense, but it also reveals the hypocrisy of the age. How can infanticide be wrong and abortion be a basic right? Both mean the killing of a baby, and both represent the Culture of Death at its most deadly.
Craig Groeschel, senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv, is in the middle of a series of posts where he is discussing things in church ministry that shouldn’t matter, but unfortunately do. He suggests, then, that they should, in a sense, matter to us if we are to reach the lost. (He points out, though, that these things don’t matter in some places in our country and in many other parts of the world.)
He begins with these three disclaimers:
Our goal is always to communicate Jesus and point people to Him.
Our goal is never to become worldly to reach people.
Occasionally we must adapt our ways to communicate Jesus in the world. (The message doesn’t change, but the method has to change.)
In the first post he talks about how environment, things like the quality, style, comfort, and up-to-dateness of a church building and the use of modern technology, shouldn’t matter.
In churches, environment shouldn’t matter. We shouldn’t care. But some people do. . . .
No, I don’t think a good environment will change anyone’s life. No, I don’t think it is necessary for a church to be successful. But I do think people are being conditioned to expect quality. As churches, we should do our best with what we have to create spiritually welcoming atmospheres.
In the second post he addresses the issue of dress—whether a pastor dresses cool, professional, like a slob, or like a pimp.
As pastors, our goal is never to be “cool.” But we can discredit ourselves with some people before we even start talking simply by the way we look. Or we can gain some credibility when someone thinks, “Well at least he/she looks normal.”
In the third post he deals with entertainment and says, “In the church world, entertainment shouldn’t even be a consideration. God’s Word and His presence should be enough.” But our culture and people’s infatuation with entertainment has changed things.
I’ll be honest, I don’t like to think about how to gain and keep people’s attention with humor, suspense, stories, video etc. But a wise communicator and leader understands that in today’s world, even though entertainment shouldn’t matter, when it comes to getting and keeping someone’s attention to hear about Jesus, it often does.
What do you think? Is he on target? Or should churches just stick with what does matter—living and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ—and trust God to bridge the gap by His Spirit?
The Pope recently expressed great concern for the future of Europe.
It appears, the Holy Father said, “that the European continent is losing confidence in its future.” As a result, he said, the European Union “seems to be on a path that might lead to its twilight in history.”
. . .
he crisis . . . has been created by the failure to embrace the spiritual and cultural heritage of their continent. His speech reflected his dismay that the Rome Declaration, issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Rome treaty, did not mention the influence of Christianity.
. . .
f the European Union is to play a credible role in the 21st century, the Pope argued, it can only do so with the “spark” supplied by its cultural and spiritual heritage. Scolding the government leaders who failed to recognize that patrimony, the Pontiff asked, “how can they exclude from Europe’s identity an essential element like Christianity in which a vast majority continues to identify themselves?”
. . .
“A community that is built without respect for the authentic dignity of human beings, that forgets that each person is created in God’s image, ends up not doing any one any good,” the Pope said.
John Fischer recently wrote an article on Francis Schaeffer in ChristianityToday entitled, “Learning to Cry for the Culture.” Here are a few highlights:
I grew up with a Christianity that was predisposed against sorrow. To be sad was to deny your faith or your salvation. Jesus had made us happy, and we had an obligation to always show that happiness. Then Francis Schaeffer came along. He could not allow himself to be happy when most of the world was desperately lost and he knew why. He was the first Christian I found who could embrace faith and the despair of a lost humanity at the same time. Though he had been found, he still knew what it was to be lost.
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Instead of shaking our heads at a depressing, dark, abstract work of art, the true Christian reaction should be to weep for the lost person who created it. Schaeffer was a rare Christian leader who advocated understanding and empathizing with non-Christians instead of taking issue with them.
. . .
Perhaps a good beginning would be to more fully grasp the depravity of our own souls and the depth to which God’s grace had to go to reach us. I doubt we can cry over the world if we’ve never cried over ourselves.
To be sure, Francis Schaeffer’s influence has declined in recent years, as postmodernism has supplanted the modernity he dissected for so long. Schaeffer is not without his critics, even among Christians. But perhaps, in the end, his greatest influence on the church will not be his words as much as his tears. The same things that made Francis Schaeffer cry in his day should make us cry in ours.
The 2007 Ligonier National Conference, Contending for the Truth, was held in Orlando last weekend. The goal of the conference was to “equip believers to answer the false claims of postmodernism, naturalism, and our culture’s other atheistic theories.”
The speakers were R. C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Al Mohler, John Piper, and Ravi Zacharias.
Tim Challies was liveblogging the conference. Here are his posts:
The Christian Post reports that the dwindling Church of England is using a new book and outreach effort, which centers on The Simpsons TV show, to reach people with the Christian message.
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Mark Batterson
Craig Groeschel
John Fischer recently wrote an article on Francis Schaeffer in ChristianityToday entitled, 
