The God of love and peace be with you today.

Logos users will want to take a look at this sale on volumes in the excellent NIC series.
If you’re interested in getting to know the Puritans a bit better, Westminster Books has a nice collection on sale.
(Yesterday on the blog: Ask Me Anything (Communion as a Guest, Lent, Egalitarianism, Eschatology, etc))
Is the Earliest, Most Complete Hebrew Bible Going on Auction?
A rare manuscript is being auctioned and some of the claims about it need to be scrutinized. “Sadly, looking at anything through the lens of a dollar sign can distort one’s vision of reality. Perhaps that is happening here. At any rate, what is certain is that a veritable dust cloud of exaggerations and half-truths are flying around in the press coverage of the imminent sale of Codex Sassoon. I would like to try and clear the air a little.”
Southern Baptist Convention Disfellowships Saddleback Church
This is a big deal. “One of the country’s biggest and best-known megachurches, Saddleback Church, is no longer a part of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) after bringing on a female teaching pastor last year.”
How Should We Handle Outrage?
“This is a difficult time. Evil is called good, while good is called evil. Objective truth is disdained. Feelings are divinized. God is mocked.” Amy Hall considers how we should handle outrage at a time like this.
The FAQs: Anglican Communion Splits over ‘Blessing’ of Same-Sex Marriages
“Earlier this month, the Church of England’s national assembly voted to let priests bless same-sex marriages and civil partnerships. In response, the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) issued a statement announcing that this schismatic and unbiblical action meant the Church of England had broken communion with the more faithful provinces within the Anglican Communion.” Joe Carter explains in one of his FAQs. (See also: Which Way, Anglicans? Global South Responds to Church of England Blessing Same-Sex Marriages.)
The Lost Art of Handing Out Gospel Tracts
“I still get scared. It’s still awkward almost every time. And yet, I continue to feel compelled, even privileged, to do this uncomfortable, scary work of handing out tracts. If you’ve been terrified to share the gospel or have hesitated to use tracts to do so, here are a few reasons that may cause you to reconsider.”
What is Reformed Theology?
Ligon Duncan provides a brief introduction to Reformed theology in this short video.
Flashback: When We Go Unnourished
…if you, my friend, fail to nourish your soul, you have no cause to be surprised when your soul feels dry, when your faith feels parched, when you seem only to whither and fade.

All things as they move toward God are beautiful, and they are ugly as they move away from Him. —A.W. Tozer

It always surprises me how quickly an idea can go from introduction to expectation, from mere inquiry to accepted standard. And once an idea has become mainstream in that way, it is difficult to revisit and evaluate it.
One of these is the idea that churches should livestream their worship services. What was rare in the days before the pandemic became almost universal during it as circumstances proved to be a kind of technological accelerant. Yet with those days now far behind us, the livestreams continue. I don’t know the percentages, but I’d say a church is now more likely to have a stream than not. It has somehow become almost intuitive to churches that they ought to stream their Sunday morning services. The video ministry has taken its place beside the children’s ministry, women’s ministry, men’s ministry, and all the other ministries a church is expected to have.
I’m sure it made sense for churches to quickly pivot to streaming in those early days of uncertainty. It made sense for churches to keep the streams going during days when meeting together was difficult or forbidden and perhaps also during the days when people were shy about being in big crowds or being in public with as much as a sniffle. I’m sure churches were wise to adapt.
But few churches considered the exit plan and whether the livestream ought to be temporary or permanent. Few considered when and if they would wind it back down. Several years have gone by and in most cases, it proved to stick around. Why? The most common rationale is that it proved valuable for shut-ins or others who legitimately could not attend on a Sunday morning. Once housebound people had grown accustomed to having access to a livestream, it seemed cruel to cut it off. It also proved helpful in helping prospective attendees gain a sense of how the church functions and worships—a sense that was superior to merely reading words on a website. And then, of course, it was affirming to see unknown and anonymous people tuning in from around the city and far beyond. For these reasons and others the streams stuck.
What most churches failed to do, though, was carefully weigh the pros and cons, something that is always a wise exercise when adding new technology to any part of personal life, family life, or church life. As always, the benefits tend to be quicker and easier to identify than the drawbacks. The benefits are exactly the ones I laid out earlier. But what how about the drawbacks?
Most obviously, this kind of ministry consumes resources that are often scarce—there are costs in time, money, maintenance, and manpower.
Of greater concern is the way streaming may change the very nature of the corporate gathering—the very meaning of what it is to be “together”—by extending it to those who are not physically present. This is an ongoing battle in a digital world and we have long claimed that churches are bucking this trend by remaining a place where people still gather physically. But a livestream both changes and complicates that dynamic.
And then there is the way preaching may change when a stream is present. When the preacher knows his words will not go beyond the room, he directs his words to his people, to his flock. This gives him the freedom to address their concerns and their needs. But when preaching to an anonymous group outside the room, he is now preaching to strangers. To whatever degree he preaches to this on-screen audience, he will be tempted to perform rather than preach.
Finally, there is the concern that streaming may enable disobedience. Many churches stream their services as a means of serving people who have no other church to attend. This sounds noble. But don’t you think it’s likely that the stream is also (or perhaps even primarily) enabling people who could attend a church close to their home but prefer the preaching or worship of a church they watch on a screen? It may feel affirming when we gather the statistics of people who are watching from far-off locations, but how do we know those people aren’t using our stream to foster their own disobedience? In most circumstances, wouldn’t the ideal outcome be that zero people are watching our livestreams because they are all in their own churches?
Wouldn’t the ideal outcome be that zero people are watching our livestreams because they are all in their own churches?Share
(On that note, it has often struck me as ironic that some of the pastors who are most adamant that watching services online should never displace or replace attending local services are the very ones who broadcast their services each Sunday morning. And they often have the budgets and personnel to create streams that are of the highest quality. The messaging seems more than a little mixed to me. Perhaps these influential men could model something positive to everyone by cutting their livestreams and urging people to find a church in their own setting.)
So here is my suggestion: The leadership of every church would be wise to take time to carefully consider the past, present, and future of their livestream. They can consider whether it is truly serving their own local church and whether it is truly serving the wider church. To that end, here are some questions they may want to ask:

When and why did you begin livestreaming? What was the reason you began it and how do you currently evaluate its success?
What is your biblical case for a livestream? What biblical principles support or contradict it?
How is the livestream impacting your local church and how is it impacting the wider church? How certain are you that your stream is not enabling disobedience in Christians who ought to be attending a local church?
If the ideal scenario is for zero people to watch your livestream (because they are all in your church or another good one) how can you help make that happen?

As the elders of Grace Fellowship Church, we evaluate our livestream on a regular basis. For the time being, we continue to offer it as a help to those who are legitimately unable to attend church due to illness. However, to ensure it is being used for only that purpose, we put it behind a password. Anyone who wants to watch it simply needs to email our sound team to receive that password. That’s probably not a great solution, but it is the one we have settled on for the time being.
My hope is that each church will evaluate its own livestream to consider if and how it furthers the mission of that local church and the mission of God’s wider church. May we all think carefully, pray earnestly, and be faithful to what God has called us to.

Abortion has always been an important cause to me. When I was very young my parents—and my mother in particular—were heavily involved in pro-life work in Toronto, so much so that the history of one of its pregnancy care centres (which, for a time, I had the joy of serving on the board of directors) reads like a history of my childhood. The names and the locations are still familiar after all these years.

Because abortion has been an important cause to me, I have read quite a number of books on the subject. Almost invariably, those books focus on the harm abortion does to an unborn child. And for good reason—abortion is the unjust and immoral killing of a human being. While society around us attempts to disguise abortion through a host of denials or euphemisms, the reality is plain to those with eyes to see.
But while the unborn child suffers the greatest harm, this is not the only harm that comes with abortion, and this is especially so when it is accepted and even celebrated across society. In their new book Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing, Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis focus on the many and often less obvious ways that abortion brings harm. “While it’s essential to focus on the unborn child—whose death is the gravest harm of abortion—there’s much more that needs to be said, because abortion harms far more than the child in the womb. The case against abortion is far more comprehensive.”
Thus, in each of the book’s seven chapters, the authors highlight a different way in which abortion is harmful. In chapter one they make the familiar case that the foremost harm comes to the unborn child whose life is terminated. In chapter two they show that, contrary to the way abortion tends to be presented, it is not a boon to women that allows them to participate in society and the economy on par with men. It has not caused increased education or workplace success, and has not allowed women to thrive as women. To the contrary, it has compelled women to have to act more like men to increase their likelihood of success.
Chapter 3 makes the argument that abortion has “exacerbated inequality, perpetuating racial division and social stratification.” Anderson and DeSanctis expose the eugenic roots of the abortion-rights movement and show how abortion disproportionately affects non-white Americans and disproportionately takes the lives of girls and those with disabilities. Chapter 4 shows that the entire field of medicine has been harmed as doctors have used their technology and expertise to kill rather than to heal.
Chapters 5 and 6 turn to the rule of law and politics to show how both the legal process and the political process have been taken captive by the issue of abortion. Here they look at a number of Supreme Court rulings, the increasingly tumultuous vetting of Supreme Court Justices, and the Democratic Party’s increased insistence that there is no place within the party for those who are not pro-choice.
The final chapter turns to media to show how popular culture is increasingly showing abortions in a positive light and even how the abortion industry has consultants in Hollywood who attempt to work positive representations of abortion into movies and television. It also shows how the corporate world is taking clear sides on abortion and using their influence to promote the pro-choice cause while blocking anything that would promote the opposite. A brief conclusion calls each person to action—action that will help make abortion as unthinkable as it ought to be. Though none of us can do everything, certainly each of us can do something.
The authors of Tearing Us Apart make a fascinating, compelling, and heartbreaking case. While we all know that abortion brings ultimate harm to the unborn child, I’d suggest that few of us have thought as clearly about the many other forms of harm. But when we begin to understand this, it opens our eyes to see just how deeply and terribly society has been impacted by the presence, the acceptance, the celebration, and the near-sacramental obsession with abortion. “We all have a responsibility to ameliorate the harms of abortion—a task that starts by remembering the profound and inherent goodness of life, even in the face of suffering. It is our hope that this book will show those who haven’t made up their minds on this issue how abortion has hurt our country, and that it will equip pro-life readers with the truth so they can offer it courageously to others.” This is very much my hope as well.

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