3rd attempt at this post…..

Oh man, this is a good line up. Check this out:

As if Al Mohler, C.J. Mahaney, Mark Dever and J. Ligon Duncan didn’t already have enough on their plates they’ve started a joint Together for the Gospel blog. Go visit. I RSS’d it the minute I saw Justin Taylor blog on it. I must give one big huge hat tip to Justin. He’s always on point with these things!

Speaking of Lig, he gave the site a quick shoutout along with Cyrene Ministries and Reformed Blacks of America. I admit – I smiled a bit. Thank you for the honor, Pastor.

Speaking of pastors, Pastor Way pummels our wrong sensibilities with Recovering A Right View of God, followed by Recovering a Right View of Worship, combined with a 1-2 punch of Recovering a right view of self and then a Right view of Sin. Finally, Phil delivers the knockout punch with Recovering a Right View of Others. All I can say is WOW. Get to reading. You’ll be convicted.

Steve Camp laments on the church report’s list of America’s 50 most influential Christians. The only two shining stars on the list are Piper and D. James Kennedy.

J.T. Carter at Evangelical Outpost gives us the breakdown on the above-mentioned list of influential Christians.

Jason Engwer at NTRMin is now leaving the ministry to take care of things in ‘real life’. It’s on a good note, though. His post is very heartwarming. Jason, I fully identify with where you are. Eric Svendsen posts some follow-up words on Jason’s departure. Keep NTRMin and all current and former folks associated in prayer, folks.

Fred Butler expresses my thoughts quite well in his post on evangelical suckers (the tendency of ‘Christians’ to get suckered by any new fad or anything that purports itself to be Christian due to lack of discernment). My favorite paragraphs:

And what about Christians who try to hunt down Christian ideas in regular secular movies? Take for instance “The Matrix.” The film has a few allusions to Christian ideas, but to suggest that it was a movie with overt Christian themes is ridiculous. It had allusions to several world religions. And to think about all the youth group leaders who took their junior high schoolers to the Saturday afternoon showing of the sequel to the Matrix, The Matrix: Reloaded, believing the movie would be this big conversation starter to present a four spiritual laws tract out in the theater lobby, only to be scandalized by the orgy scene 20 minutes into the film. I could laugh if it were not so serious.

Christians need to realize Hollywood does not care for them, nor their values. All evangelicals are to Hollywood is another means to make a buck, so they throw them a few sugar sticks with these allegedly wholesome religious films designed to just present enough of what Christians are familiar with, but hold back so as not to offend everyone else. And sadly, the Christian community laps it up.

Well said, Fred.

Speaking of people whose names begin with F, Frank (Centuri0n) has a media habits survey going. Go check it and participate.

Tony gives us a bit of an interesting post about His Library, Two Atheists and Changing Truth. The library part is unimportant (*covet, covet*), but the convo with two atheists is.

Coming back to Al Mohler again, he gives Cent a big hat tip for letting him the CBA’s advertisement promoting ‘Gospel of Oprah’ has misquoted him and setting the record straight. Frank’s really on point these days. I still remember the days of ‘I will be on vacation. You will not recognize me. These are not the droids you are looking for.”

and we’ll close the night out with a non-blog:
Al Mohler and Janet Parshall do a spectacular job on Larry King Live discussing the movie ‘Brokeback Mountain’. The full transcript is available for you to read here:

http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0601/17/lkl.01.html.

I suggest studying it and looking closely at Dr. Mohler’s argumentation and how he frames things. Head to his website and look for the recent broadcast and study his argumentation there too. It’ll help arm you in preparation for these discussions.

That’s it for now. Sleep calleth. Church bright and early.