Thank God it’s Friday
This is excerpted from my TGIF column at SOLA Network.
Articles From Around The Web
Benjamin Bae: Humble Confidence as Secure Curiosity
Ministry leaders need to build their curiosity muscles to exercise healthy power, build up other leaders, and create a culture of trust and vulnerability that comes through humility.
Jeremy Writebol: The Presence of Advent
As much as Advent is a season for gathering with family and friends, for the church it is a missional launching point for us to inhabit and take the gospel to the world. The world sits and waits year after year for a savior. They make functional saviors of sex, power, possessions, comfort, and a billion other idols they can find. Yet, all the while being let down year after year by their little, failing, and distant gods. The world is waiting, the Savior has come, the church must be present!
Colin Fast: What Does Your Pulpit (Or Lack of One) Communicate to the Congregation?
The Ministry of the Word has fallen on hard times – people grumbling to gather together in a majority of churches now for a thirty-minute sermon (if that!) once a week. No doubt, the Word does the work – pulpit or no – but there are visual cues we can give that the Word is still fundamental to our faith and our practice.
Books, Podcasts, Music, And More
Raychel McKelvy: Defying Gravity and the Weight of Sin
Wicked’s climactic number serves as an exhilarating metaphor for finding freedom in Christ.
Sam Koo: Best Books for Pastors in 2024
9Marks asked pastors around the world a simple question: what books did you read in 2024 that helped you be a better pastor?
Aaron Lee: Related Works
Book reviews: Walking with God Through the Valley by May Young, The Nature & Practice of True-Hearted Discipleship by Ian Hamilton, Historical Theology by William Cunningham, Church Planter by Tony Merida. Listen to our TGIF playlist on Spotify. Join my Asian American Worship Leaders Facebook group.
Featured This Week On SOLA Network
Aaron Lee: Vivid and Vibrant: A Book Review of The New Testament in Color
How can we read the Bible from a different perspective? In The New Testament in Color, IVP Academic presents a multiethnic Bible commentary.
Heidi Wong: A Blind Man, A Crowd, And The Call Of Jesus: Advent 2020
As we continue to await the second appearing of our savior, let us with great anticipation be persistent in our pursuit of Jesus, no matter our condition. Like Jesus, let us hear the cries of lament from our neighbors, and draw them near to the only one who can save.
Patreeya Thorn: A Letter to the Lonely
Jesus’s definition of a “Merry Christmas” is not one without sorrow, longing, or messiness — but one that is infinitely sweeter because he is there with us in all of it it.
Keith Fong: Christ, Everlasting Father
The king’s role was to protect, provide for, and preserve his nation with the benevolence of a father. The name “Everlasting Father” rejoices in Christ’s everlasting kingship. Christ is King, and throughout redemptive history he has loved his people with a kingly, fatherly love.
TGIF: Roundup for December 13, 2024
Modernity Makes Us Spiritually Sick: Or Why You Should Read Byung-Chul Han / 4 Ways Healthy Church Members Cultivate True Growth / Mobilize the Globalized / How Music Helps Us Understand the Meaning of Advent and Christmas / A Bible for the People
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