In recent years God has allowed C.J. Mahaney, my dear friend and former senior pastor, to develop some unexpected but meaningful friendships with Mark Dever, Al Mohler, and Ligon Duncan. Unexpected because CJ barely graduated from high school and these guys have lots of letters after their names. They also come from Baptist and Presbyterian roots, while CJ heads up the reformed charismatic family of churches known as Sovereign Grace Ministries. Unexpected as they are, the friendship he shares with these men is meaningful because they share a common passion for (among other things) the Gospel, Reformed soteriology, the local church, and a complementarian …
Tag Archives | blogging to worship god
A Community of Bloggers?
At the risk of being redundant, I wanted to share a few more thoughts on blogging, in response to a question I received from Steve. He wrote, “Is there the potential for there to be recognized "elders" among Christian bloggers? I wonder what that would look like, and if it would help foster a more healthy "community" here in cyberspace?” I want to take Steve’s question to address the larger issue of what blogs can accomplish. Let me respond to the second question first. What would a healthy community in cyberspace look like? Excellent question. I’m not sure how much of a healthy community CAN exist in cyberspace. …
Share this post:
Blogging to Worship God 3 – Motives
My post from yesterday is already out of date. Technorati.com now says it searches 24.5 million blogs. That’s 100,000 more than yesterday. Which leads me to ask two questions. What are all these people saying? And why are they saying it? The past two days we’ve been talking about ways Christians can distinguish themselves in the blogosphere – in content and attitude. Today, I want to speak to an area that may not be as obvious – our motives. Every action has one or more motives behind it, whether we’re aware or not. Sometimes our motives are godly, sometimes sinful. Often I find that my motives are mixed. While …
Share this post:
Blogging to Worship God 2 – Attitudes
Today, Technorati.com told me that it searches 24.4 million blogs. That’s up from 14.2 million two months ago. Apparently, in the past 8 weeks, at least ten million people have decided they have something the world needs to hear. Maybe. Maybe not. However, as Carl Trueman succinctly points out: “The danger of the web is this: where everyone has a right to speak, everyone ends up thinking they have a right to be heard; and when everyone in general thinks they have a right to be heard, then you end up with a situation where nobody in particular is listened to.” In spite of the inherent dangers, I really am grateful to God for …
Share this post:
Blogging to Worship God 1 – Content
Recently I’ve been reading some insightful posts by bloggers on blogging. (Specifically, these by Carl Trueman, Michael Beasley, and Timmy.) While I don’t think everyone who reads WorshipMatters has their own blog, I know that a good number of you do. And if you don’t, you might leave a comment on one. So, I want to take this week to talk about how posting or commenting on a blog can be an act of worship to God. He tells us in 1 Cor. 10:31: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” If we should eat and drink to the glory of God, certainly we should blog to the glory of God. Three ways we can …
Share this post:
Blogging to Worship God, Pt. 2
Starting this blog has been more challenging than I expected. When I consider all that has been written on worship the past few years (and I’m sure I’ve just seen a small slice), it doesn’t seem like there’s much more to say. We simply need to do it. Worship God, that is. In addition, many of the articles/books I’ve read communicate what I want to share much better than I could ever hope to. Maybe I should just make my blog a collection of great quotes on worship. I’m also concerned that churning out a five-day-a-week column (that’s the goal, anyway) might be a little challenging. I’m not sure I can even convince Julie, my wife and best …
Share this post:
Blogging to Worship God, Pt. 1
A few months ago I became acquainted with the blog search engine technorati.com, and learned that it searched 14.2 million weblogs. I checked it yesterday and it was up to 20.7 million. That’s a lot of blogs. Someone said there’s a new blog every second. Personally, I think that’s probably conservative. “Who has time to read all this stuff?” I ask myself after spending 30 minutes reading blogs. And here I am adding one more blog to the world. How did I get here? Let me explain… From 1999-2003 I wrote a column called “Worship Matters” for crosswalk.com. When I stopped writing, Crosswalk kindly reran the series. As the second run came to …