Wisdom for Your Weekend is your regular installment of what we’ve been reading (and watching) around the web. Presented to you by Chris Pappalardo, with guidance from Pastor J.D., this is our attempt to reflect Proverbs 9:9: “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.” While we do not always agree with everything these authors post, we share these resources because we find them challenging and enriching. As we often say around the Summit, when it comes to reading, “Eat the fish and spit out the bones.”
Podcast of the Week
On Pastoral Burnout, Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever. 9Marks has just released their most recent journal issue, a comprehensive approach to a contemporary problem—burnout. To frame the issue, Leeman and Dever get together, having their own sort of nerd fun along the way, to talk about what burnout is, how it happens, and how pastors can avoid it.
Articles of the Week
9 Ways to Get Outside the Christian Bubble, Chuck Lawless. Obstacles to evangelism are legion, but for many of us, the chief obstacle is that of distance. We simply don’t know enough nonbelievers to have the chance to tell them about Jesus. So how can we escape our Christian bubble? It may not be as challenging as you think.
Jesus Is Lord. Period. Ted Olsen. It’s fair to say our culture is overly preoccupied with politics. In response, many evangelicals—ourselves included—have taken to saying, “Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not.” “Caesar” being the chief representative of politics in the first century, statements like these intend to say that contemporary politics is secondary to gospel truth. But the Bible diminishes the power of the Caesars of the world even more dramatically than we do. The New Testament writers realized what we often forget, that every Caesar in the world is a miniscule footnote to the true Lord of history. We are still giving today’s leaders far too much credit.
9 Things You Should Know About President Vladimir Putin, Joe Carter. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been in the news this week, as he and President Trump have been interacting at a summit in Helsinki, Finland. Even though Putin has been around a while—and even though he’s been in the spotlight much more in recent months—you may not know a lot about him. Joe Carter to the rescue.
Why Can’t You Stop Reading That Book (Even Though You Don’t Like It)? Katie Heaney. This is an interesting question, and one we haven’t thought too deeply about before. But what passes as an interesting thought in the minds of us mere mortals makes for hours of painstaking research in the social sciences. Yes, they have actually investigated why it is that certain people (like me) have a really hard time putting down books we don’t like, while others (like Pastor J.D.) can ditch a time-sucker without a second thought. Is it grit? Optimism? Guilt?
On the Lighter Side
The Tweet Song, Tim Hawkins and John Crist. What did comedians do with jokes that didn’t fit in their gigs before Twitter? One of life’s many imponderables. (For the record, I think Tim Hawkins won this round.)
