Author: Jonathan Dodson

Books & Culture has a fascinating and informative article on the impact of global birth rates. Popluation control has become a hip issue among liberal urbanites. However, as Phillip Longman points out, most of the world’s countries are in birth rate decline, which will negatively affect global and local economies. Less workers, weaker economies.

Of course, certain strands of environmental philosophy argue that we exist for the earth, not the earth for man, and as a result we have a responsiblity to scale back global population growth to replete our natural resources. This issue is complex. Longman provides some clarity here. What are your thoughts?

Here is  an excerpt from Nine Marks newsletter, devoted to preaching:

We call expositional preaching the first mark in a healthy church because we believe if you get that right, the other marks follow. You’ll hear this theme surface again and again in this issue’s articles. Mike Gilbart-Smith leads the way by comparing what he calls “authoritative” preaching to recent proposals for “conversational” preaching. Ajith Fernando, Al Mohler, Kevin Smith, and Derek Thomas offer their two cents on that question. Mark Driscoll takes on the proposal for narrative preaching, while former Trinity preaching prof Mike Bullmore presents a defense for expositional preaching. And postmodernism, the cause of so much hand-wringing these days about what “should” happen the “pulpit,” is re-considered by “Carl Trueman.”

See the whole letter here.

“In a new book called Social Intelligence, author Daniel Goleman explores the fascinating “neural ballet” that connects humans brain-to-brain. And guess what? Goleman concludes that we are hard-wired to connect. According to the author, ‘Neuroscience has discovered that our brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person.'”

See the whole article here.

I just read a church planting scorecard request. This strikes me as rather odd. The metaphor communicates that points and stats drive healthy church plants. The categories requested for the scorecard are: 1) Launch date 2) Average attendance 3) Highest attendence 4) Total baptisms 5) Average offerings.

Noticably missing are: 1) Spiritual maturity 2) impact on community 3) conversions. Thoughts?

Resources for healthy church (plants):

Rohrmayer, Avoiding Church Planting Landmines

Driscol, Confessions of a Reformissionary

Macchia, Healthy Church, Healthy Disciples, Building Teams

Dever, Nine Marks, Deliberate Church