links of the week (4.30.10 edition)

Links of the week

1. Mark Batterson’s thoughts on God’s speaking his promises in past tense is awesome.  What great things has God already that we haven’t seen come to fruition?
2. Sometimes we don’t have the luxury to think outside the box.  So Elevation Church’s worship blog points out that we should follow U2’s example and think inside the box to work what we’ve got.
3. As Christians, we aren’t honest about our walk with God.  We know how relationships work so why don’t we put more time into them when it comes to God.  Perry Noble does a great job at pointing out the times or the danger signs that our walk may be a limp.
4. After reading Ben Arment’s book Church in the Making, I have been realizing that our churches should not just focus on our theology but on our networks of relationships or our sociology.  I enjoyed this post by Ray Ortlund about translating our theology into sociology.
5. I tend to remember all of my failures.  This is a great post by Donald Miller talking about the importance of owning our successes.
6. Attitudes are contagious.  Pete Wilson says that you can tell the attitudes you are conveying by looking at the attitudes of those around you.
7. If you love the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People from Stephen Covey, then you might like the 7 Habits of Highly Evangelistic Christians by Thom Rainer, because you will probably, more than likely, like lists.  By the way, this was via Joshua Harris who got it via Kevin DeYoung.
8. Stop worrying about being creative.  Steven Furtick’s message in this blog post about creativity is great because he gets rid of the idea that we always have to say something new or at least in a new way.  He uses the analogy of the musical scale to say that we should “just put the stuff that’s already out there together in a way that moves you.” Because, “chances are, it’s going to move someone else, too.”  After all, there’s only 12 notes.  It’s all about perspective.
9. I am now officially excited about M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie because of the new trailer for the Last Airbender.  Wow.  I didn’t know the kid from Slumdog Millionaire was in it.
10. I used to love going to conferences.  Now I don’t get to as much but I don’t necessarily miss it that much with all the free things that I can get online.  But I love it when conferences post their videos.  Here is the footage from the most recent church planters’ conference called Velocity.