Mark Lauterbach

A Couple Call-Outs

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Bloggers run hot and cold. Do this long enough and you either sound like a broken record or you start reading like the leaflets handed out from downtown street corners by former mental patients.

So when someone's on, the rest of us need to get the word out.

Mark Lauterbach of GospelDrivenLife is writing the best Godblog right now. No question about it. He's filling his blog with challenging stuff flowing with grace, wisdom, and truth. If you're not reading this blog, you're missing a real jolt to the soul. Anyone who can shake us out of our complacency and yet leave us refreshed is a treasure. That's Mark in a nutshell.

I have pretenses toward writing. Every so often I post about being a Christian who writes. Of all the blogs I've encountered for writers, none matches Terry Whalin's The Writing Life. Every post is loaded with helpful hints, great links, professional connections—I've got more of Terry's posts checked as keepers in Bloglines than any site I read. That Terry's a Christian is icing on the cake. Now that even your Great Aunt Gertrude fancies herself the next Annie Proulx, you might have a need to read Terry. Hey, you've already got a blog, right? Why not go for the next step?

Check out these two blogs and have a great weekend.

Either Faithfulness or Relevance?

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Recently, over at Together for the Gospel, Mark Dever made the following statement:

I think the most basic practical division among evangelical pastors today may be between those who pursue faithfulness and assume relevance and those who pursue relevance and assume faithfulness.

After reading that, I couldn't avoid asking why we Christians try so hard to make all issues that confront us into "either/or" propositions. I don't understand why we're afraid to ask whether or not we can be "both/and" on some issues instead and still be true to the Gospel.

Why can't our churches be both faithful and relevant?

Mark Lauterbach of GospelDrivenLife attempts to unpack that question. Mark,  pastor of a Sovereign Grace Church in San Diego, is rapidly becoming one of my favorite voices in the Godblogosphere. His is the kind of Christian common sense that seems so rare anymore, and nearly everything he writes resonates with this blogger.

So Mark L. counters Mark D.'s statement and gives a better answer by asking that better question in his series, "Relevance or Faithfulness?"

Relevance or Faithfulness?, 1

Relevance or Faithfulness?, 2

Relevance or Faithfulness?, 3

Relevance or Faithfulness?, 4

I suspect that Mark is not done with this series, but this will give you a start. If you're a regular blog reader, and especially a charismatic, I heartily encourage you to blogroll GospelDrivenLife. I think you'll appreciate Mark as much as I do.

Have a great weekend.