Prison Fellowship put together a short video on the life of Chuck Colson. This is well worth your time to watch.

Tim Challies has a post today about his encounter with the Louisville abortion clinic when he was in town for T4G last week. Tim says that he observed some Christians standing outside the clinic encouraging young women not to abort their unborn babies. You can read the narrative of Tim’s experience here, but I want to tell you a little bit about the people who are outside of that abortion clinic every week.

A few years ago, Dave and Stacy Hare of Immanuel Baptist Church were inspired by a sermon from their pastor to begin a ministry called “Speak for the Unborn.” The ministry was to be a kind of last line of defense for the unborn. They got together some other volunteers and went to the abortion clinic every Saturday morning to talk to young women as they approached the clinic. The message was pretty simple. They would encourage them to keep their babies, to come to the crisis pregnancy center next door, and (when there’s opportunity) to consider the gospel.

My church got involved with the ministry a couple of years ago, and I have been out there many times myself. Over the years, the volunteers of “Speak for the Unborn” have seen many women walk away from the abortion clinic and into the crisis pregnancy center. Babies have been saved as a result of this ministry, and countless mothers and fathers have heard the gospel. It’s not an easy work. The escorts from the clinic can be really hostile. But it is nevertheless a good work.

This ministry is still in need of volunteers. I have observed that the women from our church were the most effective at engaging the women who were coming in for abortions. The ministry needs more women who are bold to speak to mothers in crisis. But that doesn’t mean there is no role for men. I can’t tell you how many conversations that I had with husbands and boyfriends who accompanied young women to the clinic. Many of these women are looking for just one person to support their decision to keep their baby. So convincing these husbands and boyfriends is crucial work. Male volunteers also have opportunities to engage the clinic’s escorts, many of whom are men. Our folks did as much evangelizing the escorts as we did those visiting the clinic.

If you want more information about this ministry, I encourage you to visit the “Speak for the Unborn” website. It provides information and resources not only for those who want to get involved in Louisville, but also for those who would like to start a ministry like this in their own city.

Eleanor Barkhorn at The Atlantic waylays the movie adaption of Blue Like Jazz. Her critique centers not so much on the production value as it does the message of this story. One paragraph in particular is devastating, and it reflects to some extent weaknesses inherent in the book that the movie was based on. She writes:

Unfortunately, in its attempt to be a more honest voice of evangelical Christianity, Blue Like Jazz the movie ends up saying barely anything at all. It tries to navigate a middle course between mainstream Hollywood and mainstream evangelical movie-making, and in the process loses everyone. The film doesn’t show skeptics anything distinctive about Christianity. And it tells believers not to share what they know, but instead to apologize for it.

Read the rest here.

You may have noticed the numerous warnings that Carl Trueman gave last year about celebrity pastors and the conferences that feature them (see here, here, here, here). The one that really got me was the anecdote he shared about a pastor who was kicked out of the VIP section at a recent mega-conference. Trueman’s remarks led to a spirited and generally helpful exchange with Thabiti Anyabwile. It was a real coup that Trueman agreed to appear at T4G last week to discuss the issue again. This time he did so with a panel of celebrity pastors before a gathering of 8,000 people. The panel featured Trueman and Anyabwile along with Matt Chandler, David Platt, C. J. Mahaney, and Lig Duncan. It was a fascinating conversation, and I hope that T4G will make the audio and video of the discussion available.

As I was preparing for my Sunday sermon on John 4:45-54, the issue came up on my radar screen again. While we often think about the spiritual perils of being a celebrity pastor, I wonder if we’ve thought enough about the dangers of following one. I came across a message from John Piper that addresses this very issue with particular insight. It is from his sermon on John 4:43-54 in which Jesus heals a royal official’s son. Piper contrasts the royal official’s authentic faith with the sign-seeking faith of the unbelievers in Galilee. In doing so, Piper says that the sign-seekers were really just people who wanted to benefit from being close to a celebrity. Thus Piper warns against…

The pride of attachment to someone special. A kind of vicarious sense of importance. The people could say that this great miracle-worker grew up in their town. This makes them want for him to do his miracles. So they “honor” him in that way. But why do they want him to do these miracles? Because the more he does, the more their attachment feeds their ego. They don’t see the glory of humble service. They don’t feel the need for his grace. They use him. His power and fame feeds their pride. And so they don’t honor him for who he is, even though they think they are.

This impulse is very much alive today and can infect us and keep us from knowing Christ the way he really is. We can be attached to a church, or a movement, or a music style, or a person, or a ministry in a way that starts to feed our ego. And it will seem justifiable because it’s Christian. And subtly we begin to want this Christian thing to thrive not for the glory of Christ, but because it feeds our ego. And when that happens, it becomes harder and harder to see Christ for who he really is—the one who saves by grace alone, and who calls us to lowliness and servanthood.

We should never underestimate our own conceits. It was probably this very thing that was behind the factionalism at Corinth that Paul confronted (1 Cor. 1:12). No doubt, it is still among us now, and we need to be vigilant over our own hearts.

You can read the rest of Piper’s sermon here, download it here, or listen below.

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