Pagan Sermons, David Cloud, and Preacher Idol

1. Your Old Testament sermon needs to get saved. Though I might push back on a couple points, this is the most clear, compact argument I can remember for why and how we should preach the OT in light of the pervasive Christological themes in Scripture.

2. Read this article on church music and tell me who Al Mohler's quoting in this tweet. Because I'm not sure I believe my eyes. Maybe now I've seen it all.

3. The next hipster rage: having some fun with elders who sense a call to preach, inspired by the "American Idol" concept. I'm grateful to serve in a church that treats elders with greater dignity.

4. An interesting look at the divergent trajectories of historically Baptist colleges, and the price required to pursue biblical fidelity.

5. Some helpful perspective on student ministry from SEBTS prof Alvin Reid here. He cites a startling admission from the founder of one of the largest youth ministry organizations:

We got what we wanted. We turned youth ministry into the toy department of the church. Churches now hire professionals to lead youth ministry. We got relevance but we created a generation of teenagers who are a mile wide and are an inch deep.

Here's the fourth component of the corrective measures Reid proposes:

Connect to the whole church, across generations. The generation of teens today is not only the largest, it is also the most fatherless. We must connect students to the larger church and not function as a parachurch ministry within a church building. Students need older believers in their lives. We need a Titus 2 revolution where older men teach younger guys and older women teach younger ladies.

6. Finally, I greatly appreciated Ryan Martin's concluding post on biblical discernment—a brief summary of some key texts. I'm posting the link here so I can find it later, but I suspect you may enjoy it as well.