Faith Bible Blog

‘The Church Report’ recently published the results of a survey of their readership (both print & online).  They asked, ‘Who are the most influential Christians in the US?’  They received more than 150,000 nominations and the results are quite interesting…   So much could be said on this, but I’ll just give you a few select choices and let you look through the full report and come to your own conclusions on this.

#1.  TD Jakes
#2.  Joel Osteen
#3.  Billy Graham
#4.  Rick Warren
#5.  Bill Hybels

#6.  Paul Crouch  (and no, Jan didn’t make the list)
#15.  Joni Eareckson Tada
#20.  George Barna
#24.  John Piper
#30.  Benny Hinn
#36.  Creflo Dollar
#44.  Pope Benedict XVI
#45.  Beth Moore  (ouch, had to hurt to lose by 1 to the Pope)

#50.  Dr. Phil McGraw  (better known as Dr. Phil)

So many, many, many things I want to say about these & others listed, but I’m thinking that discretion is best here.  Scripturally, there is warrant to speak boldly against many listed (Titus 1:10-11), but this list is almost too easy.  And it’s rather painful to consider that this comprises the judgment of the vast majority of people who took the time to write in to ‘The Church Report’.  Truly we must be in the last days! (cf. 2 Timothy 3:1-5)

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{mosimage}I realize that I’m behind the times in reporting this, but on Sunday I learned that some of you are not aware that Dr. John Piper was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer.  Thankfully, it was detected early and treatment is already planned.  His faith in God is strong and his encouragement to his church family is breath-taking.  Definitely read his letter to the body and his sermon preached the next Sunday, and be in prayer for his confidence to remain steadfast & immovable during this time of tribulation.


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You may not have heard lately, but Tony Blair (PM of Britain) recently revealed that he used to spank (‘smack’ in British-ese) his children, but had not been doing so with his youngest son, age 5.  This candid, televised admission from Blair renewed calls from British campaigners to pass a law outlawing all forms of physical discipline towards children, including spanking/smacking.

Interestingly, while running that story, CNN began to take a poll, asking "Is it ever appropriate to smack a child?"  I don’t know the final tabulation, but the results when I last looked were surprising!

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Such a strong favorable response seems contrary to what’s typically conveyed via media channels.  There may be any number of factors that cause the discrepancy, so I’ll leave you to form your own conclusions.

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Occassionally, life gets so consumed that certain things get put off.  That happened briefly with the content here, and then I found myself putting it off.  I had a list of string of things holiday-related to post about and now mid-January, it seems a bit late for that…

With Steve Mulkey and I both gone for the holidays, the sermon archives fell woefully out of date.  Monday was spent getting all that back up to speed, with sermons from Christmas forward getting put online and our podcast feed updated.  (Marcelo’s January 1 message on the Forcefulness of the Word from 2 Chronicles 34 remains missing, literally.  If you know who has the CD, let Steve know!)  In addition, the audio from two Equipping classes is now being regularly uploaded.  And Erick Cobb’s class on ‘Issues in Christian Ethics’ has finally been uploaded as well.  Equipping Hour audio from past classes can be found here, for those who’re interested.

And on a more interesting/challenging note, the turn of the year saw the start of the ‘Faith & Practice‘ Blog, run by a group of guys from TMS, including Matt Waymeyer, a pastor down in Vista who’s an ex-classmate and all-around great guy!  They started with two great posts on New Year’s Resolutions.  Though the common time for resolutions has past, these two articles remain worth reading.  Here’s the links:
   A New Year’s Top Ten List (Part 1)
   A New Year’s Top Ten List (Part 2)

Part 2 is a survey of Edwards’ resolutions, and includes a great attempt at placing them in ten major categories…contrasting his ‘Top Ten’ Resolutions with the world’s ‘Top Ten’ resolutions (found in part 1 of the article.  Definitely read through his list and consider adopting some/all of them for yourself.

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Ever wonder what are the ‘popular’ verses?  Crossway and the ESV blog have recently released stats on what verses are most often searched for.   Interestingly, the top 5 are:

1. John 3:16
2. Proverbs 31:10ff
3. Matthew 5:27-30
4. Romans 8:28
5. Romans 3:23

Much could be made out of this…we could say that the majority of Christians are:

• forgetful because they can’t remember the ‘exact’ wording to John 3:16 or Romans 3:23, though most have heard both countless times
• unaware of what a godly woman is, because they have to keep checking
• personally experiencing sexual immorality, or knowing someone who is
• undergoing severe trials and in need of spiritual comfort
• oh, and tech-savvy because they searched online

 Now obviously (or at least, hopefully obvious) these are not necessarily accurate assessments about Christians who frequent the ESV website.    The list of above passages is just trivia… and my ‘facts’ have no necessary correlation.

So then, let’s close with a little more — here’s the top 4 most requested chapters of the bible:

1. Romans 8
2. Matthew 5
3. John 1
4. Genesis 1
   

And if you’re really geeky and would like the data & lots of charts, the ESV Blog has posted an excel file (6.6 MB) with all the data.

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