More evangelistic sites

My promised reviews of evangelistic sights have been slow in coming, due to life with a 2 month old! However, in the meantime, here are some more sights that I've come across.

My brother, John Ross pointed out the site Glad you asked.
That in turn has links to...

Apologetics

Veritas Forum - Veritas Forums are university events that engage students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life. Their talks are available online.

Josh McDowell - An apologetics web site with answers to many difficult questions.

The Zacharias Trust - The Zacharias Trust exists to try to answer the questions of honest sceptics about the truth of Christianity.

William Lane Craig - A resource containing articles and debate transcripts of Dr. Craig's work as philosopher, theologian, writer and speaker.

Institut für Glaube und Wissenschaft (Institute for Belief and Science) - Articles related to apologetics

Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry - Information on doctrine, various religious groups, cults, Evolution, New Age, and related subjects.

Rational Christianity - Objections to Christianity explored and answered

Answers in Genesis - Apologetics with a focus on Genesis


Culture/Evangelism

Relevant Magazine- RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM is a daily updated website covering God, life and progressive culture. They get beneath the surface and ask the questions no one else is asking.

Ministry and Media - A storehouse of pop culture information and programming ideas to help youth workers use media to relate the gospel to teenagers

London Institute for Contemporary Christianity - The LICC works to equip Christians to engage biblically and relevantly with the issues they face, including Work, Capitalism, Youth Culture, Media, Gender and Communication.

Damaris/Culture Watch - CultureWatch contains hundreds of articles and study guides on films, books, music, television and some of the developments within culture as a whole.

This is suddenly looking like a large project to review all these sites... perhaps I'll wait until my son is at least 3 months before I begin in earnest!

Are my Sermons really Christian?

One only has to read book reviews on the 9-Marks website to see that there is an epidemic among popular ‘evangelical’ books that say some true things about Christianity but fail to articulate the gospel clearly. They say a great deal about Jesus but fail to say that his penal substitutionary atonement is the only hope for sinners under God’s just and holy wrath.

Take just three quotes from the reviews in the latest 9Marks e-journal:

Most pointedly, I do not believe Simply Christian tenderly and clearly warns individual sinners of their peril or calls upon them to flee to Christ and to his cross as the only remedy for personal guilt and sin before a holy God. (Andy Davis on NT Wright)

But you still haven’t told the non-believer what exactly he’s beholding on the cross. He is, in fact, beholding the Son of God taking upon himself the wrath of God for the sins of all who repent and believe. That picture is amazing. But it’s more. It’s actually doing something, like paying for sin. (Jonathan Leeman on Erwin McManus)

The fact is, McLaren does not sufficiently call human beings to grapple with and exult in what God did for us in Christ. Put another way, he does not place concern for the here-and-now in the context of the eternal. That is a grievous error, for it is only when we have a deep understanding of our eternal relationship with God, won by Jesus Christ, that concern for the present world is placed in its proper perspective. The Bible could not be clearer about this. Good works apart from Christ’s saving work are nothing. But good works springing from a heart that has been changed by God’s regenerating power are the sweetest of fruit. (Greg Gilbert on Brian McLaren)

My question is this: could the same be said about any of the sermons that we preach from the pulpit? I fear that I have preached several sermons which were Christian in what they said, but failed to get to the heart of Christianity in failing to articulate the gospel.

Preachers, remember that you have not adequately taught any Christian truth until you have shown how that truth relates to the center of Christian truth the gospel. Thus we cannot claim to have preached a Christian sermon if it does not call sinners to depend entirely upon the penal substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Will the gospel be clear in your next sermon?

This post appeared first on the Church Matters blog at 9marks

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What to look for in Evangelistic Websites

As stated in my previous posts, I'm hoping to review various evangelistic websites.
But before I start out with any reviews, I'm going to lay out the criteria by which I will be assessing them.

1) Faithfulness of the gospel.

In any site for Non-Christians this is the most important thing. It could succeed at everything else, but if the gospel is not clearly and faithfully presented it has failed.

There are four main things that I'd look for:

1. God: is it clear that God is the Holy, Loving Creator?
2. Man: that we are made in God's image to worship him, but have rebelled against him and are therefore subject to his good and just but terrible anger.
3. Christ: that he is the perfect God-man who died on the cross to take the punishment that sinners deserve, and was raised from the dead, and is now the risen Lord.
4. Response: that Jesus calls us now to turn from our sin, submit to his Lordship, and trust him for our salvation.

2) Clarity
If the gospel is presented faithfully, how clear is it? Is it presented in a way that someone with no knowledge of biblical language might understand.

3) Applicability
How well has the gospel been applied to people's lives in various ways, so that people might see it's implications clearly? Are the implications of the gospel confused with the gospel?

4) Responsibility
Does the site take the responsibility to help people to know how they might find out more about the gospel?

5) Usability
Is it easy to navigate the site. Does it look good?