W4YW: Pastors after Affairs, the Death of Reading, & Preaching on Deaf Ears

Wisdom For Your Weekend: your weekly installment of things we’ve been reading (and watching) around the web.

Video of the Week

God Does Not Need You, John Piper. One of the ironies of the Christian life is that truly generous living comes from seeing how little God needs our help. You can drum up donations by making it seem like God is short on cash. But God tells us that he’s the big giver. And that inspires open hands (and open hearts) like nothing else can.

Articles of the Week

Should Pastors Be Restored to Ministry after an Affair? Phil Monroe. We wish questions like this were more academic and less immediately relevant. But, sadly, it seems that one of the constants in a sin-stained world is seeing gifted pastors failing to honor their marriage covenant—and subsequently having to leave the ministry. Monroe asks (and answers) a common and important question: can pastors ever re-enter the ministry after an affair?

You Won’t Believe What Shocking Thing He Said about Christian Clickbait, Aaron Earls. Eventually we’ll stop harping on the refuse that is clickbait. But until we Christians can learn to stop feeding the Buzzfeed troll, perhaps a few warnings like Earls’ are in order. So what’s so bad about clickbait? And how can I tell the difference between clickbait and, say, a catchy headline?

14 Reasons People Don’t Listen to Preaching, Chuck Lawless. If you’re a preacher, this article title no doubt makes you squirm. You’d rather not think that people aren’t listening to your preaching. But, of course, many of them aren’t. The reasons behind this, though, may not always be hardness of heart. Lawless identifies some of the most common reasons your message isn’t getting past those two little instruments of auditory wonder.

Our Culture of Reading and the End of Dialogue, Matthew Lee Anderson. What’s wrong with American society today? Ask 100 people, and you’re likely to get 95 answers (just being honest…there has to be some overlap). Anderson points to one such tear in our societal fabric—the slow death of reading. When a society reads well, it thinks well, learns quickly, and argues with civility. When it doesn’t? Well, let’s just hope that we Christians can re-learn what it means to be a people “of the book.”

On The Lighter Side

What is the Real Origin of OK? Arika Okrent. I (Chris) was quite nerd-ly proud to have known about 30% of this real origin story (thanks, Martin Van Buren!). But the other pieces of “OK” were news to me.

Wisdom For Your Weekend is presented to you by Chris Pappalardo, with occasional guidance from J.D. Greear. This is our attempt to reflect Proverbs 9:9: “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.”