http://bfads.net/ – Good site with email updates and clickable master shopping lists

http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/ – The Black Friday part of gottadeal.com . Same as bfads.net and yet some differences. I use them both.

General Great Bargain Sites

http://dealnews.com/

http://www.slickdeals.net/

http://morestuff4less.com/

http://www.techbargains.com/

and http://www.gottadeal.com/index.php

LeadershipJournal.net | Christians Without Borders

Leader’s Insight: Christians Without Borders
My risky mission expeditions force me to ask, am I first a Christian or an American?
by Mark Warnock, guest columnist

Two years ago, I had the great privilege to travel to Cuba to teach on worship in a little seminary in Havana and to preach in some house churches. Cuba? Yes, Cuba.

My father went with me on the trip. Our family is from Florida, and in the weeks leading up to the trip, we talked about my parents’ memories of enduring weeks of dread during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. My dad was 21 at the time. Given that history, and the fact that Dad doesn’t have a socialist bone in his body, I was surprised at how quickly he agreed to go along. We knew we were walking into a history of hostility, and that simply by being Americans, we could be lightning rods for trouble. Overall, I had peace about making the trip, but this was Cuba, and there were times when our planning was tinged with doubts.

As it turned out, the only nervous moments came on the way into the country. When our plane landed, we were met by soldiers wearing olive drab uniforms, just like in the movies. It was a little surreal. In the terminal, our group of five gringos stood out among the other travelers. We were questioned at length by customs officials. We were honest about why we had come, but were evasive about the names of our Cuban contacts and their churches. We were eventually allowed in without incident.

The rest of the trip was a joy. The Cuban believers were passionate, gracious, and hospitable. They have very little material wealth, but they are rich in love and courage. Over the past 20 years, a slow revival has taken place in Cuba, beginning in the eastern provinces. Thousands have come to faith. They both needed and appreciated our teaching and encouragement.

SermonCentral.com: Free Sermons, Illustrations and Outlines

Contextual Preaching:
The Key to Preaching So Your Audience Can Hear
by Ed Stetzer

At the heart of effective preaching is a solid missiological perspective.  Are you communicating in such a way that your words actually convey biblical truth to your audience?  Or does your preaching float right past your hearers because it’s not delivered “on a frequency” that they listen to?  In this respect, we can probably learn as much about good preaching from Hudson Taylor as we can from Haddon Robinson.

Indigenization

Jesus left his comfortable dwelling in heaven and took on the appearance of those he sought to reach.  He wore their clothes, ate their food, spoke their language, and understood their culture at its deepest level.  He fully identified with his hearers.

The idea behind indigenization for us today is that a church should spring forth out of the soil in which it is planted. It is indigenous in that its leadership, expressions, forms, and functions reflect a biblical expression in a certain context.

What we have found is that when the pastoral leadership, core of the church, and community all line up, the potential for the church to take on an indigenous or contextual form is significant. This combination seems to provide a greenhouse for explosive growth.  Preaching is a central part of that process.

Justified: Creation vs. Evolution: Does It Matter (as a professing Christian) Where You Stand?

Good post from a very interesting blog.

9Marks

Simply Christian
By N.T. Wright Reviewed by Andrew Davis

HarperSanFrancisco, 2006, 256 pp., $22.95

It is the unique privilege and responsibility of every generation of Christians to explain Christian faith—the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ—clearly and simply to the unbelievers with whom they share their time on the earth. It is also entrusted to every generation of Christians to protect that eternal message from corruption. The first of these two responsibilities is extramural, and causes us to probe the minds and hearts of our unbelieving neighbors to see what unique obstacles Satan has erected that make the gospel unintelligible to them. The second of these is intramural, and causes us to study the words we use to articulate the unchanging gospel and to align those words with the perfectly straight canon of Scripture to be sure they are faithful and true. Christianity must be simply explained, but it must be done in a way that is faithful to the Scripture. Otherwise, it will be simply damaging.

Many experts are promoting N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian as a primary resource for explaining Christianity to skeptics and unbelievers. The dustcover promised “This will become a classic.” Christianity Today heralded it as a worthy successor to C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity as a ready-made tool to slip into the hands of unbelieving coworkers. While such tools are extremely helpful in our evangelistic mission, it is  essential that they be faithful to the biblical articulation of the gospel. If the tools we use contain errors, faulty articulations, misleading images and analogies, and harmful oversimplifications, then they do more harm than good. This is especially true if such a book becomes a “classic,” trusted and embraced by a majority of the gospel-loving church.

Creation crisis in Christian colleges

Kurt P. Wise, Ph.D., Bryan College, Dayton, Tennessee

January 31, 2006
While many believers are committed to a Christian college education, escalating college costs are forcing these Christians to be very careful in their “shopping” for colleges (either for themselves or for their children). If one believes, as I do, that creation is foundational to all education, then an important criterion should be what the college professors teach about Genesis. 

Recently, both the Wheaton College student newspaper (this is a prominent Christian school near Chicago) and Chicago Tribune ran stories¹ about the age of the earth in Christian colleges. Now, controversy in Christian colleges is not new. Nor is young-earth versus old-earth a new conflict in the church, for it’s been with us for over two centuries. But, as the author of the Tribune article implied, this conflict might be getting worse.

So why is there a conflict? The rub comes from the fact that although 44–47% of the population seems to believe in something resembling young-age creationism,² probably more than 90% of Christian colleges and their professors do not. With the exception of Seventh Day Adventist colleges, it’s virtually impossible to find young-age creation taught at denominational colleges (Southern Baptist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, etc.), and some, such as (Southern Baptist) Baylor University, won’t even teach Intelligent Design.³  The Christian colleges which teach young-age creation are few and far between.

The 12 Mistakes of Christmas Outreach

The authors each have over 30 years experience with holistic church marketing and community outreach, working with churches and ministries across nearly 100 denominations, in every state and in many other countries. Drawing on that wide experience, they outline in this article what they’ve learned to be the 12 most common mistakes churches make in Christmas outreach.

They strongly believe any church that takes active steps to avoid these mistakes will dramatically increase the effectiveness of their outreach. Christmas outreach done in the way described here will positively impact every other facet of a church’s ministry, and many of the recommendations provide smarter ways to plan for the whole year.