Links to Read with Your Morning Coffee...

So, today I want to share with you all some things I’ve read or found recently that I thought were interesting. So, grab some coffee (or tea, or other beverage of choice) and we can sit and chat about these things that have caught my attention lately:

A friend from high school recently shared this site with me via facebook (I love facebook). It’s called PhotogenX and it’s really a very inspiring and touching organization. Here’s how they describe themselves, “The vision of photogenX is to use photography as a tool for cultural transformation so that issues such as gender based injustice will be issues of history instead of the future. PhotogenX advocates for those who cannot speak for themselves (a voice for the voiceless) and challenges the current global status quo. In addition photogenX seeks to capture the people and places of every nation in the world showing off their beauty but not masking their pain.” I think this is a beautiful and inspiring vision. They have a number of published materials to help raise awareness for issues like gender injustice around the world. They also offer seminars and a Discipleship Training Program that focuses on photography. Anyway, I think it’s very cool what they are doing and thought I’d share it with you all.

I recently came upon this Introvert's Lexicon and found it interesting. Being a pretty strong introvert myself, this made sense to me. It also gives recommendations for counseling introverts and for issues that introverts often come to counseling with, which I thought were interesting and potentially helpful.

 This is another blog about making church really local. I find the idea of a truly local church to be fascinating. I’ve been wrestling with some of the problems of a local church in this day and age though, but I thought that this article's assessment for some of the benefits of a truly local church was very interesting and thought-provoking.

This week I also discovered this cooking site that I am now in love with, called 101 Cookbooks. I have loved looking through these healthy recipes but have especially enjoyed the site because the pictures of the food are just so beautiful. If you are looking for a good healthy cooking blog this is one I highly recommend.

Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church has written three (+) posts on pastors and salaries. In this first blog, Pastors and Churches and Salaries, he asks “Can you think of some reasons that a church would not want pastors to ‘work with their hands’ in order to support themselves and their families?” In the next blog, 1 Corinthians 9 and Salaries for Pastors, he makes the argument that only “those who are travelling away from home in order to proclaim the gospel” have a right to support. And in the third blog, Acts 20 and Salaries for Pastors, he uses Acts 20 and 1 Corinthians to argue that the practice at the time, and what Paul was instructing, was that pastors and elders should work with their own hands and support themselves through their work. I found these posts to be really interesting and worth the read, since ministry and finances and sustainability and business as missions have been topics on my radar for some time now.

Ok, I think that’s it for now. Enjoy!

Rejoicing in the journey - Bethany Stedman