Al Mohler gives direction for believers on how to deal with Halloween in “Christianity and the Dark Side — What About Halloween?” He emphasizes parental discernment and concludes with this.

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther began the Reformation with a declaration that the church must be recalled to the authority of God’s Word and the purity of biblical doctrine. With this in mind, the best Christian response to Halloween, might be to scorn the Devil and then pray for the Reformation of Christ’s church on earth. Let’s put the dark side on the defensive.

We’ve chosen to forgo making much of Haloween in favor of giving our children sweets because, as my wife says “the Gospel is sweet”, and we’ll be celebrating the Reformation tonight by watching Luther.

Update: And then you gotta love the Dan Phillips family observance of the 31st. I think that’s where Carolyn got the “sweets because the Gospel is sweet” idea.

October 28, 2007 - AM Service
Be Thankful, Live for the Name of Christ - Colossians 3:17
Pastor Kevin | Higgins Lake Baptist Church

Listen to one minute of John Piper on How to Listen to Sermons

Via Desiring God Blog

I have a few Pownce invites for those who are interested. Leave a comment and be sure to give me your email address where requested. I’ll close the comments on this post when they are gone.

Here’s a quick rundown of a great piece by Jim Elliff on The Value of Hanging Out.

1. Find a hanging out place, or several, in your area.
2. Learn the names of the people you meet.
3. Take your Bible and spend time reading it, writing notes in your notebook, or reading a good Christian book while out.
4. Keep a friendly, approachable look about you.
5. Seek to get to the layer of philosophical talk.
6. You will find that they will be curious about you and your beliefs also.
7. Make friends, real friends, who will be important to you no matter what their spiritual preferences are. Love them for who they are.
8. If you have read something interesting that you can pass on, by all means do so, especially if it has something to do with the true love of your life, Jesus Christ.
9. Expect God to do something.

Via JT

Matt Perman writes at the Desiring God Blog, sharing their vision for making resources available online for free and challenges other Christian ministries to do the same:

The vision that we follow for our website is this: Post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface. I’ve just written an article setting forth this vision in more detail. It is called Make it Free: Improving Online Effectiveness by Removing All Barriers to Accessing and Sharing Content.

Here’s a quote from the end of the piece linked to above that summarizes but you should go read the whole thing.

Ministry websites exist to be a major avenue for spreading your message. Your website will do this most effectively if you “make it free”–that is, if you maximize ease of access to all of your content and remove all barriers that get in the way of using and sharing your content.

This may not be feasible for ministries with fewer resources but as much as possible I believe this should be true of all ministries.

Update (10/30/07): Matt speaks to Objections to Making It Free

Update (11/5/07): The Value of Making It Free

October 21, 2007 - AM Service
Be Thankful, The Word of Christ in You - Colossians 3:16
Pastor Kevin | Higgins Lake Baptist Church

I had the great privilege of attending the MARBC Annual Conference earlier this week. I’ve posted the audio to the MARBC.net website and it’s available at the following links.

“Discerning the Times and Seasons”
65th MARBC Annual Conference
Dr. Renald Showers, Friends of Israel, Inc., Keynote Speaker
Wednesday, October 22-24, Lake Ann Baptist Camp

Conference Description:
This year’s conference speaker was Dr. Renald E. Showers from the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. A special interactive Tuesday morning session was led by Ken Floyd regarding the vision of MARBC fellowship.

2007 Annual Conference, Session 1

2007 Annual Conference, Session 2

2007 Annual Conference, Session 3

2007 Annual Conference, Session 4

2007 Annual Conference, Session 5

October 14, 2007 - AM Service
Be Thankful, Be At Peace - Colossians 3:15
Pastor Kevin | Higgins Lake Baptist Church

I’ve not link spotted in a while but I have a few worthy links for you today.

• Pyromaniacs is about as good as it gets when it comes to taking on the hot topics of the day in the broad evangelical landscape. Subscribe to their RSS feed today.
• Think On These Things is a monthly publication from the ministry of Gary Gilley, pastor at Southern View Chapel. I had the privilege of hearing him speak at a pastors conference last spring. Gilley also takes on and writes about some of the most debated topics in the church today. You can subscribe to receive the newsletter by email. There’s also an RSS feed for the articles.
• Tim Challies reviews Joel Osteen’s latest book Become a Better You and warns that, “he teaches self-help but wraps it in a thin guise of Christian terminology. Thus people believe they are being taught the Bible when the reality is that they are learning mere human wisdom rather than divine wisdom. Osteen cunningly blends the wisdom of this age with language that sounds biblical. He blends the most popular aspects of New Age and self-help teaching with Christianity. And his audience is eagerly drinking this in.”

It seems that Bill Hybels has had a change of heart about how ministry should be done and I find the following quote very interesting.

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

How good to see an admission of this from Bill Hybels. (Via JT)

Update (10/22/07): Phil Johnson checks in on the topic

Update (10/31/07): Bob Burney writes at TownHall.com A Shocking “Confession” from Willow Creek Community Church. He notes,

Please note that “rooted in Scripture” still follows “rethink,” “new insights” and “informed research.” Someone, it appears, still might not get it. Unless there is a return to simple biblical (and relevant) principles, a new faulty scheme will replace the existing one and another generation will follow along as the latest piper plays.

Al Mohler on the urgency of Biblical preaching — From a Dying Man to Dying Men — Recovering a Bold Vision for Biblical Preaching

From Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening for October 11

“Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven:”—Lamentations 3:41 (ESV).

The act of prayer teaches us our unworthiness, which is a very salutary lesson for such proud beings as we are. If God gave us favours without constraining us to pray for them we should never know how poor we are, but a true prayer is an inventory of wants, a catalogue of necessities, a revelation of hidden poverty. While it is an application to divine wealth, it is a confession of human emptiness. The most healthy state of a Christian is to be always empty in self and constantly depending upon the Lord for supplies; to be always poor in self and rich in Jesus; weak as water personally, but mighty through God to do great exploits; and hence the use of prayer, because, while it adores God, it lays the creature where it should be, in the very dust. Prayer is in itself, apart from the answer which it brings, a great benefit to the Christian. As the runner gains strength for the race by daily exercise, so for the great race of life we acquire energy by the hallowed labour of prayer. Prayer plumes the wings of God’s young eaglets, that they may learn to mount above the clouds. Prayer girds the loins of God’s warriors, and sends them forth to combat with their sinews braced and their muscles firm. An earnest pleader cometh out of his closet, even as the sun ariseth from the chambers of the east, rejoicing like a strong man to run his race. Prayer is that uplifted hand of Moses which routs the Amalekites more than the sword of Joshua; it is the arrow shot from the chamber of the prophet foreboding defeat to the Syrians. Prayer girds human weakness with divine strength, turns human folly into heavenly wisdom, and gives to troubled mortals the peace of God. We know not what prayer cannot do! We thank thee, great God, for the mercy-seat, a choice proof of thy marvellous lovingkindness. Help us to use it aright throughout this day!

Sermon audio from our recent three part series on prayer at Higgins Lake Baptist Church is now available for download.

1. Autumn 2007 Prayer Series part 1 of 3
2. Autumn 2007 Prayer Series part 2 of 3
3. Autumn 2007 Prayer Series part 3 of 3

Tim Challies October drawing is for one case (Forty copies!) of The Truth of the Cross by R.C. Sproul along with a copy of Jesus the Evangelist by Richard Phillips. Click the image to enter–doing so also gives me another entry. That would be a good thing.

Charles Spurgeon — A Defense of Calvinism

John Piper on Ten Effects of Believing in the Five Points of Calvinism

Mark Dever’s ten post blog series, Where’d All These Calvinists Come From?

Articles at DesiringGod.org on The Doctrines of Grace

John MacArthur’s The Doctrines of Grace series sermon audio

John MacArthur Answering the Key Questions About the Doctrine of Election

What Calvinism is not — Monergism.com on Hyper-Calvinism

A ten part series of blog posts by Mark Dever: Where’d All These Calvinists Come From?

1. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 1 of 10
2. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 2 of 10
3. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 3 of 10
4. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 4 of 10
5. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 5 of 10
6. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 6 of 10
7. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 7 of 10
8. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 8 of 10
9. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 9 of 10
10. Where’d All These Calvinists Come From? Part 10 of 10