Weekly Web Roundup (2/11/17)

Photo Credit: Moinikon

Here is a collection of items from around the web that caught my attention this past week:

Why Christian Kids Leave the Faith by Tim Challies

"For some people Christianity is outright rejected and replaced by an alternate system of beliefs. For others, though, Christianity is merely displaced by competing passions, concerns, or emphases. They may commit themselves to success in business and allow religion to take a back seat, or they may passionately pursue sports and find it more exciting and fulfilling than their faith. Some endure times of trial or torment and in the midst of those troubles find their faith has fallen by the wayside. In either case, faith, once an important part of their life, falls in significance until it fades far into the background. It’s less that these people reject their faith and more that they lose interest in it or even forget about it."

Getting My Friend Back 25 Years Later by Joshua Rogers

This is a touching story of how a grown man was spurred on by his young daughters to make an effort to reconnect with his estranged best friend from middle school. Get your tissues ready.

Thoughts on Sharing our Stories by Marilyn Gardner (A Life Overseas)

"The person who has read a book cannot claim experiential knowledge. A person who has spent ten days on a cruise ship and has visited nine ports in those ten days is hardly an expert on every country where they have stopped. Yet they sometimes claim to be. The person who has gone on a short-term mission or volunteer trip needs to be careful to tell their story with integrity and honesty, not as an expert, but as a learner. It is easy to make broad assessments of places and people based on a limited view and a single story. At the same time, when we travel and when we live in places, we do experience the world through a different lens, and we do want to communicate those experiences. Much of my life is a learning process of how to communicate what I have experienced and be fair and wise within that communication."

The Headache and Hope of Multi-Ethnic Ministry by Adam Mabry (The Gospel Coalition)

"I’m not saying every church has to meet some false standard of diversity. Nor am I suggesting churches mostly composed of one ethnic group are bad. Yet if any church isn’t concerned with the other tribes—unconcerned to reach them, to know them, and to be known by them—how is that not the same kind of self-preferential partiality of which Peter was guilty? We carry the lunch tray of our cultural preferences to the table filled with persons like us because we just don’t want the headache of dealing with the other."

A Timeline of Black Christianity Before the Civil War by A.G. Miller (Christianity Today)

Here is an interesting timeline of some of the key moments of African American history as it relates to Christianity.

How Children Learn Who’s In And Who’s Out by Natasha Sistrunk Robinson (The Redbud Post)

"As an African American child, my mother taught me about race. She didn’t teach me so I would hate the other. She taught me so I would be informed, so I could better understand history and attempt to process why someone might think differently, and so I would have examples of what was and is a righteous response to hateful people. From her teaching and example, I learned my responsibility to educate myself and to advocate on behalf of others. As an African American parent of an African American daughter, this is part of the teaching and training that takes place in my home. Education about racial injustices is a necessity for her survival, and it was a necessity for mine. That’s why my mother taught me, that’s why I teach my daughter, and why I don’t want her to be colorblind."

Jennie Allen and the Longterm Impact of College Ministry by Tim Casteel

"College Ministers: What you are doing matters. Meeting with hundreds of disinterested freshmen to find a handful that want to know Jesus and make Him known. Turning over a multitude of rocks to find one or two gems. Teaching students how and why to read God’s Word. Discipling students who will make disciples. We rarely get to see the fruit of what we so laboriously sow. Students graduate and get married and get jobs and move off. And we go back to meeting with hundreds of disinterested freshmen to find a handful…"

Remembering The March On Washington 50 Years Later

It was fifty years ago today that one of the most pivotal events in the history of the United States took place. "The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" occurred on August 28, 1963 and gathered approximately 250,000 people together who believed in the inherent equality and dignity of all human beings. The reverberations from this event are still being felt today.

Although a number of speakers and musicians were present at the March on Washington, history has shown that the most memorable aspect was the "I Have a Dream" speech delivered by a 34-year-old Baptist preacher by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King's speech paints a picture of what it might look like for Americans to live together no longer divided by racial hatred but to gather at the table of brotherhood. It is generally regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history and it still sends chills down my spine whenever I hear it.

I've posted the entire "I Have a Dream" speech below for your viewing. Enjoy.

A Short History of Race & Basketball

Photo Credit: GonchoA

Doug Morlino has written the first segment of what I'm sure will be a fascinating series on the history of race and basketball. His post, entitled LeBron James Back to James Naismith: A History of Race and Basketball and published on the Bleacher Report, examines the relationship between black and white players and the role that basketball has played in helping racial progress within the United States. He also touches on the influence that Christianity played in the early origins of the sport.

Morlino traces his youth in Seattle and how his views on race were influenced through his time on the court. He says:

"It also made me question the origins of many of the assumptions I’d held about sports.

Why, I wondered, was the basketball court seen as such an ideal place to mix kids from different backgrounds? Why did I grow up as seeing success on the court as reflecting my own sense of achievement and manhood? And why and how did basketball come to be viewed as a quintessentially "black" sport?

The effort to answer those questions led me back into basketball’s history, which was more complex and fascinating than I’d imagined.

I started to see connections between how early decisions in the game’s development still echo in what we see on the court today, from Blake Griffin’s monster dunks to Phil Jackson’s coaching style. I also found that the history of what’s happened on the basketball court has very closely mirrored that of race relations in the United States, and often preceded changes off of it."

I'm often asked how I came to be so interested in black culture and how my friendships with African Americans developed over the years. Initially, it was due in large part to the time I spent with African Americans on the basketball court during my youth growing up outside of Detroit. I am looking forward to reading more of Morlino's story in the rest of these articles (a planned eight-part series) and how the game of basketball came to be what it is today.

(h/t to AOL Black Voices)

Kent State 40 Years Later

It was forty years ago today that tragedy fell upon the sleepy northeastern Ohio campus known as Kent State University. By the end of that day, four students lay dead, with several others having received gun wounds. Their injuries came not at the hands of terrorists or renegade gunmen, but from the Ohio National Guard.

I was not yet born when the Kent State shootings happened but, in some small way, I do feel a connection to what happened on May 4, 1970. Having served as a campus minister at Kent State for six years, I've spend a lot of time on the campus. In fact I proposed to my wife on campus not too far from where the shootings took place. Even though the deaths of Jeff Miller, Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder happened forty years ago, the tragedy in which their lives were taken still casts a pall over the campus.

When I moved to Kent, Ohio in 1996, the university was still in the processing of forming its identity in the wake of the shootings. On one hand the school sought to distance itself from the killings; on the other hand, it embraced its place in American history. Having become a symbol for the Vietnam war protest movement, at one point the school dropped "State" from its name and changed the logo in an attempt to form a new identity. In time, though, the name "Kent State" was welcomed back and it seems like the campus and its surrounding community has somewhat come to grips with what happened there.

For a look back at what happened and some of the details on May 4th, USA Today has a nice article here and a picture gallery here. For those that are part of the Kent State community, the shootings will always remain a part of the fabric of the university. But I hope that as the years continue to pass that the anger of the past will give way to forgiveness, healing and restoration.

* The iconic photo included here was taken by then-Kent State student John Filo.