Over a year ago, Village Schools of the Bible Principal Max Frazier, started blogging his musings on the Gospel of John. He completed a similar project on Revelation a year ago. Here’s the table of contents for the project.

This excerpt is from his June 22-28 entry focusing on the Economy. It’s good food for thought no matter what the economic climate may be:

Is there any good news on the horizon? Absolutely…Jesus is coming! Yet I realize that all of us are affected by a declining economy. Giving in many churches is dramatically lower than in past years. Many of you in business are feeling the ramifications of higher energy prices and a lowered consumer confidence. Those of you who are in nonprofit organizations or in missions already know that support raising has become more difficult. I know in our ministry - Village Schools of the Bible - we are seeing some decline in overall giving. If all we looked at were dollars and cents, then we would all be fearful, not only for the future, but also for the present. Yet our future and our present is not predicated upon what the oil-futures market does, or what the hedge-funds say about corn and soybeans, or what the value of the dollar is against …well, you name the currency of your choice. Our hope and our future is based upon this absolute reality…Jesus is coming! And so we cling dearly to that truth. It is our lifeline in the midst of a world of change…at times chaotic change.

Read the rest.

How should Christians approach the question of Creation and evolution? It’s a controversy that’s been going strong for many years, and the recent flurry of books by prominent atheist thinkers has once again put the spotlight on Christianity’s relationship to science. Is it possible for Christian to embrace evolution and related theories, or does our faith compel us to reject them?

There are (at least) two ministries in the Gospel.com community that tackle this question. Interesting (and perhaps frustratingly, if you were hoping for any easy answer to the “evolution question”) they come to different conclusions. It’s well worth reading through what both have to say as you ponder the question:

• Answers in Genesis is a major creationist ministry that has published many articles about the importance of believing in a literal creation story. There are dozens of essays there you could read, but you might start with What should a Christian think about evolution?, which lays out the case for rejecting evolution.
• On the other side of the fence is Scibel, which believes (as Answers in Genesis does) that science and Christianity are not incompatible, although Scibel comes to different conclusions. They’re dedicated to challenging myths about the faith/science relationship. They argue that it’s a myth that Christians can’t believe in evolution and have other essays on topics like the historicity of Adam and Eve and whether Christians should take the Bible “literally”.

These two ministries have different answers to the question of evolution and Christianity, but they’re both fighting to show that Christianity is not incompatible with serious science. And whatever side of the issue you identify with, it’s never a bad thing to read through different perspectives!

Many of us have been exposed to countless personal testimonies of people coming to faith in Jesus, but how many have heard of a similar story of someone’s journey into another faith?

It’s important to remember that regardless of what we believe, many people believe differently. It’s easy to flippantly dismiss someone’s beliefs on purely intellectual terms, it’s far harder when those beliefs have a story behind them. Even harder if those people are loved ones.

Read this personal story of a man converting to Islam:

“I am a 31 year old Mexican born in America, or as some would say, a Chicano. I thought I would make a webpage to tell my story of how I became a Muslim. I think it will Insha’Allah (God willing) help people understand Islam and why it attracted me. People have a wrong perception About Islam and Muslims. What little they know is usually from movies and television, which is almost all the time false.

My life before was bad. I had no direction in life. I was wasting my life away by dropping out of school in the 11th grade. I would hang out in the streets with my friends “partying”, getting high, drinking and selling marijuana. Most of my friends were gang members. I myself was never in a gang. I knew most of them before they turned bad, so it was not a problem. I slowly began to use harder drugs. I had dreams, but they seemed too far away for me to make them reality. The more I became depressed, the more I turned to drugs as a temporary escape.

One day a friend of mine told me that he knew where to get some good marijuana. I agreed to go check it out. We arrived and went inside this apartment. There were a couple of people inside. We sat around and talked for a while and sampled the weed. My friend and I bought some and were getting ready to leave when my friend said one of the guys there invited us to his apartment to give him a book.

We left for this guy’s apartment. When we got there, he gave my friend a book and asked him to read it, and said that it might help him out with his problems in life. On the way home I asked my friend to show me the book that the guy gave him. It was the Qur’an (Koran).

I had never in my life heard of The Holy Qur’an. I began to briefly read some pages. While I was reading I knew that what I was reading was true, it was like a slap in the face, a wake up call. The Qur’an is so clear and easy to understand. I was really impressed and wanted to know more about Islam and Muslims…”

Read more at The People of the Book.