In January our church was privileged to have Justin Taylor preach about the sanctity of life. In introducing him, I tried to explain to our people (many who don’t follow the blogosphere) the breadth of Justin’s influence.  It’s hard to comprehend how the world has changed, and how a blog can now quickly reach around the world.

Justin’s influence was demonstrated this weekend when he posted about Rob Bell’s forthcoming book and questioned Bell’s orthodoxy.  Of course, Rob Bell also has a large audience so it was a unique intersection of different audiences who read blogs.  The temperature began to grow.

Indeed, CNN reports (HT: Denny Burk) that Justin’s post on Bell received over 250,000 hits in just a few days.  At the same time, Bell’s book sales have soared.

There are a couple of things for the people in our church to notice:

• Until Christ returns, local churches cannot take for granted that sound doctrine will not be called into question.
• While there have long been battles for sound doctrine, the way that these discussions has changed dramatically in the age of the Internet.
• The importance of a local church carefully watching both its life and doctrine (1 Timothy 4:16) cannot be overstated.  Everything is at stake in discussions such as these.

You can read the CNN article about the controversy here.  Kevin DeYoung’s thoughts are also insightful.  And, Justin’s original post on Bell’s position is here.  I certainly agree with Kevin that it doesn’t work for Bell to say, “I was only asking questions.”

Some speculate that RSS feeds are no longer cutting edge, but I tend to agree with Seth Godin’s defense of RSS feeds:

Here’s what you need to know:

1. It’s not particularly difficult to keep up with 200 blogs you care about in less than hour using an RSSreader.
2. RSS provides home delivery. Instead of remembering where to click, or waiting for a post to get all buzzy and hot, the good stuff comes to you. Automatically and free.
3. Subscribing to a blog is easy. Just click here for my blog, for example. In Newsfire, you can paste the URL of any blog and it automatically finds the RSS feed for you.

Read the whole thing here.

Watch this video!

http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

Otherwise just read some of her posts.  Jamie and I have laughed (and been encouraged) more than once reading her blog.

Men, a word about you commenting on Amy’s blog.  Admittedly, it’s sort of a chick/maternal/feminine blog – - but, Amy has firearms and butchers livestock.  If you’re a guy, you can comment without having to turn in your guy card.

If nothing else, read a few of his ala carte posts such as this one.

As I pointed out with Darryl Dash, he is from Canada, so you will need a passport to click through.

What incredible potential for evil and for good.

HT: Z