Peril and Promise in the Digital Kingdom - Al Mohler

The digital age is upon us. In the span of less than three decades, we have redefined the way humans communicate, entertain, inform, research, create and connect — and what we know now is only a hint of what is to come. However, the greatest concern of the church is not a technological imperative, but a gospel imperative. The digital world did not exist a generation ago, and now it is a fundamental fact of life. The world spawned by the personal computer, the Internet, social media and the smart phone now constitutes the greatest arena of public discussion and debate the world has ever known.

Leaders who talk about the “real world” as opposed to the “digital world” are making a mistake, a category error. While we are right to prioritize real face-to-face conversations and to find comfort and grounding in stable authorities like the printed book, the digital world is itself a real world, just real in a different way.

Real communication is happening in the digital world, on the Web and on the smartphone in your pocket or business case. Real information is being shared and globally disseminated, faster than ever before. Real conversations are taking place, through voice and words and images, connecting people and conversations all over the world.

If the leader is not leading in the digital world, his leadership is, by definition, limited to those who also ignore or neglect that world, and that population is shrinking every minute. The clock is ticking.

Peril and Promise in the Digital Kingdom

The digital world is driven by its entrepreneurial and ideological pioneers and cheerleaders, and they are a multitude. The numbers are staggering. The World Wide Web is, for all practical purposes, less than 20 years old. It now reaches every continent and country, linking over two billion people.   Continue at Al Mohler

Pastors and Social Media (2): Be Intentional

Yesterday I posted the first part of my address to the URC Pastor’s Conference on “Blogs, Facebook, and the Flock: What is the relationship between social media and the local pastorate?” Part 1: Be Positive. This is Part 2: Be Intentional. 

Ligonier’s social media guru, Nathan Bingham, says that the most important question we must ask ourselves with social media is “Why?” (see The Best Social Media Tip I can Give You)

Why do I want to do social media? What’s my motive and aim? Is it for myself? is it for the church? Is it for unbelievers? Is it to evangelize unbelievers? Is it to disciple my flock? Is it to draw attention to resources? Is it to serve the wider Christian community?

Once you answer the “Why?” question it becomes a lot easier to answer other questions like:    Continue at David Murray

See also: 10 Things Pastor Should "Get" About Social Media

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The Mirror of Facebook

I did something recently that was useful, stereotypically middle-aged, and surprisingly emotional; I went back and read through what I have written on social media over the last couple of years; Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs.  And my conclusion? I suck.  

No, seriously. Try as I might, I’ve used the tool of social media to sin against God and against my neighbor.  I’ve taken shots at thinly veiled “opponents”, I’ve questioned motives, and I’ve used it to feed my ever-hungry ego.  And I’m guessing you have too.

No, not everything I do on social media is so blatantly (and intentionally) negative. In fact, most of it is meant positively. I use this blog and social media as a platform to proclaim the gospel. I use social media as a way to keep in touch and share pictures with friends and family around the world.  But scripture teaches me that as a fallen man, even my “good” works are to be repented of as they are so obviously (as we’ll see below) tainted with sin.

With that, I’d like to take a few minutes this week to talk about how understanding the “Three Uses of the Law” allows us to use social media in a powerful, powerful way.

In short, there are three uses of the law: As a Curb, as a Mirror, and as a Guide.

Let me explain with the following, excellent, summary from Pastor Mark Schroeder:    Continue at Marc5solas

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A Pastor’s Reflections: Social Media and Your Congregation

I feel like a dinosaur because I can remember when the internet was really lame and when e-mail was a novelty. When I was a child I actually used 8-track tapes. If you don’t know what that is, Google it! Anyway, one of the things that has come about with the internet is social media, things like Twitter and the Facebooks (yes, I know that it’s really called Facebook). It used to be that people talked with their friends on the phone and kept their deepest darkest thoughts in their journal in their nightstand. Now, people Tweet and post all sorts of things to Facebook. Personally, I have no interest in such things. Why would anyone care whether I just hit Starbucks and had a half-calf-decaf-mocah-choca-ya-ya? But just because I personally don’t care about or have interest in social media doesn’t mean that I’m totally ignorant about social media or that it has no use for the pastorate.

For reasons that still bewilder me, some people don’t seem to realize that the interweb is called the world wide web for a good reason—anyone can read what you post or tweet, unless you keep things password protected or private through your settings, though Facebook can take your pictures and use them if they want (don’t get me started on that one). People post all sorts of things on-line that, to be frank, makes me question their wisdom. How does all of this bear upon the pastor and his congregation, you ask?   Continua at Valiant for Truth

See Also:  Facebook friends and sin

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Lust Battles, Facebook Fasts, Twitter Goals, and “Humble Brags”

Over the last two weeks on the Ask Pastor John podcast we talked a lot about social media, about goals for Twitter and fasting from Facebook. Pastor John also addressed creativity in communication, and the meaning and importance of Easter. We talked about the value of Bible commentaries written by women, a practical suggestion for battling lust, and how our works exceed the works of Jesus.

What follows is a list of episodes, along with quotes pulled from each recording. Click on the titles to listen.

How Jesus’s Glory Drives Creative Communication (Episode 54):

Jesus really is striking. Jesus really is amazing. Jesus really is worthy of the most wonderful — or the most surprising — ways of describing him truly. And the Holy Spirit regularly honors that effort by opening the eyes of the blind to see a truly-described Jesus.

How Do I Know If I Love the Gifts More Than the Giver? (Episode 55):

We are sinners, which means we are spring-loaded to turn gifts into alternatives to God. And so what does God do? In this age between our fall and our perfection at the second coming, he uses pleasure and pain to provide us with revelations of his goodness and to protect us from loving substitutes.

Do You Use Bible Commentaries Written by Women? (Episode 56):

The reason for saying, “I don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over men” (1 Timothy 2:12), is not because she’s incompetent. It is not because she can’t have thoughts. In fact, the women in our church, and the woman you are married to, have many thoughts that you would do well to note and learn and learn from. And so the issue there is not she doesn’t have thoughts, the issue is how manhood and womanhood works.    Continue at Tony Reinke

Don’t Let the Screen Strangle Your Soul (2 of 2)

(Note: Part 1 appeared yesterday.)

Second, there is the threat of acedia. Acedia is an old word roughly equivalent to “sloth” or “listlessness.” It is not a synonym for leisure, or even laziness. Acedia suggests indifference and spiritual forgetfulness. It’s like the dark night of the soul, but more blah, more vanilla, less interesting. As Richard John Neuhaus explains, “Acedia is evenings without number obliterated by television, evenings neither of entertainment nor of education but of narcoticized defense against time and duty. Above all, acedia is apathy, the refusal to engage the pathos of other lives and of God’s life with them” (Freedom for Ministry, 227).

For too many of us, the hustle and bustle of electronic activity is a sad expression of a deeper acedia. We feel busy, but not with a hobby or recreation or play. We are busy with busyness. Rather than figure out what to do with our spare minutes and hours, we are content to swim in the shallows and pass our time with passing the time. How many of us, growing too accustomed to the acedia of our age, feel this strange mix of busyness and lifelessness? We are always engaged with our thumbs, but rarely engaged with our thoughts. We keep downloading information, but rarely get down into the depths of our hearts. That’s acedia—purposelessness disguised as constant commotion.   Continue at Kevin DeYoung

Pastor, How are you on Facebook so Much?

I’ve posted a similar answer to this before but in my new role some are asking the question again: Pastor, how are you on Facebook so much?

I honestly think the real question is “Why?” and some think it means I don’t work very much, but if only they knew.

Perhaps, if you follow me online, you wonder the same thing. So, let me try to help you understand.

First things first, I’m probably not on as much as you think I am. If you think so, then the strategy is working. I’ve been doing online ministry since 1996. That’s a long time. I started with a daily devotional that quickly turned into a ministry opportunity. Though they are mostly recycled now, that site is still active. (www.mustardseedministry.com) I learned that if I was going to do ministry with the potentials to reach tens of thousands (the Internet makes the world small), I had to be smart about it.

So, I work smart.

Here are four words to describe my Internet strategy.

Since I’m a pastor, and you’d want me to be pastoral, they all begin with the same letter. 

Value – I recognize the value of being online. For the past several years, Facebook has been the most prominent way people reach me in my church. It also gives them a sense that they know me. I hear people every week say they feel they can follow me throughout the week, just by reading my status updates. In addition, I have the opportunity to minister to even a larger group, including hundreds of pastors and leaders around the country.   Continue at Ron Edmondson

Facebook Makes Us Miserable

Just about everyone has joined Facebook. And just about everyone has since considered giving it up. There are all kinds of studies today telling us how much time Facebook is sucking—700 billion minutes between the lot of us every month. That’s a lot of time. But when you divide it 500 million ways it doesn’t seem quite so bad. That’s not why most of us have considered giving it up. 

There are studies telling us how Facebook is invading our privacy and selling our personal details to advertisers. That’s annoying, but not reason enough to quit.

The reason so many of us have considered giving up on Facebook is that it makes us miserable. A recent paper in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin looks at a series of studies involving how people evaluate moods—their own and those of others. The study itself is not as interesting as the implications. What the study found is that people tend to underestimate how dejected other people feel and that this in turn increases a person’s own sense of unhappiness. Put otherwise, we all believe that others have better lives than we do and this makes us feel bad about ourselves. That’s strangely significant.  Continue at Tim Challies

When Does Sports Become Idolatry?

Evidently, there was a little football game last night. One overpaid, under-educated team defeated another overpaid, under-educated team for a mythical national championship. (Sorry, still bitter about the two most evil forces in college sports playing in the BCS game).  Twitter was atwitter and Facebook was booked solid with comments about the game – mostly the effusions of glee and self-adulation from Bama and SEC fans (sorry, another uncontrollable shot, undermining the point I want to make).

 

Americans love their sports. Athletes get paid extraordinary amounts of money because of our love-affair with sports. We pay hundreds of dollars for tickets to go to games, pay $75 for a $12 t-shirt with our team’s logo on it, rant about referees, and fill social media with our praise or curses concerning our teams’ play.

I am a sports fan. There is a certain 27-time World Series champion team from the Bronx that I like a little bit. My Durango has one sticker on it, a 2009 Yankees championship window sticker. Don’t know how long I will have to wait to add another. My office at the church has a Yankee mouse pad, a Yankee light switch cover, various Yankee paraphernalia and wall hangings, and a shelf full of books about Yankees from the past. I’m a fan.

That leads me to ask a question.    Continue at Dave Miller

Just Disconnect

It was said of John Henry Newman that he was never less alone than when alone. Newman liked the peace and quiet of isolation: it allowed him to read, to think and to write.

 

I confess to some sympathy for Newman on this. I do not like the hyperconnectivity of the current world. As an administrator at Westminster, I had a seminary cell phone. I had to upgrade it to a smartphone last year because Verizon indicated they would no longer support  the vintage model I then possessed. I remember that, when I went in to exchange it, the man behind the counter looked at the phone, looked at me and then, choking back the laughter, declared "You're that guy!"  Shamed into silence, I nodded mutely and mumbled my mandated request for a smartphone.

Now, having stepped down from the administration, I have rid myself of the thing and reverted to a phone that (and yes, this sounds terribly outdated, I know) simply allows me to phone people.   You know, like they did in the olden days. Sadly, I am sure that the free market will ensure that it will be 'no longer supported' within a few years. At that point I will have to pay extra every month for a data package to provide data which I have no interest in receiving, but until then, I can resist, Canute-like, the incoming tide of things I really do not need or like but which others have determined that I apparently 'must have.'

There are other advantages to downgrading. If I receive an email, I am one of those compulsive types who has to read it straight away. Result: not just friends, but everyone from work to whackos and every point in between has been able to invade my privacy. Now, with no mobile e-mail facility, I am safe from my own weakness, at least temporarily. Further, while I have rarely ever answered my cell phone anyway (possibly the result of keeping it switched to silent), ditching the seminary's smartphone has allowed me to purge my contacts list. It is amazing how, over time, my number leaked out to all sorts of people, some of whom were simply miscreants that I would really rather avoid. At the time of writing, I now have a grand total of eighteen contacts: strange to tell, most have the same surname as me; and those who do not either serve with me at church as elders or deacons or play some part in paying my salary. In other words, pretty much the sum total of people with whom I actually need to have any regular contact.   Continue at Carl Trueman

Vacation for Pastors Who Won't Take One

Vacation? Rest? What a selfish question! How could a pastor even think of taking a break from the pulpit? 

There are too many people without the gospel, too many pressing needs in the church, and, most importantly, too many emails. What kind of pastor would put his own relaxation over laboring for the salvation and sanctification of eternal souls?

Okay, I'm being facetious.

Well, sort of.

I doubt many pastors would say those things aloud. And yet my experience has been that we pastors don't always do vacations or rest very well. We often do not use up all of our allotted vacation time, nor do we plan ahead well for breaks. We check church emails on our days off and squeeze in a call or two, or six. It's possible to be a lazy pastor who abuses rest and clocks in the bare minimum to keep his job. But I have found the opposite problem to be far more common.

So for all the pastors who scoff at days off, come let us and reason together about how we should approach vacations and our preaching schedule.  Continue at Jeramie Rinne

THE PORN GATEWAYS

As I began to reflect on the multitude of struggles amongst my Christians peers, lust and pornography were the biggest problems that they wrestled with on a consistent basis. At first I did not understand how this possibly could be such a difficult struggle, “If they don’t go on the websites there won’t be a problem,” is what I thought. Yet time and time again as I received the late night phone call of a friend that had recently fallen into pornography, I knew that their battle against pornography and lust was taking a turn for the worst. While taking a deeper look into the heart of the sin, I noticed that people were battling their sins (of pornography and lust) at a shallow surface level, and deep at the root of the problem were “innocent” gateways sins that were feeding into their daily struggles.

WHAT IS A GATEWAY SIN?

 

The term gateway sin was adopted from a popular word that I once heard in health class called “gateway drug.” A gateway drug is defined as “a habit-forming drug, that is not addictive, but its use may lead to the use of other addictive drugs.” Alcohol and Marijuana are both labeled as gateway drugs because usage of those drugs lead its users into the abuse of other heavier addictive drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and etc. Therefore a gateway sin can be defined as “an unhealthy habit that at first seems innocent, but its continuation may lead to the indulgence of other sins.”

FACEBOOK, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND THE GATEWAY  

             

As I scrolled down the news feed on my Facebook homepage, I noticed that many of my friends, who happened to struggle with pornography, were “liking” the pictures of different girls on Facebook. Also I noticed that these guys were posting comments on multiple pictures within these girls photo albums. At first I thought this wasn’t a problem, it was only Facebook. But one day while I was hanging out with one of my friends, I saw him spending fifteen minutes going through an entire photo album of one of his female classmates from school. His face was intensely glued to the computer screen as if he were reading a suicide note, and as I started analyzing the situation I began to realize that things were beginning to add up.   Continue at Urban Gospel

Vacating the Internet

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. That may be true as it pertains to friends and family, but it was not my experience this summer when I abandoned the Internet and digital technologies for a week. In early August we headed south and spent a week holed up in a cabin in a Virginia state park (Lake Anna, if you need to know). As we did two summers ago, we decided to declare this a digital-free vacation, leaving all computers and iPads and iPods and other gear out of the equation. The only electronic gear we allowed was Kindles, since that is the primary means through which Aileen and the kids read books, and a GPS, since I’ve forgotten how to read a map. I can’t say that I missed much of what we left behind.

Now let’s be clear—there are certain ways in which I’ve learned to put boundaries on my use of electronic and Internet-connected devices. If I learned anything from writing The Next Story it’s that our technologies are always threatening to form us in their image; if we do not take them captive, they will take us captive. With varying degrees of success, I’ve found ways of taking my devices and technologies under my control. Still, I often grow lazy and complacent and in such times I find myself checking email a hundred times a day or haphazardly googling any little question that may come to mind. In such times I use my devices without reflection or restriction and I use them at the expense of other things that ought to maintain a higher priority.  Continue at Tim Challies

The Facebook Fallacy

For all its valuation, the social network is just another ad-supported site. Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse and take down the Web.

Facebook not only is on course to go bust but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it. 

Given its vast cash reserves and the glacial pace of business reckonings, this assertion will sound exaggerated. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. 

At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 900 million users, its valuation of around $60 billion (as of early June), and a business derived primarily from fairly traditional online advertising, is now at the heart of the heart of this fallacy.

The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency. The nature of people's behavior on the Web and of how they interact with advertising, as well as the character of those ads themselves and their inability to command attention, has meant a marked decline in advertising's impact.  

At the same time, network technology allows advertisers to more precisely locate and assemble audiences outside of branded channels. Instead of having to go to CNN for your audience, a generic CNN-like audience can be assembled outside CNN's walls and without the CNN-brand markup. This has resulted in the now famous and cruelly accurate formulation that $10 of offline advertising becomes $1 online. 

I don't know anyone in the ad-­supported Web business who isn't engaged in a relentless, demoralizing, no-exit operation to realign costs with falling per-user revenues, or who isn't manically inflating traffic to compensate for ever-lower per-user value.  Continue at Michael Wolff

The Psychology of Social Networking (infographic)

Neal Postman warned that we were Amusing Ourselves to Death. Maybe today the fear is that we publicize ourselves to death. That’s the concern represented on this infographic.

Just consider some of these statistics:

• 9 out of 10 internet users are on a social network
• Every minute we produce 694,980 status updates
• 80% of social media posts are about the poster

But the best stat of all: “9 out of 10 Americans think people share too much.” Stop and think about that for a minute. 9 out of 10 of us are doing it. And we’re doing it a lot. But we think everyone else should be doing it less. That makes sense.

And why do we do it? To serve the greater good, advance public discourse, or develop larger networks of meaningful relationships? The infographic suggests a different reason: “Talking about ourselves activates the regions of the brain associated with the sense of satisfaction from food, money, or sex.”

Um.

Here’s the infographic. Check it out for yourself HERE.

Phil Johnson Unplugged

Today was my 59th birthday. In other words, I'm now officially in my 60th year. Last week I did some careful reflecting; I also did some calculating; and it was—how shall I say this?—unsettling. Convicting. Alarming. In the very best case, I figure I might have a decade and a half of productive full-time labor left. Looking back on the past 15 years, I realize that's a very brief time. I want to make the most of it.

Thursday my doctor confirmed what I was beginning to think: I need to cut out everything non-essential in my life that causes stress without giving me any cardiovascular benefit. I hate when geriatric patients recite the details of their medical reports, so let's just say that the doctor was serious: It's time for me to stop burning the candle at both ends. Darlene emphatically affirmed that diagnosis. Everyone who loves me is likewise in hearty agreement.

So: (gladly, with no reluctance whatsoever) I'm officially retiring from blogging, social media, and every other activity that intrudes on things that ought to be the real priorities in the final two decades of a man's life.

I started blogging 7 years ago because I was concerned about the drift of postmodern evangelicalism and the Emerging Church Movement. I've said everything I have to say about that issue—and many more issues. In fact, as I think about it, I have probably at one point or another blogged about almost everything I'm really passionate about. I don't have any significant opinions left.   Continue at Phil Johnson

Does Facebook Wreck Marriages?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed his status to “married” Saturday and received over one million “likes” from his followers. But the site he founded isn’t always so marriage-friendly.  In fact, lawyers say the social network contributes to an increasing number of marriage breakups.

More than a third of divorce filings last year contained the word Facebook, according to a U.K. survey by Divorce Online, a  legal services firm. And over 80% of U.S. divorce attorneys say they’ve seen a rise in the number of cases using social networking, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “I see Facebook issues breaking up marriages all the time,” says Gary Traystman, a divorce attorney in New London, Conn. Of the 15 cases he handles per year where computer history, texts and emails are admitted as evidence, 60% exclusively involve Facebook.

“Affairs happen with a lightning speed on Facebook,” says K. Jason Krafsky, who authored the book “Facebook and Your Marriage” with his wife Kelli. In the real world, he says, office romances and out-of-town trysts can take months or even years to develop. “On Facebook,” he says, “they happen in just a few clicks.” The social network is different from most social networks or dating sites in that it both re-connects old flames and allows people to “friend” someone they may only met once in passing. “It puts temptation in the path of people who would never in a million years risk having an affair,” he says. Facebook declined to comment.   Continue at  Quentin Fottrell

Would Jesus Have a Facebook Page?

“When [Jesus] came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.”

A recent article in USA Today by Cathy Lynn Grossman cites examples of the growing tendency in churches to treat the Internet as a genuine ministry-provider. It’s not just about having websites and email contacts, but about assuming that digital contact is actual ministry. [Cathy Lynn Grossman, "Church Outreach Takes on a New Technical Touch," Wednesday, April 18, 2012.] According to the report, for example, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association offers a page for visitors to sign on the sinner’s prayer and “turn up in a real-time scroll of latest ‘decisions’ at www.SearchforJesus.net…” Grossman writes, “Technology should ultimately be an enhancement, not a replacement, for gathering in person for worship, discussion, debate and service to others, Drew Goodmanson says. Goodmanson is chief executive officer of Monk Development, which helps churches use the Internet to fulfill their missions. He appreciates that ‘you can have a digital Bible in the palm of your hand or connect with others in prayer any time anywhere.’ Nevertheless, Goodmanson says, ‘Jesus would not have a Facebook page. He wouldn’t be stopping in an Internet café to update his status.’” Thank God.

Responding to the USA Today article, Al Mohler helpfully points out some of the costs and benefits. It’s a great benefit that we can read lots of content on-line to which he had limited access before. Yet, he observes, “A digital preacher will not preach your funeral. The deep limitations of digital technologies become evident where the church is most needed. Don’t allow the Internet to become your congregation. YouTube is a horrible place to go to church.”   Continue at Michael Horton

The Deep Limitations of Digital Church

Do you go to the Internet for church? Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today reported this week on the increasing use of digital technology by churches. This trend is not new, of course, but some of the developments she traces are fresh and innovative.

She begins with a look at Christ Fellowship in McKinney, Texas — a church Grossman describes as “on board with almost every high-tech gambit under heaven.”

She then writes:

“Find the church by going online — the 21st-century version of sighting a steeple on the horizon. Beyond their website, Christ Fellowship has a Facebook page to give it a friendly presence in social media.

You can download the worship program by scanning their customized-with-a-cross QR code. The worship services are streamed online from their Internet campus — with live chat running so you can share spiritual insights in real time.

Afterward, says senior Pastor Bruce Miller, ’someone will ask you, ‘How did it go? Did God help you, today? How can we help you?’ Just like we do when people come to our building in McKinney. We are here to help people find and follow Christ, wherever they are starting out from.’

And wherever they are in the digital world.”

There is something good, healthy, and Great Commission-minded about the eager use of new communication technologies. Digital technologies and social media have transformed our world, redefining how human beings engage one another and how we all access information. A church without a digital presence is a church that, to many people, simply doesn’t exist.   Continue at Al Mohler

Multisite, the Poker Tell and the Importance of Presence

Any classic rock fan knows that there is nothing quite like hearing a live band.   A few years ago, I went to hear The Who (or at least Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, the extant members).  I remember listening on the way home to a live recording of 'Won't Get Fooled Again' just after hearing the real thing in the stadium.  Even without Moon and Entwistle, the live performance was so much more powerful than the recording which, in the immediate aftermath of the concert, sounded like an anemic cover by a wannabe boy band.  The same thing applied next day to my watching of the video of the last time the original line-up ever played together, performing that very song.  It was simply not a patch on actually being there, despite the absence of Keith and John.

Presence is important.   In a world where it is easy to simulate presence, even visible presence as by television, webcam or skype, it remains the case that actually being in the immediate physical proximity of somebody is important.   We all intuitively know this: given the choice of talking to a loved one on the phone or over a camera link up or in the same room, who would not want actually to be with them?

This raises an important question about the notion of multi-site ministry, where the preacher is piped in to various locations by satellite link-up or fibre optic cable.  Of course, this practice is susceptible to numerous lines of devastating critique.   One might suggest that it moves the church towards a model where the accent in preaching is increasingly on the information communicated, nothing more; one might also raise questions about the way it detaches pastoral care of congregations and individuals from the ministry of public proclamation.  For church officers it should surely be a nerve-wracking notion that pastors are to be held accountable for those entrusted to their care; and how can they give a credible account of such care if they do not know the faces, let alone the names, of those thus entrusted to them?  Continue at Carl Trueman