The worst thing about idols, as the Hebrew scriptures so tirelessly point out, is that they are utterly useless when you need them most (Jer. 2:28).” (Christopher J. H. Wright, “Editorial: ‘All Our Gods Have Failed,’ Themelios 18, no. 3 (1993)). HT: Andy Naselli

by Stephen Rodgers

I suppose this would be a good time to mention that you can find past issues of Themelios here.

Actually, this is a great week for journals in general:

• The 9Marks eJournal has a new issue out, entitled The Pastor and his Staff.  I’ve also updated our 9Marks eJournal topical index.
• The July edition of Tabletalk is out, and it focuses on Fraternity: The Bonds of Brotherhood.  Again, you can peruse the archive here. I really should create a topical index for that as well, one of these days.
• Also, I recently discovered the that The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) has a Journal of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (JBMW). And you can view the archive of those issues here.  I’ve also added it to the list of journals on the Recommended Resources page.

And that brings us to the links this week; I tried to select a few from some sources we don’t see as often.

• From CREDENDAagenda we have a great article on family worship.  My favorite quote: “There is a reason kids loved to be around Jesus, and it wasn’t because he was lecturing at length about the Torah or the Five Points of Calvinism.”
• Frontline Missions International has an article about the dangers of a missionary not raising up or supporting local leadership.
• Ray Ortland reproduces five vows that his father made before God.
• Skye Jethani has some words of caution regarding the current trend of investing a church too heavily into a single celebrity pastor in his article Blessed Redundancy.

That’s it for this week.  See you Sunday!

Pro Rege