Helpful things

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The World We Made: Coming soon...

UPDATE: There’s been lots of interest in this podcast, with about 2000 listens from 30 countries and counting! If you haven’t subscribed yet, we’ve added a few links to make it easier for those of you who aren’t on iTunes, which is most of you. (Welcome non-Apple fanboys.) Don't miss an episode. Scroll down and subscribe now.

"These are the confessions of American Christians recovering from American Christianity. This is the world we made."

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce a new podcast hosted by Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson and featuring Tim Bayly. The World We Made is designed to help ordinary American Christians think through the difficult issues we face in our culture today. Season 1 is about homosexuality.

Over the course of the first season, we talk with Tim about how we went from having anti-sodomy laws in all 50 states (just 50 years ago) to where we are today. What are the changes Tim has seen in his lifetime? What exactly do they mean? What part did the culture play and what part did the church play? How are regular Bible-believing Christians supposed to respond? What has Tim learned as a pastor to help equip us for the challenge of ministering to men and women tempted by homosexuality?

These are the questions we'll be unpacking over the course of eight 20-minute episodes. We'll start out slow and easy, and things will pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the end. You won't want to miss it, so check out the trailer (above), and go ahead and subscribe now in iTunes or Android (or wherever you listen to your podcasts—Google Play Music, Stitcher, TuneInRSS feed) so you're ready when the first episode drops (July 17). 

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A few of my favorite things (1)...

It's summertime, so how 'bout a little diversion? Mary Lee and I get quite a bit of joy out of God's good earth and its lawns, bushes, trees, and gardens. Mary Lee does the perennial gardens, I cut the grass, and we both work on the other stuff (fruit trees, roses, berries, vegetables, etc.) Here then are a few of our favorite things.

Arbor Day: over the years, we've planted about 150 bare root trees and shrubs purchased from Arbor Day. The trees are inexpensive. If you take out a membership, you can buy shrubs and trees for between $5 and $10. Some of their trees are available in bulk, 50 for $40. At this price, I don't get all tense about keeping them alive, so somewhere less than half survive a full year. But that's many trees and bushes so that, by now, our yard has lots of trees and bushes that started as tiny whips. A few are over fifteen feet tall now. We've planted red oak, red maple, magnolia, sawtooth oak, cherry, apple... 


Daddy Tried audiobook now available...

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Warhorn Media is pleased to announce that Tim Bayly's Daddy Tried is now available as an audiobook. If you haven't had a chance to read it for yourself, swing over to Audible.com or Amazon.com, download a copy, and have Tim read it for you.

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We're also pleased to offer a free download of the Chapter 1 audio to Baylyblog readers.

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The book is finished: check it out on CrossPolitic...

Just now (and by "now," I mean now) I finished writing The Grace of Shame. Tentatively subtitled, 7 Errors that Keep the Church from Loving Homosexuals (And What To Do About Them), the book is co-authored by son Joseph and Jurgen von Hagen. All three of us are pastors, but here's a hint: one of the three is not like the others.

Get a feel for it by going over to CrossPolitic and listening to today's podcast.

The three guys behind CrossPolitic, David Shannon, Gabriel Rench, and Toby Sumpter, were great to work with and you'll want to sign up to support their work. Tell them I sent you.

Then look for Grace of Shame's release in a few months after it's turned down by all the publishers and we rob the piggy bank to get it printed and released.

If you want to help with that, please give me a shout.


Fully Funded!!! Just a couple days left to get your advance copy...

 

I'm pleased to announce that the Kickstarter for My Soul Among Lions's latest studio project (Psalms 11-20) is fully funded. We're so grateful to God and to every one of you who has chipped in to support the project. Many thanks!!!


Delta Touch2O® faucets go bad and Delta's lifetime warranty doesn't cover it...

I've recommended a lot of things on this blog, from books to cars. It's been quite a while since I posted on a product I wasn't happy with, but now's the time. I've always bought Delta faucets because of their lifetime warranty. If your faucet breaks, it used to be you could call them and they would send the part you needed with instructions on how to install it. Bingo!

Not any more, so I recommend you stay away from Delta faucets with the Touch2O® Technology. Delta won't fix them and you'll end up paying somewhere between $175 retail and $80 discounted to Delta to send you the (second, third, or fourth) solenoid you need to get your faucet working again....


Coming soon...


Four rules for Christian readers...

Yesterday, a lifelong friend mentioned he'd finally taken my advice and read Luther's commentary on Galatians. My advice? I didn't remember giving him any advice to read Luther on Galatians. Who "gives advice" to anyone to read Luther on Galatians? It's like recommending to someone that he breathe air or drink water. For centuries now, everyone has said you should read Luther on Galatians, but somehow my dear brother remembers me saying it. Anyhow, I'm glad he read it.

This gets me thinking about reading, so here are four rules for Christian readers.

Rule 1: Don’t waste your time reading what living men tell you the dead men said; read the primary sources.

What are primary sources?

Back in 1977 I was taking an upper-level history course at University of Wisconsin, Madison taught by the medievalist William J. Courtenay. Titled "Medieval Intellectual and Social History," the course's texts included several volumes of Copplestone's "History of Philosophy," so it was tough sledding. It was a large lecture class, but prior to the first lecture Prof. Courtenay announced he would hold a proseminar for all grad and honor students, as well as anyone else who cared to participate. I was the "cared to participate" student who showed up...


Helpful things...

Over the years, some businesses we've used have saved us a ton of money and become trusted friends. Here are a couple:

TREES AND SHRUBS:

First, order trees from Arbor Day. They're cheap, and if you take out a $10 membership, along with your order being a third less, you'll get a bunch of free trees. People like to plant older and bigger trees they buy from a nursery and we have some of them, but bare-root plants take hold quickly and almost catch up with nursery trees in a few years. There's no comparison with the cost.

CLOTHES, SHOES, BOOTS, CAMPING GEAR, HOUSEHOLD ITEMS:

Second, order everything you can from Sierra Trading Post. The company was owned by Christians until they sold the company in December, 2012. You won't find clothes, shoes, boots, tents, sleeping bags, briefcases, down coats and vests, or anything else they sell any cheaper anywhere else. Excellent quality at seconds prices and I've never been able to see why anything I've bought has been labelled a second. We've been buying from them for fifteen or twenty years and we love them. Top brands.

CARS AND TRUCKS:

Third, buy salvage title cars and trucks. In our church, we have maybe fifty cars and trucks we've bought from T&T Repairables here just outside Bloomington. They sell all over the world, so you can use them, too—no matter where you live...


You blew it...

We had our largest attendance at a pastors conference yet, this year. Over a hundred and it was a joy to be together, although the work was hard. So this post doesn't come out of disappointment in our numbers.

Sometimes a pastor needs to say to his people, "you blew it."

So, permit me to say to those of you who should have been here for the conference on child abuse and incest, you blew it. And I'll go further than that: it's my conviction that some of you didn't attend, not because you thought the conference wouldn't be helpful, but because you knew it would be. You're a pastor, elder, elder's wife, or women's ministry director and you simply didn't want to spend time thinking about how best to discover and minister to those children in your congregation who are being raped by their father, uncle, brother, or molested by their sister. 

It's easier not to know, isn't it?

Well, you can take a mulligan...


Sexual Abuse in the Church: conference audio available...

Here's the audio from our 2016 Shepherds Conference, "The Enemy Within: A Conference on Sexual Abuse in the Church." I'd particularly recommend "Recognizing Sexual Abuse" and "Shepherding the Sexually Abused."

Please let us know any criticisms or suggestions you have for us. We'll be doing a similar conference next year on the church's ministry to those suffering the gay/lesbian/transexual/BruceJenner/bisexual temptations. Here's the conference title and dates:

Not Ashamed: Gospel ministry in a post-Obergefell world

February, 15-17, 2017

Here then are the audio files for this year's conference on the sexual abuse of the church's children...


The Enemy Within: Are you registered, yet?

Conference information.

Conference registration.

How many souls are suffering incest, child molestation, and other forms of sexual violence in your own family and church without you realizing it or helping them?

In our culture of sexual wickedness, we are missing opportunities to show the love of Jesus Christ to the least of these burdened with shame, tormented by fear, and distrustful of authority. When they suffered, no one in their church knew the signs of incest. No one heard their cries for help. No one protected them.

Your church has men and women, boys and girls who are suffering because of present and past incest and child abuse.

Do you know who they are? Do you know...


A Modern Psalter...

What could be more important to the reform of our churches and homes than restoring God's Word to the center of worship? And, outside of preaching, what better way to go about this than reintroducing the forgotten practice of singing the Psalms?

We're embarking on an exciting adventure, and we're inviting all of you here at Baylyblog to share in it with us. Just this spring some of the musicians and songwriters here in Bloomington teamed up with a handful of worship leaders from Indianapolis and Toledo to begin work on producing a modern psalter for our churches and homes. In just a few short months, we finished multiple versions of the first ten psalms, and now we're looking to record them and produce charts and lead sheets, made available entirely for free.

We want to encourage a revival of Psalm singing in our churches, but we need your help. So we launched a Kickstarter project. Check out the video below, and then head over to Kickstarter to sample more of our work (see the videos at the bottom of the page), check out the rewards we're offering, and see how you can help. If nothing else, do us a favor and pre-order the digital album for only $10 or hardcopy for $25. And if you're a pastor, be sure you take notice of the sweet deal you can get your church on booking a concert...


www.frame-poythress.org: Appreciating the work of Vern Poythress and John Frame...

Much of modern theology is written by scholars for scholars, but John Frame and Vern Poythress are churchmen. Most of their writing is written for the Church and can be understood by layman. John and Vern's academic credentials and the brains God gave them would have allowed them to live with their heads in the clouds. Instead, they humbled themselves and taught people like you and me. 

This is the reason we suggested to John and Vern that they allow us to put all their works online at no cost to their readers. When they agreed, Tim asked if I would design and manage the site—which I’ve done, now, for just over a decade. Back in 2005 when we began, the site was functional and ugly, and unknown. By the beginning of this year, we had migrated everything over to Wordpress (which made my upkeep of the site much easier) and were getting about 30,000 hits a month. This past February I handed off the management of the site to Mark Ward, who was recently hired by Logos Bible Software as a writer and theological instructor. Mark is also the designer of the tri-perspectival glasses and has taken the design of the site to the next level, and will continue to keep it up for the foreseeable future.

After ten years of serving John and Vern, I’ve been thinking about the ways their work has blessed us...


Psalm 1...

Cheat sheets and powerpoint to use this version of Psalm 1 in your worship are here at Clearnote Songbook. Please click the "Downloads" link.


ObamaCare: What you need to know (Part 7): Samaritan Ministries and accountability...

This comment under a recent post about Christian health sharing ministries raises a very good point which should be addressed in greater detail. Here's the full comment:

The point I would stress here is that there seems to be a strange exception to the normal vetting process that occurs in dealing with these "ministries".

If a member of your church came to you for advice, and said they had been watching a televangelist with big hair at 2 a.m. on cable TV asking for money, and they had decided to send him $300 per month, you would raise an eyebrow, and politely start asking vetting questions about how the oversight board is appointed, actuarial audits, who is being paid how much, etc. These "health-sharing ministries" tend to get a free pass. Try getting real data, not summary un-audited financials--good luck. They shouldn't get less scrutiny than the company that insures your house, for pete's sake. The new law gives a break--finally!--to large families. Go to healthsherpa.org or kaiser subsidy calculator.org, and see for yourself.

"They shouldn't get less scrutiny than the company that insures your house" is right on, and that's why I decided to place a call to Samaritan Ministries...


ObamaCare: What you need to know (Part 6): Evaluating Medi-Share...

Medi-Share, run by an organization called Christian Care Ministry, is a healthcare cost-sharing program. It's like health insurance, but with a twist: it isn't technically insurance. However, becoming a member of this or other similar programs will exempt you from ObamaCare's individual mandate, so apparently such programs are enough like insurance to satisfy the federal government.

Medi-Share in particular seems to be very similar to traditional insurance, much more so than Samaritan Ministries...


ObamaCare: What you need to know (Part 5): Interested in Samaritan Ministries? I am too...

(Many thanks to Joe Helt for contributing to this post.)

Samaritan Ministries (not to be confused with Samaritan's Purse) is not insurance. If you're going to understand Samaritan Ministries, you must simply put the model of "buying health insurance" out of your mind. In fact, the quickest way to understand the ministry is to understand that signing up for it, instead of signing up for a traditional health insurance plan, makes you a "self-pay" patient.

That's right. The bill for your medical expenses is on you.

That sure sounds scary, right? It does to me. But stick with me. There's good news, too...


ObamaCare: What you need to know (Part 4): Christian health sharing ministries...

With all the uncertainty surrounding healthcare plans made available under Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), many Americans are wondering if there are any alternatives out there. Or, more to the point, is there any way to opt out of ObamaCare and not pay the penalty for not having medical insurance?

The short answer is "yes". According to this page on HealthCare.gov, you can avoid paying the penalty if:


ObamaCare: What you need to know... (Part 3)

For the last few days, I have been on a quest to figure out how to calculate the cost of an ObamaCare health plan. Today, I gave up. At the end of the day, the only way to really find out what the cost of an ObamaCare plan will be to your family is to sign up for one, use it for a year, and then pay your taxes... in 2015. Practically speaking, Americans electing to sign up for an ObamaCare plan must simply submit their application to their exchange to see what plans will be available to them and at what cost. It will be an estimated cost, of course, because the total cost won't be settled until they file their 2014 taxes in April of 2015.

If you're interested in the details, keep reading...