First up, Jollyblogger. I haven't been linking to him much lately, and I am not sure exactly why. Today, he's tough to ignore, with not one but TWO great reads.

First, the McChurching of America talks about the franchising of the Megachurch. I'm torn here, because in a way, it seems that the megas are doing what I want them to be doing -- they are starting new churches rather than keeping a central church that requires its own ZIP code. But I'm not sure that these satelite churches are anything more than elaborate small groups, whose identity is still tied to the "mother church" -- it almost sounds like an Evangelical form of the Catholic parish church. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but THIS jury is still out.

Second, his post yesterday about Blogging and Walls. I have to salute someone who links to a post that criticizes him (although indirectly), and takes the time to respond to it. And I like what David has to say. I kinda like the idea of denominational blog aggregators -- simply because it would help network some of the bloggers out there. I know a few other Southern Baptist bloggers out there (one, Matt Hall, is also at Southern, and he's got links to a couple other SBTS bloggers), and it would be nice to cooperate, and possibly meet up (especially at the national convention) -- maybe even set up a blogging symposium or something to show the average church how a blog would compliment their ministry. There is a LOT we could do, but we don't know each other. For every SBC blogger I know, there are probably 10 that I don't. Denominational aggregators can build a community online, and help that community work together offline. If I had the tech know-how, I'd set up the SBC agg. myself. Maybe if I could get a lesson or two from someone with a few more skills.....?

Rebecca over at Rebecca Writes is one of my favorite bloggers. She was also pretty much my first regular reader, so not only is she a good blogger, but she has great taste! And she's got some great theological writing over at her blog. She's doing a semi-series about the anathemas of the Council of Constantinople which is great reading. She's done a series about the purpose of Christ's death that is outstanding. So I'm going to link to her post about haggis. Why? Because I have a warped sense of humor. Deal with it.

Bobby Griffith is an internet friend of mine -- he posts over at the PCCBoard Forums, and is most likely doing his PhD work at Southern -- in Church History, no less. He's like me, but more Reformed! And he's posted the Christianity Today list of Ten Reasons to Study Church History -- which should be required reading for everyone, IMnsHO.

Adrian Warnock has been accused of being too close to the Jollyblogger -- in fact, he was accused of BEING JB by one blogger (whose link I cannot find right now, unfortunately). So he's decided to disagree with Jollyblogger ... or at least, try to. Careful Adrian -- David's in Baltimore, and probably could get to Fort McHenry before you could get to him -- and you remember what happened the last time the Brits tried to take that Fort.

Now I'm closing. I just found out that I am pulpit supply on Sunday for a small Baptist church, and I have a sermon to write AND a Sunday School lesson for my own church to get ready. And maybe another post or two -- I can always prepare tomorrow .....

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A brief note: I'm not linking to posts on the whole SpongeBob thing. NOT because it isn't an important issue, but because if I did that, I wouldn't have room for anything else on the cruise. Google SpongeBob and Dobson if you want a rundown of those posts.

Allthings2all has an account of a Christian doing what Christians are supposed to be doing -- meeting people where they are. This is something we forget way too easily, and far too often. We are all ministers of the Gospel, after all.

For the Joy is doing a running series on The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience -- about emphasizing living lives that are consistant with our beliefs as Christians. We can never hope to show the world how Christ can change lives if our own lives remain unchanged.

Rolling Stone won't take religious ads. GetReligion exposes their hypocracy. I love it when the intolerant get caught with their pants around their ankles.

More tomorrow, promise!

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JivinJehoshaphat (gotta LOVE that name) has a multi-part series about How Pro-Choicers Argue (the link is to part 5, but there are links in that post to the other parts as well). We should be knowledgeable about how our opponents think and debate, so that we can work more effectively against them. This is a great series -- read it from the beginning, and use it!

Along the same lines, Proverbs Daily has a series about the sanctity of human life. He's up to part 3 right now, with four more parts to the series. This time of year, it seems that we focus on the abortion issue a lot. We all need to take advantage of those who are posting this material, and use it all year round.

The Grey Shadow blogs about bloggers, and being transparant. This has a lot to do with Christians especially, and how we blog -- with humility.

Matt Hall talks about unmortified sin -- and how as Christians we walk a fine line between our quest for a holy life and the pit of legalism. The Bible commands us to live holy lives, but we are so often worried about becoming legalistic that we don't live as we are commanded to. There's a happy medium, and that lies in obedience to God and His commands.

Head over to Bobby Griffith's blog, where he's talking about Christians and our need to use the Old Testament. We owe it to ourselves to read and study the OT -- if for no other reason than the fact that it was the Bible the disciples and Christ read from. The Old Testament is not the "lesser Testament" -- it is just as inspired as the New, and it containts treasure that Christians are forgetting to mine.

Echo Zoe is blogging Oswald Chambers. This is stuff that every Christian should be familiar with -- and even if you are, it never hurts to read it again. And again. Chambers doesn't get old to me.

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First, I noticed that Evangelical Outpost was doing something called Outtakes -- Joe is basically going through his blogroll and commenting on noteworthy posts -- with links, of course.

Next, I saw that Rusty at New Covenant is doing something called Rusty Nails, where he goes through his blogroll and comments on noteworthy posts -- with links.

And now, I see that David at Jollyblogger has started his Jolly Digest, where he goes through his blogroll and ... well, you get the idea.

Far be it from me to ignore such a great idea, especially when it's being done by so many bloggers who I read and respect. So I would like to introduce the Blogroll Cruise, where I go through my blogroll and comment on noteworthy posts -- with links and trackbacks, of course. The idea is to do it daily, but I'm not going to promise that -- I will most likely miss Fridays and possibly Wednesdays. And I'll try to feature blogs that the others don't cover, especially blogs that I think are not getting the attention they deserve.

This first edition will be brief, but here goes:

• 21st Century Reformation has an inteesting piece about blogs and churches as "Power Networks" vs. "ghettos." There has been a lot of discussion about this throughout the evangelical blogs that I read (Razorskiss, Evangelical Outpost, for example). I've been doing some thinking about it as well. Our churches tend to minister to the same group of people, and when we get a couple new members, we are "really starting to grow!" We should be trying to broaden our influence. As bloggers, we get a LOT of inbound links, but they're from people within our community. All of my inbound links are from people who are Christians, and who consider themselves to be, at least part of the time, evangelical bloggers. I have linked back to the people who link to me, which perpetuates the "ghetto" that we blog in. I get hits from people outside the ghetto, but most are from Blog Explosion (and how many stay and read anything beyond the 30 second requirement, much less come back?) or from people hitting the "Next Blog" button in the Blogger bar at the top of the page. I get some interaction with people (though I'm waiting for one in particular to react to the Church/State post I made), but most of the interaction is from within the evangelical ghetto. We should strive to interact with people outside the community -- and there are bloggers who are doing a better job of that than I am right now.
• Speaking of Razor'sKiss (and you REALLY need to check this blog out, it is outstanding!), there's a great post about a potential solution to the problem of the evangelical ghetto, and it sounds to mme like it bears more than a passing resemblance to the idea of the "Body of Christ" analogy in Scripture. Evangelical bloggers have different strengths, and different roles to play. By banding together in a community, we can use our individual strengths more effectively, and make our message clearer to the general population. All of us together can be more effective than each of us separately.
• Blogcorner Preacher talks about the value of salt. Sometimes we forget how apt an anaolgy this really is for our role as Christians, and I can even relate it to the previous two posts! Salt is useless when it's still in the salt shaker, after all -- it has to be poured out onto something with no salt for it to be really noticed and appreciated.
• Sarcasmagorical posts a prayer request -- another use for this community of bloggers. The best thing that we can do for each other is to uphold one another in prayer.

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