Every Sunday morning, we’ll be posting articles and links that are saying something important about church, culture, and mission (or that just made us laugh). Here’s what resonated with us this week on the web:

On Women, Leadership, and Roles:

On Scot McKnight’s blog, RJS posted an interview with NT Wright which includes several brilliant moments, like this one:

As I say, I make no bones about it, the basic foundation of all Christian ministry is the announcement that the crucified Jesus has been raised from the dead, and the first person who does that is Mary Magdalene. I rest my case; don’t need to go any further. It’s there in John 20. And from there on the idea of women in leadership ought to have been a natural. And as I say, we see it in Paul, let’s do it.

We posted and re-shared this video from Wright himself on whether St. Paul was sexist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QIuEHWoRT0

And Greg Boyd’s recent sermon “Who’s the Boss?” brilliantly addresses mutual submission in marriage:

On the Hot Buttons of the Week:

David Fitch takes a critical look at last Sunday’s Grammy Awards and cultural definitions of “love”:

Love was celebrated loudly at the Grammys through music, numerous speeches and then 33 marriages. It was all performed before a celebratory audience and millions of viewers. And yet the Grammys didn’t reflect much on the question “what is love?” The songs, the art, the speeches all offered love as a given fact assuming everyone already knows what it means (isn’t that what artists do?). The entire Grammys production however reveals ideologies of love at work like a finely woven liturgy, does it not? It is a liturgy shaping our understandings and feelings of what love is all capped off with a wedding ceremony. How more liturgical can this be?

Micah J. Murray astutely surveys the Hobby Lobby Brief and the realities of sin, shalom, and the culture wars:

When we lose sight of shalom, sin is reduced to a collection seemingly-arbitrary violations of moral rules.

In the narrative of Scripture, we see that sin is much more than that – it’s the evil that seeks to take root in the heart of humanity, it’s the cancer that infects us all. Because sin springs from the heart, we will never do away with it by simply banning or preventing certain actions. We can attempt to legislate morality, but we can never legislate away sin.

On Miscellaneous Church and Mission Topics:

Chris Morton looks forward to the Ecclesia Network National Gathering with a post about scriptural authority:

In different ages and societies, the Bible has been given various types of “authority.” Yet, over the centuries, and especially the last few decades, the very idea of “authority” has begun to break down.

So what does that mean for the Bible?

Kurt Willems gives a good summary of what a missional community is – and isn’t:

A Missional Community is a group of approximately 18-40 people who are seeking to reach a particular neighborhood and/or network of relationships with the good news of the Kingdom of God.

On the Missio Alliance Blog (in case you missed it):

Karen Wilk asks if we could be the “diaspora” in our post-Christendom neighborhood:

As we find ourselves in a new missional era as Christians in North America, we are the ‘other’, the ‘exile’, ‘the foreigner’. Though not necessarily scattered, we are increasingly vulnerable and on ‘unfamiliar’ cultural terrain in a post-Christendom society. Just like Jeremiah’s exiles and other Diaspora communities, we must figure out how to live life with and among in this ‘strange new world’ while maintaining continuity with our faith and traditions.  We too are betwixt and between, displaced in fact from our previous mainstream, authoritative place in society, and the way to move forward like the Babylonian exiles and the Luke 10 sent ones, as a Diaspora people in a new missional era is to learn to live among, in, with, our neighbours as neighbours.

On the Funny Side of Pastorin’:

The “Everyday I’m Pastorin'” Tumblr provides endless animated-GIF-fueled laughs (click to animate):