Back when I first started blogging, when my only regular visitor was my wife, I stumbled one day across a web site called Sword and Spirit. After just a few minutes of browsing, I knew I had found something truly remarkable.
Sword and Spirit Ministries is the vision of two close friends, Dan Mannion and Mark Ritter. They share a deep commitment to Christ and deep frustration with the shallowness, navel-gazing and ignorance that pervades so much of the modern church. Taking CS Lewis as their example, they began creating and distributing literature designed to equip Christians to defend their faith in a doubting age.
In the past months, God has been leading Dan and Mark to something more ambitious. They have re-launched their website with a host of new resources, all aimed at strengthening the church and encouraging Christians to step out of our comfort zones and make a difference in the world.
Sword and Spirit is an amazing resource. Mark and Dan have created original presentations (in Apple Keynote, Windows Powerpoint and Quicktime, all free for download) with titles like “Science and the Bible”, “The Deity of Christ” and “Womb With a View”. These are well-researched, professional presentations that are excellent for youth groups, Bible studies, or as discussion-starters for outreach events.
Sword and Spirit offers a host of booklets, tracts and links aimed at answering some of the thorniest questions of faith. They have an awesome collection of resources aimed at understanding other religions. They have compiled pages of links to organizations engaged in the protection of the environment, human rights, missions and humanitarian relief.
And, best of all, these guys have a great sense of humor. A whole humor section is devoted to satire, cartoons, and some well-deserved tweaks at Christians and some of our not-so-tasteful efforts to “market” the name of Jesus.
In those early days of AnotherThink, it was largely Mark and Dan who gave me the encouragement and good advice I needed to pound this blog into shape.
These guys are worth your time. Go take a look and make Sword and Spirit a regular stop on your daily web excursions.
Oh, did I mention their new blog? Sword and Spirit: Blog.
I like it a lot. It is just kindof a bummer that it is a CSS based design… Also, that opening flash movie has got to go.
And by that I mean that this is CSS Vault Material, it just isn’t CSS based…