Religious Progressives Hold Stronger Appeal among Millennials
The challenges and potential opportunities facing religious progressives
For decades, the dominant religious narrative has focused on the decline of liberal Protestant Christianity. The new PRRI/Brookings analysis suggests a distinctly different future pattern, at least as far as one can be read the future from the tea leaves of the present: the declining appeal of religious conservatism, coupled with the increasing appeal of... Continue Reading
It’s Good to Be a Jar of Clay
Clay jars are delicate. They crack easily even though they may seem relatively durable.
That is the great purpose behind why we are called jars of clay. It is to show the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us (2 Corinthians 4:7). We are weak, we are frail, we are lame – and yet, we are chosen. We are loved. “God chose what is low and despised... Continue Reading
Confessions from an Intermediate Parent
New challenges come from each stage of life
I’m at a much more complex stage of parenting. The girls are now growing out of the innocent-keep-them-in-a-glorious-bubble stage. They are learning about life. While many new circumstances are great opportunities for Matt and I to have a “teaching moment” and see how the gospel can be applied, it’s also painful to see our kids... Continue Reading
If Cooking Slowly and Growing Organically are In, Why Is Rural Ministry Out?
A ministry accessible to the rhythms of farming and local communities does not qualify as hip
But is it wrong to wish that Christians, who have discovered the value of wholesome food and the farming practices that produce it, would translate their choices about diet and carbon footprints into congregations and pastors more circumspect about cities and more respectful of the fly-over sectors of the greatest nation on God’s green earth?... Continue Reading
A Christian vision for gender non-conforming boys
Camps like the one profiled teach parents to abandon children to their fallenness.
We are a fallen race. That means that we—as well as our children—are born with deep-seated antipathy toward what God made us to be. There is a brokenness in our bones that groans to be healed. As the Psalmist has it, we have all been brought forth in iniquity and conceived in sin (Psalm 51:5).... Continue Reading
What are the struggles of being a pastor’s wife?
Thoughts by a pastor's wife on the struggles of being married to a preacher
A Demanding Schedule: Cara has found that full-time pastoral ministry isn’t all that different from life as a doctor. “My family doctor and I have often commiserated together when we discussed the similarities between our lives and the chaotic family schedules we manage,” Cara confesses. (79) We know this and they know this: Pastor’s don’t... Continue Reading
Communion on the moon
“Buzz” Aldrin celebrated the Lord’s Supper on the moon 44 years ago, on July 20
Aldrin wanted to give people on Earth something to think about. He was planning to broadcast his Lord’s Supper, but skittish NASA worried that atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair would sue it for hurting not only the legendary separation of church and state but the definitely real separation of Earth and moon. Pardon me,... Continue Reading
Why Christians Should Be Speaking Up about the Surveillance State
Government Overreach, Compliant Christians, and the Founding Fathers
So, we should speak up when the government decides it knows best about our personal information and freedom. We cannot sit idly by while they decide to store the phone numbers and names of people we call, touch the private parts of 13-year olds in the name of airport security (using a system that is... Continue Reading
A Pastor’s First Concern
Keeping the scalpel sharp and sanitary
Like an adult in a jetliner is instructed to don the oxygen mask herself before tending to her child, so those entrusted with the care of the congregation are to make sure they are in good position themselves. This is especially important when we realize that the congregation is the “church of God.” I heard... Continue Reading
What’s at Stake with Internet Pornography
In our time, pornography is the destroying angel of (especially male) Eros
With the advent of Internet technology, with its near universal reach and its promise of secrecy, pornography has been weaponized. In some sectors, especially of our young male populations, it is nearly universal. This universality is not, contrary to the propaganda of the pornographers themselves, a sign of its innocence but of its power. In... Continue Reading
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