The implication is that the way to achieve the greatest social and cultural transformation is not to focus on social and cultural transformation, but on the “conversion” of individuals from false religions to faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life. Or to put it another way, missionaries... Continue Reading

And suddenly we understand why John called Jesus “the Word” of God.  Jesus Christ is the embodiment—the incarnation—of the Father’s heart. What we could not see, what previously had had no form, reveals itself to us in Him. To paraphrase His own words, “Out of the abundance of God’s heart, Jesus is.” And this is... Continue Reading

Well, it is and it isn’t. The law will continue to embody a morality code, just a very different code from the Christian moral system that undergirded Western law for more than a thousand years. This new secular morality is radically different, to be sure; there is just a very different morality driving the new... Continue Reading

We’ve all witnessed them. They are in every church, regardless of the church’s level of faithfulness. These prayers are at the Wednesday night prayer meeting, Sunday morning service, church staff meeting, Christian conference and home group gathering. And its purpose is to rile a crowd. Its aim is not to commune publicly with a living God, but to inspire a group... Continue Reading

Using the tools of sociology and cultural anthropology, Wuthnow argued that Will Herberg’s well-known tripartite schematizing of America into Protestants, Catholics, and Jews has been replaced by a twofold division between cultural liberals and cultural conservatives, and that this shift has resulted in a dramatic “restructuring of American religion.”    After five years of an... Continue Reading

 Jesus’ going back into the world has served as a model for the church’s ministry until the present day. When Christ calls people into His kingdom, He doesn’t pull them out of the world forever. He sends them back out with the gospel.   I’ve long been fascinated with those moments in Jesus’ life when the... Continue Reading

The fact is, though, that things simply aren’t these days the way they used to be. Turns out that the last round of presidential elections was based on anything but honest premises. Explicit lies—repeated dozens of times by our incumbent president about his healthcare law, the Benghazi attack, and other things—were the foundation stones of... Continue Reading

Cowden feels as if he himself became an offense to the PCUSA institutional preservationists.  That thought is offensive to consider. It unmasks the intolerance of a system that cannot abide the continuing presence of people who lead change in evangelical and missional directions.   Presbyterianism has historically been described as a system of faith and... Continue Reading

Long before LBJ’s call to combat poverty, Christians heard a higher call to compassion for the poor. How to live out that biblical command in the context of 21st-century America is the challenge.   “It’s just too easy to love ‘The Poor,'” policy expert and author Amy L. Sherman says in a video interview for the study... Continue Reading

I want to add an important duty to those given above to the job description of the pastor. One often neglected by evangelical church leadership today: that of resident theologian. The Apostles of the New Testament–and especially Paul in the Pastoral Epistles–are jealous to see local church pastors (or elders) steeped in the richness of Biblical doctrine,... Continue Reading