Do Not Lose This Term “Christian”
If you are glad to be a Christian, don’t be ashamed to be called one either.
Sometimes you find people who are a little hipper than thou who conspicuously eschew the title “Christian.” They would rather we called a “Jesus follower” or a “disciple of Jesus of Nazareth.” There’s no problem in using this biblical language, unless it is to steadfastly avoid other kinds of biblical language. In our day there... Continue Reading
Modern Hymn Writers Aim to Take Back Sunday
"Our goal is to write songs that teach the faith, where the congregation is the main thing, and everybody accompanies that.”
“You know, for some people, singing a simple, seven-word, simple chorus, draws them into the presence of God,” he says. “And to me, ultimately, what is the goal of worship music? It’s to exalt God.” In the past few decades, some church leaders have called the tension between contemporary and traditional styles a “worship war,”... Continue Reading
Please Don’t Help My Kids
I’m 15 feet away from my kids, not because I am too lazy to help them climb the ladder. They are here so they can learn to climb it themselves.
I want them to climb that ladder without any help, however well-intentioned, from you. Because they can. I know it. And if I give them a little space, they will soon know it, too. So I’ll thank you to stand back and let me do my job, here, which consists mostly of resisting the very... Continue Reading
Kirsten Powers: How a Liberal Democrat and Former Atheist Came to Know Jesus as her Savior
In an interview with Focus on the Family, Powers shares how she converted from atheism to Christianity
“Really, it was like God sort of invaded my life. It was very unwelcome. I didn’t like it. Obviously, I started having a lot of different experiences where I felt God was doing a lot of things in my life. It’s kind of hard to describe, but I did have this moment where the scales... Continue Reading
The Obamacare Revolt: Physicians Fight Back Against the Bureaucratization of Health Care
Without government meddling, health insurance would be individual, portable, life‐long, guaranteed‐renewable, transferrable, and competitive; going to the doctor would be as simple as eating out.
“Direct primary care,” which is the industry term for Neuhofel’s business model, does away with the bureaucratic hassle of insurance, which translates into much lower prices. “What people don’t realize is that most doctors employ an army of people for coding, billing, and gathering payment,” says Neuhofel. “That means you have to charge $200 to... Continue Reading
The Hidden Sins of the Heart
Our old house had hidden dirt but so did I, grungy stuff in the form of hidden sins
No, I was not envious or jealous of Queen Esther and King Solomon. Scripture teaches us that what they had God gave them. I was ashamed when I realized that my sins of envy and jealousy showed that I wasn’t content with all the Lord had given me. It was time for me to count... Continue Reading
Church Wants Pastor Gone After Wife’s Column
Newspaper column lampooning Southern Baptists as "the crazy old paranoid uncle of evangelical Christians," causes stir and puts a pastor's job in jeopardy
The column said Southern Baptists have become “raging Shiite Baptists” after drifting “to the right” for the past four decades. “Santa and the Easter bunny are simply the devil in disguise and cable television and the Internet are his playground. The Boy Scouts are his evil minions,” she wrote. A newspaper column lampooning Southern... Continue Reading
The Big Tent is Falling, Just Like it has Before: the Latitudinarian Poverty and Decline of the Southern Baptist Convention
The big tent in the Southern Baptist Convention is falling, just like it has before
It is this big-tent, anti-confessional mentality that has caused some confessional, Reformed, Calvinistic Baptists to leave the SBC and join other like-minded associations. The big tent is falling, just like it has before. Does an examination of church history reveal that the big tent, anti-creedal, anti-confessional approach leads to eventual decline? There is a marked... Continue Reading
Calvin: the Great Re-Former
His one great concern was to restore the church to the form it had in the New Testament and in the first four Christian centuries.
… it is hard to find in Calvin a single idea that had not been part of Christian tradition from time immemorial. He shunned originality, and if his -ism has any one distinctive it is that it has no distinctives at all. It is simply, as one great 19th century scholar put it, “Christianity come... Continue Reading
9 Things You Should Know about John Calvin
July 10 was the 504th anniversary of Calvin's birth.
Calvin worked himself nearly to death. As Christian History notes, when he could not walk the couple of hundred yards to church, he was carried in a chair to preach. When the doctor forbade him to go out in the winter air to the lecture room, he crowded the audience into his bedroom and gave... Continue Reading