Raising a Pure Son In a Sex-Crazed World
Here are 10 things I’m doing as a mother to a boy to fight against the triple threat of porn, aggressive girls, and ultimately premarital sex
I’m not pushing the girl thing. It’s not cute or funny for a young boy to be encouraged to have a girlfriend. I want my son to know we live in a cultural with aggressive girls who will make it challenging to be pure and we want him to resist this pressure until he’s older.... Continue Reading
The Conflicting Kingdoms and Gospel Amnesia
Are we seeking the Kingdom of God or the kingdom of self?
Could it be that much of our stress results from seeking to get things out of ministry that it will never deliver? Could it be that we’re asking ministry to do for us what only the Messiah can do? Could it be that in our ministries we’re seeking horizontally what we’ve already been given in... Continue Reading
What is a most unique opportunity for a pastor to do evangelism?
Offer your services to a local funeral home to do funerals for those families who use their services and don’t have a pastor
Through meeting with the families of the first few funerals, I realized that most, if not all of them were not believers. I began to see a pattern. If the funeral home was calling me, it meant that the family was so detached from any church involvement that they didn’t even have a distant uncle... Continue Reading
7 Words From The Cross
The Word Of Forgiveness
The One who taught “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” asked God to forgive the sadistic soldiers who scourged him, crowned him with cruel thorns, mocked him and now sat beneath the cross gambling for his robe. He prayed for Pilate who knew Jesus was innocent but caved to save his... Continue Reading
Alabama congregation granted dismissal from PCUSA
Stockton Presbyterian Church was granted dismissal to join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC)
Founded in 1847, the church has been a pillar of the community in Baldwin County – 30 miles northeast of Mobile – throughout its history. Headrick said the small-town church is located in a conservative community that doesn’t even have a traffic light. That conservative stance is what led the congregation to seek dismissal from... Continue Reading
Secret hearts and sorry tales in the PCA
A PCA Ruling Elder considers the National Partnership
Interesting coincidence that at about the same time as the secret (sorry, confidential) announcement of the National Partnership, an article appeared on the PCA’s denominational magazine site about how we should blog. While generally a worthwhile article, the author took a number of conservative blogs with which he obviously disagreed to task. Yet, not a... Continue Reading
Four Things We Must Learn from the Cyprus Debacle
Christians need to be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.
Money is based on faith and trust. Money is inherently a religious issue. Money today is guaranteed in terms of the full faith and credit of men who control the federal government. Just step back and think about that for a minute! A society whose money is based upon deception and theft will hear its... Continue Reading
BioLogos and Templeton waste more money on accommodationism
An atheist evolutionist on the futility of trying to reconcile evolution and Christianity
Religious people who deny evolution are not, by and large, stupid. They know that telling them that religion and evolution are compatible isn’t going to settle the queasiness in their stomach when they realize that, in the end, evolution implies to many that humans are a contingent result of a purely materialistic process. It’s easier... Continue Reading
Grace and Legalism: Two Misunderstood Terms
As with most bad definitions, these distortions have an element of truth at their core, but they over-simplify and distort the larger reality
Obedience to God’s law is not legalism. Obedience to God’s law in an effort to earn favor from God is legalism. Obedience to God’s law in an effort to pile up enough merit to outweigh our demerits is legalism. But a grace-empowered obedience of God’s law is not legalism. What’s the difference? It’s the difference... Continue Reading
Why Does American Religion Increasingly Look So Weird?
A Review of Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
Douthat argues that two strategies were open to the mainline churches—“accommodation” and “resistance.” Many in both mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic circles sought to accommodate themselves and their churches to the new spirit of the age with naturalistic, political, this-worldly forms of Christianity. But this effort at accommodation largely failed in that there was no... Continue Reading