What once was a slightly watered-down seeker-friendly version of the Gospel is now a slightly Gospel-flavored bucket of water. And it’s not enough to quench the thirst of the masses. During the 1990s, “seeker-friendly” churches began popping up everywhere. Most were non-denominational churches looking to reach those who fell between the cracks and divides that... Continue Reading

Are we saying that we can’t borrow anything from other organizational worlds where leadership, management, technology and innovation are being manifest? I recently learned a great deal about leading a church from someone who has never led one. Jack Welch, the salty former CEO of GE, sat down for an interview with Bill Hybels, senior... Continue Reading

As Eugene Peterson wrote—“the church is the institution God has set at the center of the world to keep the world centered.” One of the sweetest privileges of ministry is for a pastor to finish well at a church, so that there is mutual blessing—the church blesses the pastor and the pastor blesses the church.... Continue Reading

One morning recently I arose early, preparing to conduct ministry as a reserve chaplain and feeling a little sick from a cold, still dizzy from the medications for it. I opened up Safari to survey my news sources and was hit, as badly as this virus hit me a few days ago, by the barrage... Continue Reading

The PCA is currently facing two “crises” with a view to deacons. The first deals with the question of whether a deacon possesses any authority in his office; the second is the question of whether the Book of Church Order makes room for unordained female and male deacons. It might be difficult for some to... Continue Reading

How does one create a hero at a time when heroes have fallen out of favor? Much of the literature of the twentieth century shows an ambivalence about this question. During the bloodiest century the world had ever known, a time of ever increasing disillusionment, the conventional hero became an increasingly rare figure in literature... Continue Reading

Christian sociologist Os Guinness has observed that there are as many people going out the back door of mega churches as coming in the front door. I spend a lot of my time wandering in and out, worshipping in Episcopal and Anglican churches around the world. I have come to some conclusions about church growth... Continue Reading

To ensure a glorious future, the “B team” must be denounced, demonized and demoted…The “B team” is the global capitalist Empire, controlled by patriarchal heterosexuality and religious “dualism”, led by U.S. militarism and multinational corporations. You know—the Age of Aquarius, chakras and crystals, Shirley MacLaine’s “going within,” and Marianne Williams, guru to the stars. Well,... Continue Reading

Reed said, “people have not only the right but the have the duty and the obligation to overthrow that government, by force if necessary,” if government violates those God-given rights. At the annual Values Voter Summit last weekend, Billie Tucker, co-founder of the Jacksonville, Florida–based First Coast Tea Party, recounted how “some people say, ‘don’t... Continue Reading

Many in the young, restless, reformed movement do not realize that there is an alternate stream of Reformed theology, one that stands more in the tradition of Barth, Berkouwer, and Torrance than Warfield, Berkhof, and Frame. I happen to think that second stream is truer to the source, but not all agree. Of course, the... Continue Reading