The most generous poll never seems to find more than thirty per cent of Americans saying they are “not religious or not very religious,” though the numbers get up to around fifty per cent in Europe. But something has altered in the course of a century or so. John Stuart Mill said in the early... Continue Reading

There are multitudes of sins that could cause the church to become involved seeking your repentance. But only if you persist in impenitence can it lead actually to being cut off from the body of Christ   In this excerpt from his teaching series The Parables of Jesus, R.C. Sproul reminds us what true forgiveness looks like. Transcript This begins (Matthew 18:15-22)... Continue Reading

Leaders who talk about the real world as opposed to the digital world are making a mistake, a category error. While we are right to prioritize real face-to-face conversations and to find comfort and grounding in stable authorities like the printed book, the digital world is itself a real world, just real in a different way.   The Digital Age is... Continue Reading

Most people desire immediate pleasure over delayed gratification, lower arts over the fine arts, and self-indulgence over self-control. For instance, our very makeup as humans demands that we naturally desire leisurely entertainment over sermons that require thought and argument.   This is a series to further explain the articles of “A Conservative Christian Declaration.” We... Continue Reading

What happens when someone violates your schedule? Do you act as if know everything, stepping in to comment when someone makes a verbal mistake? Are you a controlling person? And are you, at times, arrogant enough to think that there is no one out there that can give you advice and counsel?   Human beings... Continue Reading

A common objection to the foregoing goes like this: “If a person cannot control whether they have same-sex attraction, how can that attraction be considered sinful?” This objection bases moral accountability upon whether one has the ability to choose his proclivities. But this is not how the Bible speaks of sin and judgment. There are... Continue Reading

When modern people look back at the Spanish Inquisition, there are particular things about it that they find deeply offensive. But perhaps among the most offensive is that these authorities forced people to say and do things that were against their consciences. They forced them to lie. They forced them to recant deeply held religious... Continue Reading

If we consider the history of the church, we find that the gift of languages was universally considered to be the supernatural ability to speak authentic foreign languages that the speaker had not learned.   We begin today’s post with a question: In New Testament times, did the gift of tongues produce authentic foreign languages only,... Continue Reading

The point is, cities such as Birmingham and San Francisco have very different spiritual climates.  And while people’s spiritual needs are the same everywhere, and the gospel is the same, and Christ is the same yesterday today and forever, it helps to understand  the climate were ministering in, just as Paul did in Athens.   Cities have... Continue Reading

As a movement, we treasure the individual getting right with God, the religious born-again experience, the innovative way to do mission. Sounds good, but when individual trumps communal, experience trumps received teaching, and innovation trumps the Great Tradition, you get exactly what we’ve all just lived through. It can go no other way.   It... Continue Reading