There are many ways to identify the most lasting or best loved hymns among American Protestants. But what would we find by looking at all 28 hymnals published by mainline Protestant denominations from the late 1800s to the present? Out of almost 5,000 hymns, how many would appear in all 28 hymnals?
I think this is all an amplification of what the definition of love has become in society. Love has morphed into the need for attention with the side benefits of what love really is: a committed relationship. And in this quest for attention, many of these women are willing to throw out their standards for the pursuit love.
Ed Stetzer on “Traditional, Contemporary, and the Future of the SBC”:
At the end of the day, I think most of us really do want to hear from the diversity that the SBC has become, within our confessional consensus. Suits, ties, sandals, goatees, English, Spanish, Korean, and all the rest should be welcomed and represented as we press into the future.
John Starke offers a charitable critique of Steven Furtick’s Sun Stand Still:
I was a little surprised at the popularity of this book. I knew it had sold well, but I had no idea how much it motivated readers.
For my Romanian friends, a former professor of mine, Marius Cruceru writes about baptism from a Baptist (particularly Romanian Baptist) point of view, including the issue of baptizing small children:
Botezul este important pentru baptişti, numele confesiunii este derivat din verbul grecesc care numeşte actul botezului, dar nu este cel mai important act liturgic în slujire, aşa cum s-ar putea crede, nici cea mai importantă doctrină a crezului. Există numeroase prezentări ale Crezului şi practicilor baptiste, prezentări realizate din diferite puncte de vedere, cu informaţii deformate de multe ori, cu prea puţină bunăvoinţă în multe cazuri. Baptiştii sînt prezentaţi ca o sectă obsedată de botezul adulţilor. Cred că peisajul este mult mai complex şi există baptişti, paradoxal, care practică botezul copiilor, nu imediat după naştere, dar în perioada în care aceştia nu îşi pot asuma cu totul responsabilitatea pentru propriile decizii. Baptiştii români, prin tradiţie, au acceptat botezul numai după 18 ani, în rare cazuri s-a coborît pînă la vîrsta de 14 ani.
Tim Challies recently reviewed a biography of A.W. Tozer that describes the sad state of Tozer’s family life. Challies writes:
These strange inconsistencies abound. Tozer saw his wife’s gifts for hospitality and encouraged her in them; yet he disliked having visitors in his own home. He preached about the necessity of Christian fellowship within the family of Christ; yet he refused to allow his family or his wife’s family to visit their home. For every laudable area of his life there seemed to exist an equal and opposite error. This study in opposites leaves for a fascinating picture of a man who was used so greatly by God, even while his life had such obvious sin.
Tozer’s example reminded me of Cornelius Plantinga’s description of sin as parasite:
“In general, good and evil grow together, intertwine around each other, and grow out of each other in remarkable and complicated ways.
Martin Luther: “one of the three or four most prominent Christians after Paul, a doughty champion of the gospel of race and a ghastly anti-Semite who wanted his readers to break down Jewish homes and house their occupants in stables.”
Martin Luther King, Jr: “one of the noblest and most eminent Americans of the twentieth century adulterated his marriage and plagiarized some of the work that made his reputation.”
Thomas Jefferson: “held slaves.”
King David: “a great and godly and wicked man whose name has been blessed by centuries of Jews and Christians.”
Observing character ironies of these kinds, we naturally conclude that human beings are inexpressibly complex creatures in whom great good and great evil often cohabit, sometimes in separate and well-insulated rooms and sometimes in an intimacy so deep and twisted and twined that we never get to see the one moral quality without the other.”
It’s not that Facebook is solely to blame: already-strained marriages are bound to break with or without the service. Still, a couple doesn’t have to be experiencing marital difficulties for an online relationship to develop from mere online chatting into a full-fledged affair.
Most people don’t know who David Swing was–but in the 1870s and 1880s, David Swing was the most popular minister in Chicago: bigger than D. L. Moody, more significant than anyone else. As Swing’s New York Timesobit put it, at one point, he had the largest church and the largest salary of any minister in Chicago. He was also heterodox…
Allow me to risk being doubly wrong — sharing with you not only 10 church trends for the next 10 years, but ones that may be unexpected to some. I believe these trends are critical for leaders to know as they lead their churches to advance God’s kingdom in the coming decade.
We are not able to change worldviews and transform culture and save 1.37 million children.
We are not able to reform the judiciary or embolden the legislature or mobilize the slumbering population.
We are not able to heal the endless wounds of godless ideologies and their bloody deeds.
But, O God, you are able!
And we turn from reliance on ourselves to you.
And we cry out to you and plead that for the sake of your name, and for the sake of your glory, and for the advancement of your saving purpose in the world, and for the demonstration of your wisdom and your power and your authority over all things, and for the sway of your Truth and the relief of the poor and the helpless, act, O God. This much we hunger for the revelation of your power.
With all our thinking and all our writing and all our doing, we pray and we fast. Come. Manifest your glory.
Philippians is a video-driven small group curriculum that includes 12 half-hour teaching sessions from Matt Chandler and a study guide that helps participants apply each message. The video sessions are of Matt teaching/preaching in a small group setting.
The content is substantive. My wife and I particularly enjoyed the way Matt draws out the stories of the people in Philippi. His exposition makes for a very personal approach to the text. Also powerful is to hear Matt speak of overcoming suffering with the hope of the gospel – this, just months before he would be diagnosed with cancer and have brain surgery. I can’t help but think about how God was using this study to prepare Matt himself for the journey ahead. Now, thanks to this resource, God can use this material in our lives as well.
I don’t believe it’s wise for a small group to bevideo-based all the time (it doesn’t train new leaders and it can increase the cult of personality), but if you are looking to try something different, or you have a teacher who may need a breather, this curriculum would be excellent supplemental material. I could also see church staff members going through this series together as a way of receiving encouragement and strength from Matt’s expositional message.
Another book of essays? I can see your eyes glazing over. Well, don’t let them – at least not when it comes to this book.
I’m not generally one to enjoy books of essays, but Don’t Call It a Comebackis an exception. Kevin DeYoung has not only brought together an impressive line-up of young (all under 40) pastors and scholars, but he has also worked hard to make sure the essays stay on topic and don’t overlap. The result is a cohesive look at evangelicalism from a variety of up-and-coming evangelical leaders and thinkers within the Gospel Coalition stream.
What makes this book so good is that each contributor plays to his strength. So, for example, journalist Collin Hansen writes on the history of evangelical identity, Andy Naselli writes on the nature of Scripture, Ted Kluck on vocation, and Darrin Patrick on social justice. And then there are two essays that are themselves worth the price of the book: Justin Taylor’s precise and powerful case for a pro-life witness and Russell Moore’s robust vision of the kingdom of God against all rival thrones.
As I finished Don’t Call It a Comeback, I felt a strong sense of hope and optimism regarding the next generation of evangelical churches. Don’t let this book pass unnoticed. I want you to sense that optimism too.
The good news is that passion and energy for the ultimate goal is the key, not personality type. In Chicago, when it comes to running for mayor, we call it, “Having the fire in the belly.” If you want to contract great books badly enough or dig up the information for great articles badly enough, the door to success is open. People work outside of their dominant behavior patterns all the time when there is some aspiration driving them sufficiently to overcome the inertia their personalities can cause.
The charge is typically that Apple has a clear strategy: produce a technology, make you pay for it, and then produce a slightly better technology, make you dissatisfied with your current technology, and then make you pay for the new technology to replace it. It’s a vicious cycle of covetousness that never ends, and it’s all Apple’s fault. Or is it?
There are groups of 30-something-and-under Christians in cities who are trying to present a different kind of evangelical Christianity—one that’s not so political and not so much about “culture wars,” protesting abortion, or escaping “the culture” to the safety of the suburbs. These groups have made a conscious decision to not live out Christianity politically.
Love does win, after all. “God is love,” John writes (1 John 4:8), and Paul notes that love is the underlying theme of the eschaton: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). At judgment, Jesus Christ will make the final pronouncement for each of us (Matt 25:31-46). Sheep or goats. Righteous or unrighteous. The kingdom or…hell. At judgment, each of us will be looking Love in the eye. He’s won. He’ll win.
Those of us who believe unborn children deserve human rights can be encouraged. Though we still have many hurdles to overcome before we arrive at the place where all human life is legally protected in the United States, we can be optimistic about the end result. Here are 10 reasons why:
10. Recent Polls
A majority of Americans surveyed in a Rasmussen national poll say they believe abortion is morally wrong, a number that includes a large percentage of people who call themselves “pro-choice”. Last year, for the third consecutive time, Gallup found that more Americans accept the pro-life label, a result which led the polling firm to declare “a real change in public opinion.”
9. Abortion’s Treatment on Television and in Movies
In the “Fetal Position”episode of House, Dr. House operates on a fetus in utero. During the operation, the baby’s hand emerges weakly and grasps House’s index finger. (This scene was based on an actual occurrence.) After the operation, House calls the child a “baby” instead of a “fetus”. (See clip.)
In a 2009 episode of Law and Order (“Dignity”), a female attorney seeking justice for a murdered abortion doctor is shaken by a description of partial-birth abortion. She says, “I grew up thinking Roe v. Wade was gospel. Now… I don’t know where my freedom ends and the dignity of another being begins.”
In the recent MTV documentary on teen abortion, though clearly in favor of the pro-choice view, the producers did not mask the conflicted feelings of the teenagers. Before the young mother chooses to abort her child, she gets visibly frustrated with a Planned Parenthood counselor who tells her to not think of the fetus as a baby. “Call that thing a baby. Alright, exactly what it is. A thing…A thing can turn out like that [pointing to their first, living child]….nothing but a bunch of cells can turn out to be her.”
8. The Revulsion to Sex-Selection Abortion
The rise of sex selection abortions and the media coverage of such abortions in other parts of the world provide a stark reminder of the laxity of abortion restrictions in the United States. Sex selection abortion is not a Chinese or Indian debate. It is happening here! People all over the world were repulsed by the actions of an Australian couple who aborted twin boys because they felt entitled to replace the baby girl they lost.
Sex-selection abortion puts pro-choice advocates in a difficult position. They must defend such insanity (or only faintly protest it) if they wish to maintain their conviction that abortion can and should be provided for any cause at any time.
7. The Exposing of Planned Parenthood’s Corruption
LiveAction has video footage from five different Planned Parenthood clinics that show people posing as sex traffickers being aided in their attempts to gain medical treatment for young girls. Armed with this kind of evidence of corruption, the House voted to defund Planned Parenthood. The fact that no Planned Parenthood advocate will go head to head on television with LiveAction president Lila Rose indicates that this organization cannot and will not respond directly to the allegations of corruption.
6. Planned Parenthood’s Recent Talking Points
Planned Parenthood’s advocates have sought to redirect the discussion on abortion by pointing to all the other health care services their clinics provide for low-income women. Implicit in Planned Parenthood’s downplaying of abortion and emphasizing of other services is a stunning admission: abortion is a problem. The advocates of Planned Parenthood are seeking to cast their clinics as much more than “abortion providers.” These talking points indicate that fewer and fewer Americans can stomach the idea of “abortion as health care.”
5. Abortion as a “Tragic Choice”
On a recent episode of The View, Whoopi Goldberg explained her reason for being pro-choice: the low-income woman who already has too many children. When confronted about women who simply get abortions out of convenience, she called them “idiots.” Why does Whoopi have such a visceral reaction to abortion-for-convenience? Because she’s an inconsistent advocate of abortion rights: she recognizes that the fetus is a human being and that abortion snuffs out this life. The fact that she and others like her see abortion as a “tragic choice” implicitly speaks to the immorality of the procedure.
4. Young People
16-year-old singing sensation, Justin Bieber, was recently asked his opinion on a variety of issues. Though seeking to take a non-judgmental stance on abortion, he told Rolling Stone, “I really don’t believe in abortion… it’s like killing a baby.” Bieber is not alone. The annual “March for Life” in Washington is a sea of young faces, prompting NARAL president Nancy Keenan to worry: “There are so many of them, and they are so young.” Ironically, Bieber was castigated by Barbara Walters for answering questions inappropriate for someone of his age – even though young girls can actually receive abortions at ages younger than 16.
3. Ultrasound Technology and Pregnancy Support Centers
Ultrasound technology continues to prove what embryology textbooks and Scripture have told us all along – the unborn child is a human being. In a Washington Post editorial, Frances Kissling recently advised abortion-rights advocates to shift strategies: “We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible,” she wrote. Meanwhile, pro-life advocates are active at the grassroots level, making sure that women make informed choices and have ample financial and emotional support during their pregnancy. Pregnancy support centers are on the front lines in the battle against abortion.
2. The Third Wave
John Ensor: “In the first wave, Catholics took the lead is declaring the inherent evil of abortion. Evangelicals then flooded in to help advance the pregnancy help movement. The Third Wave points to the victory of our movement and the downfall of abortion as a business, when Black and Hispanic Christians not only join this movement, but lead it.”
Billboards like the one above (which has subsequently been taken down) are causing controversy, but at the very least, they are prompting conversation about the racial component to abortion. YouTube videos demonstrating the racist agenda of Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, are also making the rounds – causing pro-choice advocates to reconsider their assumptions.
1. God Hears
Speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed. Speak up, judge righteously, and defend the cause of the oppressed and the needy. (Prov. 31:8-9)
For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and taking no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. (Deut. 10:5)
The faculty of Talbot School of Theology (Biola University) has begun a group blog – “The Good Book Blog.” I encourage you to check it out.
Speaking of that new blog, here’s an interesting post on how to make a case in the church for expository preaching:
So, you might not get what you WANT every week at our church: something that scratches your felt-needs right where they itch. But we promise to do our best to give you what you NEED: a big-picture exposure to God and His Word that gives you a basic biblical foundation for a lifetime of study. Because the Christian life is not a 100-yard dash—it’s a marathon.
Cal Thomas on President Obama’s “evolving” view of marriage and his decision to not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act:
Doesn’t this sound strangely like Richard Nixon’s approach to the law? It was Nixon who told David Frost in 1977, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” So when the president and his attorney general refuse to defend a law they have taken an oath to uphold, isn’t that the other side of the same coin? Imagine the reaction from the left had George W. Bush announced his administration would no longer defend Roe v. Wade because he thought it unconstitutional and it would eventually be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Jon Acuff on the friend who assumes you’ve read every one of their tweets or status updates:
The Internet has introduced lots of new people we need to be kind to. Although “love your neighbor,” didn’t specifically mention people you follow on Twitter or friend on Facebook, I have to assume that command was inclusive of “digital neighbors” as well.
One of the people I have the hardest time with is the “Friend who assumes you’ve read every one of their tweets or Facebook status updates.”
(79-80).
