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How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive
Economists Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins famously estimated that we could reduce poverty by 71 percent if the poor did just four things: finished high school, worked full time, got married and had no more than two children — and the number of children was the least important factor in that calculation.
By encouraging members to marry, the Mormon Church is encouraging them to reduce their own likelihood of ending up poor. But it may also be creating spillover effects even for non-Mormons, because Chetty et al didn’t just find that married parents helped their own children to rise; they also influenced the lives of the children around them.
Listen More, Speak Less to Help After Tragedies Like the Deadly Texas Church Bus Accident
If you really want to help people affected by the bus accident, then you need to listen more and speak less. Although listening may sound easy, it is not. It can be particularly challenging when we sit across someone who might be sharing a difficult experience with us. Thankfully, there are some simple helpful steps and missteps we can learn from the story of Job that can make us better listeners.
Sadly, we don’t seem to be able to conceive of that possibility today. Such intimacy must mean sex. Our sex lives are meant to be the best things about our lives. But I think that tells us more about our relationships today than David and Jonathan’s back then. We live in a society whose only route to true intimacy has become the joy of sex.
And the consequences for someone like me sound pretty tragic: no intimate relationships because I’m saying no to sex. My life will thus be a lonely one without the sort of relationships that any human being needs to survive, let alone thrive. No wonder so many think the celibate life I’ve chosen just isn’t plausible—that I’ll either wither away slowly or (preferably) give up on it very soon.
The Church Every Generation Needs
In the end, though, God, life, and church aren’t about us. We’re called into something bigger, something beautiful, and yes, something that’s often disappointing and broken. There’s no such thing as a church community that would satisfy our desires. There are only flawed churches led by broken leaders and filled with sinful people who are desperately loved by God.
The task of the church isn’t to make changes to satisfy each succeeding generation. The millennials will one day join baby boomers and Generation X, who also made demands of the church, in reading the demands of Generation Z, also known as postmillennials.
We need churches to love people of all ages, to lovingly remind all of us (no matter how young or old) that it’s not about us, and to invite us all into the nongimmicky embrace of family. We need churches to embrace the cynical and disenfranchised, even when they rail against us. That’s the kind of church every generation needs.
4 Reasons Our Church Stopped Doing ‘Come and Watch’ Events (And 5 Alternatives)
The big ‘come and watch’ event may still work in some places, but many church leaders (like Carey Nieuwhof, in a recent helpful post) have found that they work less well than they used to – or we thought they did.
Several years ago, our church stopped doing ‘come and watch’ events on special Sundays, like Christmas and Easter. Then we stopped doing them altogether.
Jonah, the Son of Jonah and the Gentile Mission
It seems to me that Luke’s point here is that the God that sent Jonah and the God that sent Peter are the same God of Israel. He extends grace and mercy to “everyone who believes” just as “all the prophets testify” (Acts 10.43).
The God of Israel has sought to bless all nations through his people and Jesus is the ultimate representative of Israel to the nations. The Jewish Messiah is everyone’s Messiah!
The Myth of Professional Beggars Spawned Today’s Enduring Stereotypes
But Pimpare thinks classifying beggars as professionals can be dangerous because it suggests society should turn to harsher punishments for poverty. “By blaming people for that failure it doesn’t obligate us collectively through government to step up and ensure there are opportunities available. People will often say poverty is such a hard problem, it’s so intractable, so difficult to deal with. It’s actually not all that difficult to deal with. Pretty much every rich democracy on the planet has a lower poverty rate than we do.”
I tell them about restoration works which reveal the city’s architectural beauty, about the built-in lights in walls which will highlight bas-reliefs and statues, competing only with our dreams. About the fountains which have suddenly come back to life, fountains which were dry and covered in dirt for decades, and now they spout clear water.
I tell them that when I get into private-collective taxis, I see every passenger get into the vehicle and say: “Good day, good afternoon…” as if our lost values (better yet, forgotten values) have suddenly woken up. I see small private businesses display their clever initiatives to attract people’s attention, all of this gives color to the landscape, giving it momentum, current: life.
I tell them about the bustle of tourists, about an undescribable commotion, like those noises which travel in the distance and only animals or psychics pick up on: unrest, movement, change.