Unapologetically Pro-Life—From the Moment of Conception Until the Last Breath on Earth

And, as the tide changes, maybe we need to be reminded that the unborn need our voice. It seems that it’s become trendy to talk about broadening the pro-life agenda, and you can see my article on refugees here. But, it seems that, for some people, broadening the agenda means discarding the unborn. For some avant-garde evangelicals, maybe they are a little embarrassed about the religious right pro-life cause when there are refugees, children, immigrants, and the environment before us.
But I’m not embarrassed. We can be pro-life and whole life.
As the tide is turning, maybe we need another reminder—broadening the pro-life agenda does not mean discarding the unborn.

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Good Friends, Good Food, and Good Conversation Over a Bottle of Wine: On How Not to Be Transgressive

First of all, the “good friends, good food, and good conversation over a bottle of wine” model of church and Eucharist smacks of so much economic and educational privilege that I feel embarrassed for people who say things like this. The “good friends, good food, and good conversation over a bottle of wine” model of church is so self-absorbed and self-indulgent that it makes me cringe.
Where are the poor and homeless at your Pottery Barn-worthy table? Show me that, and your dinner might start looking more like the table Jesus envisioned.
Where are the awkward dinner guests, the zealots breaking bread with tax collectors? Is there a Trump supporter or a Black Lives Matter activist at your table? Show me that, and your dinner might start looking more like the table Jesus envisioned.

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Millions of Americans Believe God Made Trump President

At a certain point in “God and Donald Trump,” the recent theological gymnastics on display from Tony Perkins and Jerry Falwell, Jr., among others, to explain ongoing conservative Christian support for a president who (allegedly) paid off a porn star weeks before Election Day so she would keep quiet about their (alleged) affair become clear. There will be no point at which Trump’s most loyal evangelical and charismatic supporters declare they have had enough. Because to do so would be to admit that they were wrong, that God wasn’t behind Trump’s election, and that their Holy Spirit radar might be on the fritz. That it was, after all, about something as temporal and banal as hating his Democratic rival.

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Don’t be scared of lame evangelism

So embrace the lameness. Not as a badge of honour, or as a means of purposefully doing a worse job than we ought, but knowing that salvation is a work of the Spirit bringing the gospel to bear in the lives of those that hear it. The same Spirit who can work through the most amazing, sell-out conference or mission is the same Spirit who can apply the gospel to a passer-by who picks up a leaflet from a table outside your church. The same Spirit who used Peter’s amazing sermon on Pentecost was the same Spirit who used Paul’s feeble speech. Accept your lame evangelism for what it is – simply another means of seeking to reach the lost with the gospel – and thank God that the work depends entirely upon him and his sovereign good purposes.

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What Dying Churches Have in Common

The seven things dying churches have in common are:

1. Anger at change
2. Nostalgia on steroids
3. Confusion of methods and facilities with the gospel
4. Little to no interaction with non-Christians
5. Deflected blame
6. Refusal to see reality
7. Very little time left for survival

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Personality Tests—A Waste or a Resource?

Now, our personality is not our destiny.
We can, should, and must change and grow.
God loves us and made us as we are, but he doesn’t intend to let us stay the same. As God promised Ezekiel so long ago, we know that he intends to give us new hearts and place new spirits within us. Better yet, he says he will “remove the heart of stone” in our bodies and leave in its place a “heart of flesh.”

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How to Live The Bible — Going Deeper in an Age of Information Overload

In his book, Shaped by the Word, Robert Mulholland describes formational reading in these ways:

• Formational reading is not concerned with quantity.
• Informational reading is linear; formational reading is in depth.
• Informational reading’s task is to master the text; formational reading’s purpose is for the text to master you.
• With formational reading “instead of the text being an object we control… the text becomes the subject of the reading relationship; we are the object that is shaped by the text.”
• “Instead of the analytical, critical, judgmental approach of informational reading, formational reading requires a humble, detached, willing, loving approach.”
• Informational reading is problem solving; formational reading is openness to mystery.

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What Do We Do with the King James Version?

Mark Ward advocates something between these two extremes, and does so in an excellent new book titled Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible. He insists this book is not for pastors or scholars but “for the regular, English-speaking, Bible-reading public. It contains no Greek or Hebrew words. It focuses entirely on English. This beyond-influential translation, this ‘Authorized Version,’ has been and is both used and misused. We need to discover its proper place. So what do we do with the KJV? Teach people to read it? Revise it? Chuck it? No, no, and no.”

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