How to Influence “The Liberal Media”
As a journalist, I often grit my teeth over many Christians’ responses to the media—especially believers who watch only one cable news station and read only evangelical newspapers and magazines such as World (but never Sojourners). Because these believers agree with the biases presented on conservative stations and in print, they don’t notice when they get news slanted in their favor. So sadly, in the words of Lifeway researcher Ed Stetzer, “Too often, Christians are in a state of perpetual grievance, where each passing day brings another new controversy about which we must act or else Christianity in America will crumble.”
4 Questions to Check Your Church Culture
Unfortunately, the culture of a church doesn’t always match the confession. And when the culture isn’t aligned with the confession or the calendar, the culture typically wins. Which means, as church leaders, we shouldn’t spend all our time stocking the calendar or tweaking the confession. Instead, we need to take a step back and ask some questions about our culture.
12 Questions you can ask a missionary that will help them stay on the field
Brenda Bosch identified 12 top stressors that missionaries face on the field. You and I can help them deal with that stress by asking simple questions.
It’s Time to Move Beyond Overhead
The Overhead Myth
So when you are making your charitable giving decisions, please consider the whole picture. The people and communities served by charities don’t need low overhead, they need high performance.
My point here is not to address the issue of teetotalism. I obviously don’t believe in it but I will say that scripture only speaks of drunkenness as sin. My concern here is how this story might illustrate the gap that exists between the gospel and culture. In fact I wonder: Do we even have a gospel for the person sitting in the local pub?
Follow Your Heart—Why That’s a Bad Idea
We see life from a limited perspective, so we need to resist the assumption that because we feel something strongly, it’s true.
Don’t confuse true feelings for truth.
When God the Father spun the earth into orbit millennia ago, He knew we would need a guide to lead us through the deceptions of Satan and the maze of our feelings.
Obedience is that guide. Anything else is a bad idea.
Starbucks is Adding Calorie Counts, But Will it Curb Consumption?
Some public-health experts argue that without putting the calories into some kind of context, simply attaching these tallies to menus won’t be effective. In a recent editorial for the New England Journal of Medicine, two Johns Hopkins obesity experts wrote, “If customers don’t understand what 250 calories means or how those calories fit into their overall daily dietary requirements, posting that information on a menu may not be very useful. That difficulty may apply particularly to minority populations and those with low socioeconomic status, who are at highest risk for obesity and tend to have lower-than-average levels of nutritional literacy and numeracy, which may make it difficult for them to translate the information into interpretable equivalents.”