When Americans debate about immigration, they most often think of people coming from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Seldom do they first think of Black migrants. Yet Pew Research Center reports that today one in 10 Black people in…
A response to Tish Harrison Warren about livestreaming worship
“I think it’s time to drop the virtual option,” says Tish Harrison Warren in an op-ed for the New York Times, arguing that churches should stop livestreaming their services. She explains: “Bodies, with all the risk, danger, limits, mortality and vulnerability…
GDP never was intended to show economic health, so why do Americans obsess over it?
Just before Christmas, Visual Capitalist released one of its signature infographics capturing the $94 trillion world economy in a single frame. It’s a stunning image, insofar as Voronoi diagrams can be stunning, in no small part because the numbers are…
We are the coalition of the unwilling
Back in the 1970s, church growth experts fell in love with the “homogenous unit principle.” “People like to become Christians,” Donald McGavran noted, “without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers.” The pushback was immediate. If the gospel is all about…
Why conservative content dominates online searches for Bible study helps
Imagine you’re an adult Bible study teacher in a local church, a layperson without access to personal theological library. Imagine it’s a Saturday afternoon and you’re working on a lesson and need help, so you turn to the largest library…
Was Adam and Eve’s ‘worldview’ the original sin?
Snowed in with my family over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, I stole a few moments away to read and reflect on racism in American society, how it persists even as its forms change, and ways to…
This is a tale of testicles, fertility, the length of men’s hair, and one bizarre tweet
Owen Strachan woke up on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with decades of injustice weighing heavily on his mind: Men with long hair. Strachan, who is former president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and is now provost…
How a student’s fashion design project upset the created order at Bob Jones University
Let’s call this controversy Wrap-Coat-Gate. Trustees and administrators at Bob Jones University recently grew so alarmed over a wrap coat designed by a student for a class project that they publicly called the student’s work sacrilegious, blasphemous, dishonoring to Jesus,…
Acts 29 ups the ante by offering church planters $50,000 apiece
In yet another sign of how church networks are replacing denominational identity, the Acts 29 network announced Jan. 11 that it will provide up to $50,000 apiece for new churches started through its sponsorship. Leaders of Acts 29 insist it…