If nothing else has frightened you about our national leadership in the last few years, take a visit to Cuba, and then come back and listen to our Leader of the Free World extolling his new program of “Patriotic Education.”…
10 ways to take care of yourself because things may get worse before they get better
2020 has been one heckuva year. The bad news is, it isn’t over. If I am reading the tea leaves correctly, we are in for a wild ride these next few months. Between now and the end of the year,…
Church leaders, please don’t waste your transition crisis
What would you say is the best gift a transitional pastor can give a congregation? Most traditional interim training programs land heavily on the idea that the primary task of a church in transition is dealing with grief. Thus, much…
In this election season, I am partisan to the gospel first and last
It’s always about power, don’t you know? If that hasn’t become obvious to you in the past week, then you suffer from hardening of the categories caused by hyper-partisanship. I was on three calls just Wednesday asking me about how…
Baptists, of all people, should work for voter participation
Donald Trump has spent the past several months attacking vote-by-mail, going so far as to encourage North Carolina voters to vote twice (by mail and at the polls — which is illegal). Nonetheless, white evangelical support for Trump remains high,…
What I learned from RBG about the ‘dissenter’s hope’
As a funeral director, I sit across from families trying to process their grief. Just about any funeral director you’ll meet will tell you that no two families are exactly alike. Some families really open up, and their faces light…
‘Yes, and’: A response to stories of pastoral angst in the present moment
How many articles and blog posts have come across your computer screen recently describing the angst of pastoral leaders? It seems nearly every author, blogger, denominational minister, coach, consultant and anyone else who serves alongside pastors and church staff persons…
Who is Jesus Christ for us today?
Deep and terrible divisions wrack American society. Sober observers are concerned that the sporadic protests and counterprotests, the riots and gun-toting militias we have spotted this summer could give way to intensified nationwide civil strife this late fall if the…
Bonhoeffer moment No. 1: Claiming Christ but losing the gospel
At the “turn of the year 1942-3” and some four months before the Nazis arrested him, Lutheran pastor/scholar Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an essay titled “After Ten Years,” detailing pressures that developed after National Socialism’s assumption of power in 1933. Two…
I’m a stay-at-home dad who’s learning the power of relationships
I’m a stay-at-home dad for five kids under the age of 10. One of the most common responses to my recent piece about how John MacArthur doesn’t love his neighbor has been people attacking me for being a stay-at-home dad. Who…
Don’t be left behind in this apocalyptic autumn
This will be an apocalyptic autumn. While the biblical concept of “apocalypse” has been historically appropriated in some fantastic ways, its meaning in the Greek — “to reveal” — is what leads me to make this claim. Many Americans will…
What we can learn about the Holy Spirit from Jesus and the Gospels
Numbers are hardly inspiring, but they are indicative. A batting average of .350 is far more impressive than a batting average of .225. A shooting percentage in basketball of 50%, rather than 30%, can be the difference between advancing to…