I suspect that most all of us now are familiar with the infamous statistic that over 80 percent of evangelical Christians voted for Trump and most of them even today continue to support him. It is very difficult to understand…
Moderateness as betrayal of the gospel
In his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. criticized “white moderates,” identifying them as feeling empathy toward the civil rights movement, but not acting upon it. King’s “white moderate” compares to contemporary white Baptists who claim…
A spiritual performance review
It’s time for performance reviews in my school. The provost reviews the faculty and academic staff; I review the leadership team and my executive assistant; and other leaders review the work of their teams. We have sent out questions and…
Culture warriors make crummy Christians
Culture warriors make crummy Christians. As liberals and conservatives battle for dominance American religion has been co-opted by both sides. Conservatives want to shore up the mainstays of traditional American culture: a civil religion suitable for teaching in the public…
Is public sentiment shifting from free will to determinism?
Pick your arena — Calvinism versus Arminianism, moral liberty versus determinism, Rush’s “Freewill” versus Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” — there’s quite a bit of conversation in the scientific community these days about what philosophers have debated for centuries. That…
Seeing God (a short tale)
A devout, Christian man was told that he was going to be given an opportunity of a lifetime: he was going to get the chance to see God. He did everything he could to prepare for the occasion. He spent…
Looking for blame in the midst of congregational decline
My colleague Bob Dale often asks me a simple question: “Bill, what are we hearing out there in the churches?” He knows that every week members of our team are fanning out across the country to work in dozens of…
You can’t go home again. But that’s OK.
You know the saying that goes, “You can never go home again”? The phrase was running through my mind as I drove the four hours from New York to Washington last weekend to attend the installation of the Revs. Maria…
Ready or not, church, change is coming
“You know that trick where a person pulls the tablecloth off of a table set with fine china, leaving everything standing as if it hadn’t been touched?” This was to be our final staff meeting as a team. Dr. Jim…
‘Don’t shoot! You’re all getting A’s!’
What if campus carry is simply the most dangerous of an unceasing set of classroom distractions, existing alongside tweets, texts, Google, Wikipedia and Facebook, diversions that thwart both instruction and provocation, disengaging students from ideas that might form or re-form them?
Whatever happened to evangelism?
It’s a fair question. It’s a good question. But it’s one which needs unpacking.
Alive in the heat of the Holy Spirit
Preaching through Lent and Eastertide is a daunting task, and pastors give their best energies to understanding the remarkable ways in which God has reset the whole horizon for humanity through the testing, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the…