John Chandler

Twenty-five years ago, Lyle Schaller told a group of ministers in North Carolina that if we wanted to stay conversant with what was happening in the country and also peek around the corner at what might be trending next, simply…

David Brooks’s recent New York Times op-ed column on Google’s “ngram” analysis revealed a stunning surge of individualism reflected in our language and literature in recent years. Another element revealed by analysis of words trending upward is what Brooks calls…

My friend Jim Baucom pointed me to a column written recently by one of my favorite writers, David Brooks. Brooks wrote a wonderful, breezy book in 2001 called Bobos In Paradise, a self-described “comic sociology” of sweeping generalizations about the…

According to dean of American church consultants Lyle Schaller, when leaders in nondenominational Protestant megachurches founded since 1975 are asked, “What proportion of your regular attendees in worship were born, baptized, reared and confirmed in a Roman Catholic family?”, responses…

In her turn-of-the-century work with Apple and Microsoft, tech veteran Linda Stone was on the front edge of developing new “attention strategies” for living and working in a hyper-connected, always-on world. With the state of “continuous partial attention” now our…

Around the turn of the century, tech-industry veteran Linda Stone coined the term, “continuous partial attention.” This state is, in the words of her June interview in The Atlantic, “the modern predicament of being constantly attuned to everything without fully…

Last year, the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies published William Tuck’s book, Modern Shapers of Baptist Thought. Shout-out to Bill Tuck and Fred Anderson for this fine compendium of 24 key Baptist influencers from John Broadus to Jimmy Carter,…

Here’s a no-brainer trend: blogs, Twitter and Facebook pronouncements by public religious leaders going viral with all kinds of unintended negative consequences. Besides making me shake my bald head, it raises the question of what the “best practices” trend will…

Dallas Willard’s death in May has given us a chance to think about his substantial legacy, and his contribution to the wonderful trend of turning the core evangelical conversation toward discipleship and life in the Kingdom. Only 30 years ago,…