Current Events (Page 2)
The Dangers of Celebrity Pastor Culture, Pt. 1
For those who were active in the Church during the 1990s either as a youth or involved in youth ministry in some capacity, memories of what is today called the “purity culture” are likely to comprise a fair amount of what we remember. While this movement suffered from several abuses, not the…
The Billy Graham Rule – Today
Much has been made about the so-called “Billy Graham Rule” in recent years, due to the acknowledgement of many public figures (such as Vice-President Mike Pence) who adhere to it. When Billy Graham was beginning his ministry, he and his team understood that all of their Kingdom efforts could be undermined and discredited by a single accusation of sexual impropriety. …
#SBC Thoughts – Part 2
This week’s thought is from Lisa King, who served as a messenger to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention this year. I am thankful for her – as well as the other messengers’ – prayerful and thoughtful participation this year. I thought it would be a good thing for you to hear the perspectives of some of those who attended and not just my…
#SBC19 Thoughts – Part 1
This year, the SBC’s annual meeting was held in Birmingham, Alabama with nearly 8,200 messengers representing the more than 47,000 SBC churches throughout the United States. Every year, these messengers gather together to handle the business of this convention of churches, hear reports from our various entities, ask questions, become informed and educated, and meet…
D-Day
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing by Allied forces into Nazi-occupied Europe, a significant turning point in World War II. The full story of all the events that led up to D-Day, as well as its completion, is much too long to tell in such a short space here, but it is a story that we should all know, study, remember, and pass on to the…
The Distraction of Boredom
Have you noticed how almost everything in our society today is focused on entertainment? Our lifestyles push us so that we do not have much downtime at all, and much of the time we spend engaged in activity is centered on keeping us entertained. Sports have become a multibillion dollar industry, regardless of the level. For instance, the NFL alone reported $14.2…
The Power of Story
Over the past eleven years, a remarkable series of movies have been produced based on comic book characters from Marvel Comics. Marvel had attempted to produce movies prior to their release of Iron Man in 2008, but had failed to find much commercial success in their endeavors (in fact, they sometimes failed rather spectacularly). In casting the actor Robert Downey, Jr.…
Short Attention Spans
Last week, Sports Illustrated reported that the coach of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, Kliff Kingsbury, has decided to provide “cellphone breaks” during team meetings in order to help his players maintain their concentration and attention. Kingsbury, who previously coached the Texas Tech football team, was noticing what could only be described as withdrawal symptoms…
The End of the World As We Know It
A favorite children’s story is “Chicken Little,” which is about a naïve fowl who has the proclivity to believe the end of the world has begun as the result of some rather mundane event (in many tellings of this fable, an acorn falling out of a tree and hitting her on the head). Chicken Little begins to run to all her friends in order to warn them – quite hysterically –…
The UMC and the Moral Revolution
Ever since the United Methodist Church (UMC) was formed in 1968 by the merger of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the question of how the denomination should view homosexuality has been a recurring issue at each of their quadrennial General Conferences. This conflict existed despite the fact that The Book of Discipline, the…