• 3 Ways to Stay Christian During This Election Season. Jared Wilson shares three ways we can wisely engage in the upcoming election cycle without losing perspective on what matters more than who wins or loses.
• Christianity Continues Rapid Decline in U.S. as Number of “Nones” Swells: Pew. Adam Ford writes “The percentage of Americans who identify as Christians continues to decline rapidly while the portion of Americans who claim no religious affiliation rises, according to new data from the Pew Research Center derived from telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019.”
• Francis Chan Leaving US to be International Missionary in Hong Kong. Caleb Parke writes “Francis Chan, former megachurch pastor and best-selling author, is leaving the United States to become a full-time missionary to “bring relief, share the gospel, and plant churches among” the “ultra-poor” in Asia.”

Click on ‘Continue reading’ for:

• More interesting article links
• Cartoon of the Week
• Favorite Quotes of the Week

Continue reading →

• How LGBT Pride Month Became a Religious Holiday. Joe Carter writes “LGBT Pride Month is not a just a secular commemoration of a people but a religious celebration of a belief—the belief that “Gay Is Good” and that moral opposition to homosexual behavior or transgender ideology is inherently bigoted.”
• PCA Sides with Nashville Statement over Revoice’s Approach. Kate Shellnutt writes that faced with more proposals addressing LGBT issues than any other topic, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the denomination that I am an elder in, last week approved measures to affirm the Nashville Statement and launch its own study committee on sexuality. Denny Burk includes a video of the debate.
• The Theological Legacy of Rachel Held Evans. Anne Carlson Kennedy writes “Evans made a way in the Bible Belt for advantageous, unorthodox, incoherent interpretations. Most of all, she nursed ordinary people into a strange comfort, not of bringing the difficult and terrifying questions of life and death to be answered by a kind and merciful Savior in the life-giving Scriptures, but of finding refuge in their own doubts, their supposedly unanswerable questions. This is perhaps the most tragic portion of her legacy, and one with which the church will have to wrestle for many decades to come.”

Click on ‘Continue reading’ for:

• More interesting article links
• Great cartoons
• Favorite Quotes of the Week

Continue reading →

• Starling Murmurations. On a winter evening in England a flock of 200,000 European starlings congregate to soar in breathtaking formations before roosting for the night. These incredible displays of aerial precision are truly a wonder of creation.
• Parenting and the Cultural Pressure to Conform. Albert Mohler writes “God is up to this. I’m not saying we’re up to this, but God is up to this.”
• Toward a Theology of Apology. Kevin DeYoung writes “We need more work in the years ahead—exegetical, historical, and doctrinal—on our theology of apology.”
• Finding God at the End of Ourselves. Randy Alcorn writes “In our spiritual lives, as in our professional lives, and in sports and hobbies, we improve and excel by handling failure and learning from it. Only in cultivating discipline, endurance, and patience do we find satisfaction and reward. And those qualities are most developed through some form of suffering.”
• We Are Not Meant to Be Awesome. Scott Sauls writes “God has not called you to be awesome. Rather, he has called you to be humble, faithful, forgiven, and free. We can all leave the awesome to Jesus. When we do, we will also become the best version of ourselves. But without the pressure.”
• Psalms for Men Who are Struggling. Scott Slayton writes “If you are a man who struggles in silence, turn to the Psalms. In them, you find strong men revealing their weaknesses and showing you where you can turn to for help. There are three Psalms in particular that give you grace for the difficult situations you face.”

Continue reading →

• • Good News Hearts in a Bad News World. Scotty Smith prays “By the truth and power of the gospel, may a faith-full heart beat within our breasts. Free us to trust and worship you more, and fear and vex less. You’ve hidden our lives safely in Christ; now make us less shakable when shaky things are going on—whether in Syria, our homes, or hearts.”
  • His Head and Heart Were God’s. John Piper writes “If you look at Jonathan Edwards from the wrong standpoint, everything is wrong. Some people look at him as a great eighteenth-century thinker, writer, and preacher, and that is as far as they go.”
  • Puritan Documentary. Puritan: All of Life to the Glory of God is the latest documentary from Steven McCaskell (Luther).
  • Deep Theology. Sinclair Ferguson writes “This is deep theology indeed. Yet virtually the profoundest statement we can make about God is that the Father is “in” the Son and the Son “in” the Father. It seems so simple that a child can see it. For what word can be simpler than in?”
  • What Made Paul Washer’s “Shocking Message” So Very Shocking? This looks like a very interesting series. Tim Challies writes “Today I am kicking off a new series of videos I’m calling The Great Sermon Series. The premise of the series is finding and examining modern-day sermons that the Lord has chosen to use in unusually significant ways. What we will find, I think, is that the Lord uses sermons to save, stir, and edify his people–and that sometimes he does this through unexpected messages and messengers. The series begins in 2002 in Montgomery, Alabama, with Paul Washer’s “Shocking Message.”

Continue reading →

Courtesy of World Magazine

JUSTICE:

• Grace, Justice, & Mercy: An Evening with Bryan Stevenson and Tim Keller Q&A. Watch this question and answer session with Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy (my top book of this year) and Tim Keller.
• Amanda’s Trial and My Book Release. Pastor Davey Blackburn writes about the next developments in the trial for his wife’s murder and his book Nothing is Wasted.

• Churchill Film Darkest Hour Offers Compelling Vision of Leadership. I’m looking forward to the new film Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. Owen Strachan writes “The acting is generally solid, but two performances stand out: Lily James as the prime minister’s typist, and Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI. James gives us a moving picture of valiance in the face of surging grief; Mendelsohn has both an arresting voice and a regal hauteur that flexes for both comedy and nobility. They help make Darkest Houra must-watch movie (fathers should take their sons, in particular; also, the movie is generally clean, with just a bit of bathroom humor).”
• Is Racial Harmony Disintegrating? This article is John Piper’s written version of a live online address given on November 30. He has revised and expanded his message to provide more clarity on the finer points of his burden.
• How Acts 29 Survived—and Thrived—After the Collapse of Mars Hill. Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra writes “I don’t ever want to do that again,” Chandler says of leading Acts 29 through five fast years of major changes. “I can’t overstate the hard work and faithfulness of Steve Timmis. None of this happens without his savvy, his ability to absorb accusations that weren’t tied to him. We took a beating for more than two years for things we didn’t have any part of.”
• Millennial Evangelicals on Israel: ‘Meh’. Bob Smietana writes “American evangelicals love Israel—if they’re older. But many younger evangelicals simply don’t care, according to a new survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research.”
• The Man Who Didn’t Invent Christmas (But Had Things to Say About It). The Man Who Invented Christmas is one of my favorite films of the year. Check out my review here. In her review of the film Gina Dalfonzo writes “In the vein of other Christmas movies like It’s a Wonderful Life,The Man Who Invented Christmas concentrates on values inspired by the season—rather than the real reason for the season. Yet in doing so, perhaps it helps us see that season and those values through fresh eyes.”
• Voting in a Two-Party System: Ten Other Questions to Ask. Kevin DeYoung writes “This is not about any particular candidate or contest. Every election will have special features and personalities to consider. What’s necessary for Christians, then, is to step back from the hoopla of Right Now! and try to develop some big-picture principles for making difficult voting decisions.”

Continue reading →