Pam and I went to the beach last week for vacation. For five days we forgot all about our usual responsibilities and instead listened to the roar of the surf, played in the waves and read books under an umbrella. We had a great getaway and I realized—not for the first time—how a week at the beach may be a better investment than a year of therapy. On Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday but at the beach I lose track) something happened that caught me by surprise, not just because it was a new experience but because of the larger meaning it had for me as a […]
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Independence Day worship services put faith and patriotism in the same place at the same time for the same purpose, and finding the right balance isn’t as easy as we want to admit. LifeWay Research last week proved the point in the release of a survey it recently completed of one thousand Protestant ministers regarding their attitudes toward July Fourth worship services. Much of the information is about what you’d expect but the more you drill down some surprising details come to light regarding the uneasy connection between patriotic themes and biblical faith in the nation’s evangelical churches. First, almost every church gives at least some attention to the patriotic themes of […]
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While the presidential primary season has a little ways left to go, the candidates at this point are set with Republican Donald Trump facing Democrat Hilary Clinton in November’s general election. In any other year I’d be confident that most evangelical Christians would automatically support the Republican candidate because of the party’s stance on moral issues important to us—abortion and same sex marriage in particular. But this year isn’t like any other, and for many the choice isn’t as clear cut. Here’s why. Clinton’s positions on every moral issue are at odds with evangelical beliefs. She supports abortion on demand, same sex marriage, special rights for transgendered people and […]
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Denny Burk teaches at Boyce College, the undergraduate arm of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He writes and blogs about current events and cultural trends from an evangelical perspective and has a lot of good things to say. His piece earlier this week about pornography really caught my attention because of its application for our churches. The fact is pornography is the great undercurrent pulling at many men (and some women) and students in our churches. I’m approached by men wrestling with pornography on a regular basis and have walked with many of them through their personal bondage into freedom. Our Student ministry continuously deals with it as well—teens today […]
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Georgia Governor Nathan Deal this week removed any doubt regarding the diminishing influence Christians have in America when on Monday he vetoed the Free Exercise Protection Act. The bill was passed a couple of weeks ago by both chambers of state government to protect the rights of faith-based institutions to exercise their religious convictions in providing public services as well as in their hiring practices. The practical consequences of the bill would have been to protect churches that refuse to conduct homosexual marriages and to ensure churches wouldn’t be forced to hire employees who didn’t share their doctrinal convictions. Like similar bills several other states have passed or […]
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The people we’re working with are Christian refugees from a closed Muslim country. I know that’s a roundabout way of describing them, but in light of security concerns that’s the safest language to use. There’s a large group of them living in this city and their numbers are swelled during this holiday to the point that the streets and restaurants are filled with them. There are two groups. The first is the Christians and their friends, family members and acquaintances who are still practicing Muslims but interested enough in our message to hang around. The second group I can best describe as seekers–those hungry for an alternative to the […]
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I’m posting twice today to make up for missing yesterday (we were busy all day). The earlier post was from Frankfurt, Germany, where we had a long layover and now we’re in Philadelphia waiting for our final leg into Columbia. I’ll be able to sleep in my own bed tonight. By the way, if you hear any stories of me locking myself in the lavatory on the long flight here, I refuse to confirm or deny those reports. I will say, though, that if a flight attendant hadn’t happened by I might still be on that plane. The picture above is of our team. These guys, along with one other […]
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Our job on Day Three was to go out in small teams and distribute material to vacationers gathered for the Persian New Year. They travel from their homeland and are quick to respond when we offer them gifts–a card wishing them a happy New Year that includes a message about our faith. Each team includes an interpreter and the brief encounters along the roads or in malls or on buses often turn into more extended conversations. The nationality we’re reaching out to is well known for their hospitality and openness and our encounters with them prove that reputation time and again. What’s more, they love Americans, an irony that’s made […]
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We started our day yesterday with a ferry trip to an island just off the coast that’s a favorite destination for tourists from the closed country adjacent to us. Ministering to citizens from that country is the main object of our trip and we went to the island to connect with as many of them as possible. While our team was involved in several different means of outreach, the most effective was a small display set up by our partners offering free henna tattoos. Henna tattoos are temporary and use ink made from a local plant. They originated in India then migrated into this region and are especially favored among […]
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I’m on my way to join our mission team in Central Asia–they left Friday while I had to wait until Saturday night to travel because of a wedding. The wedding, by the way was beautiful and well worth the wait. It also had one of the most hilarious moments I’ve ever seen: when it came time for the little guy serving as ringbearer to give the preacher the ring, he looked down at the cushion where the ring had earlier been placed and it was gone! The ribbons that secured it had somehow become untied and during the processional the ring had disappeared. The poor kid looked helplessly up to […]
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