Millennials Are the Church’s Next Great Generation

Millennials—the demographic cohort born from the 1980s through the early 2000s—have a reputation for being self-absorbed, liberal political leanings, an obsession with social media, rejecting traditional morality and a lackadaisical work ethic.  Most of all—if you believe the various surveys that claim to measure such things—Millennials are known for rejecting the Christian faith of their parents.   A recent Pew Research study seems to bear this out:   While the overall decline in the country’s religiosity is driven partly by modest declines among Baby Boomers and those who are part of the Silent and Greatest generations, generational replacement appears to be an even larger factor. In other words, Millennials, who make up a […]

Read More

The High Cost of Tearing Down President Trump

It wasn’t surprising that comedian Kathy Griffin earlier this week released a photograph of her holding what appeared to be the severed, blood-soaked head of President Trump. The media feeding frenzy surrounding the president has reached such an insatiable level that Griffin’s publicity stunt was inevitable. The surprising thing is that someone hasn’t done it before now.   Celebrities aren’t the only ones making the president their whipping boy. Prominent politicians and media analysts seem to be in competition with one another to see who can express their criticism in the most vulgar way. John Burton, outgoing Chairman of California’s Democratic Party, may be the winner to this point. When he presided over […]

Read More

Marriage for a Lifetime: Showing Christian Couples How to Build a Great Marriage

Nothing is more important in modern church life than teaching couples how to improve their marriages–the problem is it’s so hard to do.   I’ve tried everything. I’ve preached on marriage more times than I can remember. And while people were in general kind and grateful for the sermons, I’m not sure any hit their target. When a sermon tells wives to submit and husbands to be patient, well, it doesn’t always work. In fact, it may actually be counter-productive because a hostile spouse dragged to church against their will rarely gets fixed by being told to do more or less or better. On the other hand, their more hopeful […]

Read More

Final Thoughts

Friday morning 6:30AM The picture at the top of the post is of our joint team of folks from Lexington along with the national Peruvian hosts, at breakfast yesterday morning. Tito Savilla, our host pastor, is at the head of the table. We call him The Godfather. We had a packed day yesterday, the last day of our mission trip, on the fourth straight day of running the medical/eye clinic from 9:00AM until 2:00PM. Then hosting a children’s VBS at the same site. Back to the hotel for dinner. Finally, teturning to the site for an evangelistic service from 8:00-9:00PM. Last night’s service was full–maybe 100 people there, packed onto […]

Read More

Why Should Peru’s Baptist Church Look Like Ours?

Wednesday 10:30PM I mentioned yesterday that today’s plan was for our group to split up, so after an early breakfast this morning two group members and I, along with our national host Tito, left for the two-hour drive to the Baptist seminary in Trujillo. We were met by Pastor Julio, the director of the seminary and a key Baptist leader in the country. Like every other Peruvian leader I’ve met, he was open, friendly and passionate. His vision for Kingdom ministry in his country is to train pastors so that churches can be planted throughout the country. While I was speaking at the seminary, the rest of the team was […]

Read More

Modern Day Apostles

Tuesday 8:30PM Today’s schedule was like yesterday’s only more so. Attendance at the medical clinic doubled to 250 people, evenly divided between the regular clinic and the eye clinic. Responses to the gospel also doubled, with maybe 60 people praying to receive the Lord. And at tonight’s evangelistic service we had over 60 people–again, twice the number that attended last night. The picture at the top is of team leader John Payne preaching at the evangelistic service with team translator Jose Vazquez beside him. The tent extends out into the street; the doorway behind leads into the church. I don’t want to get too caught up in numbers, but I […]

Read More

Helping Hurting People

Monday night 8:30PM We’ve finished our first full day of ministry here in Chepen and all of us are worn out. But I wanted to post a few comments to keep you guys informed. More than that, I want to let folks know–especially those of you thinking about taking this kind of mission trip–what it looks like. Wake up call was early and we walked out the door to breakfast at 7:00AM. All our meals are at a local restaurant a couple of blocks away so we took the short walk and sat down at what’s become a community table. Together with the national believers who are a part of […]

Read More

Mission Trips Aren’t for Sissies

Sunday night 8:30PM We’ve just finished our first day in Chepen, Peru (we’ve taken to calling it “Chapin” as in South Carolina because, well, it’s funny) and I wanted to post a brief blog about the day. As the title indicates, these kinds of trips aren’t for sissies. We left Lexington yesterday at 11:00AM and drove to the Atlanta airport, fighting through the unending I-20 repair work to finally arrive at 3:30PM. We got all our personal stuff loaded along with the 13 trunks of medicines and departed for Lima at 5:30PM. We got in somewhere around midnight and took the next couple of hours getting all our stuff through […]

Read More

Mission to Peru

  I’m sitting in the Atlanta airport with eight other men waiting for our flight to Lima, Peru, where we’ll spend a week leading medical clinics, conducting VBS, and ministering at nightly crusades. I’ll also be teaching at the Peruvian Baptist Seminary. It’s going to be a packed week. We’re not traveling for any of the things you sometimes hear about when men get together for international trips–we’re not going to hunt, surf, hike or ski. We aren’t attending some cool kind of men’s retreat that promises to help us bond together as brothers.  Goodness knows we won’t be partying or gambling, either. We’re going instead to reach out in […]

Read More

The Benedict Option–Churches in Post-Christian America

Rod Dreher is one of today’s best known commentators on religion. A devout believer in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Dreher has been on my radar for at least ten years and I make it a point to read everything by him I can find. He understands the radical shifts happening in the modern world and has a sense of urgency about Christianity’s future in America. His voice is important for the church to hear. Dreher’s “How Dante Can Save Your Life” (2015) is the best devotional book I’ve read in a long time, and his commentary at theamericanconservative.com is must reading for anyone wanting to keep up with the latest […]

Read More