fisher of men

In a recent column for CNN, Rachel Held Evans offers some thoughts on “why millennials are leaving the church.” Her post struck a chord with readers. She is addressing a perennial topic of conversation among church leaders and church goers: what will happen to the next generation. Like Rachel, I’m 32 – right on the border of the millennials, and many of the questions and doubts I hear from the millennial generation resonate with me too. But my analysis differs somewhat from Rachel’s. Rachel’s Analysis Rachel thinks millennials are leaving the church due to the perception that evangelicals are “… too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.” She’s right to decry a vision of Christianity t...

Regular preachers need to be more like starters than bench players. The bench player is a specialist. A southpaw might take the mound to pitch to one player. A sharp shooter enters the game to knock down threes to spark a comeback. But the starters need to do everything well. These are the triple-threat basketball players, athletes who can shoot, pass, or drive to the basket. These are the five-tool baseball players, guys who can hit for average, hit for power, throw, field, and run fast around the bases. The triple threat, five-tool preacher is characterized by variety in his sermons. He varies his structure, tone, and delivery of the sermon, so that his church never hears the same message twice. Must you add variety to your sermons? Why can’t you just preach three points and a poem on a ...

I was sitting on a ledge two hundred feet above the Judean wilderness. A lifeless and virtually unending sea of sand dunes was below me. It’s one of those visuals you never quite get your head around. A network of sandy spines reaches out to the horizon and then disappears. This is where things in this region go to die. Ironically, it’s a beautiful place. The scale alone is spectacular. And when the deep colors of the afternoon sky in Israel collide with trillions upon trillions of granules of sand it’s a breathtaking masterpiece.   I was here reconnoitering for my local church. A trip to Israel was in the works. This was my first time in the Holy Land. By the time we arrived at this particular spot I’d been traveling for five days. Several of the places we stopped offered an opportun...

Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World (David C. Cook, October 2013) I was sixteen when my parents kicked me out of the house. What started out as run-of-the-mill adolescent rebellion in my early teens had, over the course of a few short years, blossomed into a black hole of disrespect and self-centeredness that was consuming the entire family. I would lie when I didn’t have to, push every envelope, pick fights with my siblings, carry on, and sneak around—at first in innocent ways; later in not-so-innocent ways. If someone said “black,” I would say “white.” Nothing all that terrible by the world’s standards, but given my Christian context and upbringing, it was pretty egregious. Eventually, everyone involved reached the end of ...

The days I wake up and make a list of items I want to accomplish for that day are typically great days. I feel accomplished. I’ve completed my tasks and there is peace. Those days when I don’t have my to-do list can seem chaotic. I can stare at the clock anxiously wondering what to do next. I enjoy schedules because they give me a framework and rules to go by through the day. Rules provide comfort. I know when I am aware of what needs to be done and what is expected out of me, I am comforted. I don’t fear—I know and understand what will be required of me for the day. I’m not surprised at the end of the day if I’m tired because I knew that for that particular day I’d have much to do. There’s security in my schedule. There’s security in having the rules. My security and my hope are misplaced...

When Van Halen’s album 1984 hit the record stores, many a young lad, myself included, signed up for piano lessons. This was because the great guitarist, Eddie Van Halen, learned to play piano and proceeded to compose the hit single of that album—one still played at many NBA tip-offs—“Jump.” In six short lessons I learned how to master this melody, which in those days was enough to impress friends, woo girls, and justify the expense of ten-dollar lessons. My performance at the junior high talent show was enough to bestow upon me that prestigious adjective-noun combination—rock star. I entered the stage. The spotlight moved across my face and fingers. Cameras flashed. A sixth grade girl fainted. Wearing black dress pants, a white shirt, one glove, cool sunglasses, and (yes!) a skinny piano tie...

Many books extol the wonders of music. Leonard Bernstein wrote The Joy of Music. Igor Stravinsky helped us see The Poetics of Music. Aaron Copeland instructed us on What to Listen for in Music. Aided by the recent advances in neuroscience, Oliver Sacks wrote Musicophilia and Daniel Levitan offered The Science of a Human Obsession. Duke Ellington even boasted that Music is My Mistress. The list goes on. And why not? Music moves us in ways that no other art form can. At bare minimum we observe that music involves our minds, our emotions, and our physical bodies. For those of us who employ music in our worship, we experience unique modes of connection that differ from reading, studying, listening to sermons, and fellowship. (Note: I am not saying that m...

Westboro Baptist Church has made a name for itself by protesting funerals, naming their website godhatesfags.com, and telling lots of different people that God hates them and is going to send them to hell. Rob Bell has made a name for a himself by taking the traditional doctrine of hell and making it more palatable. In his highly controversial book Love Wins, Bell essentially said that everyone will end up in heaven, even those who reject Jesus Christ during this life. According to Bell, God’s love will win over everything else. Westboro Baptist commits the error of saying everybody and everything is wrong, evil, and doomed to hell. Rob Bell makes the error of taking hard truth and bending it so it becomes more palatable. And the reality is, we too can fall into both errors. When...

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Current controversy over the nature of Christ’s atonement for sin points to a truth many younger evangelicals may not know, i.e., the substitutionary nature of Christ’s death on the cross was a major issue in the Conservative Resurgence that took place within the Southern Baptist Convention in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The issue of biblical inerrancy stood at the forefront of Southern Baptist debates during those years of conflict and controversy, but other issues drew major concern. Moderates and conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention were divided over controversial issues, including abortion rights, the exclusivity of the Gospel, and the nature of the atonement. As might be expected, most of these debates followed the same or very similar lines of div...

I returned yesterday from Frank Turek’s CrossExamined Instructor’s Academy (CIA) in North Carolina. CIA is an intense three-day program that teaches students how to present I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, a four part apologetics presentation based on Frank’s iconic book of the same title. Students spend three days on the campus of Southern Evangelical Seminary learning how to present the case for truth, God, miracles and the New Testament. They make their own presentations as well and learn how to answer questions about these topics in a hostile environment. I participated as an instructor this year, along with Frank, Ted Wright, Greg Koukl, Richard Howe, Brett Kunkle and Larry Blythe. It was a powerful (and busy) three days, and I highly commend the experience to anyone who is...

If you’re a Christian, then the life and death issues that have shaped the struggles and joys of Christians for 2000 years matter to you. Dr. Timothy Paul Jones makes the story of God’s people come alive in “Christian History Made Easy” (Rose Publishing). Originally published August 16, 2013.