Reading Time: 8 minutes We’re still on Chapter 7. Here, we look at a very common modern-day evangelical practice: overstating the stakes, then declaring victory even when they’ve completely lost their manufactured squabble. Today, Lord Snow Presides over evangelicals’ weapons-grade cognitive dissonance.
Ministry
Burnout: Pastors’ Wives Confess All
Reading Time: 17 minutes Today I’ll show you what this problem looks like, what the women dealing with the problem make of it, and what it means for the religion as a whole.
Thom Rainer and the Impertence of Communicationizing.
Reading Time: 9 minutes Thom Rainer’s blog post “Seven Areas Where Pastors Have Failed at Reading Minds” is worth the read just to get a feel for how frustrated pastors in fundagelical churches are these days. It’s largely their own fault, sure, but still, that is a lot of frustration to see boiling up from the page.
Evangelical Churn: Accusations, Power Grabs, and Overreach.
Reading Time: 10 minutes This idea is becoming one of Christians’ favorite excuses for why people leave their religion (or refuse to join it in the first place). What they don’t realize is that it also now forms one of the best illustrations anyone could devise for why evangelicalism, as a worldview and faith system, is faltering as hard as it is lately.
The Broken System and the Nature of Power.
Reading Time: 10 minutes A social system becomes broken when it starts causing harm to people both in and out of its group, and when it fails to deliver what its leaders and designers have promised it can do. But “broken” doesn’t imply a loss of power. To the contrary, a broken system’s leaders might have even more power than those in a healthy one because a broken system relies upon a shrewd understanding and brutal deployment of unwarranted power among its leaders. That’s the kind of power we’ll be talking about today.
The Ashley Madison Hack Was a Factor in a Seminary Professor’s Suicide.
Reading Time: 6 minutes Last month, a Professor of Communications at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary took his own life. A few days ago, his family revealed the shocking news that in his suicide note, John Gibson had noted that his name was on the Ashley Madison client list that had been released by “hacktivists” only six days earlier. Depressed and wracked with fear and remorse, he took his life rather than face his “loving” tribe once the news got out. John Gibson paid the ultimate price for his culture’s impossible demands and misplaced priorities.
6 Ways Christians Totally Miss the Boat with Non-Believers (And Why).
Reading Time: 9 minutes Yet another wide-eyed, disingenuous Christian takes a shot at why people become atheists. The results are, well, sadly predictable. I’m just surprised he didn’t also make some guesses about the number of teeth and ribs atheists have.
Oh Noes! A Baptism Drought!
Reading Time: 14 minutes One group of Christians, however, is finally coming to grips with their own drop in numbers. They might have the wrong explanation for it and the most nonsensical way possible of dealing with it, but they’re at least dimly aware that their denomination is starting to falter. That group is the Southern Baptist Convention, who recently declared that their denomination is facing a “baptism drought.” Today we’ll talk about why they’re facing it, and why they think they are, because those are two different things.
Abandoning All Hope.
Reading Time: 13 minutes One of the greatest of all the benefits of Christianity is supposed to be hope. So why do so many Christians seem to lack it? Today we’re going to look at the very sad case of a Christian man who lost hope, and we’re going to talk about some things that lead Christians to lose […]