Tag Archives: Christianity Today Magazine

For me, local creation care offers an antidote to cultural chaos. We live in a cultural moment defined by divisiveness and chaos. Every day there is something new to be afraid of, something to fix or to save. School shootings, economic instability, and political upheaval all engender feelings of powerlessness and discouragement. If I turnContinue reading “Save Your Soul: Start Gardening”

Critics accuse American Bible Society of being too restrictive with its corner of the internet. Ongoing net neutrality debates reveal the tensions between the Internet’s open-source, free access ideals and the commercial or private forces behind the web. The debate extended into the internet’s officially biblical realm—the .bible domain—in a recent dispute over its faith-basedContinue reading “Sacred Domain: How to Keep the .Bible Holy”

When we are sick and need to know what can make us whole again, there is no other fount we know. In the time it takes to read this sentence, your body will produce 17 million blood cells deep in its marrow. To put that in context, that’s as many cells as twice the populationContinue reading “Our Blood Exposes Our Physical—and Spiritual—Health”

Chicago presents a unique context for evangelism and church planting. I remember as a child taking Saturday day trips with my parents, driving from the Quad Cities to Chicago and being enamored by the sheer size and diversity of the city. My dad knew some families who helped start an Alliance church in the cityContinue reading “Chicagoland Church Planting Alliance Spring 2018 | Chicagoland. Context. Evangelism.”

What I saw at two very different protests of violence against children. This year, I’ve attended two marches related to causes that matter to me: the March for Life in Washington in January, and the March for Our Lives in Chicago last weekend. They overlapped in many ways—not just in their names. But they differedContinue reading “Two Marches for Lives”

Controversy over the anonymous handout, “Excalibur,” has the campus pushing for public dialogue. A month later, Taylor University is still buzzing about an underground publication, Excalibur, which claimed the evangelical college was becoming more liberal on sex, immigration, and race. True to its namesake, the controversial newsletter sliced through campus conversation, drawing students and staffContinue reading “Taylor University Still Shaken by Unsanctioned Conservative Newspaper”

Crime, punishment, and Christ’s easy yoke. The cross of Christ has sometimes been compared to the electric chair or other forms of execution, meaning we are wise to remember that it was an instrument of death in the ancient world. The cross is also often used to prompt us to give ourselves sacrificially for himContinue reading “What Dostoyevsky’s Prostitute Can Teach Us About the Cross”

Just because a church is small, doesn’t mean it’s broken. Karl Vaters’ new book Small Church Essentials: Field-Tested Principles for Leading a Healthy Congregation of Under 250 has just released and it’s a great read for pastors and leaders of smaller churches. Karl has been a small church pastor for 30 years, is the authorContinue reading “20 Truths from Small Church Essentials”

What made Jesus explode in the Temple on Monday is actually related to his Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday. The black Baptists of the South are not known for their adherence to a liturgical calendar, but we do know Palm Sunday and Easter. Palm Sunday is the tremor before the earthquake of our resurrection celebration,Continue reading “The Palms, the Temple, and the Nations”

What if we challenged ourselves to shift our focus from self-improvement to fostering community? As what all too quickly happens, the New Year pizazz motivates us to make some positive changes or accomplishments with our lives and year ahead, and then quickly dims into tiredness, excuses, or disappointments as only about 8% of us actuallyContinue reading “What Will You Do Each Day to Make Our World—and Those Around You–Better?”