Renew

“O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense.” --Proverbs 8:5 It’s election year again. Every time the political debates come round, I am reminded of the section in Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death where he described what political discourse looked like a hundred and fifty years ago. Postman cites the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates as an example of how much things have changed. In 1858 a day’s debate could last seven hours and was packed with richly developed intellectual argumentation. By contrast, today’s politicians typically offer us a succession of quick, disconnected points which attempt to convey a general impression of competence and trustworthiness while lacking in the rigors of analytical depth and philosophical sophistication. Elvin T. Lim, political scientist from Wesleyan University, has chronicled the gradual dumbing-down of American political discourse in his 2008 publication The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric fr...

Things were supposed to slow down after Easter. I promised my wife that I would be more available after the flurry of activity surrounding Passion Week. But alas my predictions were way off. Because of a "late" Easter, the end of the school year activities came quickly on the heels of the holiday. My administrative assistant had her baby two weeks before we expected. This meant that our new pastoral intern was thrown into his role as church administrator with no training. On top of this we are launching a day camp this summer--a new ministry for us. My reaction to this type of perfect storm, of course, is to go into "Superman mode" and think I can single-handedly get everything off the ground at once. Things never go as planned. You would think at 43 I would know this by now. Not so. When things speed up, the chance of things going wrong increases. And that's what has happened since Easter. From my perspective, a boat load of things have gone wrong. The elusive...

Two recent news events caught my attention. The puffy fizz surrounding the release of Rob Bell's Love Wins seemed to fizzle at the execution of Osama Bin Laden. I couldn't help but notice the irony between the covers of Time magazine featuring Bell's book and that of the NY Daily News heralding the news of Bin Laden's death. I could almost hear the call go out, "So which is it? Do you want there to be a hell (for Bin Laden types) or don't you? Make up your mind!"

Kevin DeYoung, like the rest of us with kids in the house, is a struggling parents. He writes, "I remember years ago hearing a line from Alistair Begg, quoting another man, that went like this: 'When I was young I had six theories and no kids. Now I have six kids and no theories.' I must be smart. It only took me four kids to run out of theories." I am at three kids (and holding) and I'm fresh out of theories. After explaining his "no theory theory" of parenting, Kevin concludes: The longer I parent the more I want to focus on doing a few things really well, and not get too passionate about all the rest. I want to spend time with my kids, teach them the Bible, take them to church, laugh with them, cry with them, discipline them when they disobey, say sorry when I mess up, and pray like crazy. I want them to look back and think, "I’m not sure what my parents were doing or if they even knew what they were doing. But I always knew my parents loved me a...

Do you remember the Burger King commercials and slogan "Have It Your Way"? The idea was that you could order your hamburger the way you wanted with the toppings you wanted--right when you wanted it! That kind of "make it the way I want it (right now!)" mentality has crept into the way we live, the way we relate to one another, and even the way we pray. On this National Day of Prayer , I had a note from Elisabeth Elliot in my email box. She asks, "Does prayer work?" Here is her answer. The answer to that depends on one's definition of work. It is necessary to know what a thing is for in order to judge whether it works. It would be senseless, for example, to say that if a screwdriver fails to drive nails into a board it doesn't "work." A screwdriver works very well for driving screws. Often we expect to arrange things according to our whims by praying about them, and when the arrangement fails to materialize we conclude that prayer doesn...

Last Sunday I was mad. I was not in a good frame of mind to be entering the pulpit. Over the course of the last three or four weeks, several people had let me down--not showing up to teach youth SS, not attending the New Member class I was offering, not showing up at small group, missing church when they said they would be there. I was letting it get to me and it showed. My preaching crossed the line from passionate to irate. And people sensed it, of course. Comments and questions like "Are you mad at us?" were made. I had to apologize and ask forgiveness. When I read this passage from Randy Newman’s book, Bringing the Gospel Home: Witnessing to Family Members, Close Friends, and Others Who Know You Well , I knew I had missed the mark of displaying God's love as I preached about it: A few years ago, The Washington Post conducted a social experiment in what they called “context, perception, and priorities.” They arranged for Joshua Bell, one of the finest violinists of...

I was raised in what most people would consider a very strict family. I was banned from many "worldly" activities that my friends enjoyed. My motto became, "I don't dance, drink, smoke or chew or ever go out with girls that do." Whenever I pressed my parents about going to school dances, I was reminded what Mamie (my grandmother) would often say when asked to dance, "When I dance so, I sweat so, and when I sweat so, I stink so--so no thank you, I don't think so!" A lot of my friends growing up, however, (and many of my friends now) fit very comfortably in the dance, drink, smoke and chew category, including my wife (JK--I just angered Heather, my wife, and gave my mom a heart attack!). Often people ask me about these "worldly" activities--if I think they are sinful or if people who do them are going to hell. Randy Newman, in Bringing the Gospel Home: Witnessing to Family Members, Close Friends, and Others Who Know You Well , gives a great...