Month: February 2020

As if beating a dead horse, I must yet again propose this simple truism – that the mainline church today is far more influenced by the secular culture than the other way around. And to make matters worse, they don’t seem to recognize it.

Perhaps the greatest fallout from this is the loss of “fellowship,” the sense of belonging, of being inextricably bound to one another, of being “in Christ.”

The surrounding culture has largely jettisoned this rather quaint notion, to disastrous result. Yet despite its pronounced effect, it remains largely unnoticed.

One of the root causes is the hyper-politicization of every aspect of modern life. One must choose sides. You’re either with us or against us. It’s Manichean, black or white.

Continue reading “Abstract Me-ism”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to say a prayer to change the weather. For some reason it’s a popular joke, implying that pastors have some special pipeline to God. More to the point, it betrays a shared sense that pastors are holy creatures, closer to God and immune to sinful pressures.

Now, I do think pastors should be held to a higher standard and that they should strive for holiness. But I also know every single one of them is a sinner. It’s biblical, after all, as well as confessional, doctrinal, and in accord with lived experience. We all fall short of the glory of God. No news flash there.

Yet some pastors seem to believe their own “press releases,” so to speak. The temptation is to assume that because you serve a religious community, you’re somehow immune to non-religious influences.

Continue reading “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”