Blog - Page 65 of 318 - John H Armstrong

A Pastor Who Learned How to Serve the Homeless On the Streets

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:50-05:00March 15th, 2013|Categories: Counseling, Culture, Poverty, Race and Racism, The Church, Women in the Church|

For twenty-seven years Deb Richardson-Moore was a journalist in South Carolina. Then, after being a writer, mother and wife, she entered a Presbyterian seminary (Erskine) to become a Baptist minister. After graduating with her M.Div. she accepted a post at a run-down inner-city church, oddly named Triune. It was a place where the homeless routinely gathered for food and clothing in Charleston, South Carolina. She was, to put it quite mildly, shocked. She thought she knew what she was getting into but within a few weeks reality hit her like the proverbial freight train. Seminary, and life as a mother and professional writer, had not prepared her for this unique calling.

Deb tells her brutally honest and compelling story in a new book with a lovely title: The Weight of Mercy: A Novice Pastor on the City Streets (Monarch, 2012). Her story is told as a personal memoir, a form that has become increasingly popular with modern writers. This allows Deb to relate the story from her perspective, as she recalls it and as she lived it. […]

Thank You Pope Benedict XVI

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:50-05:00March 14th, 2013|Categories: Current Affairs, Roman Catholicism, The Church|

Catholics, and many other Christians with them, have been talking about the choice of Francis I as the new Catholic pope. Opinions will be all over the map in coming weeks. We should not be surprised at this chatter in the modern era. When the announcement was made I was in my local Catholic store among friends. One, a Latin American, was astounded and so profoundly and obviously pleased. Immediately the talk was about the name, Francis. I believe this choice sends a wonderful signal about the global nature of the church. I have not had time to form serious views on the man himself but my first impressions are very positive.

Before we forget we should be thankful for the humble actions of Pope Benedict XVI. I was asked to express my response to his resignation last week by a major ecumenical news source. They wanted me to comment about what he had done. By design this was to be a short, simple statement. Here is my profoundly simple appreciation for the former pope, now living out […]

FDR's Holocaust Legacy – A Lesson in the Failure of Moral Courage

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:50-05:00March 13th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, Culture, Ethics, History, Immigration, Israel, Politics|

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was, and still is, one of most admired and esteemed presidents in American history. I grew up hearing a lot of good things about FDR. I also heard some bad things from those who felt the “New Deal” created the modern welfare system with all its contested problems. One thing is certain, FDR’s name was esteemed by most scholars and ordinary Americans who lived through the Depression and the Second World War. Rarely could you get a serious taker for a critical debate on FDR’s accomplishments, at least not among those who loved and adored him as a president.

When FDR died on April 12, 1945, Americans grieved deeply as a nation. His picture hung in millions of homes. He was lionized by multitudes and is still considered by a large number of people to be one of our five best presidents. Amazingly, he is the only president to have served three full terms in office. He had just been elected to a fourth term less than six months before he died. (Constitutionally no […]

"One Hit From Home" – A Film I Enjoyed Sharing a Role in as an Actor

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:50-05:00March 12th, 2013|Categories: ACT 3, Baseball, Culture, Faith, Film, Personal|

Some of you know that a few years ago I worked with several friends on a feature film. These two friends–Johnny Meier and David Stone–came to personal faith in Christ as young filmmakers and were powerfully nudged by the Spirit to change their lifestyle. This leading of the Spirit led them to make some faithful choices about what they would do and why. They were introduced to me through my nephew and soon became good friends. They both came to Chicago a few years ago to make a film about my life and the work of ACT3. You can see that film on our website, in a three-minute version or the longer thirty-minute version.

Johnny and David were working on their first inspirational film at the time we met, or at least they were working on the script and the early stages of anticipated production. As they scripted their film they had the need for an actor who would be a minister. This led them to cast me in a role in their film. Over the last two […]

Being Accountable?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:50-05:00March 11th, 2013|Categories: Discipleship, Freedom, Leadership, Personal, The Christian Minister/Ministry, The Church|

Today’s blog is written by guest writer Dr. Stephen R. Crosby. Stephen is the president of a ministry called “Sword of the Kingdom.” You can see his various blogs and learn about him at Sword of the Kingdom. I post this blog for several reasons. First, Stephen is an insightful writer from the background of charismatic and Pentecostal experience who “sees” some things more clearly than other writers I’ve “met” online. Second, this article speaks powerfully to a concern I have as I coach and mentor various independent evangelical movements, leaders and churches. This issue of “accountability” is not limited to one type of church form. Third, there are times that you think about writing something yourself and then you read someone who has said it far better than you could have and you just say, “My friends need to read this article, not something I would write at this point.” This is the case with today’s extremely important blog.

I hope that many of you will respond to this blog and comment on it here. I also hope many of you will bookmark Stephen Crosby’s […]

Boyd Crowder: Justified or Apostate?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:51-05:00March 8th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, Religion, Television|

You can gain wisdom from a lot of sources. Now and then a script writer for a television show actually speaks truth more powerfully than many of the children of the light. (I have no idea about the faith of the script writer so do not assume I am making a specific statement about someone else here!) Let me explain what I mean.

I watch very little television these days. I watch some national news, which amounts now and then to the CBS Evening News. I watch a bit of the local Chicago news, preferring to watch my favorite anchor Alan Krashesky, a friend who is a solid Christian and a fair journalist. I also watch PBS news and enjoy a lot of the Frontline episodes. I get most of my news on the web.

When I do watch television I watch less and less drama. I have tried several of the popular new series in early 2013 and have already quit on them. The new drama series featuring Kevin Bacon – The Following – is just too […]

Voluntarist Protestantism and the Dangers of Secular Modernity

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:51-05:00March 7th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Culture, Current Affairs, Marriage & Family, Missional Church, Protestantism, Separation of Church & State, The Church, The Future|

Voluntarist/Biblicist Churches

During the same period that I referred to yesterday, and especially since the decade of 1960s, churches deeply centered in teaching the Bible have grown numerically. Only recently has this growth begun to significantly slow down, a fact that very few are willing to openly face at this juncture in history. Was the success of these more conservative churches a result of turning against the subjective tendencies of their more liberal brothers and sisters? This seems to me to be the $64,000 question among modern religious sociologists. The early evidence appeared to support such a conclusion but now that conservative churches are also beginning to decline the data, and thus this debate, needs to be revisited. I believe the answer is that this simplistic analysis, namely that liberal churches in the mainline are in decline because they turned away from strong biblical teaching, is only a half truth.

The compelling idea employed by conservative churches is that each person is directly responsible for their own religious commitment. This is what is meant by voluntarism. This idea has […]

Non-Voluntarist Protestantism and the Dangers of Secular Modernity

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:51-05:00March 6th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Culture, Current Affairs, Ideology, Missional Church, Postmodernity, Protestantism, Religion, The Church, The Future, Uncategorized|

There are two types of churches which constitute the visible expression of Christianity in the modern age. For the sake of simplicity let me call these two expressions of the church the non-voluntary and the voluntary models. If these seem initially confusing they should be clearer as soon as you read what follows.

Non-Voluntary Churches

The decline of non-voluntarist Western Christianity, of both the Catholic and Protestant variety, has been much greater than that of the voluntarist variety of church expression. This should not really be surprising if you consider the context of this statement. A good part of church decline in the West has been the decline in the “mainline” churches. “When a state church loses its central role in society it loses something of its soul” (An Introduction to Christianity, 347). This is exactly what has transpired over the last sixty years or so.

In these mainline churches God was humanized and anything remotely like severity was all but removed. Liberalism led many young people to turn away from divine transcendence toward “human values,” values that were more […]

The Real Threat to Personal Faith Commitment to Christ

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:51-05:00March 5th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Culture, Current Affairs, Discipleship, Education, Emergent Church, Marriage & Family, Missional Church, Protestantism, Separation of Church & State, The Church, The Future|

I would argue that in America the impact of personal and social secularization is different than in virtually all other Western nations. The reason for this is because religion was never formally established in America as a function in which the state had a compelling role. From every angle you can look at this question it now seems that state support for Christianity harms long term personal faith commitment. For this reason the “free market” of faith communities has led to a competitive context in which churches can, and do, appeal for people’s support and, in some ways at least, flourish accordingly. This shift to voluntarism means that churches must work to gain the personal commitment of their people. This has proven to be a very healthy thing, at least in one sense. But recent developments have begun to erode the impact of the church in this culture for what appear to be other compelling social reasons that are new to our history. Let me explain.

Within a democracy […]

Secularization: Its Impact Upon America and Americans

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:51-05:00March 4th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Culture, Protestantism, Religion, The Church, The Future|

Various theories of secularization have been advanced to explain what has happened to the cultures of the West. It seems fairly clear that social secularization has caused religion to lose its power and influence over and within Western society. This process has taken longer to have its impact upon American culture but the last several national elections reveal how profoundly true this has become the “new norm,” at least in terms of social and religious values. Individual secularization, which happens to varying degrees to all of us all the time, is another expression of this same culture-changing phenomenon. This individual secularization seems to have led to our general decline in personal allegiance and open commitment to formal expressions of religion.

The way to measure the impact of personal secularization is notoriously hard to define. I can start with the obvious–declining church attendance and shrinking membership rolls. We do not precisely know what the numbers were for societies prior to the nineteenth century so it is hard to compare the […]