Those who follow the sport know that running back Mark Ingram, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, is hurt and will not play tonight against Penn State. But Trent Richardson is playing. If you watch this incredible video you will see why Bama is still a true college football "beast" for good reason. Those who are good, and commit to getting better, generally do improve.
I made several mission trips to India in the decade of the 1980s. It has always amazed me that so many people in the West do not recognize that the world’s largest democracy is India. Great progress has been made in both human rights and economic development in India, especially over the last two decades. I thank God for this progress. The church in India continues to grow in many states while it struggles under persecution in other states. Christians should pray for their brothers and sisters in India. We should also pray for the nation as it deals with many injustices that trouble ordinary people with life and death consequences.
One of India’s most troubling problems is the way women are still treated. This seems particularly odd given the fact that India has had strong women become political leaders. But the fact remains that in much of India women are second-class people. One evidence of this is the practice of “honor killings.” An honor killing […]
After my recent posts on “home church” I got a number of personal responses, both here on the site and through private emails. One daily reader forwarded me the email of a relative (who was sent the post by this reader). I asked permission to slightly edit this reflection and publish it as a follow-up to my earlier mini-series. I personally find this sister’s struggle very common, especially in the evangelical Christian community. Here is her edited letter to my daily reader:
Because I may be moving sooner or later I was telling a mutual friend that it would be disheartening to look for a church because I don’t want to do “church” anymore. We are involved in a church where we live because we are settled and established here. I love my pastor, the music and the people. I honestly don’t hate “church” but I yearn for something different and don’t know what it is. We continue to go on Sunday because it […]
I love apologetics. In fact, I have taught a graduate course titled: “Apologetics for Postmodern Evangelism.” Christian apologetics is a pretty interesting discipline if you are a person of the mind who is called to explain and defend the faith well. But for all of my love for apologetics I do not love a lot of what is called apologetics by a growing number of evangelicals. Even more puzzling to me is the growth of a similar type of apologetics among some conservative Catholics. Let me explain.
From the earliest days of the church Christian apologetics has been an important part of the study of theology. It is a branch of thought that aims to present a reasoned defense for Christian faith. It does this by increasing both the knowledge of the faith and the knowledge of how the Christian faith can answer the basic questions critics use against it.
One could well say that interest in apologetics began with the Apostles Peter and Paul. Clearly, it was […]
Yesterday I began to answer a question put to me by a comment left on this site by a Roman Catholic reader. Today, I want to begin by expressing my deep appreciation to my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters who read this blog. The number of such readers continues to grow. I think the reason is rooted in the mutual charity and common faith of all who see in Christ the center of living faith, hope and love. I believe that there is a movement of the Holy Spirit that has been going on since Vatican II. This movement is gently pulling all of us along as the wind of the Spirit blows us to one another in the love of Christ for his holy mission. This is what I call missional-ecumenism. I hope you will read my book, Your Church Is Too Small, if you want to really understand my perspective. In the book I tell the story of my own journey and explain […]
Yes, the question at the head of this post is one that I am still asked. Admittedly, it is asked of me less frequently these days, since most who really know me realize how amazed I am that people still ask the question.
Dave Lipsiea, an encouraging Catholic reader of this blog, recently (July 14) thanked me for my commitment to true ecumenism and then asked: “Do you see wasted effort and money by different Christian denominations who try in earnest to steal sheep from other Christian groups?” Dave added that Muslims, atheists and pagans are not evangelized in some countries, as much as they should be, because so much effort is focused on missionaries reaching Catholics. He added that part of his frustration is “with those who believe Catholics are not really Christian.” He added that he meets “friendly evangelicals” but when push comes to shove they “really believe Catholics are not Christian. Until that changes true ecumenism will be stifled.”
Well, I have […]
Classical Christianity, following the words of the first two great ecumenical creeds, spoke of the church of Jesus Christ as demonstrated by four great realities. These marks confess that the church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.”
I grew up in a part of the Christian church that did not use creeds. For this reason I did not hear these words until sometime near the end of my college experience. Even my evangelical college, Wheaton (IL), did not use the creeds. Thus I am unclear about where and when I first heard these four words. I know that when I heard them my first reaction, like so many from my background, was to react to the word “catholic.” But at the same time these words made me want to explore their meaning and grasp their deeper significance.
Following college and graduate studies I still knew very little about these marks. I planted a Baptist church (1972-1976) and then moved back to Wheaton to pastor another Baptist church (1976-1992). Somewhere, during my second pastorate, I began to study the creeds and their doctrinal/historical importance. I […]
One of my great joys is to teach evangelism, as an adjunct professor, at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. And one of my most profound joys in teaching is to work alongside some of the finest practitioners of evangelism in the world. 
One such evangelist is my dear friend Dr. Lon Allison. Lon is the Director of the Billy Graham Center and a dedicated preacher and evangelist. He also promotes the unity of the Spirit in the whole church. I was asked by Lon, a few years ago, to serve on this advisory team. I gladly do this and support him in every way I can. Lon recently made a trip to Africa and shared the following account of his journey with his friends. I share it with you because of the insight it provides regarding the church in Rwanda and in the West.
I have loved two sports for most of my life: baseball and college football. (I have begun to like hockey in a growing way in recent years.) I love baseball because it has a very slow pace and forces the real fan to slow life down and watch a long season in which endurance becomes the big factor over 162 games. You just have to “grind” as baseball players like to put it. Life is a lot like “grinding” with the need for real perseverance and focus.
I love college football for a totally different reason. As a small boy of nine years of age my dad took me to see Alabama play in its first season under the legendary coach Paul W. “Bear” Bryant. I watched this team, interestingly named the Crimson Tide, with rapt interest as my dad told me story after story about the famous “Bear.” I would learn that Bear played against my dad in high school football and that they […]
Victor-Marie Hugo (1802–1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, artist, statesman and human rights activist.
In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry, even causing some to see him as the greatest of all French poets. Outside France, his best-known works are the well-known novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). The former novel is about social misery and injustice in the early 1830s, but it took 17 years to complete and thus was published well after the time in which it was set. Both books have been very influential in English literature classes for more than a century and both have been made into major films, and dramatic plays, several times.
Hugo was a committed conservative royalist as a young man but became more liberal over the years, eventually becoming a passionate advocate of republicanism (not the American political party of course). His written work touches upon virtually all of the political and social […]
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