Blog - Page 276 of 318 - John H Armstrong

What a Way to Celebrate My 58th Birthday

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:44-05:00March 1st, 2007|Categories: Baseball|

Readers of this blog know I am a huge baseball fan. They also know that prayer and baseball help me keep my sanity and general well-being, in that order mind you. Today I turned 58. I also celebrate my 50th year of being a Braves baseball fan. I adopted the Braves as my team in 1957 when the Milwaukee Braves won the NL pennant and then beat the New York Yankees in the World Series, 4 games to 3. I had four heroes on that team—Hank Aaron, Eddie Matthews, Warren Spahn and Lou Burdette. Only Aaron is still alive, making me aware of my own age and mortality as I grow older.

Today, as I noted, I celebrated my 58th birthday. I celebrated at The Ballpark at Disney World with my daughter and her husband. We watched the Braves beat the LA Dodgers, 7-2. We enjoyed the sunshine, the crack of the bat, and the wonderful green grass of the field. I even called one of my best friends, David Moorhead, about six times on my cell phone so I could update […]

Following Up on the UBF Conversation, Part 2

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:44-05:00March 1st, 2007|Categories: Missional Church|

My goal in writing about these various reactions to my initial post on UBF has primarily been one—reconciliation between brothers and sisters in Christ. My motives and my insights have been attacked fiercely by some former UBF members. Meanwhile, UBF members have expressed appreciation, generally speaking. I also continue to pursue my real concerns with leaders within UBF and conduct a civil and respectful conversation. For this I am seen as foolish, unwise, self-promoting myself and unstable.

A friend wrote to me in private, after this discussion began on my original January post, saying: “It is very easy to take sides if you become friends with one party and feel their pain. However, if you appear to be taking sides—by, say, defending one group and at the same time criticizing the other—then you will not help them move closer to each other. I don’t think anything can be more important to God than reconciliation. Paul described the Christian mission as ‘the ministry of reconciliation’ and Jesus said ‘blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.’” I so […]

Boredom: The Cause of a New Form of Teen Crime

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:45-05:00March 1st, 2007|Categories: Current Affairs|

I have discovered this week that Florida has a major problem with teenage violence against the homeless. In a new twist on violent crime incidents the homeless are being attacked across this state regularly. In St. Petersburg two homeless men, ages 43 and 53, were shot to death in January in separate incidents. The two men indicted for these two crimes are 18 and 20. There were 41 incidents of violence against the homeless in 2006, more than in any other state. Eight of these led to deaths. A man was beaten to death in August by two teens, ages 13 and 16. Last April a homeless man in DeLand claimed ten teens attacked him with metal pipes and set his tent on fire.

The staggering thing about this new wave of crime is the most common reason being cited for the attacks. An online survey conducted by the National Coalition for the Homeless says 55% of the teens involved report “boredom” is the most common reason. 47% of people surveyed say such teens should face adult penalties for these crimes. I […]

Following Up on the UBF Conversation, Part I

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:45-05:00February 28th, 2007|Categories: Missional Church|

On January 27, I wrote a blog titled: “The Korean Revival and the Ministry of UBF.” UBF is the University Bible Fellowship, an indigenous and international tent-making mission that was birthed through the impact of the Korean Revival some 75 years ago. UBF is a mission that has produced a dynamic movement of evangelism that follows the principles developed by people like John Nevius and other influential Asian missional thinkers who encouraged every-member ministry and tent-maker leadership. This approach is so different from North American forms of local church development that is has both incredible strengths and potential weaknesses, both of which I briefly cited before.

I knew when I posted this particular blog that I would engender the kind of response that appeared on my site over the next several weeks that followed. I have read the numerous responses, and kept an open mind through it all. I will continue to observe UBF, learn from them, and speak the truth in love to them as best I know how. And I assure all of the critics of UBF that I am […]

Breach: The Shocking Story of a Double-Agent

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:45-05:00February 27th, 2007|Categories: Film|

The wonderfully crafted docudrama Breach is both an entertaining and disturbing movie. It is the story of America’s most prominent double-agent spy, Robert Hanssen, who sold more priceless American secrets to the Soviets than any other agent ever convicted in U. S. history. Chris Cooper’s portrayal of Agent Hanssen is anything but humdrum. He chillingly takes the viewer into a deeply complex world of spying and national security. In the process he powerfully exposes how vulnerable our best intelligence really is when an agent is willing to sell his soul.

What is so disturbing about this movie is not just the depth to which Hanssen’s deception went but how deeply this deception was entertwined with his commitments to Christian faith, Hanssen was a deeply devoted member of Opus Dei, a renewal movement in the Roman Catholic Church. As everyone knows the Catholic Church has come under culture-wide suspicion, for well over a decade now, for sexual scandals related to some of its priests. This movie exposes a whole different kettle of fish—the nature to which a person can use religious faith to […]

Free Speech & Blogging: Don't Take It For Granted

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:45-05:00February 27th, 2007|Categories: Current Affairs|

The world of blogging can be dangerous, especially if you live in Egypt and oppose Al-Azhar, the most prominent religious center in Sunni Islam. Abdel Kareem Nabil, a 22-year old former student at Egypt’s prominent university found this out last week when he was convicted of a crime for, among other things, calling the school “the university of terrorism.” He was sentenced last Thursday to four years in prison for his Internet comments and his “insults” to Islam. Nabil’s lawyer, in a vast understatement if there ever was one, said this conviction will “terrify other bloggers and have a negative impact on freedom of expression in Egypt.” You bet it will. Thankfully Egyptian and international human-rights groups have already unleashed major criticism. A New York committee to protect journalism and freedom notes that as of December there are 49 bloggers now behind bars for such expressions of free speech. Anyone want to guess what religious practice and faith fosters such a reaction to freedom of speech and vocal secularism?

A U.S. State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, had no comment on the Nabil case, […]

The Power of Amazing Grace

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:45-05:00February 26th, 2007|Categories: Film|

Rarely have I seen a movie that moved me the way Amazing Grace did last evening. The new film, which opened across America on Friday, is the story of the life-long struggle of William Wilberforce to end slavery and reform British society in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The movie should compel Christians to understand how culture can be truly altered by incrementalism, deep faith, sheer perseverance, and quite often with great personal sacrifice.

When the anti-slavery movement began in earnest in the late 18th century almost every leader in the British Empire embraced the retention of slavery on economic and, in some cases, so-called “Christian” grounds. One of the chief influences against the horrible institution was John Newton, the evangelical Anglican clergyman who wrote the world best-known hymn, “Amazing Grace,” thus the title of this new movie. Newton had been a “slaver” himself and thus knew well what happened to the Africans who were sold into slavery. After his conversion Newton lived with the nightmare of 20,000 African souls perishing through his own complicity and consistently opposed the grim […]

A Day at Grace

By John Armstrong|2007-02-25T14:26:27-06:00February 25th, 2007|Categories: Missional Church|

Grace Christian Fellowship, of Largo, Florida, is twelve years old, a young church as congregations go. It was begun by Pastor Randy Evans, and his wife Becky, after Randy had served in a much larger charismatic church in the Clearwater area as a youth pastor and associate minister. I was introduced to Randy when he came to several of our conferences in Chicago, about eight to ten years ago. When he invited me to visit, and told me that I could come in the spring, I noted that I should take him up on this invitation in March of 2005. I wrote and Randy kindly invited me to come to Largo that year. (I do like to be in Florida for spring training baseball games so why not speak at the same time, I reasoned with a measure of obvious calculation.)

Today marked my third consecutive annual visit to this growing missional church. Randy, and his associate Heath Watson, are doing a great job of pointing this church, now in its new building for a little over two years, toward advancing the kingdom […]

U.S. High Schools Learning Less: What's the Answer?

By John Armstrong|2007-02-24T10:44:30-06:00February 24th, 2007|Categories: Education|

U. S. high school students are taking harder classes, receiving better grades, and from every indication in recent data, leaning much less than their counterparts fifteen years ago. Go figure. All the talk about spending more money and about improving testing and teacher standards and the end result is that two decades of educational reform may not have improved things overall.

The U. S. Department of Education released two studies Thursday that raised very tough questions. David Driscoll, the commissioner of education for Massachusetts, notes, "I think we are sleeping through a crisis." He called these two new studies "stunning." Two means were used for this study: (1) A standardized 12th grade test, and (2) An analysis of the transcripts of 2005 high school graduates.

The fascinating thing is that students in 1990 had a GPA of 2.68 and in 2005 it rose to 2.98, and this included students taking more college preparatory courses than ever before. 12th grade reading scores have been dropping steadily since 1992. So, what are students learning in college prep classes? As for math fewer […]

The War in Iraq Has New Meaning for Me

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:45-05:00February 23rd, 2007|Categories: Personal|

All Americans have some interest in the present war in Iraq. Some have a deeper and more personal interest since they have members of their own family serving in this present struggle to establish an effective democracy in a far-away place. It is relatively easy for people to debate the merits, or demerits, of this conflict so long as they are not personally touched by the tragedy and the daily dangers of death.

Yesterday I had lunch with a dear friend of mine, a Wheaton College classmate, and also member of my advisory team. His son took up duties in Iraq almost three weeks ago as the executive officer of a company of about 150 men in the Baghdad area. He is, in other words, part of the much debated “surge.” My friend thinks of his son every moment of every day. When we met for lunch yesterday we talked about Stephen, what news he has heard (very little) and how he is doing in this dangerous place. All parents live with the reality that their children could be taken from them at […]