Last weekend, my family gathered around the big screen TV and watched the Disney movie “Earth.” It was quite spectacular... and there were no animated characters. It was just the raw wonderful world of nature. During the movie the voice of James Earl Jones mentioned how different the earth would be if it were not titled at an angle of 23.5 degrees. It set me to thinking.



With my quick Google research I discovered that 23.5 (or to be exact 23.43) is the angle of degrees that the earth is tilted on its celestial axis, or the angle the earth is positioned from pole to pole. 



While that may appear to be of little significance, this number determines much of life on our planet. Without the 23.5 degree tilt our earth would be vastly different. Birds would have no reason to migrate; plants would grow at different times and in exotic...

An Associated Press story in the Raleigh News & Observer reported this week that the decline in U.S. newspaper circulation is accelerating,  Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that average daily circulation dropped 10.6 percent in the April-September period from the same six-month span in 2008.

 

The report went on to say that although newspaper sales have been declining since the early 1990s, the drop has accelerated in recent years. The accelerated change is partly because newspapers have stopped serving harder-to-reach areas and have limited circulation to their core regions. However, in many cases, people simply aren't buying print copies as much as they used to, given the abundance of free news on the Internet. (newsobserver.com 10/28/09)

 

It’s just another sign of the times. The way we report and receive news is drastically changing....

Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. So, since the following story comes from the tarheel state, I felt obligated to pass it along to my fellow North Carolinians. This comes from kwtx.com:

CANTON, N.C. (October 13, 2009)—The Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C. will celebrate Halloween by burning Bibles that aren’t the King James Version, as well as music and books and anything else Pastor Marc Grizzard says is a satanic influence.

Among the authors whose books Grizzard plans to burn are well known ministers Rick Warren and Billy Graham because he says they have occasionally used Bibles other than the King James Version, which is the sole biblical source he considers infallible.

According to the church’s Web site, members will also burn “Satan's music such as country, rap, rock, pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel, contemporary Christian, jazz,...

I’ve come to realize that there are no less than three worlds that exist in my church—and perhaps as many as seven. There is the world according to grandparents—those who grew up in the 30s, 40s, and 50s; the world according to parents—those who grew up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s; and there is the world according to children—those who grew up in the 90s and the first decade of the 21st century. This is an oversimplified version of the seven categories some sociologists would suggest.

The bottom line is the world that we live in—planet earth—has changed exponentially with each passing generation. Where does this leave the church? That’s a question I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

In the past week, I’ve heard the prophetic voices of Brian McLaren, Phillip Jenkins, Kendra Creasy-Dean, and a few others speak about the future of Christianity—for American Christians and those across...

Sunday I began preaching through the Letter of James. My first sermon in the series was entitled: “Overcoming Worthless Religion,” as in, “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless” (James 1:26). I am sorry to report the following example of “worthless religion” that emerged on my computer screen this morning.



Seems a Phoenix-area pastor has started to draw protesters to his congregation after he delivered a sermon titled, "Why I Hate Barack Obama." The “pastor” told his parishioners that he prays for President Obama's death and encouraged them to join him in praying for the president's death. "I hope that God strikes Barack Obama with brain cancer so he can die like Ted Kennedy and I hope it happens today," pastor Steven Anderson told MyFOXPhoenix on Sunday.



He called his message "spiritual warfare" and said he does not condone killing. Huh? 

Apparently Pastor Anderson's inflammatory message...

I just got back from a “last-blast-of-the-summer-beach week” with my wife and three boys. We had a great time despite some rainy days. (Who can complain when you’re at the beach?) We spent our week at Topsail Island off the coast of North Carolina playing in the surf and sand trying not to think about the reality of school starting back in a few days.

On our last afternoon as the high tide made its way in, the boys were playing in a natural “lazy river” created by the current in a drift of sand between the surf and our beach chairs. I noticed a fisherman to my left pulling hard at his line. He followed the fish down the beach until his line stopped directly in front of us. He struggled for a couple of more minutes and finally dragged onto the sand… a four-five foot long sand shark.

Needless to say, no one wanted to go back into the water for the rest of the day. We had...

 After all the innovation of the past several decades of growing churches, guess what the most significant factor in the twenty-first century is in getting people to attend church? Ready? According to a recent Lifeway Research survey, the answer is: an invitation from a family member or friend. That’s it. A majority of respondents (67%) said an invitation from a family member was either somewhat or very effective, and 63% said an invitation from a friend or neighbor was effective. (Baptists Today, May, 2009:13)

 

Things like billboards, TV commercials, impersonal door-to-door visits, even social networking websites lagged far behind in effectiveness. Bottom line: people today are open to invitations to church—they just need to be personal. There is no magic potion for church growth whether it be cool music, casual dress, formal liturgy, hip preaching, or state of the art facilities. Without authentic relationships church growth will not be sustainable. It will be short-term at best.

 

...

There are a lot of great things about the annual summer rite of passage we in the church know as Vacation Bible School. The basic thrust of VBS hasn’t changed a lot since I was a kid: Bible stories, fun, snacks, singing, crafts, etc. But the form is way more cool now. The songs are more contemporary and upbeat, the snacks are more creative, the themes are more modern, and the decorations are more elaborate.

These days there is no marching into the sanctuary and pledging to the flags and the Bible. There is no watered-down Kool-Aid, no dry cookies. But the focus is still on the children. Even in their world of Nintendo, X-Box, and the Internet, their innocence and thirst for God becomes evident during VBS week. Their complex world is simplified for a few days in the summer. I am reminded that our children are still in many ways an open canvas waiting to be painted.

The old...

As Bob Dylan once sang, "The times they are a-changing."  I won’t begin to recite the massive cultural shifts that have taken place over the past few decades, but all churches are greatly affected by the tsunami of societal change. Newsflash: denominational churches are graying—even among Southern Baptists.

As the SBC meets this week to vote on meaningless resolutions, a recent study by the Southern Baptist research arm indicated that 34 percent of church representatives were younger than 40 at its 1980 annual SBC meeting, but only 13 percent in 2007. Over that period, the proportion of representatives older than 60 rose to 36 percent from 13 percent. (courier-journal.com) Add to this the fact that SBC membership and baptisms have been in decline year after year—even after the conservative resurgence got rid of all the moderates and liberals. Now they are talking of a new Great Commission “resurgence.”

 

Of course, these trends hit all the other mainline denominations long ago. So it’s finally...