Most people celebrate at least two Christmases—Christmas with immediate family and Christmas with extended family. It may even be as many as four Christmases if you’ve had divorced parents and step-parents added to the mix—hence the movie by the same name. As for me, I’ll be celebrating Christmas with my wife and children, followed by a long trip to Mississippi where we will make the Christmas circuit through my parents and in-laws homes. So that makes three Christmases for me.

What’s been on my mind this Advent season is the stark fact that we are all confronted with two Christmases whether we realize it or not. There’s the cultural Christmas experience complete with Santa, reindeer, snow, warm fuzzy Christmas songs, and most importantly the giving and receiving of gifts.

Then there’s the Christian Christmas experience as told through the Gospels of Luke and Matthew of God sending God’s own son in the form of a baby in the most unconventional, unpredictable way imaginable. Nobody expected it to happen this way. Messiah was to come, everyone thought, amidst royalty and privilege and power. Of course, according to the Christian tradition, it didn’t happen that way at all. God came from way beyond left field. It took the intervention of angels to convince folks that it was really true.

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I read in this morning’s Raleigh News & Observer about a recently released report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It further confirms the new realities facing Christians, churches, and church leaders. We must all wake up and smell the blended faith!

In a nutshell, it is a “build-your-own-religion” approach—much like building your own ice-cream sundae. Here are a few interesting thoughts from this study to consider:         

One-third of Americans say they regularly or occasionally attend religious services at more than one place.

It is now the norm for Americans to blend multiple religious beliefs and practices--from Christianity to Buddhism to New Age.

 Pop culture and the Internet and are probably more powerful teachers than Sunday School teachers (Scot Thumma- Hartford Institute for Religion Research). These survey...

I recently officiated my thirteenth funeral of 2009. I’ve lost track of how many funerals I’ve presided over during my 14 years as a pastor. But I have noticed some changes. In general, funerals have changed alongside the changing nature of our culture. As each new generation becomes less churched, and less influenced by organized religion, these changes begin to emerge in some of the unconventional practices we see at funerals.

Gone are the days when one might assume the loved ones of the dearly departed have a sense of what is appropriate for a funeral—committing a sacred creation back to the Creator and looking forward with Christian hope in the resurrection.

This is especially true when it comes to the selection of music. I’ve heard such sacred artists as Bette Midler, Brooks & Dunn, Eric Clapton and Elvis (at least Elvis had a sacred...

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...