For years now, I’ve considered it a major red flag to find the presence of a church discipline policy in a church. These policies grant church leaders enormous, unchecked power over congregants—who don’t realize how that power may be misused until they themselves are caught in its crosshairs. Usually, the Read more…
Evangelicals may fluff themselves up about their dedication to accountability all they like. The truth looks far different. They actually despise accountability, and do everything they can to avoid facing it. The resulting lack of accountability is the biggest red flag about their culture, and the reason why scandals pour more Read more…
Usually, evangelicals have a hate-hate relationship with mental-health counseling. And they should. Counseling puts the lie to their entire conceptualization of Jesusing their troubles away. But yesterday, one evangelical guy gave a speech to Asian Southern Baptists that sought to reposition counseling as a responsibility church congregations have toward each Read more…
Finally, we enter the big scene Peretti set up as the big conflict from the start of the novel: a church voting scene. We’ll look at how this scene might have resonated with Peretti as an author, and what it actually accomplishes in the novel’s setting. Today, Lord Snow Presides over a scene that demonstrates just how far from reality evangelical pastors’ lives truly are.
David Kinnaman’s central idea is that The Big Problem Here is that modern churches aren’t properly discipling their youth and that if this starts happening properly, young people will stop leaving and maybe even return to the groups they’ve already left. Today I’ll teach you what this confusing term means–most of the time anyway–and why this author is totally wrong.