To My Brothers/Sisters Saying “I Told You So” After the Giglio Debacle Part 2

It’s impossible to divorce yourself from your context. So this means no one is actually completely objective – this means you, this means me.

So here’s a little of my context: I am a pastor in a larger evangelical church in the Northeast who is trying to encourage his fellow brothers and sisters and inspire those outside our walls to the life-giving message of Jesus with word and deed. I’m tired of the haters within our walls that are preaching doomsday scenarios. And I’m tired of those outside our walls merely identifying us by our failures and blind spots. I’m excited by [Read more…]

Reflecting on Driscoll, The Inauguration & State of Evangelicalism Today

I really wanted to avoid posting about Driscoll and his condescending tweet about President Obama during the Inauguration but when your fingers touch the keys and these words keep coming out – well you got to let them out. Here’s the tweet.

What??  I don’t follow Mark but when I saw this RT pass through my feed, again and again, I was so embarrassed and decided to give up on social media for the day.

First, let me admit my bias – I am not a “Driscoll guy” in any way. Aside from having a post entitled, “Why We Shouldn’t Make Fun of Mark Driscoll By a Guy Who Likes To”  I rarely talk, gossip or hate on him. I may roll my eyes at times but I really try to avoid his name (among a few others) in conversation. My experience is that it brings disunity to some of my brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Second, I could never understand why some of my good friends who are intelligent, relational and have access to better minds would [Read more…]

Regarding the Coming Evangelical Collapse

First, well done Mr. Spencer, your post, The Coming Evangelical Collapse was a very interesting post. I had bookmarked Internet Monk but I now regret not adding it to my RSS feeder. I will remedy that. It is not my intention to refute his post, just adding to the conversation. Also check out Evan Curry’s post, “Dear Mom, the Evangelical Collapse is Coming”.

Indeed change is in the air. I agree with the consensus, it’s coming but I don’t think the “collapse” will happen within the next 10 years. My main reason is the Boomer Generation is not yet old enough and they still have enough money.

Consequently, I see the following happening within the next 30 years: “Collapse” is too overstated, I see it more as a evolutionary, and we’ll look back and cal it the “Renaissance of Evangelicalism”.

I mean no offense by this, though there is a strong attraction to the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican faiths, their current approach to family ministries will not be relevant enough to the children of young X’ers and Millennials. This will result in the aforementioned evolution of evangelicalism.

Agreed, there will be a drop off political ideology in the evangelical world. Meaning, there will be less and less of an assumption that evangelicals are republicans.

Agreed that the mega-church will stick around in the coming years. There will be fewer and fewer mid-size churches (600+) There will be fewer and fewer of the less than 100 people churches in their traditional role. They will more likely be house churches, or cell churches.

Agreed that we will not be speaking about the “emergent church” but not because it failed but as so many have pointed out, it was a segue to different conversations that did not create their own brand or denomination (praise God).