How the Playboy magnate won the culture war, lost his soul, and left us with a mess to clean up. Editor’s note: This piece was published in 2003 for the 50th anniversary of the founding of Playboy magazine, which some proclaim as a cultural watershed for a new liberation. As a young recipient of this …
How tribalism and culture-warring have ravaged our ability to think. Alan Jacobs’s wonderful new book How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds never mentions the concept of black magic. But it offers a lively antidote to magical thinking nonetheless. As any wizard knows, to practice magic is to marshal the powers …
A study reveals why relational ministry can leave our inner circle empty. My pastor recently asked me, “Why is it so hard for people to see pastors as friends and not just pastors?” In one respect, the question caught me by surprise. He is part of a large pastoral staff of a big and vibrant …
What young people must understand about commitment and its costs. Our pastor recently preached a sermon on strategic bridge-burning. He didn’t really call it that, but that’s what it was about. The biblical passage was 1 Kings 19, where the prophet Elijah calls his successor Elisha. The story begins with Elisha behind a team of …
After Irma disrupted his 25th wedding anniversary, Baptist pastor shares how he got Samaritan’s Purse to come to the rescue of St. Martin and why he went right back. When Jonathan Falwell saw the first signs of what would become Hurricane Irma swirling on the weather map, he moved up the dates of his Caribbean …
David Lynch’s cult-classic revival is exactly as imaginative—and as uncomfortable—as it always needed to be. “Should we watch Twin Peaks: The Return?” Now that all 18 episodes of David Lynch’s long-awaited television series are available for binge-viewing on Showtime, I’m fumbling with insufficient answers to this question. As I formulate replies, I feel myself fracture …
Why I embraced the Bible’s sexual ethic before I understood it. This is not a story of being gay and becoming straight. But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind to the beginning. My parents met at a gay nightclub in San Francisco. My mother just wanted a safe place to dance. My father …
As part of the family empire, I lived a life of luxury. Then doubts began to surface. Almost 15 years ago, on a shoreline outside of Athens, Greece, I stood confident in my relationship with the Lord and my ministry trajectory. I was traveling the world on a private Gulfstream jet doing “gospel” ministry and …
From denim to downloads, BSF is loosening up and adapting for millennials. Most Monday evenings for the past two years, Naomi Ruth Jackson has ridden her 22-speed bike uphill or caught a bus after work to Westover Hills Church of Christ in Austin, Texas. She meets there with around 450 women for a Bible Study …
Their sins and scandals were extreme, but it’s too easy to dismiss them as an aberration. The apostle Paul considered himself the “chief of sinners,” but then again, he never met Jim Bakker. The latter’s ministry got off to an innocent enough start. Jim and his wife, Tammy Faye, were young, no-name, itinerant Pentecostal evangelists …