Good dads are an endangered species, but good pastors are even harder to find. Bad dads are an epidemic and bad pastors are a pandemic. The good new is that there are good mothers, like Mary, who follow their sons even to the cross when the dads are gone. This is because we have embraced toxic versions of manhood where the gentleman as an ideal has been replaced by the bullyboy. This results in pastors who value brand and winning... Read more

A long time ago, though in this galaxy and not one far away, I received an email from a girl named Melody Guy*, who said, “I’ve noticed there are Bible translations, and I am curious about your thoughts…may this find you flourishing. I am gobsmacked to discover ancient books aren’t written in English! Why didn’t they speak Real in ancient times? Please, as your mom told me to say, drop some precious wisdom on me. Thank you for all the... Read more

Is there life on other planets? I hope so. So far the evidence is not great, but perhaps it is so. A former student and genuine intellectual, let’s call him Aristodemus*, provoked this discussion. He is not quite persuaded by my responses and so writes: I’m going to offer the guess that John Mark Reynolds has watched the Sci-Fi channel remake of Battlestar Galactica – such was my instinct when he noted, wisely, that a species of atheists would probably... Read more

Our problems are not unique, but are classic. Plato starts his Republic with a city in decay: the heads of the city are impotent and dull while those most powerful wish to be tyrants. God help us. The Republic starts with a miracle: the head of house leaves the conversation voluntarily and give Socrates the freedom to examine the assumptions of the young men. This “head”man, Cephalus, is removed without revolution. Nobody has to yell “off with his head.” As a... Read more

Today we shall hear from a critic of this column, but before the excitement let me describe some of what I have learned about writing interacting on line with critics, since I started on a C64 on Qlink back in 1986. If you want to get to the good stuff, skipping the “how to use blogs” part,  and see a commentator go after me (unedited! raw!), then skip to the last section. On Blog Comments and Patheos as a Valuable... Read more

Strategic Leadership, Planning, and Management for Christians by Peter M. Danilchick (SVSP, 2016) Good ideas are rare, the ability to implement those ideas is as scarce as a professional athlete who can describe what he does. For every Tony Romo, there is a Phil Simms, that stand in for the thousands more who could not even earn a job as he inexplicably has in order to fail miserably on a weekly basis. I work in a big idea place for... Read more

Many years ago, so long ago the VCR had not yet been invented, there was an eccentric movie called Star Wars that became a bit of a hit. The setting for the movie was a remote desert planet where an isolated moisture farmer and his family lived quite happily and peaceably with little contact with the outside world except what was needed to get blue milk. All of that changed one day when someone flying high overhead dropped two robots to... Read more

Data is just a Google away, but understanding data is tougher. Often we need help in putting the facts in perspective or just finding out if what is being reported as a “fact” is in fact factual! Books are best, but books take time to write and so the long form magazine or newspaper article has a place. Here are the center-right resources I use, in some cases daily. The Telegraph Newspapers are no good in the States. The best... Read more