Jackson Wu teaches theology and missiology for Chinese pastors. He blogs at www. jacksonwu.org. Wu has also written Saving God’s Face: A Chinese Contextualization of Salvation through Honor and Shame (2013). Follow him on Twitter by clicking here. When the Church Confuses “Me” and “We” In Christian Political Witness, the authors repeatedly lament the divide between “public” and “private.” Why? It is often thought that freedom is only possible by parting the political seas. In order to enjoy the “miracle” of American democracy, we... Read more

I was honored to speak at the Mission of the Church in the 21st Century conference at Laidlaw College in Auckland (Henderson) New Zealand, and it was a thrilling, encouraging, and challenging experience. First a word of thanks to Rod and Rosie Thompson for the invitation and hospitality at Laidlaw, to Esther Sila’ila’i for her organizational skills, to Fiona Sherwin who kept near us in the event we needed anything (including flat whites!), to Mark and Ruth McConnell for an... Read more

Bob Smietana’s fine article: About a third of young (18-29 year old) Americans — and more than half of younger Christians — are people of color, according to data from the Public Religion Research Institute. White Christians, on the other hand, make up only a quarter of younger Americans. In fact there are more Nones — those with no religion — than white Christians in this age group. That’s a remarkable demographic change from older Americans, where nearly 7 in... Read more

From USA Today: The old $20 couch from the Salvation Army was “pretty ugly” and smelled, but it fit the apartment three New York college roommates were sharing. When they got their funky, lumpy seating home, the new owners discovered its big redeeming quality: nearly $41,000 stashed inside. “I almost peed,” Reese Werkhoven told The Little Rebellion, the student paper at State University of New York at New Paltz , which first reported their March find Monday. “We put it all on... Read more

By Allan Bevere: Churches may have pastors, but the ministries of the church must be and should be lay-driven. The huge downside to the professionalization of the ministry is that too many pastors believe they have to do ministry for everyone in the church, while too many laity believe the same thing. When the pastor does everything it leads to an exhausted pastor, over-fed and out-of-shape laity, and a church that is neglectful of its mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ.Yes,... Read more

From USA Today: Francis Collins has changed medicine. As director of the international Human Genome Project, he led the first full sequencing of human DNA, the “instruction book” for human life. In 2009, President Obama appointed him director of the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest funder of medical research. He met recently with USA TODAY’s Editorial Board. His comments were edited for length and clarity. Q: What medical breakthroughs are on the horizon? A: Biomedical research is at... Read more

CBE: Many thanks to David Cramer for his blog, posted earlier this week, commending John Piper’s advocacy for the education and the safe return of 276 Nigerian females. Cramer applauds Piper for declaring Christian discipleship gender inclusive, compelling Christians to educate both male and female, based not on the contested passages related to authority (such as 1 Timothy 2:11-15 or 1 Corinthians 14:34-35), but on a broader and perhaps more egalitarian understanding of Christian discipleship as a whole. I join David in commending complementarians as they... Read more