Envision, Plan and Make Your Escape Our absolutely unbelievably amazing online community, The Lasting Supper, is entirely made up of escape artists: people who’ve escaped or are in the process of escaping from unhealthy churches, relationships, jobs and other unhappy situations. (I warmly invite you to come and join us.) Today I want to share with you some observations I’ve made from my own life as well as the lives of my friends about escaping. My Sophia series of 52... Read more
(I tweaked the cartoon because some misunderstood that I was accusing Furtick of worshipping the dollar, when in fact he’s pointing to the God of the dollar. A fine point but an important one.) This is all over the news. Pastor Steven Furtick first came to our attention because he is buying a 1.7 million dollar home. Frankly, I don’t care how much money pastors make or how much churches pay them. I will also give Furtick the benefit of... Read more
I think it is possible for people with profound disagreements to get along. We can be congenial while we argue. We can even be friends while we fight. Like after a good mixed martial arts match, we can hug and pat each other on the butt and say “Good fight!”. I’m observing something that is happening online, especially in blogs and social media like Twitter and Facebook. It seems that there are two majority opinions about disagreeing with others that ends... Read more
I invite you to join others asking questions. Read more
What do you do when you have women on one hand who are every bit equal to men but the bible on the other hand that says they are not? Don’t let your left hand know what you’re right hand is doing? If your right hand offends you cut it off? I’ve made new friends with amazing women at The Lasting Supper! Read more
Apologizing is agonizing work. I know because I do it a lot. My wife Lisa is an amazing person. She has taught me how to apologize. (No, this is not a wife joke.) I’m serious! When I first started needing to apologize to Lisa, she made it clear that she wanted me to actually feel sorry for what I did, which meant that I had to be aware of what I actually did, then make amends and promise to not... Read more
I believe in the the power of authentic community because I’ve experienced it and experience it still. One of the church’s greatest potential assets is community. Of course, where we may most succeed is also where we may most fail. But I have experienced the power of authentic community in a church context, and really there’s nothing like it. I have heard of similar experiences in AA and similar 12-step programs, as well as other religious and interest groups. If you’ve... Read more
Knives in backs everywhere. Some in our hands. Some in our backs. My post yesterday, John MacArthur sends 500,000,000 Charismatics to Hell in Just One Hour got a lot of attention. Then Mark Driscoll’s gimmick of crashing MacArthur’s “Strange Fire” conference. He was handing out his book on the gifts of the Spirit at MacArthur’s conference where they were criticizing them. Driscoll tweeted that MacArthur confiscated his books when MacArthur’s team claims Driscoll wouldn’t take them but left them. They... Read more
I noticed Tim Challies posted an article on John MacArthur’s Strange Fire Conference the other day so I check it out. MacArthur’s church hosted the Strange Fire conference last weekend, a conference devoted to the critique of the charismatic movement. I read Challies’ post as well as watched John MacArthur’s address that opened the event and set its condemning tone. When I read Challies’ notes at first I didn’t believe them. Challies doesn’t interject his opinion, but neither does he... Read more
(*** You can purchase a fine art reproduction of this cartoon in my store!) You’ve heard the story of the blind men who were standing around an elephant trying to describe what they were feeling. One thought a tree. Another thought a snake. Another thought a mountain. Whenever I draw a cartoon or write a post, I always try to write from a humble posture. I don’t always succeed. But I try. Because I know all too well that we... Read more
nakedpastor
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In