It’s been a long, cold winter, but that most wonderful time of the year has finally arrived. Time to begin that sacred journey that culminates in the crowning of a new champion of American Christianity. That’s right, let the word spread across the land, American Jesus Madness returns March 17th!! For the uninitiated, American Jesus Madness is a royal rumble of American Christian culture that pits people, places, things, ideas, literally anything else you can think of in American Christian culture... Read more

Today’s guest post comes to us from Amanda Miles and my new friends at The Meeting House. Amanda is the Compassion Pastor at The Meeting House and she’s stopping by the blog today to share about AIDS CARE and a super simple way you can get involved in their effort to provide comfort to folks living with HIV & AIDS in southern Africa. After you read her post, make sure you check out the fantastic video they’ve put together with a... Read more

It’s not really surprising anymore when Pat Robertson says something crazy. What is kinda surprising, however, is that somehow he seems to outdo himself with each new crazy thing he says. This time, he explains to a viewer why posting ultrasound pictures on Facebook is both abhorrent and will inevitably draw curses from demonic covens. As you will see in the video, there are basically 2 major takeaways here. 1)Based on his “posting the most intimate parts of your body on... Read more

I’m really excited to have my friends Amy Hollingsworth and her son, Jonathan, guest post on the blog today. They’ve just released a fantastic new book called Runaway Radical: A Young Man’s Reckless Journey to Save the World. It chronicles Jonathan’s efforts to change the world in Africa, an adventure that, as the subtitle implies, didn’t turn out the way expected. As I said in my endorsement, what I love most about Runaway Radical is its raw honesty. It’s not the cheap honesty... Read more

Tony Campolo tells a story about a parent-teacher meeting he once had while a professor at Eastern University. A father of one of his students had demanded a meeting with his son and Tony because he was upset about some of the things Tony was teaching his son about what it really means to be a follower of Jesus. What Tony was teaching was simply too radical for this father. He was incensed that his son had taken the gospel literally, given... Read more

(Credit: NBC News) These days it seems like I unintentionally get most of my breaking news from Facebook. It’s probably because Facebook tends to be the first thing I check whenever I turn on my phone. When I turned on my phone last night, I was met with the devastating news that ISIS had struck once again; this time executing 21 Egyptian Christians on a beach in Libya. As I’m sure many of my fellow Christians also felt, my reaction was one of... Read more

I’m really excited to introduce you to my friend Ryan Pemberton. If you’re anything like me, his new book Called is gonna make crazy jealous, but in the best kind of way. Called chronicles Ryan’s journey to fulfill a life long dream of studying theology at Oxford University, academic home of his favorite author C.S. Lewis. Through a series of very fortunate events, Ryan had the chance to eat dinner at C.S. Lewis’ old house, which eventually led to leading tours of the home, the... Read more

(Credit: The Telegraph) On Monday, I wrote a post about how we use cherry-picked verses from the Quran to condemn all Muslims rather than being rightfully angry at particular groups like ISIS who also use cherry-picked verses from the Quran to sanctify their atrocities. The point of that post was twofold: to demonstrate how the Bible can be used to sanctify atrocities in the same way groups like ISIS use the Quran and to remind us all of our shared call... Read more

(Credit: Thomas Hawk, Flickr) I have a confession to make. I get easily distracted in church, especially during the sermon. Maybe it’s undiagnosed ADHD or maybe it’s just because I’m a theology nerd, but sometimes, ok, a lot of times when we stand up to read whatever scripture the pastor is preaching on that Sunday, I sit down and immediately start reading the surrounding verses because I want to know what else was going on before and after Jesus said... Read more