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Note: I drafted this six months ago, but had forgotten about it and never published it. Now that we are into the holiday season once again, the topic has renewed relevance. I was in a situation a while back with my daughter--who had a loose tooth at the time--where she was around other children who informed her that she needed to put the tooth under her pillow for the tooth fairy and she would get money from it. My daughter immediately informed her friends that the tooth fairy isn't real. They protested: "Yes she is!" and a few moments later my daughter came up to me saying "Daddy, they think the tooth fairy is real." For many parents who have chosen not to participate in this cultural game, this can be an awkward moment. You've chosen to be honest with your kids and not pretend that Santa, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, etc. are real. How do you instruct them to engage with other children who think these things are real? To be fully honest, I wasn't

1975 words | 6-8 Min If you're not aware, I'm church planting in Southern Indiana. When we started this work we came in with a strong commitment to evangelism and outreach, which is reflected in our church's purpose statement: " We exist to glorify God by proclaiming Christ that every individual in our reach might hear, believe, and follow Him ." This reflects several passages of Scripture, including the Great Commission , Col 1:28-29 , and  Rom 10:14  "how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?"  We had a variety of ways we were pursuing outreach when we first got started back in 2019, but when the whole world got shut down by you-know-what, we had to begin to think differently about how we did outreach. It seemed unwise for us to go knocking on doors, and most people were visibly afraid to have face-to-face conversations.  We had a dilemma: people needed the hope of the Gospel a

  How do you plant a church in a pandemic?  We've been spending the year trying to navigate these interesting waters and answer that very question. With new spikes of COVID in our area that has people more worried than ever, some might even call into question whether this is an activity that should be happening at all. As we seek to continue to get the word out about our Bible Study group we desire to keep everyone healthy and safe, but the things that motivated us to begin this journey pre-covid remain true and are perhaps more pertinent than ever. Here are just a few reasons why this task must move forward: The Gospel must still be proclaimed. In a day when more people may be aware of the fragility of their own life than ever before, we must step forward and boldly proclaim the excellencies of Jesus Christ, the God-Man who took on flesh, lived a life without sin, and yet died the death of the worst of sinners. In His death He endured the wrath of God for our sins, and yet rose

Edit: at the time of writing, Joe Biden is not the president-elect. I wrote this anticipating that he would eventually become the president-elect, but failed to make it clear that he is merely projected to be the president-elect. The electoral college votes on December 14th. Joe Biden, Projected President-Elect of the United States (at least, he is for now) Well, this has been quite the week. Obviously, things are far from "over" as we all anticipate the inevitable legal and court battle over the election results. My anticipation is that things will stand as they are, with Joe Biden being the President-Elect of the United States. If there was no widespread voter fraud, then Biden is the legitimate President-Elect and should be dutifully sworn into office in January. But even if there was significant voter fraud that swung the election from Trump to Biden, I'm a bit skeptical that our system that allowed this to occur in the first place will be the knight in shining armor

If you aren't aware (and you should be😊), I host a podcast called Do Theology with Jeremy Howard , in which we seek to keep doctrine in its place. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, rate, review, share, and all that jazz. Anyways, we recently had Joel and Troy from Revived Thoughts on our podcast. Revived Thoughts is a great podcast that brings some of the greatest sermons of church history to life while providing biographical information about the original preachers. We had them on to talk about doing theology in church history when there are many different theological positions represented. In particular, we talked about the lives of Geroge Whitfield and John and Charles Wesley and how they managed to maintain their relationships despite significant theological differences. Revived Thoughts also released an episode of a sermon read by Jeremy that was originally preached by John Wesley at the funeral of Geroge Whitfield. If you haven't listened to these two podcasts,

N.T. Wright, New Testament scholar and theologian Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus That’s the headline of an article on the Times Magazine Ideas section of their website. Its author? N.T. Wright. More like N.T. Wrong. First, who is this guy? N.T. Wright has been an interesting figure on the scene of Christianity for quite some time. He once was lauded as a go-to resource for information on the historical background surrounding the New Testament. However, he has since written some things that lead to questions over his understanding of key Christian doctrines, and when challenged about those issues his answers are less than clear . At best, he’s a convoluted writer/speaker who repudiates caricatures . At worst he is not an orthodox Christian because he has abandoned central Christian doctrines . Where he fits in that spectrum has been and remains a topic of debate within Christianity. I don’t intend to weigh in on my thoughts on Wright’s theol

Editorial note: Why did I choose to write about the coronavirus? Honestly, part of it was processing my own heart and emotions as I see the headlines, track the spread, and anticipate the future. I've had to put my own heart in check, submit to Christ's commands regarding anxiety, and direct myself back to trusting the Lord through uncertain times. This is the fruit of that. I hope it is helpful. Stats/Maps: [A] [B] [C] The Novel Coronavirus; aka 2019-nCoV; aka SARS-CoV-2; aka COVID-19. A rose by any other name, amirite? Many people have said many things regarding the new disease that is exploding across the world. Despite exponential growth in multiple nations, as of this writing, there are still some who are hesitant to label this a pandemic. It is my belief that this will change soon, and it will be globally recognized as a pandemic in the coming days or weeks. I’ve kept a pretty close eye on this for around a month now, and it’s fascinating to read the