This article originally appeared on July 19, 2021 at Baptist News Global. The sound of skidding tires filled the air as the car spun around, the window rolled down, and an arm reached out. It wasn’t until the third shot that I realized that I was staring down the barrel of a gun. With nowhere to […]
This article originally appeared on July 13, 2021 at Baptist News Global. The early morning air breathes hot on her face as archaeologist Cynthia Shafer-Elliott picks up her trowel to begin her work she describes as “not for the fainthearted.” Before her stands a mound of dirt, otherwise known as a “tel,” that holds within itself […]
This article originally appeared on July 7, 2021 at Baptist News Global. Months ago, we sat around the wooden table in our booth, enjoying our food and reminding our kids to be mindful of the other customers around us. With five kids under the age of 10, it isn’t an everyday experience to be able to […]
This article originally appeared on June 28, 2021 at Baptist News Global. In this world of spiritual warfare, theological compromise and Republicans losing the White House, there lives a group of men, mostly white, who put on their armor, saddle up and ride into the glorious battlefield known as Twitter. They alone wear the belt of […]
This article originally appeared on June 26, 2021 at Medium. For one of my seminary classes, we had to write a pastoral letter to someone about the commands in the Hebrew Bible for Israel to kill their neighbors. We were given a number of academic resources that we were to interact with to explore how […]
This article originally appeared on June 24, 2021 at Baptist News Global. Over the past decade, evangelicals have had to come to terms with the fact that people are leaving the church in droves. According to a recent Gallup poll, just 47% of Americans are members of a church, falling from 70% in 1999. This decline in […]
This article originally appeared on June 8, 2021 at Baptist News Global. As senior airman Derek Tarr was flying over the Adriatic Sea in 1999, he suddenly realized he was being followed by a bright light. “We started into a turn and as I look back, it’s just a bright white orb. It was bouncing almost […]
“A flurry of new books have hit the market to define the phenomenon of Nones & Dones known to some as Deconstruction. The Gospel Coalition, a Reformed Ministry source, has released, Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt in the Church, in an attempt to shape thought and focus on the individual and excuse the […]
In this conversation, I talk with Dr. Jacob Robinson, who is one of my professors about the book “The Value of Nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy” by Raj Patel. In our conversation, we each gave the other five quotes from Part One of the book that resonated with us. And then […]
In this conversation, I talk with Dr. Jacob Robinson, who is one of my professors about the book “The Value of Nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy” by Raj Patel. In our conversation, we each gave the other five quotes from Part One of the book that resonated with us. And then […]
This article originally appeared on April 9, 2021 at Baptist News Global. Imagine if America’s coalition of conspiracy theorist, cowboy Christianity had colonized its way into the world of international politics and sexual abuse cover-ups under the guise of spreading the gospel. Research scholar Mary Li Ma believes this isn’t an imaginary scenario, but a very real one […]
This article originally appeared on April 1, 2021 at Baptist News Global. I sat on my front porch as the cool morning breeze gently lifted the leaves from the grasp of the trees and carried them to their death. Winter was coming. Seasons would change, and new life would be born again after the cold passed. […]
This article originally appeared on March 15, 2021 at Baptist News Global. As Bishop Curry spoke about the power of love during Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding in 2018, having recently joined the Anglican Communion myself, my heart was full. But when I watched Oprah’s interview with Harry and Meghan last week, I was stunned at […]
“The Bible Says What!? is an atheist vs. Christian style podcast that captures my one on one conversations with religious leaders from across the globe.”
This article originally appeared on February 23, 2021 at Baptist News Global. Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s as an independent Baptist in an all-white church, the first 20 Februarys of my life came and went without any awareness of either Lent or Black History Month. Liturgy was considered something the evil Catholics did. And […]
This article originally appeared on January 26, 2021 at Baptist News Global. Two weeks before I got married, I lost my job delivering pizzas because I had gotten three tickets for minor traffic violations over the previous two years. So when we got back from our honeymoon, I landed a job working at another fast food […]
This article originally appeared on January 17, 2021 at Patheos. The new Postcards from Babylon documentary comes out on January 21. And I had the opportunity to screen it for a review. But I wanted to share some additional reflections from a section later in the documentary where a number of soldiers begin to process […]
This article originally appeared on January 14, 2021 at Baptist News Global. White conservative evangelicalism had just survived its perceived nightmare of the Obama presidency. They were certain that contraception mandates, cake-baking mandates, transgender people being free to use the restroom for their gender identity, and ultimately the legalization of same-sex-marriage were threats to their religious […]
This article originally appeared on January 5, 2021 at Baptist News Global. The day I walked out of church, I had just finished assisting our children’s church lesson about how God created the world in six literal days. God had put the first two humans in a garden with one rule, and then sent them into […]
This article originally appeared on December 28, 2020 at Baptist News Global. Based on the heated responses I’ve received to my review of the first American Gospel: Christ Alone documentary, I began to realize I should review producer Brandon Kimber’s second film, American Gospel: Christ Crucified. Kimber had read my first review and reached out to me, and despite […]
This article originally appeared on November 25, 2020 at Baptist News Global. In the fall of 2009, I finally gave in and signed my life over to Facebook. I figured it would be a great way to reconnect with friends and family. Over time, I began to enjoy sharing my thoughts on theology, politics and sports. […]
Writer, Musician, Stay-At-Home Dad shares his journey from Evangelical Certainty through doubt and despair and back to hope in Christ. Join Kristine Johnson and John James Kirkwood in this full interview with Rick Pidcock, as they discuss the pitfalls of Young Earth Creation, Calvinism, Eternal Conscious Torment, and more.
This article originally appeared on October 27, 2020 at Baptist News Global. My body was tense as I sat in the white-walled classroom of my Baptist high school in Middle Georgia. With the sounds of pretend canons firing at the Civil War reenactment across the street, I listened to my teacher tell us about how President […]
This article originally appeared on September 29, 2020 at Baptist News Global. It was billed as a worship rally, but it could have been a political rally. Last Saturday, Sept. 26, nearly 100,000 evangelicals gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the stated purpose of worshiping God. They were led by Vice President Mike Pence speaking and by Michael W. Smith in singing. Among […]
This is an excerpt from an interview on the Voices in the Wilderness podcast. It was originally posted on September 25, 2020.
This article originally appeared on September 23, 2020 at Baptist News Global. I’m a stay-at-home dad for five kids under the age of 10. One of the most common responses to my recent piece about how John MacArthur doesn’t love his neighbor has been people attacking me for being a stay-at-home dad. Who am I as a stay-at-home […]
This article originally appeared on September 4, 2020 at Baptist News Global. The year was 1993. I was a sweaty junior high kid who had recently gotten my first stick of deodorant and had begun experiencing sensations in my body that felt both good and confusing. But one night, as my brothers and I were laying […]
This article originally appeared on August 14, 2020 at Baptist News Global. I grew up so terrified of God’s wrath that I drove through a stoplight while staring at my speedometer, afraid I’d lose my salvation for breaking God’s law in Romans 13 by going 36 mph in a 35-mph zone. When my grandfather died, I […]
This article originally appeared on August 4, 2020 at Baptist News Global. I stood next to my friend in the parking lot of our Baptist church with my large suitcase while our moms took our photographs. I was 8 years old. And I was about to experience my first time away from my parents overnight at […]
This article originally appeared on July 28, 2020 at Baptist News Global. As he walked across the stage July 26 to the large, wooden pulpit, the auditorium that seats 3,500 people was filled with non-masked, non-socially distanced conservative evangelicals with another 1,000 people gathered outside who all jumped to their feet for a standing ovation. The […]
This article originally appeared on July 24, 2020 at Worship Overflow and reflects my desires at the time for churches entering into the Covid-19 pandemic. Little did the Church know at the beginning of March 2020, the opportunity that was about to present itself to us. Many of us have lived our entire lives attending […]
This article originally appeared on July 11, 2020 on Medium and was edited on September 6, 2021 to include recent quotes from John Piper. After growing up in the patriarchal world of the Independent Fundamental Baptists where men would sit on couches watching football and waiting to be served their dessert while maintaining absolute control […]
I watched “Hamilton” last night for the first time. And I was struck by the parallels in King George’s song You’ll Be Back to the Calvinistic view of God. The lyrics say: “The price of my love’s not a price that you’re willing to pay …Now you’re making me mad …And when push comes to shoveI will […]
This article originally appeared on June 20, 2020 on Medium. I’m sound asleep when suddenly I get jolted awake by my screaming four year old son. Bleary eyed, I try to get a grip on my surroundings as I role out of bed, pull up some shorts, and put on a shirt. My four year […]
This article originally appeared on June 12, 2020 on Medium. It was a paper that I submitted for a class at Northern Seminary. Having spent my entire life in overwhelmingly white churches, it wasn’t until I had reached my twenties that I started to become aware of the water I was swimming in. I had […]
This article originally appeared on June 8, 2020 at Medium. It was a paper that I submitted for a class at Northern Seminary. In our previous article, we looked at how the Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist traditions have seen the relationship between church and culture. Each of these traditions were rooted in an origin story […]
This article originally appeared on June 7, 2020 on Medium. It was a paper that I submitted for a class at Northern Seminary. Bob Dylan once said that popular culture “was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it.” His lyrics […]
This article originally appeared on May 29, 2020 on Medium. In 2015, I was a huge conservative talk radio listener. Every day, I’d tune in to Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin. I was sold on everything they said. Then every few months, another black man would die at […]
This article originally appeared on March 28, 2020 at Worship Overflow and reflects my desires at the time for churches entering into the Covid-19 pandemic. As the coronavirus spreads throughout the world, many churches are canceling their services for the foreseeable future. I obviously have not done an exhaustive study of how churches are handling […]
This article originally appeared on March 23, 2020 at Worship Overflow and reflects my desires at the time for churches entering into the Covid-19 pandemic. As our days of staying home due to the coronavirus turn into weeks, Christians are feeling something they have most likely never felt on Sunday mornings before, at least in the West. […]
This article originally appeared on March 23, 2020 at Worship Overflow and reflects my desires at the time for churches entering into the Covid-19 pandemic. One of my deepest wounds that I’ve carried in life has been the wound of identifying with lonely exile. Last year, as I was talking about my career and ministry […]
This article originally appeared on March 16, 2020 at BioLogos. It was an interview about my album, “Consider the Stars.” “Creativity is the force of the imagination being formed into something true and beautiful by the world’s constraints. You can see it is a sufficient generalization of both science and art,” explains Tom McLeish, the author […]
This article originally appeared on February 29, 2020 at Worship Overflow. A pair of YouTubers who I admittedly had never heard of named Rhett and Link recently shared their de-conversion stories. Now, I’ve never watched any of their videos other than the two videos about their personal stories. But with that said, there was much about their stories that […]
This article originally appeared on September 17, 2019 at Worship Overflow. You may have noticed over the past few articles I’ve posted that they’ve each been listed as “Uncategorized.” At first glance, this may appear to be due to laziness on my part. But in a weird way, it has actually been a healing exercise for […]
This article originally appeared on July 20, 2019 at Worship Overflow. Every moment of loving, creative overflow begins with the seed of wonder. We may not even recognize it as such. In fact, we may not even notice what is happening in our souls until the seed of wonder begins to grow into questions. This […]
This article originally appeared on March 23, 2019 at Worship Overflow. I sat down into my chair as the light filled room began to slowly sing with the soft whispers of old and new friends. We’d been having a stunningly beautiful experience of wonder, rest, and community over the past 16 hours. And as the morning […]
This article originally appeared on January 31, 2019 at Worship Overflow. Two years ago, I purchased the Worship Overflow domain and was excited about starting my new blog. A couple years prior, I had gone through an extensive season of healing. I had gained much clarity regarding my gifts and desires. And I was ready […]