Recurring medical developments with my precious wife, Sharon, have motivated me to rediscover a pattern of finding my knees in prayer. When you face those challenges in life that touch the deep places in your heart, you know that all of your personal creativity, intelligence and ability are completely inadequate to fix whatever you are facing. You fall to your knees with arms raised in helpless submission and with many tears you cry out to the Lord. Desperation is when you have exhausted … [Read more...]
Church planters win at U.S. Supreme Court
Just as everyone was headed home from Columbus, Ohio, from another productive Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, word came of a major victory at the U.S. Supreme Court for free speech and church planters. On June 18 the Supremes delivered a stunning, unanimous 9-0 victory for the 82-year-old pastor of Good News Presbyterian Church in Gilbert, Ariz., finding that the Town of Gilbert’s sign ordinance is content-based discrimination. The win paves the way for smaller congregations … [Read more...]
This could be the year
In a most passionate way, Dr. Ronnie Floyd is convening Southern Baptists to seek the Lord for revival and spiritual awakening. The urgency of the hour is evident to anyone who cares about life and liberty. The entire agenda of the SBC Annual Meeting is new. We cannot do business as usual. While there is business to do, the need of the hour is what happens starting Tuesday evening when Dr. Floyd and several other key leaders call God’s people to repentance and prayer. Authentic revival … [Read more...]
Mule muffins: A liberal’s view of Christians, politics
There seems no end to the cacophony of liberals in the media demanding that there be no biblical influence on government. One of the most recent is David Rosman, columnist for The Missourian in Columbia, in his column, “Forcing religion into government is wrong.” To make his point, Rosman cites two instances where it was apparently attempted. The first was Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia requesting a grant from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The church wanted to resurface … [Read more...]
How can 5 billion people be wrong?
The world’s population stands at more than 7.1 billion people. According to Adherents.com, this number includes 1.5 billion Muslims, 1.1 billion nonreligious people, 900 million Hindus, nearly 400 million Buddhists, and millions of followers of other faiths. The website also reports there are 2.1 billion “Christians,” a broad category that includes Catholics and Protestants, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and so-called “nominal” Christians. If the exclusive claims of Jesus are true, … [Read more...]
Shop ‘til you get dropped – and love anyway
I’d been grocery shopping long enough that I found myself wrestling a two-ton cart. Why is it you can never tell the cart has a wanky wheel until you’ve loaded it with the first ton of stuff and there’s no turning back? That sucker pulled so hard to the left I’m pretty sure I accidentally circled the store three extra times. It was grocery rush hour so I hunted to find a checkout lane short enough that I might have a chance to get out of the store before morning. Nothing. But then … [Read more...]
Building trust as a leader
“Trust me!” Ever hear yourself saying these words to those you lead? We live in a world that is skeptical of trusting anyone. A recent Gallup poll suggested that Americans don’t trust anything, from used car salesmen to Supreme Court justices. The poll also included banks, television news reports, the police, public schools, and just about everything else. Probably for good reasons, 56% of those surveyed don’t trust church leaders either. In 1973, “the church or organized religion” was the … [Read more...]
Is the Holy Spirit like electricity?
A recent survey by LifeWay Research, as reported in Facts & Trends magazine, reveals that 59 percent of American evangelicals believe the Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being, and another 10 percent are not sure. This lack of understanding of the divine and personal nature of the Spirit is more at home in counterfeit forms of Christianity like the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, whose adherents are known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. Our JW friends promote a “holy spirit” that … [Read more...]
Baptist intelligentsia, politics and atheists
Too often stereotyped by some as uneducated, superstitious Bible thumpers, Southern Baptists have entered an era where its intellectual firepower has never been greater, exerting much needed influence on our troubled society. While many of us serve our Lord Jesus at the church level, Southern Baptist scholars are engaging the lost on another part of the spiritual battlefield. Blessed with keen minds and the unsheathed sword of God’s inerrant, infallible Word, they are making Christ known in … [Read more...]
Perspective Lenses
I was born with a special condition shared by many men (like 1 out of 100). It is technically called green-red dichromatic vision or color blindness. My parents were somewhat familiar with the condition because of my mom's brothers. However, very early in my preschool days, I would bring home from church my own Crayon landscape pictures that celebrated God's creation. I was so proud of my artistic abilities and mom would affirm my accomplishments by displaying them in the kitchen. Only … [Read more...]
The challenge before us this Memorial Day
As we pause to remember the more than 1.3 million members of America’s Armed Forces who have died in defense of our freedom (2,487 Missourians in World War II, 4,660 Missourians from the Korean War through Iraqi Freedom), Pathway Associate Editor Ben Hawkins reminded me this week of a reason Christians ought to be engaged in public policy: Out of gratitude for benefits received and debt owed. Ben said it seems that Christians who want to leave politics and patriotism behind forget the men … [Read more...]
The problem of too many pastors-less churches
“Dr. Yeats, I have 237 pastors-less churches on my list.” As I rode down the elevator, the administrative assistant for MBC’s pastoral ministries shared with me this disheartening news. It broke my heart to hear that one out of eight Baptist churches in the heartland are without a shepherd to lead the congregation. I thought, “That is too many pastors-less churches.” As I reflected on the number, the thought of these men of God, who experienced forced termination or resigned out of … [Read more...]
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