Jennifer Taylor has confessed her sin publicly: she’s bored at church. But unlike many people, she’s not interested in a more whizz-bang service with hipper music or preaching. “I’m not looking for a slicker sermon series or a faux-hawked worship leader or designer coffee in the back lobby.” And she’s not about to leave her church to find a different mountain to climb:

“I also believe you make a commitment to one local church and invest in community with those believers long-term, I’m not going to start shopping for a new church. Besides, all those churches would also have long sermons and rambling prayers and worship leaders in skinny jeans. That’s the problem.”

So what is she bored with? What is she looking for? Taylor cites an article by Brett McCracken…

[NOTE: This post originally appeared on The Washington Post’s “On Faith” website.]

Governmental, religious, and cultural leaders on all sides have already spoken, written, or tweeted about the proposed Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. So when my friend Eboo Patel asked me to add my voice to the noise, I wasn’t sure what new perspective I could offer.

An expert in constitutional law might see the Cordoba House controversy as a First Amendment issue and demand that the Muslim-Americans organizing the project be allowed to proceed without impediment. A politico might see the matter as an opportunity to score easy points with constituents (right or left) by supporting or denouncing the “Ground Zero mosque.” And a member of the media might see the issue…

This week crowds of worshipers outside Apple Stores around the globe will finally be able to lay their hands on the latest object of their devotion: the iPhone 4. The public was given its first official look at the device a few weeks ago when Steve Jobs descended from his holy digital mountain with the updated phone in his hands. Reports have already circulated about spontaneous rallies of Apple fans, and we’ve seen the video footage of consumers reacting with fits of ecstasy as they hold their new purchase.

The frenzy created every time Apple releases a new product highlights a growing but under-reported phenomenon: the power of consumer brands to supplant traditional religions in peoples’ lives. Many Christians believe the greatest threat to the church today is postmodernity.…

Last Sunday I spoke at Mars Hill Church in Grandville, Michigan. Listen to the full sermon “With”.

Below I’ve also included a number of quotes cited in the message:

The older brother: “All these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command. Yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends.” -Luke 15:29

The father: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” -Luke 15:31

“There truly is no division between sacred and secular except what we have created.  And that is why the division of the legitimate roles and functions of human life into the sacred and secular does incalculable damage to our individual lives and the cause of Christ.  Holy people must stop going into ‘church…

I ended Part 1 of this post with a question-what is the church to do about the growing ranks of the de-churched? I believe the answer depends on which de-churched group one is talking about. In Part 1 I identified two sides of the de-churched population-those who have left the church because they had received a false gospel, and those who have left because they’ve encountered the true gospel.

Let’s start with the false gospel side. As Matt Chandler explained, these de-churched are fed, knowingly or unknowingly, a false gospel of morality. They believe that if they just follow God’s rules he will bless their lives. When things fail to work out as promised, they bail on the church. Christian Smith, a sociologist of religion, has called this belief MTD-moralistic therapeutic…

In days gone by, missional efforts were focused on presenting and demonstrating the love of Christ to non-Christians. But in the 1980s a new term was coined to describe the growing number of North Americans without any significant church background. They were called the unchurched. Untold numbers of books were written about them. Ministry conferences discussed them. Church leaders orchestrated worship services to attract them.

The shift from “evangelizing non-Christians” to “reaching the unchurched” was perceived as benign at the time, but it represented an important shift in our understanding of mission. The church was no longer just a means by which Christ’s mission would advance in the world, it was also the end of that mission. The goal wasn’t simply to introduce the unchurched to Christ, but—as the…

One of the most popular blog posts I’ve written was a theological exploration of evil through the lens of the film, The Dark Knight. To continue the theme of superhero movies and theology, let’s talk about Superman.

After traveling a few weeks ago, I retuned home late one evening after the kids were in bed. After debriefing with my wife, I decided to vegetate by watching Superman Returns…the effort by director Bryan Singer to “reboot” the Superman movie franchise for Warner Brothers. Most critics, including myself, were very disappointed by the film. Superman Returns gives homage to Richard Donner’s Superman films (starring Christopher Reeve) by lifting characters, plot devices, dialogue, and even laugh lines from the original movies. But it had none of the Donner films’ magic.

The failure, I…

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season prior to Holy Week and Easter Sunday. Vice President Joe Biden sparked curiosity when he appeared in public and on television with a smudge of ash on his forehead. One news anchor in the UK had no idea what it was. “What’s happened to his head?” asked Kay Burley on Sky News. “It looks like he’s walked into a door!” The co-host speculated that he had fallen on the ice while attending the Winter Olympics. (As if we needed more evidence that Britain is an utterly post-Christian secular culture.)

Biden is a practicing Catholic, and the ash was part of the Ash Wednesday mass he had attended earlier in the day. While usually associated with Roman Catholic expressions of…

This post comes a day late, but I trust it will still be helpful as we reflect on the ministry and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is celebrated by Americans as a civil rights leader, but we often forget that he was also a minister of the gospel. In fact, King told a Chicago congregation in 1967,  “Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment.” It is only within this larger calling that we can make sense of his civil rights work. For King, combating the injustice of segregation and Jim Crow was part of being a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. It was how he loved…