Category: Church

Where Did the College-Aged Evangelicals Go?
I’m trying a new format out with some short-form videos. Here’s our first foray: You can subscribe on YouTube to get alerts when we publish more videos. I’ll also likely cross post them here as well.

Stop Blaming COVID
A story from RNS: For the first time since 2018, thousands of college students will gather a few days after Christmas to talk about God’s mission to the world and their place in it. Organizers of Urbana 2022, a missions...

Decadence, Joe Rogan, and Non-Anxious Authority
I’m an old-cohort millennial or, if you like, part of the Oregon Trail generation. I graduated college in 2010. At that time, I was definitely aware of transgenderism, for example, because I was an English major and I worked at...

Gratitude 2022 (1)
I decided this past Lord’s Day to start a new custom on the blog, which is to write short pieces about gratitude and specifically things I am grateful for as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, which I dearly love, even...

Church and “the Therapeutic”, Ctd.
Two different things, both of which I have seen in churches: Church One The church’s leadership distinguishes carefully between spiritual care/shepherding work and mental health/therapeutic care, preserving space for both, but keeping them clearly separate. “Parishioner” is not another word...

HR Goes to Church
The longer that I listen to folks who didn’t like Samuel’s review talk about Samuel’s review the more I think Samuel has it exactly right. Perhaps this is a good way of getting at the concern I have, which is...

The Barnacle Problem
Back in my marketing agency days, we’d sometimes talk about the concept of “barnacle SEO.” What that meant is that you basically had to find ways to attach your client or brand to some larger entity and profit off of...

Networks v Institutions
One of the primary difficulties facing local churches right now is the emergence of large online networks which shape and disciple church members in ways that are conducive to the growth of the network but not conducive to the health...

Haunted by Mars Hill(s)
Years ago I remember my pastor giving a sermon on forgiveness and bitterness. I was in college, still recently removed from a fairly nasty church situation, and, well, I was struggling a lot with bitterness. After church, I was talking...

Alternatives to Culture War
One of the lines we have taken for a long time at Mere Orthodoxy is a skepticism about culture war strategies and motifs in Christian public speech and Christian political strategy. (This is one of the first pieces I wrote for...