“Our longing for a tribe is right and good, but we must also acknowledge the reality that sin corrupts all our desires. What marks a descent from a longing for a tribe into tribalism? Here are three warning signs. 1. Only Seeing Wrong ‘Out There’” - TGC

“Caught between the (semi) proverbial rock of Ham and the hard place of LaHaye, many Christians–especially American fundamentalists and evangelicals–have been progressively conditioned to resort to conspiracy as an explanatory heuristic” - Conciliar Post

“The Florida chapter of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, a theologically conservative Methodist group, announced Tuesday that 107 churches in the state had ‘chosen to initiate the process to depart the Florida Conference of The United Methodist Church.’” - C.Post

“Pursuant to the Messenger’s Motion, Guidepost must submit its report to the Task Force no later than 30-days prior to the SBC Convention in Anaheim, which begins on June 14, 2022. Thus, the report is due to the Task Force on May 15, 2022” - BPNews

“The decree says that women should leave the home only when necessary, and that male relatives would face punishment — starting with a summons and escalating up to court hearings and jail time — for women’s dress code violations.” - Christian Index

“The share of Americans who say abortion should be legal in all or most cases is little changed in recent years. But support is higher today than it was a decade ago. In 2012, and throughout much of former President Barack Obama’s administration, only about half of Americans said abortion should always or mostly be legal.” - Pew

“…philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, in a piece at Evolution News, called the paper ‘the most interesting biology paper of 2022 so far.’ Its findings are precisely the opposite of what we’d expect if life evolved from a common ancestor.” - Breakpoint

Read the series.

Some of this post reuses material from a previous article.

The Covenant of Grace (1)

Covenant theology depends for its credibility upon theological covenants with virtually no exegetical proof. This is especially the case with the “Covenant of Grace.”

We have seen some self-designated “evangelical” leaders change their position on LGBTQ issue, and very many — for a very long time — on the issue of women pastors/elders. The last conviction standing in the moral/social realm, it seems, is abortion.

Now with the clamor because of the potential supreme court ruling, will many cave-in on this last hold out of Biblical morality?

Poll Results

Will More Mainstream “Evangelical” Leaders Change Their Position on Abortion?

“1. Hold celebration in tension with resolve to continue the work. 2. Hold the rights of the unborn in tension with the needs of mothers and the newly born. 3. Hold the ‘trump effect’ in tension.” - Kainos

“Our objective ought to be church health, not church growth. A vital or healthy church is marked by spiritual vitality, functional effectiveness, and statistical growth in its life and ministry.” - Ken Brown

A very short pep talk: “I know it’s hard, but that’s why you’re the leader. It’s your job to make the difficult decisions no one else wants to make.” - Cooke

“…later, a brand-new missions team took me in. And then something happened that I didn’t expect. I was asked to stop attending church because our new team needed to bond on Sundays. This struck me as odd. What about the church?” - 9 Marks

“Mayor Michelle Wu’s office declined to comment on the group’s request other than to say it’s reviewing the high court’s decision while also evaluating its flag-raising program.” - C.Index

“In what is being called an ‘unprecedented gathering,’ the three announced candidates for Southern Baptist Convention president spent just under two hours answering questions and interacting with one another in a candidate forum Wednesday (May 4).” - BPNews

“Proclaimed by Congress in 1952, the prayer day has been observed since 1988 on the first Thursday in May, with a more diverse array of participants in recent years.” - RNS

“The lawsuit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, argues that Liberty ‘failed to provide Plaintiff with services or reasonable accommodations required under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Rehabilitation Act, and other laws.’” - C.Post

“Piper’s most recent book, What Is Saving Faith?: Reflections on Receiving Christ as a Treasure…. Piper argues for his ‘affectional’ understanding of saving faith…. treasuring Christ is an affectional ‘act of faith,’ not in the sense of an action that results from faith, but as one of the ‘actings that constitute what faith is.’” - TGC

“…instead of concentrating its fire solely on left-wing elites, as Reaganite, conservative populism had done, the Trumpist brand of populism did something more: It simultaneously assailed right-wing elites, including the Buckley-Reagan, fusionist conservative movement described earlier.” - Acton

“In a statement released on Tuesday morning, Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the authenticity of a draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that would overturn the precedents set in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.” - N.Review

Related, from The Dispatch (podcast): Making Sense of the Supreme Court Leak

“In the past six years we’ve lived in four different cities and served at three different churches in various roles…. I can’t speak to the challenges of staying in a single place for a long period of time. I can, however, offer four lessons I’ve learned about staying from our going.” - TGC

“…the Stronger Men’s Conference, a Christian conference for men in Missouri that includes all your classic Christian men’s conference stuff. Notable speakers. Worship music. Bull riding. Professional wrestling. Boxing. A monster truck” - Relevant

“Natural theologians believe that the book of nature reveals to human reason aspects of the divine creator that point to the one true God, while freely confessing that only the book of scripture reveals to human faith the gospel by which alone we can be saved.” - Ref21

Read Part 1.

My comfort in suffering comes from the knowledge that God ordains my suffering for my eternal good and his glory. It is not enough to say that God allows my suffering. After all, why would God allow something if it wasn’t for the best. For God to allow something would imply that another force of equal or greater power was the actual cause of my suffering. That is clearly not the case. So, the all-wise God must be the prime cause of my suffering, and if He is all-loving and all-powerful, then He ordains it for my good and fully controls it.

“There’s a fine line between being welcomed and being embarrassed…” - Phil Cooke

“In a unanimous ruling, justices agree the city violated the First Amendment by keeping religious views out of a space being used as a public forum.” - C.Today

Related: C.Index, ERLC, RNS.

The Democracy Fund “was a panel that started in 2011 and continued surveying the same people through November of 2020. Did people who were evangelicals in 2011 abandon that identity by 2020? And did they do so for political reasons? … The biggest finding is a lot of stability.” - GetReligion

CCLI data study: “In the mid-1990s, a popular song like ‘Refiner’s Fire,’ or ‘In Secret’ had a lifespan of about a dozen years, rising for 4-5 years before hitting a slow decline. Two decades later, that lifespan has dropped down to 3-4 years” - RNS

“Starting May 4, we’re releasing a five-part video debate series featuring prominent Christian thinkers discussing some of the most divisive issues facing the church today… . we hope to model this—showing that it’s possible for two Christians, united around the gospel, to engage in charitable conversation even amid substantive disagreement.” - TGC

“It saddens me that any of us need to be convinced to be gentle. It saddens me that I’m often not gentle to those I love most. Gentleness is both a command from the Lord and a sign that we are becoming more like Christ.” - C.Post