“once the SBC makes this negative requirement official …where could the EC go except to recommend en masse to the convention in session that all these churches … be expelled?” - SBC Voices

“Additionally, from 2020 to 2022, the UCC went from having 4,794 congregations to 4,603 congregations, with membership dropping from approximately 773,000 to approximately 712,000.” - C.Post

“A sentencing hearing has been set for July 2. The defendants each face up to a maximum of 10 and a half years in prison, three years of supervised release and fines of up to $260,000.” - Fox Nashville

Reactions…

“the focus on finding a partner’s primary love language can be too restrictive …. ‘all of the behaviors Chapman identified are important.’” - RNS

This week I made my annual journey back to Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary in Ankeny, Iowa, for the Refresh Conference.

It was my fourth Refresh, so I realized that, in essence, I have witnessed another class of college students pass through Faith’s doors during these days. To me that time seems like it has just whisked by—as does the entire interval since I was a seminary student at Faith.

I knew that this would be a somewhat sentimental trip for me this week, since this summer will mark 30 years since my wife and I first stepped on Faith’s campus to look things over. I remember so much about that first visit—just like that also was yesterday.

“It’s good when we seek God in the ordinary, see the sacred behind the common, open our eyes to the beauty of the world, and meet God in the everyday rhythms of life…. But not at the expense of his transcendence.” - TGC

“For cultural evangelicals, they reject one leg of the stool—the behavioral piece. For them, evangelicalism is primarily about tribal belonging (and perhaps some vague belief in the teachings of the Bible).” - Ryan Burge

“GuideStone Financial Resources has released its most popular annual publication, the 2024 Ministers’ Tax Guide for 2023 Returns prepared by Richard Hammar” - BPNews

“Decades of data gathered in a single study released last fall shows that a relationship with God improves mental health and well-being, the study’s creators said Wednesday during the fourth annual International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C.” - Deseret News

Nowhere in the New Testament do we find either a command to baptize infants or even an instance of babies being baptized. No verse hints at this practice in the first century church.¹ So, Christians who hold to this ritual try to forge a link between Jewish circumcision and Christian baptism. The lone New Testament passage they can find that could possibly be read to make this connection is Colossians 2:11–12.

“the ‘consequentialist’ or ‘utilitarian’ approach (e.g. of Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill), views the morality of a decision or action, based upon the anticipated result of that decision or action. It seeks to quantify the ‘highest good, for the greatest number,’ thereby reducing all ethical considerations to a ‘pleasure/pain’ calculus.” - Common Good

“Confessions is well-written and rewards re-reading, but ultimately it is good because it is true. It is a book by and for the restless soul, which is every soul.” - Word by Word

“…the book could have been taken to its proper conclusion: that there is something viscerally objectionable about sterilizing children, about blocking their progression to natural puberty, with all its inevitable discomfort and strangeness.” - Public Discourse

“Of course, we should look over the candidates carefully and prayerfully consider the issues and where they stand, and what kind of character they demonstrate…. Still, we dare not set our hopes on the Republican or Democratic parties or candidates, or Independents, but upon the only One who can save us” - Randy Alcorn

“Even among younger generations, there is some hesitancy. Around one in three Gen Z (29%) and Millennials (32%) say they are ‘skeptical’ of AI, more than they are ‘excited’ about it (20% of Gen Z and 23% of Millennials say this).” - Barna

The Question

There is no shortage of passages exhorting Christians not to sin.¹ So it is no surprise that John also acknowledges in his first letter that Christians can sin.² It might be surprising, then to discover that John says that “All those who are born of God sin they do not do.”³ John adds that they do not, “because His seed abides in him.”⁴

“Let me start by recognizing that those who give altar calls do so because they sincerely desire for people to be saved… . Altar calls remain popular today and are increasingly accompanied by an invitation to be baptized immediately.” - 9 Marks

“While these fears may be legitimate at certain times, they should never consume us. Focusing too much on fear causes us to miss the beauty of the world in which we live.” - IFWE

“Paragraph 2553 expired at the end of 2023, with over 7,500 congregations successfully disaffiliating from the UMC through the process” - CPost

Related: The UMC lost a quarter of its churches — most in the South - RNS

“The Genocide Convention of 1948 was established in order to prevent the atrocities that took place during the Holocaust from happening again. One hundred and fifty-two countries…. It reads: ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.’” - Jerusalem Post

“How do we ‘fear not’ during such fearful times? How do we not let the ‘sun go down’ on our political anger?… How do we love those we fear or hate?…How do we love those who fear or hate us?” - Providence

“There are Southern Baptist Churches that are no longer allowing women to vote… We are acting like women are the problem in our churches.” - SBC Voices

“The ERLC’s 2024 Public Policy Agenda is again divided into four key focus areas: Life, Religious Liberty, Marriage and Family, and Human Dignity.” - BPNews

“One of the first steps in bridging differences is striving to understand rather than rush to judgment. Remember James 1:19, which encourages us to be ‘quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.’” - The Baptist Paper

“The survey revealed that 72% of respondents came to faith before the age of 18, while the remaining 28% didn’t start holding Evangelical beliefs until they were adults.” - CPost

January 27 was “the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the biggest of the many concentration camps used by the Nazis during World War II to enslave and exterminate millions of Jews” - USA Today

“Some of us are gaunt, frail Christians because we’ve learned, like our world, to cater to the whims of our own fickle hearts rather than direct them and determine to reshape them.” - Desiring God

“The report… documents the growing number of American clergy who are burned out and have considered leaving either their current congregation — 44% — or the profession itself — more than half (53%). The latter figure represents an increase of 16% since 2021.” - RNS

Read the series.

(Luke 4:16-30 with Isaiah 61:1-2)

The Spirit-empowered Anointed One

Jesus applied Isaiah 61:1-2a (below) to Himself. At first, this garnered praise from the synagogue crowd, but their praise quickly turned to scoffing. The Isaiah passage reads:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.