04/03/2015 — Every now and then I’m handed a newspaper story that warms my heart. This week, two stories got me angry, and reminded me of how much work the Church has to do if it wants to make an impact on the culture in which it’s called to be salt and light.

One of the stories this one in The Washington Post by “social change reporter” Sandhya Somashekhar. It highlights a clinic in the well-to-do Friendship Heights neighborhood of Washington that looks like a spa, but is actually a place where you can get your unborn baby killed.

The ads the Carafem clinic prepared for the city’s transit system proclaimed, “Abortion. Yeah, we do that.” It’s part of an effort to “destigmatize” abortion – something that, quite frankly, shouldn’t happen on the Church’s watch. Read More

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03/27/2015 — Few articles I’ve read recently have been as revealing of the current state of our higher education culture than this one in The New York Times March 21.

The author, Judith Shulevitz, deserves credit for exploring a dynamic that even the nation’s unofficial journal of political correctness finds disturbing. Normally I read the Times strictly for comic relief or opposition research, but I’m glad they published this illuminating piece.

Shulevitz describes in great detail how many of today’s college students become easily traumatized by points of view that contradict their own. Increasingly, though, many students are making unusual demands on their institutions. They are calling upon their colleges to go to indulgent extremes to protect them from those points of view. That got me thinking about whether the Church does something similar – and, if it does, whether it should. Read More

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02/19/2015 — I am blessed to have three strong women in my immediate family: my mother, Mrs. Ellen Parsley: my wife, Joni; and our daughter, Ashton. All of them are incredibly gifted for ministry, and they enrich my life more than I could ever hope to express in words. I’m a better man and a better minister of the Gospel because of the influence each of them has brought to my life.

But there are things my mother, my wife and my daughter should not be expected to do, or even attempt, because they are not men. Your Bible says that God created us male and female, clearly implying that He intended each gender to fulfill different functions. If we were all intended to be interchangeable, why did He bother to create two radically different types of humans?

That is expressly not to say that a man’s role is less important than a woman’s – far from it! But Christian men in particular should ignore the feminist lie that there is no functional difference between men and women, and intentionally fulfill the role for their families that God intended.Read More

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02/12/2015 — One of the most misunderstood aspects of leadership is that you can only lead from a position of power. But that doesn’t make sense when you really think about it, because the number of positions of power is extremely limited. The trend in business is toward flatter organizations, with fewer levels of management, not more.

Fortunately it’s possible – and vital – for people to lead at all levels of an organization. Most of us will lead and follow in our lifetimes. So it’s important to know how to follow if you really want to be an effective Christian leader. Read More

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01/30/2015 — For me, the best thing about teaching is that the teacher always learns more than the students. So during my current [Influential Leadership 120] lecture series, and in the [Effective Leadership 300] series before that, I’ve learned a lot about leadership – especially what the Bible says about it. Read More

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