The grandiosity and confidence of some theologians and pastors in an age of democratic theology is something the early church fathers would find puzzling. If you’re attending a vibrant church, it seems easy to assume that your church must be “right.” In evangelicalism, what qualifies as credible is often church size and pastoral charisma. If the church is big and the pastor is a good speaker, then the church must be preaching something right. God must be “in it.” However, in an age where theological accuracy and biblical fidelity to the historic teachings of the church are authenticated by the size of parking lots, media appearances, profiles in Christian magazines, the pastor’s “hipster” quotient, believing that Christianity began in the 16th century, and so on, I’m not so sure we should be as dogmatically confident as we profess.

Churches without pastoral leadership bound and accountable to higher ecclesial authority and oversight, outside of the local congregational setting, typically end up with pastors who surround themselves with “yes men.” These men may be called “elders” but they were selected by the super-pastor and are not considered his theological equal.

For pastors driven by numbers (followers), influence, making the church catholic into their own image, and so on, it is also easy to fall prey to the group-selected narcissism that feeds the arrogant self-deception that “pastor X’s” or “Dr. X’s” theological preferences are best for the church universal. A congregation’s “vision/mission statement” or “statement of faith” is treated as creedal and used as a basis for assessing the orthodoxy of the church down the street.

Perhaps this is why celebrities, in general, believe their own hype as suggested in Dr. Gad Saad’s article, “I’m not a Doctor, But . . . ,” in the most recent issue of Psychology Today. Narcissism, grandiosity, fame, “yes, men,” the post-modern democratization of opinion lead us to wrongly believe that well-known people must be right. I think issues may apply to well-known pastors, theologians, and Christian musicians, as well.

Honestly, I struggle with theological humility in my own writing and speaking. This is not a problem, then, exclusive to those who are well-known. There is also the opposite extreme of those who believe they are “right” because their church world is small and their pastors are not well-known.

What’s different about a church world of democratized theology is that we no longer have the authority to declare something heretical nor in error. We can’t remove bad teaching from church communities. We can only blog about error or slander error on Facebook and Twitter. Sadly, numbers feed the self-deception that Paul the apostle would agree with whatever your church teaches and practices. Church history should remind us that it is entirely possible, because of sin and deception, for any of our churches to be large, or your favorite pastor or theologian to be famous, because God is, in fact, not “in it.”

I am growing more confused by many thought leaders in the black community who speak of how racist America is yet encourage more and more blacks do put their lives in the hands of government officials who are white. Is government bureaucracy immune from racism or classism? If American society is categorically racist against blacks then black liberation would focus on divorcing blacks from dependence on the state—which is controlled by “rich white people,” as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright says.

In his book Hope on a Tightrope, Princeton University religion professor Cornel West makes the claim that in America “the very discovery that black people are human beings is a new one.” There was a time when blacks were considered “three-fifths human—we were monkeys or rapists,” writes West. “Now we are projected as crack addicts or criminals.” Moreover, he adds, blacks have always been cornered into positions of “having to defend our humanity.”

West later explains that whites cannot avoid being shaped by white supremacy:

White brothers and sisters have been shaped by 244 years of supremacist slavery, 87 years of white supremacist Jim and Jane Crow, and then another 40 years in which significant progress has been made. The stereotypes still cut deep. Any white brother or sister who deeply revels in the humanity of black, brown, yellow, and red brothers and sisters must undergo a kind of conversion, metamorphosis, and transformation.

According to the most recent government data employment numbers, about 60 percent percent of non-postal federal employees are white. If whites have a white supremacy problem and will not change without “metamorphsis,” then the last place I would want to encourage blacks to align themselves with would be the federal government. Right? Isn’t injustice inevitable for blacks if the majority of government employees recently learned that blacks are human?

Why, then, is there such blind trust that government officials will serve the interest of blacks and other minorities? Or is it the case that the assumption of racism only applies to those white people with whom black elites do not agree on policy issues?

I agree with West that white racism toward blacks describes most of America’s history sanctioned and promoted by many Bible-believing Christians. It would seem, however, that blacks leaders employing racial reasoning would promote initiatives to free blacks from the risk of coercion and injustice at the hands of whites in government by doing all that is necessary to position blacks to be free from the surrogate decisions of white government bureaucrats. Or, maybe “racism” is simply a convenient charge to distract us from having principled arguments about what is best. Sadly, until many black leaders can justify trusting whites in government, the race card remains on the table to be used against whites and others who disagree with socialistic public policy.

A year ago the world was waiting to see if Americans would elect a president who would bring about sweeping social, cultural, and political change. As Sen. Barack Obama became President Obama it brought a mix of ridiculous expectations and unfounded fears regarding what “Superpresident” would accomplish. I was so captivated by the spectacle of it all after Election Day I committed to attend the presidential inauguration ceremony. I have kept my attendance quiet until now.

Although I strongly disagree with the way House Speaker Nancy Pelosi views America and with many policy initiatives of the Obama administration, in the spirit of honoring the office of president (1 Peter 2:17) and recognizing the legitimacy of government (Romans 13:1), I met family members and friends in Washington, D.C., to witness the transition from President Bush to President Obama. Standing in front of the Washington Monument I felt the magnitude and weight of the office in ways I had not experienced before. It was fantastic to witness all the pomp and circumstance. Watching the procession of congressional leaders, Supreme Court judges, and so on was thrilling. I was particularly surprised by the cold interactions between Presidents Clinton and Carter witnessed by millions on JumboTrons before they took their seats. These two families obviously do not like each other.

Many voters on Election Day and at the inauguration were excited because “change” was coming. We were supposedly ushering in a new era of governance. In the past nine months, however, not much has changed and the Obama administration continues as is normal for Democrats—and for an ever-growing number of Republicans—to expand the tentacles of government into areas where government is neither designed nor equipped to manage. Oddly, there has been much disappointment among many liberals because Obama has not gone far enough in bringing about “change.”

According to The New York Times, Europeans are growing critical of Obama because “Mr. Obama has not broken clearly enough with Bush administration policies that they dislike.” I say if the Europeans are frustrated with Obama, then he must be doing something right. Why then has there not been “change” enough to satisfy liberal critics? The answer is found in the reality check President Obama encountered when his campaign rhetoric was met with real facts about the world and by the independent agenda of Speaker Pelosi.

The Rasmussen Reports‘ daily Presidential Tracking Poll from yesterday showed that 28 percent of the nation’s voters “Strongly Approve” of the way that Barack Obama is performing while 41 percent “Strongly Disapprove,” giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13. What does this mean? Friends, the Obama honeymoon is over and most people, with the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, are realizing that President Obama is a regular politician. No change, just Washington politics as usual.

Do para-church urban youth ministries need to be dissolved and collapsed into neighborhood churches? Do we need urban ministry-minded Christians placing more efforts into teaching in inner-city public schools in order to truly serve the city? I think this may be the way forward. For those Christians with a calling to serve the needs of inner-city youth, teaching in the public schools may be the best place to have the greatest impact outside of the direct work of local churches. The para-church model is out of a 1950s playbook and may not be best use of human and financial capital to meet emerging needs.

For example, nearly 23 percent of all young American black men ages 16 to 24 who have dropped out of high school are in jail, prison, or a juvenile justice institution, according to a new report titled “Consequences of Dropping Out of High School” from the Center for Labor Markets at Northeastern University. There is no urban youth ministry that has the capacity to put much of dent in this alarming trend. These students need academic discipleship in addition to spiritual formation.

The para-church model for helping black and Latino males has expired and does not have the full scope of influence that missionally minded teachers could have being in a school setting working directly with local churches. Teachers have the advantage of being with students most of the day for about nine months out of the year. No urban youth worker could come close to that many “contact” hours.  If the minds of urban youth are not being cultivated, we aren’t really helping them become makers of culture here and now.

As public school teachers, administrators, and coaches, urban-minded missional Christians wouldn’t have to raise support either. Moreover, until America begins to re-think our public school system disaster for black and Latino males we will have to work with the current system. As such, the public schools need a cadre of missional Christian teachers, thousands of them, who understand that forming human dignity is spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional.

We must remember two things about the black male graduation crisis: (1) it is not reduced to the nation’s largest cities—South Carolina, Wyoming, Michigan, Louisiana, and Georgia have among the lowest rates of black male graduates in country; and (2) this has much to do with the break down of the family, which is the unique reparative work of the church. Urban para-church ministry is neither designed nor equipped to meet the holistic needs of families.

Having said that, I know many people can offer countless lists of exceptions and personal stories about urban ministry “X” that helped kid and/or family “Y.” Those are great. I’m not saying that current ministries do not help a few. We should celebrate and honor that good work. However, in 2007, 16 percent of persons between 16 and 24 years of age (nearly 6.2 million people) were high school dropouts. Among these dropouts, 60.1 percent were men, 18.8 percent were black, and 30.1 percent were Hispanic. Only churches and teachers have access to this many students and their families.

Whatever active duty Navy SEALs get paid it’s not enough. I arrived at this conclusion after reading the story of Marcus Luttrell in the book Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10. It is the most moving and personally transforming story I’ve ever read about someone in my generation.

In early July 2005, four U.S. Navy SEALS departed for the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border for a reconnaissance mission. Their mission was to document the activity of an al-Qaeda leader believed to be very close to Bin Laden with a small army in a Taliban stronghold. Five days later, after heavy fighting, only Marcus Luttrell made it out alive. (Luttrell is pictured above with the parents of one of his late teammates, Lt. Michael Murphy, a recipient of the Medal of Honor.) After being wounded and presumed dead in a firefight that took the lives of his teammates, Luttrell crawled for miles through the mountains and was taken in by sympathetic villagers who risked their lives to keep him safe from surrounding Taliban warriors.

Luttrell’s story recounts not only the events surrounding the dreadful days before and after losing his teammates, but it also invites readers to understand the years of training and preparation necessary to produce warriors like Luttrell. It’s a story about discipleship, camaraderie, courage, commitment, wisdom, and mercy.

Readers will be challenged by Luttrell’s brutal honesty describing how the “liberal media” and “rules of engagement” put soldiers’ lives at risk because terrorists have figured out how to disguise themselves as civilians and how to contact the media to give the appearance that U.S. soldiers have murdered “innocent” people. War is ugly and has costly spillover effects. According to Luttrell, terrorists use politician-drafted rules of engagement to exploit soldiers’ lack of freedom to protect themselves and prevent murderous situations from occurring in the first place. Luttrell writes:

“The truth is, any government that thinks war is somehow fair and subject to rules like a baseball game probably should not get into one. Because nothing’s fair in war, and occasionally the wrong people do get killed. . . . Faced with the murderous cutthroats of the Taliban, we are not fighting under the rules of Geneva IV Article 4. We are fighting under the rules of Article 223.556mm—that’s the caliber and gauge of our M4 rifle. And if those numbers don’t look good, try Article .762mm, that’s what the stolen Russian Kalashnikos fire at us, usually in deadly, heavy volleys.”

Overall, not only was I brought to tears in some parts, and aroused to anger at terrorism in others, a few moments after closing the book, I seriously thought through what it would look like for me to drop what I’m doing and join the Navy. I was previously unaware of the specialized training as well as the nature of SEAL teams. These men are simply amazing. If I ever meet a SEAL in person I’ll consider it a real honor. Because I am constantly thinking about applications for the church I couldn’t help but imagine what a formidable force of good the church in America could be if we raised boys to be men with Navy SEAL levels of camaraderie, courage, and wisdom. What if we really understood what it meant to train others to “take up their cross.” Read the book. You’ll be inspired.

“Mom, I’m thinking about becoming Catholic.” For many Protestant parents, this statement is being heard more and more. As long as Protestants continue to devalue tradition, history, and social justice concerns we should expect to hear more and more young evangelicals “going home to Rome.” The combination of family church hoppin’ to find the best children’s and youth programs, combined with the mythology that Protestants embrace sola Scriptura in practice, creates the perfect conditions to usher young adults into Roman Catholicism.

I was recently in a room full of young adults raised in evangelical America. To my surprise, there was not a single person who had been raised in one congregation or denomination—they’d all changed churches at least two or three times. I’m not surprised, then, that we find among this generation a longing for tradition and consistency—especially in a culture of broken families and high levels of geographic mobility. People want to call something “home.”

In the September 2002 edition of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Scot McKnight’s article, “From Wheaton to Rome: Why Evangelicals Become Roman Catholic,” offered good insight regarding the phenomenon of Protestants converting to Catholicism. The list included: (1) a desire for certainty, (2) a desire for history, (3) a desire for unity, and (4) a desire for authority.

A desire for consistency exposes the fact that Protestant theology is wildly divergent on key issues like justification, salvation, grace, marriage, divorce, birth control, social justice, and so on. Moreover, the downplaying of history and distinctiveness among Protestants tend to undermine connection to tradition. If you’re Baptist, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, and so on, your family should know why. Also, no church or denomination really practices sola Scriptura as the only, or final, rule of faith. If your church uses a statement of faith, recites creeds, uses confessions and catechisms, sings from hymnals, and so on, your church has dual authorities—Scripture and tradition. While Scripture has final authority for issues related to salvation and morality, tradition determines who gets ordained, what is taught in Sunday school, what the sacraments mean, who holds what church office, and so on.

A desire for unity exposes grievous bifurcations among Protestants, of which there are over 33,000 different denominations in the world. This does seem consistent with Jesus’ desire for unity expressed in John 17. Of course, the “unity” of Catholic and Orthodox communions is often cosmetic. While Protestants put their disunity on display through church planting and denominations, others disagree off the record. The desire for authority is likely a reaction to being raised by a generation of anti-authoritarian baby boomers not carefully distinguishing between good and bad uses of authority. Trustworthy authority can be good for clarifying questions of theology and life as well as providing wisdom. Some forms of decentralization, however, may not be as helpful as we once believed.

To McKnight’s list I would add a desire for intellectual leadership in public life.  The Catholic Intellectual Tradition is a history of rigorous scholarship coupled with spirituality and ethical teaching toward forming people committed to piety and making the world a better place, especially for the poor. There have been intellectual contributions by Protestants but there is no comparable, consistent intellectual Protestant tradition that applies spiritual and moral formation to making the world a better place.

In the end, and sadly for some, young Protestants are exposing the weaknesses of their upbringing with their feet. Until Protestants recapture some sense of historic unity and mission to enter the world’s cultures, beyond evangelism, this trend will likely continue. McKnight’s observations are cause for much reflection.

A few months ago I was introduced to a Jesus movement among New England’s boarding and independent schools. It made me wish I was a billionaire philanthropist donor to Christian missions. In the 1960s, Peter Moore and others founded FOCUS (Fellowship of Christians and Universities and Schools) to organize gatherings for students attending New England boarding schools. For over 40 years Moore—an orthodox Episcopal priest and a graduate of St. Mark’s, Yale, and Oxford—grew a ministry team with deep familiarity with the culture at leading independent boarding and day schools to nurture thousands in a life of following Jesus from the Northeast down the Atlantic seaboard.

FOCUS seeks to “explore with independent school students a life of faith that is real, adventurous, intellectually sound, and eminently practical.” Because boarding and independent schools are usually off the missions radar for many evangelicals, I was profoundly moved to hear about the activity there.

Rob Lofberg, the area director for the group’s work at New England boarding schools, said he decided to work for FOCUS in part “because it is the ministry through which the Lord opened my eyes to the reality of his grace.” While a junior at the Middlesex School in Concord, Mass., a FOCUS staff person came to a small student-led Bible study he attended. Shortly afterward, Rob became a follower of Jesus and now, with a strategic heart and passion for the “peculiarities of the boarding school culture,” is uniquely placed.

Rob explained the honor of serving this population this way:

FOCUS is an exciting ministry because so many of the students we work with are engaging with the gospel for the first time. Many are opening the Bible for the first time, and though they are the most competitive students in the world, there is so little religious predisposition. There is a freshness when they hear about Jesus and his claims, and many are excited to know more as they discover Him through the Bible.

Rob said that he has one of the most exciting jobs in the world. I believe him. Bringing Jesus to that area of the country is sadly revolutionary to many who have given up praying and caring for students and families in New England’s boarding school culture. “I enjoy being a witness to Jesus in New England,” Rob said, “because every time I enter into a serious conversation about Christian claims I never know what I am going to get.” The frankness and honestly of New Englanders when given the gospel fuels an exciting mission, especially among students who tend to be “very serious about intellectual honesty.”

It is sadly rare that I meet Christians who desire a missional Christian presence in New England, in general. The work of FOCUS in the Northeast continues to confirm to me God’s heart for all different kinds of people, that they would come to follow Jesus. FOCUS is one of the little known gems among Christianity’s missional ministries. The revolution continues. . . .

Most Americans have bought into the propaganda that we need milk for strong bones and teeth. I don’t believe it anymore. Higher levels of calcium are found in many green vegetables per serving than one would find in a glass of milk. Moreover, the connection between strong bones and cow milk simply does not hold up to science and history. In America we have all been conditioned to believe that milk contributes to strong bones throughout a child’s life. In the end, could this rhetoric be nothing more than the dairy lobby taking advantage of government intrusion into the world of business?

According to a New York Times article, the dairy industry is struggling. Dairy farmers are now using a technique to discard sperm with Y-chromosomes to produce more female cows for milk production. The problem today, however, is that demand is low and diary farmers are being paid to discard milk they produce as well as being compensated to send cows for slaughter. I am wondering, however, if demand is down in part because American families are “wising-up” to the fact that children and adults don’t need to drink milk to stay healthy. Maybe it’s time that we say “good-bye” to the government-supported dairy industry.

The dogs I’ve owned over the years had strong bones and they didn’t drink cow’s milk. Lions have strong bones and they don’t drink cow’s milk. Gorillas have strong bones and they don’t drink cow’s milk. Grizzly bears have strong bones and they don’t need milk cow’s milk. I am not saying it is forbidden as a beverage, but I’m not convinced that anyone ever needs to drink milk from a cow—ever.

Walter Veith, former professor and chair of the Department of Zoology at the University of Western Cape, South Africa, has this to say:

Mother’s milk is essential for infants, but then infants are specially designed to cope with this growth-promoting food. Prior to weaning, the necessary enzyme systems needed for the digestion and assimilation of milk components are active, but they are progressively deactivated with age. The milk of other mammals also differs in composition from human milk, and this, together with the potential danger from ingested antigens, makes cow’s milk unsuitable for human consumption.

If we don’t need a cow’s milk then why is it in the government food pyramid? An interesting study published a few years ago in the medical journal Pediatrics titled “Adult Female Hip Bone Density Reflects Teenage Sports-Exercise Patterns but Not Teenage Calcium Intake” demonstrates that, for women, bone density has more to do with early exercise than calcium intake.

It’s pretty well-known that many vegetables have higher levels of calcium than milk: for example, according to The George Mateljan Foundation, dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, Swiss chard, mustard greens, and collard greens. Shredded cabbage, also common in many salad bars, is also a good source of calcium. If parents want to make sure their children intake good amounts of calcium perhaps it’s better to stick with old saying, “Honey, eat your vegetables.”

Anyone aware of the alarming state of American evangelicalism’s celebrity-driven church culture would not have to try hard to draw parallels with the church in Corinth. The “big name” pastors, as we sometimes call them, thanks to the Christian conference circuit, book publishing, the internet, and so on, tempt many evangelicals to cannibalize each other in the spirit of following “Paul” or “Apollos.” In today’s terms, these could be men like John Piper, Tim Keller, Mark Dever, C.J. Mahaney, Mark Driscoll, Rob Bell, R.C. Sproul, Tony Evans, or whomever people would rather download and listen to instead of their own pastor.

The problem is not the wonderful ways God uses these men. The problem is with us, the people holding these great preachers and teachers of our time too highly and using them to attack other Christians who might not believe whatever we consider to be the “right” interpretation of what “the gospel” says the church should be doing in the world. I go through seasons of falling into this myself. It’s embarrassing but I do it.

Quarrels, dissension, and divisions are plastered all over the internet as Jesus followers poke passive insults at each other in the name of whatever peripheral minutiae we determine as “getting the gospel right.” For example, not being Reformed enough, or not “traditional” enough, or too traditional, or too literal, or too involved in social issues, or not evangelistic enough, and so on. Paul challenges the Corinthian church saying:

“You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere men? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. (1 Corinthians 3:3-6)

Matthew Henry wrote wise words about this passage:

“Contentions and quarrels about religion are sad evidences of carnality [worldliness]. . . . Many professors, and preachers also, show themselves to be yet carnal, by vain-glorious strife, eagerness for dispute, and readiness to despise and speak evil of others.”

Here’s the rub: Contentions and quarrels can make you famous among evangelicals. Evangelicals love strife. Marketing for Christian publishing, the speaker circuit, and the like, all feed into this pathetic trend. If you’re a Paul or an Apollos you can easily get a book contract and draw large speaking fees, even if you’re a dissension starter. If a preacher does not have a following like an Apollos, he will get no book contract and he will not be invited to speak at conferences. Have you noticed the various Apollos sections of the Christian bookstore? It’s no wonder that many young preachers are busy trying to be like a famous Apollos instead finding contentment with their own gift-mixes.

I’ve actually seen an evangelical Pauls and Apolloses speak together at the same conference about “the gospel” and then read blogs where their “followers” attack “followers” of the other guys. Again, it is not that admiration, respect, nor celebrating the gifts of any of today’s great teachers is necessarily a problem. The problem is neither books nor conferences. The cancer in the church is the disunity created with “fans” of certain preachers create dissension over minutiae that we reinterpret as “the gospel.” Maybe, then, it’s not a good sign when large crowds gather to hear their favorite preachers speak together.

A short column like this is clearly insufficient to cover this topic, which is worthy of much discussion in book form at least. I’m not sure, however, who would be brave enough to write it and which publisher would be bold enough to publish it. However, I can’t imagine that Jesus is smiling on a church in tension because of trifling Paul and Apollos followers. Something needs to be said soon. While Christians are busy fighting over which preacher is “right,” evil in the world roams free without opposition.

Until I started walking around New York City and noticed that every third or fourth person seemed to have one, I was blissfully unaware of the popularity of iPods. When this late adapter walked into the Apple Store the other day to buy an iPod Nano, I likely became one of the last of my friends to buy one of the devices. I had resisted over the years mainly because I have psychological issues about paying $150 or more for a something barely larger than a credit card.

On April 9, 2007, Apple announced that the 100 millionth iPod had been sold, making it the fastest selling music player in history. According eWeek.com, during its July 21 earnings report, Apple announced iPod sales had declined since last year, but at just 7 percent. That still meant that 10.2 million units were sold, and millions and millions of people walking around with ear buds.

I have a few concerns about introducing this device into my life. I have yet another device to worry about in terms of me losing it or someone stealing it. Adding a cell phone to the wallet and keys I already carry around is burdensome enough. Plus, how are ear buds going to affect my hearing in the long run? I am so paranoid about making my hearing loss worse, I’ll likely turn the volume down so much that I can barely hear the music.

Is this going to make me less of an extrovert and more of an isolationist? When my iPod is on and I’m lost in a world of music and podcasts, am I going to stop talking to strangers? I used to regularly strike up conversations with people I don’t know and eventually get to the topic of religion. Now I don’t have to talk to anyone while I’m watching my nephew’s soccer game or walking through the park. I can also freely ignore the beggars I see nearly every day because I can act like I don’t hear them saying, “Do you have any spare change.”

I was trying to imagine Jesus plugged into his iPod mediating on the Psalms and walking right past all those folks asking him for help. In some ways it is a ridiculous question to ask: “Would Jesus have an iPod?”

I am aware, like all other technologies, that this is not a matter of “if” but of “how much,” “how loud,” “when,” and so on. The great irony of acquiring new technology to enhance my quality of life is that the devices do nothing but bring on new complications.