I’ve been involved in missions for 15 years. I love to share my faith. I’ve botched the gospel more times than I care to admit, but I’ve also seen friends transformed by God before my very eyes. In every instance of evangelism, there has been some baseline understanding of Jesus.

For the first time, I met someone who had no earthly idea about her heavenly Creator. I was shopping in an East Asian market when “Doris” (the Western name she gave herself) befriended me and wanted to practice her English. She asked me about my life in the United States. I said, “I’m a Christian.”

Nothing.
Blank stare.
I told her I was a follower of Jesus Christ.
Nothing.
She’d never heard of Him.Read more

Most of you who read this blog regularly know about a man named Dustin Salter, a college campus pastor, and the tragic accident that has put him in a coma with severe brain damage three weeks ago.  Several of us who post here (including Glenn) count Dustin and his wife, Leigh Anne, as friends and when it was my turn to blog, I knew I had to talk about it.  Read more

So, I’m on a second date with this guy from e-harmony, and we’ve just had a quite tasty (and expensive) dinner. We arrive at the theater ten minutes late for the movie for which I’ve lobbied: Flushed. It’s one of those animated flicks promising to elicit laughter, not blushing, so I’m guessing it’s a good second date movie. My date, however, leans towards Borat whose next showing is in five minutes. He has paid for dinner and is paying for the movie; Flushed has already started and I have heard that Borat is sweeping the theaters. “Okay,” I say. 

 The previews during Borat do not bode well. Three big themes are showing up: sex, killing, and, like the overlap in a Venn diagram, body parts. At least I have Milk Duds. Read more

Soon Thanksgiving will be here, and with our newly glutted bellies we’ll be catapulted full-force into a season of consumer frenzy, summarized best by the mantra “X shopping days left 'til Christmas.” (Funny, Advent used to be about anticipating a Savior). Already my inbox and mailbox are stuffed like Thanksgiving turkeys with “Special Holiday Offers,” and I’m wishing there were Tums to tame that horrible feeling of ambiguity that churns in my stomach around this time of year when I long to savor a true spirit of thankfulness without choking on the gluttony of the season, when I yearn to anticipate the Savior without dreading the frenetic, consumeristic clamoring of Christmas. Sigh……. Ay me.

So I’m taking a deep breath as I pause on this holiday precipice. And I’m basting my mind and heart in the things I want to remember this Thanksgiving and Advent season:Read more

I first met Rick Smalley on April 13, 2004.  I had been invited to have lunch with him at Rice University’s Faculty Club. To give a little background: Rick had been going to the church where I’m a pastor for almost three months because his girlfriend, Debbie—who was a Christian and whom Rick later married—had suggested it.

So after some not-so-small talk, Rick said, “You know, Ben, when I first started coming to your service, I was repulsed.”  I knew right away I was going to like this guy—a straight-shooter.Read more

Christmas music usually gives me a headache. Literally. I particularly try to avoid shopping around the holidays because I find Christmas music to be overly pop-happy, as if holidays always mean joy for everyone. Actually it’s possible I’m clinically allergic to Christmas music because I usually get hot, then cold and end up generally nauseous. 

But who says that one can’t grow out of her allergies? Last year I first heard Sufjan Stevens’ “Songs for Christmas” and for the first time I actually enjoyed hearing traditional Christmas hymns and jolly jingles about decorating a Christmas tree, which my family never did. Traditional hymns like “What Child Is This” and “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” echoed the solemn reverence that they deserved, while Stevens’ originals like “Come On! Let’s Boogey to the Elf Dance!” lightened the mood with lyrics about your sister’s bangs and Uncle Bob. 

Stevens received some criticism for the quality of his songs on his last album “Avalanche”, a collection of outtakes from “Illinoise”. He has done nothing but redeem himself from the forgettable tracks on “Avalanche” by releasing those streamed Christmas tracks as part of a larger set of songs in a recent Christmas box set called “Sufjan Stevens Presents Songs for Christmas”. Read more

When you go for a job interview, you always ask to know what the company expects of you; it doesn’t work like that in marriage. Having the opportunity to teach a class for newlyweds, my husband and I have heard from a lot of struggling young couples. While the maladies differ, one trend is the same: disappointed expectations. We get surprised spouses saying, "I heard it would be hard, but I don’t think I signed up for this".

A wise woman once told me this formula: E - R = D, Expectation - Reality = Disappointment. My hope is that by upping some of the reality of marriage, we can decrease some of the disappointment that proliferates.

So, what do you think marriage is going to be like? I’m assuming you hear messages of romance and knowing, and of growing together while God’s love is expressed to you through your mate. It is certainly a recipe for great joy, but there is a slice of the pie that is sheer will. Is anyone telling you about that sliver? Note: if you are commitment phobic, either stop now or read to the end. My goal is not to make your common plight worse.Read more

John Wilson, the editor of Books & Culture, has written an essay in the New York Times about evangelicals and the alarm spreading among secularists and non-evangelical people of faith.

This is a very well done short piece. Wilson nails it.  The cottage industry that was producing a few 'Look at the scary evangelicals trying to take over' books has become a full-fledged industrial phenonemon, cranking out a flood of books competing with each other to paint evangelicals in the most scare-mongering terms.  Michelle Goldberg's anti-evangelical screed cum secularist call to political arms, The Kingdom of God, is only one example of this breathless immaturity.

Wilson (or the NY Times editor) is too temperate to title this "Evangelicals in the hands of angry secularists" but "God fearing" is a lovely double entendre.  The NY Times requires registration but just do it.  Wilson's essay should be read.

Excerpts
On evangelicals sudden common appearance in literature:Read more

Read more

Halloween got me thinking about why we like to scare ourselves. I wondered: What are we doing with what I’ll call our “horror art?”

Of the many potential reasons I pondered regarding the popularity of horror art, the one I found most intriguing was the idea that we’re trying to tell ourselves something. It’s my premise that we write and consume horror art because on some level, each of us knows that deep down a monster is lurking within us.

Think about it. Aren’t the scariest films the ones in which any of the main characters could turn into a monster? And don’t the monsters tell us more about ourselves than we might be willing to admit?Read more