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Thursday, June 24, 2021

It's Midsummer Day: Helping Your Kids Avoid Negative Christianity and More


Positive Christianity focuses on the positive message of unsaved people hearing and receiving the Gospel’s power in order to change their sinful lives. Negative Christianity focuses on the negative message of people changing their sinful lives in order to experience the Gospel’s power.

I Believe the Children Are (Not) Our Future
Children, like every other generation in our churches, are the present. If we think otherwise, we run the risk of projecting all our theological understanding and ecclesiological practice toward the future while merely parking the kids in Sunday school. If, on the other hand, we see our children as an integral part of today’s church, how do we include them in the life of God’s people?

Parents, Take Note of the Spiritual Practices Common to Kids Who Flourish As Adults
The research (compiled now in the new book Nothing Less) indicated that children who remained faithful as young adults (identifying as a Christian, sharing their faith, remaining in church, reading the Bible, and so on) grew up in homes where certain practices were present.

White Gen X and Millennial Evangelicals Are Losing Faith in the Conservative Culture Wars
Over the past six years, I have been working with an interdisciplinary team of scholars at the American Academy of Religion to analyze generational shifts in evangelicalism and religion more broadly in the United States. We are finding that some of the younger evangelicals are openly questioning their religious and political traditions. In short, the majority of white evangelicals are aging and a portion of younger evangelicals are engaging in both religion and politics differently.

Francis Collins: How Christians Can Help Curb COVID-19
Over the last year of the US pandemic, a few key scientists and medical professionals have been lifted onto the national stage by their timely expertise. Americans turn to them for information, insight, and even pastoral care of a certain kind. Among those is the physician-geneticist Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and founder of BioLogos. Timothy Dalrymple, president and editor in chief of Christianity Today, and Ted Olsen, CT’s executive editor, spoke recently with Collins about the Delta variant, vaccine hesitancy among evangelicals, and how Christians can come alongside communities that are still crippled by the virus.
In the Commonwealth of Kentucky where I live all new cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus are appearing among the state's unvaccinated population. My region of Kentucky is just across the Mississippi River from Missouri with its low vaccination rate and surging infection rate. It is less than a fifteen minute drive to Tennessee which also has a low vaccination rate. What affects the unvaccinated in these two states can be expected to affect the unvaccinated in my region.
Make the Most of the Rest of Your Summer with These Five Tips
For most churches, the summer months can be a lull. Families vacation and people tend to be in and out of the church more. It’s rare to have high attendance Sundays in the summer, but there are ways to make the most of the season. These five tips will help you navigate the summer months.

A Small Group “Summer of Purpose”
Many groups tend to “take a break” for the summer, meeting for times of fellowship and fun. Why not encourage your small group members to make it a “Summer of Purpose?” The most common question that everyone asks is, “What Am I Here For?” This summer, you and your group members could purposefully use a book centered around the topic of purpose, as “tools” to have spiritual conversations with others, helping them discover the answers to their questions. Prayerfully, in the process, they will be drawn to Christ and eager to learn more. As His disciples, we’ll also re-discover the joy of our own purpose in sharing Jesus with others!

Americans Agree With Pastors on Gender Identity—Barely
A slim majority of U.S. adults say changing genders, identifying as a gender different than one’s biological sex, is morally wrong. According to the latest survey from Gallup on morality, 51% of Americans say it is immoral to change genders, while 46% say it is morally acceptable.The study also found significant demographic divides. Men (56%) are more likely than women (47%) to say transition to a different gender is morally wrong. Non-white American adults are more likely to see gender changes as morally wrong compared to white Americans. (55% to 49%). Politically, 3 in 4 conservatives believe changing genders is morally wrong, 3 in 4 liberals see it as morally acceptable, and moderates are evenly split (48% to 48%).

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