Dear Worship Pastor: It’s Not About You

Dear Worship Pastor,

I enjoy praise and worship.  I really do.  And I appreciate the enormous effort and the talent that goes into excellent worship leadership.  I hesitate to admit the following, because it seems like someone with a theology doctorate ought to be motivated by more cerebral concerns, but a significant (major but not main) part of why I made Perimeter Church my home church is because I enjoy it so much when Laura Story (whose “Blessings” won a Grammy this past year) leads worship there.  That woman has an anointing; that’s the only way I can explain it.  I am moved by her voice and her worship leadership.

So this is nothing against contemporary praise and worship music, which I genuinely like.  And it’s nothing against worship leaders, most of whom I also like.  And, by the way, please don’t bother trying to figure out whom this is aimed toward, because (a) you’re wrong and (b) it’s not aimed toward anyone in particular.

But it has happened so often over the years that I’ve seen worship leaders fail to lead.  And by fail to lead, I mean “They went where no one could follow.”  And, after all these years, I thought I’d say something.

Imagine the following scenario.  A church service begins, and the music breaks in.  The congregation warms up, and the music grows more intense.  Yes, we all know the progression by now — the video “Sunday’s Coming” was so funny because it was so true — and yet the progression is there for a reason.  It’s rooted in human nature.   Continue at Timothy Dalrymple

The Young Christian’s Guide to Sex at Seminary

I was not a geek in high school.  I know this because I never had a slushee tossed in my face (which, according to no less an authority than Glee, is the leading indicator of geek status in high school), and I never suffered the distinct indignity of a “wedgie,” and I never went to high school.  As a top-ranked gymnast, I worked through our high school’s “independent study” program, which meant that every person in every class I took thought I was perfectly wonderful.

Neither was I particularly uncool at college.  I was a varsity athlete, a relatively sociable person, and a leader in student Christian fellowships.  There were times when my counter-cultural Christianness was painfully clear.  I did not go to drinking parties, had no interest in joining a fraternity, and made no effort to bed the young ladies at Stanford University.  But, honestly, I never felt like an outsider.  Stanford had many thousands of students from hundreds of different cultures and faiths and value systems.  I was just a part of the mosaic.

It surprised me, therefore, when I found that I felt like an outsider at seminary. 

We were all Christians.  Princeton Theological Seminary is a fine institution, and I enjoyed my time there.  I formed friendships with fascinating people, found mentors in excellent professors, and enjoyed the classes immensely.

And yet…I did feel like an outsider.  There was a single prevailing culture there — and I did not belong to it.  I am an evangelical with conservative leanings.  I came to PTS at the recommendation of my famously-agnostic undergraduate mentor, Van Harvey, who strongly believed that I should gain a three-year seminary education before going on to a secular research institution for the more specialized work of a doctorate.  (He was right, but more on that later.)   Keep Reading >>>

See Also: Series on Sex in Seminary

The Sex Test, Abortion, and the War Against Girls

It is one of the cruelest ironies of the modern abortion movement that while the movement advanced under the banner of women’s rights, it is unborn girls, in monstrously disproportionate number, who have been aborted.

If you must read only one thing this weekend, it should be Jonathan Last’s book review of “Unnatural Selection” by Mara Hvistendahl in today’s Wall Street Journal.

 Hvistendahl’s book treats the spread of sex-based abortion and the deleterious consequences for societies that systematically abort females.  Read it first for the statistics, which are gobsmacking.  The natural birthrate is 104-106 boys for every 100 girls.  Yet Hvistendahl — who is reflexively pro-choice, by the way — documents the wild disproportions abortion produces around the world:

Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China’s and India’s populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120…By Ms. Hvistendahl’s counting, there have been so many sex-selective abortions in the past three decades that 163 million girls, who by biological averages should have been born, are missing from the world.

What’s perhaps even more astonishing is what happens when parents try for the second, third or fourth time to give birth to a boy.  The increasing desperation of the parents is evident in the numbers: Keep Reading...

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