What if your baby was gay?

Dr. Albert Mohler caused a stir recently with a blog entry, "What if your baby was gay?" I read the whole article and thought it was pretty good. You can read it here, but read the whole thing. Don't stop midway through the article, or you may misunderstand. He discusses how a Christian should respond if scientist were able to prove that there is a genetic tendency toward homosexuality. Dr. Mohler's analysis is consistently pro-life, pro-heterosexual, yet loving to the value of all people. Very thought-provoking article.

Dr. Geoff Hammond new president of NAMB

I'm very pleased to share that yesterday our board of trustees elected Dr. Geoff Hammond as the new president of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Dr. Hammond grew up in Africa, the son of Southern Baptist missionaries, and was educated at Spurgeon's College in London. He came to the United States where he met his wife, Debbie. He has served as an IMB missionary in Brazil, and associational missionary in Arkansas, and a church planter and NAMB missionary in Virginia. For the past five years he has been the associate state executive for Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.

I'm excited that we are getting a missionary to lead our mission agency for North America. I'm also excited that we are getting a man who is humble, brilliant, and a good listener. He understands that North America is a true mission field, and that we need to have a passion to reach the vast array of cultures who have come to North America. He speaks Portuguese, some Spanish, and he can converse in both American and British English! Pray for him as he moves his wife Debbie, and son Nicholas to Georgia. They have a son, Timothy, whom they will leave behind in college in Virginia.

The search committee did an excellent job. They left no stone unturned in the process. Dr. Hammond was given psychological tests, management tests, and submitted to all kinds of background checks. The search committee resisted political pressure to select somebody else's favorite. In fact, they told us that they received phone calls and letters for candidates, but they ignored the outside political pressure. Nobody on the committee had any personal connection to Dr. Hammond, although one member had met him when he was a missionary and had his picture on his refrigerator for years to pray for his missionary work. The trustees had a roll-call vote, yet the vote was an enthusiastically unanimous vote to call Dr. Hammond as our new president.

You can read an article about the election in The Christian Index here, which includes a quote from me.

You can read an interview with Dr. Hammond here.

You can see photos of the meeting here.

To see a video introducing Dr. Hammond (and hear his soft British accent), click here.

"March Madness" in church

It's "March Madness," the time when basketball fans get excited about the college playoffs.
We have "March Madness" in church, too. Matt Tullos has noticed lots of sports terms that fit in church. Basketball has an "alley-oop." In church, an "alley-oop" would be when the singer sings an incredible song that relates to the sermon and the preacher slams it home. But be careful, as church can also have an "alley-oops," as when the pastor preaches a sermon on adultery and then the soloist sings, "Why Not Tonight?"
Basketball also has a "slam-dunk." In church, a "slam-dunk" happens when the pastor loses his grip in the baptistry. There is also a foul called a "double-dribble." In church, this is when the Lord's Supper juice glasses are cracked.
Football has a "blitz." In church, a "blitz" is when a 20 people rush the associate pastor five minutes before the service, each with an announcement that must be made. Football also has a "screen pass." In church, a "screen pass" is when the pastor plans to use a clip from a Disney movie and then chickens out. Then there is the "illegal use of the hands" foul. This happens in more formal churches when charismatic worship is practiced. Then there is the "two-minute warning." In church, this is when the pastor slows down his sermon with the words, "Finally, church..."
Baseball has the term "stealing home." In church this is when a member slips out the back door during the invitation. Another baseball term is a "pinch hitter." In church, this is when a visiting preacher steps up to the pulpit.
My favorite sports term is a "sacrifice." This is done by a baseball player who allows himself to get out in order to advance a runner or even bring a runner home. And this is what Jesus did for us on the cross, getting "out" in order to advance us to our eternal "home" in Heaven. He had to do this because all of us have a "batting average" that is below .500 (we are sinners who often strike out) and we aren't good enough to get to Heaven on our own good deeds. Thank God, that even in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs, we can make a comeback and win the victory through faith in Jesus Christ!
That's the message of the Easter season, when "March Madness" turns into "April Gladness."

Savannah paper publisheds my column against Sunday alcohol sales

The Savannah Morning News website now has an online version of my column, which will be published on Monday, March 5, arguing against Sunday retail sales of alcohol in Georgia. You can read my column here.
It will be interesting to hear the reaction of readers.

Lost Tomb of Jesus?

The Discovery Channel plans to air a TV special claiming to have found ossuaries (burial boxes) that contained the bones of Jesus and his family. In other words, they claim to have evidence that Jesus never rose from the dead.

To bolster this claim, they point out that one of the ossuaries is engraved with "Jesus son of Joseph," and the other family names were Mary, Mariamne (which they claim is Mary Magdalene), Judah son of Jesus, and Matthew (which they claim is the apostle Matthew, although there is no explanation of how the apostle got into the family). They then claim that statistically this is highly unlikely that these same family names are all together.

One would think that such sensational claims would only be made with careful documentation, yet according to The Jerusalem Post, the archaeologist who first did the excavation of these ossuaries in 1980 says that the current claims of the TV show are "impossible" and "nonsense." He points out that the family names found are very common, noting that there have been three or four other ossuaries found that are inscribed "Jesus son of Joseph."

In an article in Baptist Press, professor Darrel Black of Dallas Theological Seminary points out how common the names are on the ossuary. Joseph was the 2nd most common name, Jesus was sixth, and Matthew was ninth. Mary was the most common female name, given to 21% of all females at the time!

Just think about the implications of what The Discovery Channel's show is claiming. They claim that Jesus' body lay decaying in a tomb in Jerusalem while the disciples were boldly telling everybody in Jerusalem that he was alive. The Christians publicly charged the religious authorities with murder, saying "This Jesus whom you crucified is alive" (Acts 2:36). The religious authorities had the apostles jailed several times, and ordered them not to preach about Jesus. So why didn't they search for his decaying body and put an end to Christianity? Yet none of the early opponents of Christianity denied that the tomb was empty. They argued that the disciples stole the body or that Jesus swooned on the cross and woke up in the tomb, but nobody denied the tomb was empty. Isn't it interesting that The Discovery Channel can make a claim that the earliest opponents of Christianity never thought to claim?

UPDATE ON MARCH 3: Scientific American published an interesting article on their website in which they interviewed the same scholars used by The Discovery Channel. When he began asking them questions, he said, "I encountered more than a few angry scholars and archaeologists." He talked to Tal Ilan, the statistical scholar whom The Discovery Channel quoted to claim that the names on the ossuaries must be the family of Jesus. She expressed outrage at how the TV show twisted her words. Carney Matheson, the scholar whose DNA studies of the particles scraped from two of the ossuaries, said that the DNA results mean "absolutely nothing."