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This is extracted from the famous 60 minutes interview with Joel Osteen, where the reporter asked the questions most evangelicals ignore. Here’s the entire interview, parts 1 and 2.

From 2006, this is my diagnosis of why evangelicals are increasingly drawn to the culture war. It’s not, contrary to what the rhetoric wants us to believe, because we have a Jesus shaped mission to the world, caring passionately about the issues Jesus cared about. No, it’s a bit less flattering.
I’m suggesting that spiritually empty, […]

UPDATE: How did Jesus Fight The Culture War?
UPDATE II: Why angry Bob is angry?
Today being election day, and many of my evangelical friends being in somewhat of a foul mood, for reasons that, as of 12:28 p.m., are suspected and not yet clear, I found myself thinking about a fellow I’ll call Bob.
I met Bob […]

LINK: Read Matt Davis’s take on the 40/40.
Resource: IM lurker Pastor Scott sends along Greg Boyd’s sermon/prayer guide for a current emphasis in his church called “The Great Reversal: The Upside Down Kingdom of God.” Woodland Hills Church media for the series will be here starting Oct. 5.
UPDATE: Read IMB Missionary in the comment threads.
I […]

UPDATE: A page of Horton resources related to Osteen.
UPDATE II: So many good Osteen pieces on there. Denny Burke zeroes in on Osteen’s glad admission that he does not preach the Bible’s main message.

UPDATE III: Slate Magazine on Osteen’s God.
The mentality that thinks in terms of marketing Jesus inevitably moves toward progressive distortion of him; […]

UPDATE III: While we wait for CBD to apologize, we can all play Oprah or Osteen.
UPDATE II: Can anyone in a Lifeway Store or working for Lifeway confirm that Lifeway is selling this book? Please tell me it isn’t true. If TIME Magazine can tell us this fraud is a prosperity preaching wolf in […]

How do you know I like this book? I spent three hours writing the review, hit publish and Wordpress promptly ate it.
I’m rewriting it.

Tyler Wigg Stevenson is a writer, preacher and political activist with credentials as wide-ranging as a Yale Divinity M.Div., a year as an assistant to John Stott and being part of the […]

I’ve mentioned the “Prosperity Gospel” in some presentations recently, and I’ve had some questions about what I mean when I use the term. I’m going to outline some very basic responses- and have a little to say about them- so that I can refer others to them as a more complete answer than I can […]

Sometime when I was in seminary, I first heard the term “civil religion” and started to understand that some people had a problem with the American flag in a church sanctuary. The flag- and its companion, the “Christian” flag- have been in every church sanctuary I’ve ever been in, and both flags are in the […]

[Check out the previous IM post, “With God On Our Side.”]
One of the results of working with international students, and especially of having them in worship services you’re leading, is a new appreciation of how some commonly accepted elements of American Christian culture sound to those who aren’t Americans.
Take, for example, those patriotic songs at […]

My men’s Bible study has been reading and discussing John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life. If you aren’t familiar with DWYL, it is a small book that Piper wrote to persuade college-age young people to live missional, Kingdom-building, God-glorifying and passionate lives. If you want to give the “Piper” experience in short form, this […]

A good friend mailed me a note the other day, asking my opinion of a book that was all the rage in his megachurch. It’s not the first time we’ve had that conversation. We’ve covered this ground many times because his church, like most of American megachurch evangelicalism, often behaves like a group of consumerist […]

Dan Edelen is on one of the best bloggers I know of, and his post We Need A Gospel That Speaks To Failure is outa the park, center field.
Your church is looking for new elders. Which of these two 40-year old men has a better chance of becoming an elder, the self-made man who runs […]

The BHT has a regular banner quote, and this one was so good I wanted to share it with my readers over here.
The nominal Christian, then, will see Jesus as a name, a representative, a symbol, a personification, a prototype, a figure, a model, an exemplar for something else. The nominal Christian pays homage to […]