How Should We Respond to the Never-Ending News Cycle?
In a culture filled with bad news, may God give us wisdom to lead graciously and share boldly the good news of Christ.
Articles for tag: Social Media
The Inevitable Rabbit Hole: Countering Satan’s Impact on Young People Through Social Media
Spiritual warfare impacts teen today through psychological manipulation of social media where culture, politics, fluidity of truth, pornography, misinformation, greed, and so much more collide.
February 11, 2025
Keeping Up With Forty-Five Executive Orders
The perpetual onslaught of breaking news is numbing. It makes us care more … at least at first. But over time we get fatigued with the world’s chaos every second of every day, and we lose our ability to care.
July 1, 2023
Spiritual Formation 101: Three Guidelines for Meeting Our Moment
By Tyler McKenzie Spiritual formation has become a buzz phrase. It sounds sophisticated, all the influencers use it, and it’s a way to signal my friends that I am one of those neo-monastic types who reads poetry and welcomes strangers into my home. But what does it actually mean, and why does it matter? I believe this is an important discussion in our cultural environment. A spiritual formation mindset can help us reframe the discipleship conversations we are having in our churches to meet our moment. When I’m asked to talk about spiritual formation, I boil it down to three
May 1, 2023
Gradations of Unity
By Tyler McKenzie A recent Love Thy Neighborhood podcast detailed how fake news spreads in the church. They told a story from the 2016 election as a case study. On November 5, 2016, just three days before the presidential election, the Denver Guardian ran this headline: “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide.” The article stated that FBI agent Michael Brown and his wife were found dead in their home. The web article looked legit. It included quotes from the local police chief, comments from neighbors, and links to online sources claiming it was a
May 1, 2023
Divide and Conquer
By Megan Rawlings I have a problem. My husband has confronted me about it numerous times. It is beginning to affect our everyday lives. Frankly, I am on the verge of addiction. I cannot resist the temptation when it appears. My toxic trait is that I cannot stop clicking on clickbait. There, I said it. The first step to fixing a problem is admitting it, right? Clickbait is a nuisance that potentially infects your computer with viruses. But I find it tough to resist because it’s a portal through which I gain access to one of my favorite things on
January 1, 2023
Are You a Truth-Teller?
By Kent E. Fillinger A January 2021 Lifeway Research survey found 49 percent of U.S. Protestant pastors say they frequently hear members of their congregation repeating conspiracy theories about something happening in our country. Around 1 in 8 pastors (13 percent) strongly agree their congregants are sharing conspiracy theories. WHAT THE RESEARCH SHOWS An October 2020 research report found that Facebook users engage with misinformation 70 million times per month on average. Though far fewer than the 2016 peak of 200 million monthly fake news engagements, it still is no small figure. On Twitter, people share false content 4 million
November 8, 2022
10 Ways to Minister to Your Church’s College Students
A student who leaves for college too often leaves the church for good, but students who receive special attention from their home church will realize they are valuable to the body of Christ. Consider some of the following strategies to help your church go the extra mile with your college students, whether they attend a Christian or secular college.
November 4, 2022
‘Mr. OCC’ Meredith Williams Uses Facebook Like Barnabas (and Barney Fife)
Among the 15,000 Ozark Christian College alumni, Meredith Williams is a legend. During his 46 years at OCC, Meredith wore many hats, including admissions director, alumni director, and many others. Nicknamed “Mr. OCC,” he’s been the college’s single best cheerleader, and when he retired in 2013 at age 73, his ministry didn’t stop. He just moved it to Facebook. . . .
July 20, 2022
What Issues Are People Concerned about Today?
Our elders at Risen Church Westside, Santa Monica, Calif., were challenged to make decisions that addressed the present reality of post-COVID-19 life. To better serve our congregation and community, we decided to conduct a survey to understand the questions and issues being asked and considered by our members, local Christians, and non-Christians in the community. . . .
July 1, 2022
The Slavery of the Digital World
How to Break the Chains and Build a Tech-Wise Life for You and Your Children By Tyler McKenzie I believe history will remember 2007 as a defining year. Why? In 2007, a nuclear-sized tech explosion occurred. Facebook transitioned from a college to global phenomenon. Twitter went global. “The cloud” took off. Hadoop began expanding the ability of any company to store and analyze enormous amounts of unstructured data (which enabled big data and cloud computing). Amazon released its first Kindle. Google introduced Android. And (drumroll please) Steve Jobs introduced the first-generation iPhone. As I mentioned in my May/June Engage column
March 1, 2022
The Quest for Authentic Identity
By Megan Rawlings “Tell me about yourself.” There was a long, long pause. “Well,” she finally said, “I’m a 2.” “A 2?” I asked. “Yeah, on the Enneagram. It’s this test that tells you who you are and so much about yourself . . .” This conversation and others like it spurred me on to contemplate the emotional and mental state of young adults in our country. Although I cannot speak for the masses, in my experience, millennials (those born 1981–1998) and Generation Z (born 1999–2015) are longing to find their identity and purpose. There appears to be a chasm
March 1, 2022
Authentic Influence
By Kyle Idleman A word you hear a lot these days, a word that drives a lot of social media ambitions and daily decisions, is influencer . . . and underneath that word is a deep desire we all have. Nobody grows up dreaming of waking up, going to work, heading home, watching Netflix, scrolling through social media, and then doing it all over again the next day until their last breath. We all want to be used to change the world. We don’t want to spend our lives being time-wasters, or space-takers, or binge-watchers, or game-players, or even book-readers.
January 24, 2022
Jan. 30 | Application
How can we honor the Lord when conflicts arise? Is it possible to hold firm convictions without destroying relationships? Several principles found in Romans 14 can help us put this slogan into practice.
September 1, 2021
The 4-1-1 on 9/11: How a Terrorist Attack On America Changed Everything
American generational history is defined by marker events. Terrible assassinations. Catastrophic disasters. Tragic failures. Bloody wars. Economic depressions. From Bunker Hill to Gettysburg to Vietnam, America has been shaped by Thomas Paine’s “the times that try men’s souls.” For those born in the last half of the 20th century, no event proved more horrific than the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. That moment was our generation’s “Pearl Harbor.” In its wake came transformational change in how America socialized, worked, learned, played, and churched. In telephone vocabulary, 9-1-1 is an emergency assistance call. So it’s strangely fitting that September 11,
The ‘Invisible Government’
The manipulation capabilities of the “invisible government” are chilling and terrifying.
Words
Our words have the power to build up or tear down. Yet words can also be the healing agent God uses to bring reconciliation, rebirth, revival, and restoration. We need more of these healing words in every arena of our lives and ministries.
March 1, 2021
The Dilemma of Social Media and the Church
I received an email from Jonathan, a person I’d never met, last June. He explained that he’d hit a point in his life where he had questions about life, faith, his purpose, and how to respond to everything that was happening in the world. We were in the midst of a pandemic; people were losing their jobs, and there was political turmoil and racial injustice. Jonathan said he didn’t know how to process all the chaos we all were witnessing. Jonathan had found our church through Google and Instagram. Unbeknownst to me, he had been listening to our sermons and
October 12, 2020
Discovery Questions for October 18, 2020
COMPANION RESOURCES Lesson for Oct. 18, 2020: How To (2 Timothy 2:14-26; 3:1-9) “Don’t Get Sloppy” by David Faust (Lesson Application) ________ Study Questions for Groups By Michael C. Mack 1. What challenge did you face last week? 2. In what way was God’s power evident in or through your life over the past week? Ask three people—two readers and one reteller—to help. Ask the readers to read 2 Timothy 2:14-26 one after the other, preferably from different Bible versions. Repeat the process for 2 Timothy 3:1-9. Ask the third person to summarize the passages in one minute or less.
March 20, 2020
A Megachurch Pastor's Letter to His Congregation
Editor’s Note: Jeff Vines, lead pastor of ONE&ALL Church in San Dimas, Calif., shared these thoughts concerning the COVID-19 outbreak with his church. With his permission, we have decided to share it with our readers. _ _ _ By Jeff Vines I love my church, although ONE&ALL church does not belong to me. I love the people who attend, the staff who diligently make this engine run, and the executive team and elders who give so much of themselves to the cause of Christ. During this coronavirus pandemic, our leaders and servants have stepped up to lead and serve. I’m
