You’ve probably heard the expression “15 minutes of fame.” Odds are, you haven’t ever been famous enough to experience it yourself. Me neither. But this week I was able to experience 15 minutes of someone else’s 15 minutes of fame.

It began in the Mississippi airport security line. Admittedly, not a location I’d expect this story to begin with.

A few of us from Central were coming back from visiting a church in Mississippi and when we prepared to go through the airport security line we had to pass through dozens of people milling around and holding signs. The signs had different variations of the phrase “Mississipi loves Skylar Laine.”

Continue Reading…

This post is as much for me as it is for you. Let me begin there.

The rise of social media has brought with it a tempting opportunity that is hard for the typical person to resist. They call it the humble brag. At its core, it happens whenever someone acts surprised by how good they are and it manifests itself in numerous subtle ways. Here’s a recent tweet that I saw that included not one, but TWO humble brags at once! See if you can catch them.

I black out the names because both of the people involved are good Christian dudes. That’s the point of this all—we can all easily fall into this trap. This is a guy who has a very popular blog and has asked a guest writer to post on it. The guest writer then humble brags about the amazing response to his post and then the blog owner retweets it and let’s him know that he is also surprised at how popular his blog is!

Continue Reading…

I recently read an article in Relevant Magazine about sex outside of marriage. It gave traction to something that I have seen more and more in ministry over the last few years. I’m amazed at how many Christians either don’t know what the Bible says about sexuality or don’t see its value for their life. The flip side of this is how many individuals as well as couples I have met with and tried to help them work through the consequences of these decisions. Most people don’t think twice about living the way the world sees as normal when it comes to sexuality. Even those people who are Christians and seem to be living out their faith. The heartbreaking part is when they realize what that actually means for them in the bigger picture. This realization usually happens a few years down the road during the first couple years of marriage.

The fact is that God’s way may seem outdated to our media dominated culture. But God designed sex and is the only one that knows how to get the most out of it. The Relevant Magazine article showed that according to a study conducted by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 88 percent of unmarried adults (ages 18-29) are having sex compared to 80 percent who self identified as evangelical. An 8 percent difference for those who call themselves Christians? Clearly, those who claim to surrender to God sure haven’t trusted Him in this area.

Continue Reading…