Prepare to Meet Your God: Repentance in the Time of Coronavirus
By Rhett Burns We live, like the old Chinese curse goes, in interesting times. A global pandemic and all its political and economic ramifications are wreaking havoc upon the world. The wise among us will ask: What is God doing through this pandemic? The very first thing we must recognize is that God is doing […]
Put Your Mercy on Display: A Prayer in a time of Pandemic
By Rhett Burns Our Father in Heaven, “[You are] our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea.” (Psalm 46:1-2) We find ourselves in a time of trouble and so it is a […]
The Glory of Inefficiency
By Rhett Burns My eight-year-old son asked for a Truist Park cake for his recent birthday, and my wife, always up for a baking challenge, set herself to replicating the home stadium of our beloved Atlanta Braves. As you can see in the below photo, she hit a home run. It took several hours of […]
Opting Out: Farage, Freedom, and Cheerful Defiance
By Rhett Burns At 11:00 p.m. local time January 31, Great Britain left the European Union. A few days prior, Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party and member of the European Parliament, gave a short, but glorious farewell speech ahead of the parliament’s Brexit withdrawal agreement vote. I am not British and have no […]
Man as Maker: Why Entrepreneurship Excites
Over at the How to Build a Tent podcast, Matt Williams is encouraging listeners to start businesses in 2020, and he plans to dedicate a good portion of his shows this year toward helping people succeed in their new ventures. The goal—to start a business that brings in $250 of revenue per month—is purposefully small, […]
Do Not Leave Your Friends in Battle: Chick-Fil-A and the Culture Wars
By Rhett Burns Chick-Fil-A announced this week it is restructuring the company’s charitable giving. Instead of donating to more than 300 organizations, the company will give to three partners focusing on three specific issues: education, homelessness, and hunger. Among those organizations no longer receiving funds from Chick-Fil-A is the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of […]
True Believers, Marketers, and Evangelists
When I was a child, our church would gather late every summer with dozens of area churches for a large tent revival on the campus of the local Baptist college. In the sweltering August heat, we’d sing southern gospel hymns, listen to hellfire and brimstone preaching, and laugh at the corny puppet show put on […]
Can the Church Replace the Natural Family?
A few weeks ago, I wrote the following in this space: We should also stop conflating the church and the natural family as if the former may be substituted for the latter. While there is some overlap, and family works as a metaphor to describe the church, these are two separate spheres that God has […]
The Future is Familial
By Rhett Burns The Atlantic recently published an essay chronicling the childless American city, noting that New York City has shrunk for the first time in four decades in a non-recession year. The cost of living, particularly housing, has priced families out of the city. In their absence, American cities have become “entertainment machines” for […]
Singing is Slaying
By Rhett Burns Several weeks ago, I wrote here that feasting is fighting. But bread and wine and forks are not our only weapons as we aim to take the planet for King Jesus. We also have organs, guitars, drums, pianos, cellos, and those two ligaments in the larynx responsible for producing the human voice. […]
Motherhood in the Mission of God
By Rhett Burns At the most recent annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (my denomination), president J.D. Greear hosted a panel discussion entitled, Indispensable Partners: The Value of Women in God’s Mission. The discussion was standard narrow complementarian fare, neither very helpful nor harmful. It would have been unremarkable if not for one glaring […]
Feasting is Fighting
In the war for the world, that ancient, yet active campaign to extend the rule of King Jesus to the four corners of the globe so that the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the seas, food is not neutral. Nor is it utilitarian, a simple means of physical sustenance […]