“You are Republican,” your Facebook algorithm whispers in your ear. “You are a Democrat,” your social circle chants. “You don’t just believe in those political ideas; they are who you are,” the world murmurs. Taking a side and defending it has become the norm in our society. Being with others like us feels safe, comfortable, protected from critique. But when we’re in a place where we separate from others, where we only hear, “Yes, you’re right,” we stagnate and fail to grow. Our political substitute identities leave us self-righteous, angry, and unable to cope with life’s reality: not everyone is like us, sees things the way we do, or wants the same things we do. If our happiness depends on being isolated from differing opinions, it is a false happiness.

In 2016, data scientists Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza analyzed data among registered voters to determine how often Democrats and Republicans married. They learned that 30 percent of couples were politically mixed, meaning they did not share the same party identification. However, most of those mixed marriages were between Independents and a spouse registered as Republican or Democrat. Only 9 percent of marriages were between Democrats and Republicans. That number has worsened. In 2020, the American Family Survey saw that only 21 percent of marriages were politically mixed, and fewer than 4 percent were between Democrats and Republicans. The indications are that we tend to only have deep friendships with those who share our political ideology.
In 1958, Gallup Research asked respondents, “‘If you had a daughter of marriageable age, would you prefer she marry a Democrat or Republican, all other things being equal?’ The results: 18% of Americans said they would prefer their daughter to marry a Democrat, 10% preferred a Republican, and the majority didn’t care.” When Gallup asked the same question in 2016, the number of those who cared nearly doubled: “28% of respondents said they preferred their child to marry a Democrat and 27% a Republican.”
In 2017, after Trump won the presidential election, 10 percent of Americans ended a romantic relationship because of different political views.
Politics are divisive no matter what country you live in. England has been split over Brexit (leaving the European Union). France has been divided over immigration policies. And South Korea has massive political division between its younger and older residents and between those in urban and rural environments.
Let’s make this personal. What would your reaction be if you learned a close friend of yours voted for a different presidential candidate than you in each of the past three elections? How would you feel if you walked into a new friend’s home and MSNBC was on the TV in their living room? How about Fox News? How would it impact your friendship?
We long to be around those who validate our opinions and share our worldview. It’s not surprising, then, that our political allegiances have a significant impact on our friendships.
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The doctrinal grounding of non-denominationalism is typically at the mercy of the Senior Pastor. The good news is that the median tenure of pastors has risen to six years in a recent study.[i] But even a change in pastoral leadership every six years means that a congregation will be setting a new doctrinal course at every transition. A doctrinal statement sets the long-term trajectory of a congregation’s ministry and preserves its doctrinal distinctiveness for the long run. That will create more unity and leadership coherence over the decades.

This past year, we’ve visited Evangelical Free, Southern Baptist, Assemblies of God, and Anglican churches and been blessed in each gathering. These are brothers and sisters in Christ who worship the one Triune God. While varied in style and different on theological non-essentials, it is an honor to know that we are part of God’s family: we are rescued by God-made flesh who died for our sins and is risen from the dead. We submit to the same Word of God. We are indwelt by the same Spirit.
In the world of non-denominationalism, the tendency is to scrape theology down to its bare minimum and make room in our local churches for as many in the family of Christ as possible despite our theological differences. The spirit behind this reductionism is admirable: to not create unnecessary division. Why can’t we join together as a church in unity despite our minor disagreements?
New Life is swimming against that current. In a day and age many church’s doctrinal statements could be printed on written out on a napkin; we have a 37-page doctrinal statement.
I discovered New Life’s doctrinal statement when I began considering whether God might be calling apply to serve on staff. I was pretty surprised. I was also grateful. I’m even more grateful for the doctrinal statement today. Here are 7 reasons why:
1)     Because Doctrine Matters
At its best, doctrine helps us understand God and ourselves better. It clarifies the purpose of the church and answers questions we have about all sorts of matters: from salvation to sovereignty to sexuality. The question isn’t whether or not the church has answers to those issues, it is how biblical, clear, and unified those answers are.
2)     It is Transparent
Have you ever had people leave your church after your pastor preached a sermon on a controversial topic? A doctrinal statement doesn’t mean that will never happen, but it helps.
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Every gathering of God’s people is a place where God brings his transformative power, where God spills his love out over his people, and where he calls unbelievers to himself. Don’t stop believing in God’s church. And don’t miss out on your opportunity to invite the many who are disconnected from God’s family to come and see what God is doing.

There was a time when going to church is what respectable people did. Church was a place not just of worship, but, for the worldly-minded, of upward mobility. My childhood was at the tail end of these days. When I was in sixth grade, our family became acquaintances with a businessman at church. My mom and dad ended up doing business with him only to be burned by his less-than-ethical business dealings. Church, it turned out, was just a handy place for him to expand his business.
Long gone are those days. And good riddance to them. I have no desire to have our society return to “the good old days” of church attendance done for the sake of appearances.
Any vestige of attending church because it is the right thing to do was killed by Covid. With online services and world class worship artists a click away, why go to your local church? Why not just sleep in?
But the local church is not just a dispenser of spiritual wares, it is the local manifestation of God’s people, where we are called to serve and love. I long for people to come to church not because I want an outdated institution propped up. Attending your local church isn’t propping up the last physical movie rental store in your zip code. Participating in your local church is choosing to encounter your holy and loving God in the presence of his people, experience the warmth of God’s family, and steward the gifts God has given you for the sake of others.
A recent survey asked people why they do and don’t attend church. Those who attend cited reasons such as “to get closer to God,” “because I find the sermons valuable,” and “to be part of a faith community” as some of their answers. Those who don’t attend listed these as their top reasons for not attending:
1.      I practice my faith in other ways
2.      I am not a believer
3.      I haven’t found a church I like
4.      I don’t like the sermons
5.      I don’t feel welcome
That’s a helpful glimpse into the heart of the non-church attender. You might notice that four of the five reasons don’t have anything to do with their beliefs. That means that the most significant objection you might fear from your neighbor (disagreeing with your faith) is unlikely to be the main reason they aren’t attending.
If we consider that in a town like Tucson somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of residents very rarely, if ever, attend church, each of these reasons represents a huge number of people. An argumentative approach is certainly not the way to go. Instead, lovingly addressing each of these concerns is far more effective.
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There is only one rabbit worth chasing: God himself. He is the only rabbit who can be caught and, at the same time, remain elusive. In Christ, you can catch God.[i] And yet, because he is infinite, you will never really catch him. Once you’ve tasted the true presence of God, you should know that nothing else will ever satisfy the way he can.

Bob Buford tells a story about dog races in his book Finishing Well that rattled my heart when I first read it and continues to shake me:
“One of my favorite stories is about the dog races in Florida. They train these dogs to chase an electric rabbit, and one night the rabbit broke down, and the dogs caught it. But they didn’t know what to do with it. They were just leaping around, yelping and biting one another, totally confused about what was happening. I think that’s a picture of what happens to all sorts of people who catch the rabbit in their life. Whether its wealth or fame or beauty or a bigger house or whatever, the prize isn’t what they thought it would be. And when they finally get it, they don’t know what to do with their lives.”
What rabbits have you caught in your life? I’ve caught a lot of rabbits in my life. And, like the dogs, they usually hang lifeless in my jaws once caught.
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Don’t lose hope. Not because your child, your boss, your employee, your spouse, or yourself is capable on his own of the change that he or she has have failed at time and time again, but because we believe in the Spirit of God, who can transform any heart, who can resurrect the dead, and who can restore relationships beyond repair.

“I don’t even know why we’re here. Nothing is going to change.” I’ve heard those words many times in counseling sessions. And I’ve felt those words from the empty eyes, the rigid shoulders, and the dropped heads of those I have counseled.
Who is it that you don’t believe can change? Your boss? Your employee? Your friend? Your son or daughter? Your spouse? Yourself?
Who have you given up on?
Be honest. You’ve probably given up on someone somewhere. You know what the theological term is for not having hope for someone? For giving up on them? Damning. That’s right. When you lose hope in someone you’re damning him.
The latter half of Romans 1 speaks of the hopeless situation of those who have turned against God. In chilling language, Paul explains that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men…”[i] He explains that those in rebellion “are without excuse,”[ii] and then he goes on three times in the next five verses to explain how God damns them: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts…”[iii] and that “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions,”[iv] and finally “God gave them up to a debased mind…”[v]
On those four words—“God gave them up”–hang the icy chill of damnation.
Only God can damn. We can never give up on anyone. We can never lose hope for anyone. Jesus tells us that we are not only to love our neighbor, but also our enemy. And Paul explains that that this love has the shape of hope.
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God works through prayer. Period. When was the last time you prayed for the salvation of your neighbor or co-worker or family member? In some crazy way, God uses our prayers to stir his heart. Our prayers stir the fires in our own hearts as well. When I pray for someone, I empathize with them and my capacity to share the good news with them grows. Let’s pray for the salvation of those around us. And let’s pray for revival.

In the sixty-five-year history of New Life we’ve planted five churches intentionally and at least three unintentionally. I’ve heard the unintentional church plant called a “splant”—a conflation of “split” and “plant.” If you’ve been a Christian for a while, you’ve probably lived through one. Maybe an associate pastor at your church started a church a few miles down the road without the elders’ blessing. Perhaps a senior pastor was fired and planted a church nearby, or left and returned to start a church. Sometimes church leadership retroactively calls these splits plants, and often not with poor intent: they’re trying to be gracious.
I wonder if that five plants for every three splants is reflective of the average church. My hunch is that splants outpace plants. That is heartbreaking.
Those who choose to splant are culpable for their sin, but the existing churches also bear responsibility. Far too few churches are committed to God’s intention for them to multiply.
First, let’s admit: it’s hard to multiply. Planting churches is taxing on the mother church. It takes time, energy, finances, and (most significantly) people. It’s painful. But it’s biblical.
Churches, like people, are intended to be streams not ponds, highways, not cul-de-sacs. The book of Acts shows us a healthy church multiplying itself across the Roman Empire and beyond. Paul is a church planter. Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus are coaching documents for these elder-pastors. If you pick up any of Paul’s other epistles, Paul is training the city-churches at Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, etc. Many forget that these letters weren’t letters to a single church. Paul wrote to one city church, a network of churches in the city. These churches were so connected that Paul could write one letter that would be read by all of them. These were multiplying churches.
Researchers estimate that only 7% of churches in the United States are reproducing, and less than .1% are involved in a multiplying movement (see this study by Exponential and Lifeway). Isn’t that disheartening? It saddens me. It’s not that this type of church doesn’t exist any longer. I need to look no further than our partnership with God’s church multiplying work in southern India through Mission Voice Network than to know God is still in the work of multiplying his church.
I’m convinced that if we are going to see God do a fresh work of revival in Tucson, Arizona, and the United States, we have to become a healthy multiplying church. There are at least two reasons for this: first, church plants are much more successful at reaching the lost than established churches. Second, if many come to faith, it will require more local congregations to provide places to disciple and care for these new members of Christ’s family.
Here are six ways that we can participate in God’s multiplying work:
1)     Develop Partnerships
Every one of Paul’s letters ends (and sometimes begins) with a list of men and women Paul is in partnership with.
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The foundation of your devotions ought to be God’s Word and prayer. Generally, for us the best rhythms from later elementary age on have been to read one chapter of the Bible, ask some basic questions about the chapter, sing a song, and pray. Don’t overly complicate the time. It’s better to go shorter than longer. I would rather have five ten-minute family devotions a week than one hour-long devotion. The daily rhythms help draw us into closer intimacy not only with Christ, but also with one another.  

Angel and I have a nineteen-year-old and a seventeen-year-old. On the precipice of empty-nesting, I’ve been reflecting upon what has worked and what hasn’t worked as I have tried to lead our family spiritually over the years.
I have experienced ebbs and flows of successes and failures as the spiritual leader of our family. By God’s grace, our kids are faithfully following Christ and have vibrant spiritual lives. Angel and I give God all the credit and glory for the ways in which we have been able to encourage Camille and Soren’s spiritual development; anything good we gave them the Father first gave us.  We cannot lay claim because “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17) We own the times we have unintentionally and foolishly put obstacles in their spiritual path. Perhaps our wins and losses might help you walk a wiser course.
The Basics
None of the basics will surprise a mature Christian. While uncontroversial, these are more important than my suggestions for spiritual rhythms below. If leading your family spiritually is playing jazz, the basics are the structure that keep the music cohesive, and the spiritual rhythms are the improvisation that make the song unique to your family.
I’m not able to properly lead my family into spiritual health if I myself am not intentionally growing spiritually. They are watching you closely: lead through your example. There is no faster way to give Christianity a bitter taste than for your kids to sniff out that you don’t take your walk seriously.
Similarly, the spiritual temperature in your marriage will impact your children. The depth of spiritual intimacy in your marriage will directly affect the depth of spiritual intimacy in your family.
If your spouse isn’t a Christian or isn’t committed to the spiritual development of your children, it’s far better to act alone than to wait for your spouse to get on board.
Just as your relationships with your children change as they get older, so too will your spiritual relationships with them change. Expect this to happen and welcome their growth in spiritual maturity.  As you walk alongside them, you will be blessed watching God transform them and even through their struggles you can experience joy in seeing God sanctify them.
Spiritual Rhythms
I’m that dad – the one who introduced his kids to great books about two years too early. A great book isn’t great if the reader isn’t ready for it. Similarly, I often made the mistake in our family’s spiritual life of trying to push the kids ahead of where they were developmentally. How about you? Our goal as parents isn’t to have the most theologically astute eight-year-old, but rather a child whose walk with Christ is marked all the days of his life as having run the race well.
Infant and toddler stage: this was the most straightforward stage for me. The main goal is to create a warm environment where children come to love singing praise to Jesus and reading his Word. For us, this meant that our bath and bedtime were times where we sang simple songs of praise (such as “Jesus Loves Me” and “God is so Good”) and read Bible stories (The Jesus Storybook Bible and The Biggest Story Bible are both excellent).
Elementary stage: this transition was very hard for me because of several challenges. First, most families will begin to have after-school activities (sports, music, and clubs) that impact dinner and bedtime. If you also have toddlers and other elementary-age kids, this is exacerbated.
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Are you desperate for victory? Over sin? Over despair? Over loss? Bow down and worship. “Draw near to the Lord and he will draw near to you,” (Jms. 4:8) James admonishes. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise,” (Ps. 51:17), David echoes. This is not a promise of victory in our way and in our timing. God’s victories often look very different than our version. But God’s glory is made manifest when our hearts draw low in worship.

We’ve all had moments in our lives where it seemed like all hope was lost. I remember sitting at my desk in high school, staring at an AP Chemistry test that might as well have been written in Latin. I felt so doomed. My mind spun. I was going to fail this test. I was going to fail the class. Would I have to take summer school? Would I be able to get into my dream college?  I had catastrophized this one test into determining the trajectory of my future years.
We’ve all experienced failure and hopelessness: the creeping dread of loss.
Why does God allow us to fail? And how can God bring victory in hopeless circumstances?
In Judges 6, fear is spread like a blanket over the hearts of Israel. The Midianites have “overpowered Israel,” scattering the people of Israel into dens “in the mountains and the caves of the strongholds” (Jdgs 6:2). Israel cannot even harvest crops, “For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them” (Jdgs 6:3) and “leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey” (Jdgs 6:4). The Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey, had become a barren graveyard.
In their despair, “the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord” (Jdgs 6:6).
And God responded in the most unexpected way. He sends an angel to a fearful Gideon who is beating out grain not on a true threshing floor (where wheat was usually threshed), but to a Gideon who is tucked into a winepress (traditionally carved into a rock) away from Midianite eyes. Without proper access to wind which was needed to carry away the chaff, the return for his efforts must have been nearly inedible grain: as much chaff as wheat.
“The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor!” (Jdgs 6:12), the angel of the Lord greets Gideon.
Gideon’s head swivels, his heart thumps. Where did this intruder come from? What did he want with him? Gideon wants to run, but freezes instead.
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What an incredible promise: that we, men and women, who were enslaved to the world, have been purchased by the price of the Son so that we could be adopted as sons of God! And now God invites us, who were once estranged from him, to intimately cry out to him, “Daddy!” Oh, friends, what an invitation! What a reality! Can you believe that you are a son of God?

Here is an oddity: women are never referred to as “daughters of God” in the Bible. Kind of strange, especially given how often people use that phrase. “Daughter of God” nets over 1,000 books on Amazon. In the Bible, however, the seemingly clumsy term “sons of God” is used for men and women alike.
What gives? Is this a linguistic fluke? No, unlike the Greek word for brothers, adelphoi, which often means “brothers and sisters,” the Greek word for sons, huioi, rarely means “sons and daughters,” with the complete phrase “huious kai thugateras” used instead.[i]  So, while we might be tempted to add “daughters” when we see “sons of God” in the Bible, it’s unlikely that is what the author intended.[ii]
Is the lack of inclusion of daughters a patriarchal blind spot in the Bible that we ought to rectify? On the contrary: the authors of scripture used the phrase “sons of God” to lift the status of women.
Let me explain: in the ancient world, Israel included, only sons received the family inheritance. Daughters received no inheritance. They were dependent on their husband or the care of their family. If the biblical authors referred to men and women as “sons and daughters of God,” their readers might have mistakenly presumed that only men received a spiritual inheritance from God.
By exclusively referring to all the children of God as “sons of God,” the biblical authors are saying something profound: men and women are equal recipients of the inheritance of the Father. Wow! What a vision for men and women in the Kingdom of God – and two thousand years old, no less!
With this in mind, let’s re-read two of the most beautiful passages in the Bible that offer us the hope of what our sonship entails.
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God established worship: an encounter with his people mediated through the tabernacle. The tabernacle safeguarded the presence of God: the personal, active God was invisible. With the golden calf, there was accessibility to a visible god who was an impersonal object.[vi] In true worship, we encounter the holy, the awesome. In idolatry, we encounter the domesticated, the manageable. There is a stark contrast between true worship and idolatry.

Are you an idolater? I already lost you, didn’t I? Most wouldn’t raise their hand to affirm their idolatry.
Idolatry doesn’t preach well to us 21st-century Westerners. A couple of years ago, I had someone leave the church after I preached on idolatry. “You preached for most of your sermon on the Old Testament, the law against Idolatry, and how might we be guilty of idolatry today,” she reflected. She said that the sermon didn’t connect with her and didn’t offer “spiritual encouragement.”
Oh, friends, the dangers we face when we think that biblical passages on idolatry don’t apply to us! When God calls us, God calls us to leave our idols to follow him.
There is no room in our hearts for idolatry and following the one true God. That is such a significant theme that it has been said that “The central… principle of the [Old Testament is] the rejection of idolatry.”[i]
And yet idolatry seems as though it doesn’t apply to us today. Do you have a golden calf in your home? Do you start your mornings off at the local altar?
But idolatry is no mere ancient practice. It is the default function of the human heart. Our gods have gotten modern make-overs, but they are the same gods they always were: beauty, power, money, achievement, satisfaction, comfort, security, love, independence, happiness, respect. These things are good in and of themselves, but they are not meant to be worshiped. They are gifts from the Giver. And yet we worship them rather than him.
As Bob Dylan famously said, “you’ve got to serve somebody.” We all serve somebody or something. Or, as 16th century pastor John Calvin said, our hearts are “a perpetual factory of idols.”[ii] We are made for worship.
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