Written by R. Albert Mohler Jr. |
Monday, August 26, 2024
It is increasingly clear that the Democrats really are the party of sterility and death. No less than The New York Times predicted that the DNC will be a display of “unbridled abortion politics.” Unbridled indeed. Harris and Walz represent the most ardently pro-abortion ticket in American history.
The Democrats are gathering in Chicago this week for what they predict (and fervently hope) will be one big festival of joy and party unity. The ever-smiling focus of attention will, of course, be on Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s nominee for the highest office in the land. Keep in mind that major Democratic leaders had discounted Harris’ political future just weeks ago. Now, the party’s leadership celebrates a new energy and attitude with Harris at the top of the ticket and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Chicago is planned as one big and very unexpected celebration.
Of course, the unexpected dimension points to the fact that the Harris-Walz ticket only came about because party leaders carried out what amounts to a coup against President Joe Biden. Once the cratering incumbent agreed to exit the race and endorse his vice president, the stage was set for delegates in Chicago to give Biden an exit worthy of a retiring hero. If you know how political conventions work, it says everything that Biden’s address to the delegates will come tonight, opening night, which is the lowest rank among the evening sessions. In other words, the message to Biden is “Thank you very much, and now get off the stage so we can get on with business.”
Read More
Related Posts:

The evangelical church over the next thirty years is going to pay the price for paying too much attention to the wrong kind of leadership toughness. It already is. Just read the books that are dealing with the outflow of poor leadership. And it seems to me that at a sophisticated level, there are often far better secular thinkers in this space than Christian thinkers, Steve Magness being one of them.

Do Hard Things
I love the new book by high performance coach Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness.
I’ve followed Steve’s career as a high performance coach since he was the whistle-blower at the Nike Oregon Project, in which marathon legend Alberto Salazar sailed close to the edge (and probably over it), seeking that little bit extra from his runners. The decision by Magness cost him in the short term.
But not in the long term. He came out of that debacle smelling of roses. Salazar? Well there was a different whiff about him. Still is. Magness is not simply a sports high performance coach: His skills are employed by the likes of NASA in order to get the best out of people. His insight into what makes humans tick is amazing. He kinda has a PhD in “people”. And as you can see from his picture he’s not the gym junkie Adonis
I initially bought the book because, as a runner, I wanted to see if I could break a few barriers, particularly mental barriers, in my own running regime. I know that much of my success—or otherwise—resides in that under-utilised muscle—my brain! So much of what we achieve or don’t achieve is dictated by how we feel mentally at the time about the challenge we are facing.
What sets Magness apart from other coaching/performance consultants is his exceptionally sophisticated and mature approach to psychology, family of origin issues, societal factors and the like when it comes to performance. And in a critical way Magness turns much of what we think about resilience on his head, doing so by simply looking at the stats and outcomes of resilience training methods.
The famed sociological author and podcaster, Malcolm Gladwell (also a solid runner who is happy for anyone to follow him on Strava) had this to say:
Steve Magness beautifully and persuasively reimagines our understanding of toughness. This is a must-read for parents and coaches and anyone else looking to prepare for life’s biggest challenges.
Meanwhile New York Times bestselling author, Cal Newport, of Deep Work fame, observed:
It delivers a critical message for our current age of posing and performance: real toughness is not about callous bravado, but instead about the ability to navigate difficulty with grace and an unwavering focus on what matters.
Fake Toughness
Magness has a lot to say about what real toughness is, but the first thing he does—and it’s critical because it’s so pervasive not just in the sports world, but the world in general, is to break down fake toughness. So he observes:
Fake toughness is easy to identify…It’s the idea that toughness is about fighting and ass-kicking. It’s the guy picking a fight at your local gym. The anonymous poster acting like a hard-ass on message boards. The bully at school. The executive who masks his insecurity by yelling at his subordinates. The strength coach who works her athletes so hard that they frequently get injured or sick. The person who hates the “other” because that’s a lot easier than facing their own pain and suffering. The parent who confuses demandingness for discipline. The coach who mistakes control for respect. And the vast majority of us who have mistaken external signs of strength for inner confidence and drive. We’ve fallen for a kind of fake toughness that is:

control and power driven
developed through fear
fueled by insecurity
based on appearance over substance.

Fake Christian Toughness
Now you may be reading this and wondering what it has to do with Christian leadership. Or perhaps you can see some kinda spiritualised self-help coming on. Some sort of slogan on a poster that you’d get at Christian Kmart. But none of it. Leaving aside the longer part of Magness’ quote above, have a look at the four aspects of fake toughness he lists below that and ask yourself “When you’ve seen poor leadership in the Christian church, how often do those terrible characteristics surface.
Read More
Related Posts:

Iron sharpens iron. Before the word is snatched away, think through what you have heard and speak about it. What challenged you? What did you learn? Be brave. Encourage honesty by opening up what you found difficult to hear or to understand. Admit your struggles. Remember that the message was preached to the church family so talk about it together.

This is what I find odd. Evangelicals invest huge amounts of capital into sermons. We spend large sums of money training people to preach and then pay them an annual salary to do it as a fulltime job. We set aside at least fifty percent of our weekly church services to sermons and we invest huge amounts of our hope in believing that preaching is one of God’s chief ways of saving and nourishing us, and his way of speaking to the nations.
Why are we so reluctant to talk about them?
It can’t be that we consider sermons unimportant. We invest so much in preaching because we believe with Peter that ‘the one who speaks, speaks the very words of God’ (1 Pet. 4:11). We stand with the Westminster Shorter Catechism when it says that ‘the Spirit of God makes… the preaching of the Word an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, building them up in holiness and comforting them through faith unto salvation.’
Our Excuses
Some people would say that preaching is personal and that what God says to them is nobody else’s business. Some people, but not evangelicals! In the Bible, preaching was always to families, tribes or nations. Their response, whether weeping, anger, amazement or indifference, was always corporate. I can’t think of a time when people responded ‘privately’, can you?
Let’s be honest though.
Read More
Related Posts: