The following articles have been selected because they are informative, instructive, entertaining, or simply interesting. Articles appearing in Your Friday Five do not represent an endorsement.
Robby Gallaty: ‘God Turned Off Our Megachurch’s Power — So We Could Witness His Power’, By Jesse T. Jackson
Pastor Robby Gallaty of Long Hollow Baptist Church in Tennessee posted Sunday on his Facebook page a testimony of how God worked in spite of a full-blown power outage that took place during their 11:15 AM service this past Sunday.
Most Americans Favor the Death Penalty Despite Concerns About Its Administration, By Pew Research Center
The use of the death penalty is gradually disappearing in the United States. Last year, in part because of the coronavirus outbreak, fewer people were executed than in any year in more than three decades.
Think Small for Big Improvements in Preaching, By Jonathan Pennington
“Small” isn’t a particularly attractive word in most instances. Who wants a small bank account, a small level of honor, or a job with a small salary in a small office? And even though we might romanticize some advantages of having a small church, I think few pastors in their honest moments would rather have their church be small than large and growing.
Pitiful Pride, By Carl R. Trueman
It is doubtful that there is anyone in the United States who is unaware that June is Pride month. Saturday morning saw the self-indulgent antics of Pride marchers, and if you are on the email list of almost any corporate entity, you will have had the triumphant celebration of the LGBTQ+ community trumpeted in your inbox. Corporate America isn’t the only institution selling out. Once again, the P.C.U.S.A. is here to remind us that the perennially superannuated pieties of liberal Protestantism are incapable of discerning the commercialization of the counter-culture and the trivialization of political protest. China may be engaging in genocide, have a network of gulags holding three million people, and be actively reinstating the playbook described so graphically by Solzhentisyn—imprisonment for thought crimes, state-sanctioned gang rapes of prisoners, etc.—but the P.C.U.S.A. knows where the real human rights issues are: the use of pronouns, inclusive bathroom policies, and dismantling women’s sports.
Are Evangelical Parents Raising Evangelical Teens?, By Aaron Earls
Most teenagers follow in their parents’ religious footsteps, but some groups do better at retaining the next generation than others.