Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 12049. Is smoking a sin? I get asked this more often than you might expect, usually by someone who has just come to faith and is quietly terrified that the answer is yes and that they will fail. That pastoral setting shapes everything I am about to say. The honest answer is that Scripture…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11030. Whether Christians should be raising hands in worship is a question I have been asked more often by people who feel awkward about it than by people who want permission, and that itself tells you something about how tangled the issue has become. In some churches raising hands is so normal that not…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11029. Arguments about worship styles have split more congregations in my lifetime than arguments about doctrine, which is a sobering thing for a Baptist minister to admit and an important thing to face honestly. Organ or band, hymnal or screen, choir or worship team, robes or jeans. These questions are not nothing, but they…