Half of All Marriages Do NOT End In Divorce

Recently I heard it again, “Half of all marriages end in divorce.”

I wanted to take my laptop and hurl it through a window. It’s hard to be sure what the divorce rate in America is, but it’s not 50%.

Here’s how the misleading notion came about: one year someone noticed that there had been 1,200,000 divorces and 2,400,000 marriages. Not thinking clearly, this person concluded that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. And not thinking clearly, our whole culture agreed.

The error is hard to see, so perhaps an example will help. Imagine that there were 100,000 births and 50,000 deaths in one year. Would you conclude that half of all people die?

Clearly not. And that highlights the problem: although it seems like you’re comparing apples and apples, you’re really comparing apples and apple wedges. The real question is: if 10,000 people get married in 2010, how many will remain married until parted by death? And the answer is: we won’t know until 5,000 people are dead.

For a better perspective on this, see the 2005 NY Times article Divorce Rate: It’s Not As High As You Think. For a contrary view, see the normally reliable Straight Dope which maintains that the 50% figure is reasonable.

I’ll give you a thought experiment just to mess with your mind: suppose I pull in $10,000 a month and that my expenses are $5,000 a month. Half of all my income ends up divorced from my wallet. Am I in good financial shape or bad financial shape? Why is your reaction to this story different than your reaction to a story claiming there are 100,000 marriages in a month and 50,000 divorces in a month? And why do we prefer to say that half of all marriages end in divorce rather than observing that twice as many people are getting married as are getting divorced?

Anyway, that’s what I have to say about that. I have little doubt that American marriages are facing great pressure and that for a number of reasons the divorce rate is disturbingly high – but it’s not 50%.

Every Ph.D. Has A Little Crazy Inside

Ph.D. stands for doctor of philosophy. Doctor is from the Latin doctor which means ‘teacher’. Philosophy is from the Greek (the verb phileo ‘I love’ plus the noun sophia ‘wisdom’). From an etymological standpoint, a doctor of philosophy is one who teaches others to love wisdom.

But etymology is often a misleading guide to reality. Just ask a butterfly or a pineapple.

There’s an old joke that Ph.D. stands for permanent head damage. Humor usually has more truth buried inside it than etymology. I am convinced that most Ph.D.s have a little crazy in them.

You see, to earn a Ph.D. one must convince not only oneself but also a committee that you are one of the world’s leading experts about one narrow slice of reality. Ideally, you convince the committee that you know more about this very narrow problem than anyone else who has ever lived.

And here’s where the crazy comes in: this idea that you are uniquely qualified to hold a certain opinion in a very esoteric area becomes a habit which creeps into other areas of your life. You convince yourself that you are right and the world is wrong about something quite trivial. Everyone does this to a degree, but there is one important difference: the Ph.D. believes something absolutely crazy.

At this point you are thinking to yourself, “Glen, I know several Ph.D. holders. They’re nice, normal people.”

Yes. They are. They are also insane about something unexpected. They have learned through experience to keep their craziness well-masked. You have to dig down deep.

Talk with your friend long enough and you will likely discover that they raise hamsters for food. Or that they have a plan for which stores to loot in which order after the next major natural disaster, and actually have a shopping list secreted about their person at all times for just such an eventuality. Or that they believe in flooding preschools with marijuana smoke to keep the kids calm. Or that they keep a bazooka in the trunk of their car.

And that’s just the way it is. Some things come with accessories – Barbie dolls are one and Ph.D.s are another. You just have to learn to live with it. This is why I have a much higher tolerance for eccentric beliefs in outside speakers for my ministry if they have a doctorate. I expect the crazy. I actually welcome the crazy – it keeps things interesting.

So if you are my friend and are in pursuit of a Ph.D., know that I love you and that I won’t be distressed when you turn crazy in a few years.

And if you already have your Ph.D., just remember that I know. Somewhere deep in the recesses of your brain is an idea. I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know what it’s about. But I know it is so insane that your family has tried to slip pharmaceuticals into your meals on more than one occasion, which is why you only eat foods that are translucent. Which is crazy.

Where Should Prospective Ministers Go To College?

C. Michael Patton over at Parchment and Pen (one of my favorite blogs), recently offered some thoughts on entering ministry. He made a statement that has always seemed like common sense to me, but that I know many people find objectionable:

If possible, go to a secular university for undergrad and an Evangelical seminary for your masters. You need exposure to both.

I’ve long been mystified that as a matter of course we isolate prospective ministers from their culture for 4 years (more if they go to seminary afterwards). Surely there’s a case to be made for taking our prospective young ministers and forcing them to solidify their own faith and also minister to their peers in a secular setting. Let them prove that they can be both faithful and fruitful before they invest time and money in education that is useless outside of ministry.

I’m sure a Bible college is the ideal route for some people, but it seems to me that we should highlight secular schools as a viable option. It’s certainly borne good fruit for the Pentecostal movement and the impact in the larger evangelical world is even more impressive (Tim Keller, anyone?).

I suppose the most common objection is that secular colleges are harmful to faith, but that’s just not true. And even if it was, I don’t think it would matter that much. If someone who is planning to enter ministry can’t handle Intro to Sociology or the campus beerfest, then I really don’t want them preaching the gospel. They’re a time bomb waiting to explode and take others with them.

But someone who can thrive spiritually at a secular university and make a difference for Christ on campus… give that person a robust theological education and then turn them loose in the pulpit!

Evaluating Sermons

I evaluate a lot of sermons. I don’t just mean that I listen to sermons and decide whether I like them or not – everyone who goes to church does that. I mean that I professionally evaluate sermons and give formal feedback to the preacher. Some I evaluate in my role as a ministry trainer and others I evaluate in my role on a preaching team (before one of us preaches we preach the sermon to each other and get feedback on how to strengthen it).

So I’ve thought about this a lot. Most sermon evaluation forms you find on the internet and at seminaries are not very helpful because they measure too many things.

These were the top hits when I googled for “sermon evaluation forms”
Calvin Seminary’s (30 questions)
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s Form for Ministry Interns (41 questions)
Reformed Baptist Seminary’s (35 questions).

Do all the things these long forms ask about matter? A little. But using that to evaluate a sermon is like evaluating your church’s statement of faith based on its grammar. It sort of misses the point. Of course you want a statement of faith that is grammatical, but if its content is sketchy then every moment spent improving its grammar is wasted time. Sinfully wasted time.

In the same way, focusing on the superficials of a sermon when the underlying content is bogus is ridiculous. I realize that’s not the intent of these forms, but that is what they encourage.

So this is the form I use:

Pointers (what should I change?)

Keepers (what was so good I should be sure not to take it out)?

That’s it – two questions. I sometimes do it on a 3×5 index card. Keepers on the front, pointers on the back (a tip I got from Earl Creps).

And this is the grid I’m putting it through:
1) Was Christ proclaimed clearly?
2) Was the sermon Biblically sound?
3) Was it interesting?
4) Did it ask me to do something appropriate in response?

I try to never give them more than three pointers and three keepers, and I try to be as specific as possible.

There are lots of other aspects of a sermon I could nitpick, but if the person is preaching an interesting, Biblically sound sermon that exalts Christ and challenges me to obey Him then they’re doing fabulous. Why would I nitpick them at that point? To demoralize them? To clone my habits (“at this point I would have told a joke – you should tell a joke”)?

Anyway, this post probably wasn’t relevant to most of you. But for those of you who have to evaluate preaching on a regular basis, I hope I’ve given you some food for thought.

And to those in my ministry, now you know what I’m trying to do when I prepare a sermon: proclaim the good news of Jesus in a way that is faithful to the Biblical text I’m working with in an interesting way that challenges you to wholeheartedly respond. From time to time, be sure to let me know how I’m doing.

Christianity, China, and College Students

I just read an interesting article

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about Christianity in China. The emphasis of the piece is on the dominance of Reformed theology in Chinese Christianity, but I was struck by the comments on the role of universities in the revival.

And in China, the place where Calvinism is spreading fastest is the elite universities, fuelled by prodigies of learning and translation. Wang Xiaochao, a philosopher at one of the Beijing universities, has translated the two major works of St Augustine, the Confessions and the City of God, into Chinese directly from Latin. Gradually all the major works of the first centuries of the Christian tradition are being translated directly from the original languages into Chinese.

All of this is happening outside the control of the official body which is supposed to monitor and supervise the churches in China. Instead, it is the philosophy departments at the universities, or the language departments and the departments of literature and western civilisation that are the channel.

“The [officially recognised] churches are not happy with universities, because it is not within their control. And their seminaries are not at the intellectual level of the universities,” says Dr Tan. “Chinese Christianity using Chinese to do Christian thinking has become a very interesting movement.”

And

If [May Tan] goes to preach at an official church, she says, “There will be perhaps 1000 people and 95% of them are over 65. So it’s a sunset church. But if I went to house church – there would be 1000 people; perhaps 20 of them in their 50s, and all the rest are youngsters. The older ones will all be professors at the universities. So these are the future of the churches. They have registered pastors, and no access to seminaries: But they have youth, and future, and money.”

And later on

“Very soon”, said Dr Tan, “Christians will become the majority of university students… that could happen.”

May it come to pass.matrix the divx download

My Redeemer Lives Considered From The Standpoint Of Grammar

WARNING: grammar geekiness ahead.

I hate songs with nonsensical lyrics, especially those that purport to be worship songs. The lyrics of a song matter far more to me than their accompanying music: I would forbid a song from being played in my ministry for having bad lyrics but never for having chords which I did not like.

And so I was especially pleased to make sense of some puzzling lyrics in My Redeemer Lives

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in church this morning.

The problematic stanza is

You lift my burdens
I’ll rise with You
I’m dancing on this mountain top
to see Your kingdom come

I was hung up on the word “to”, which I took to mean “I am dancing on this mountain top in order to bring about Your Kingdom’s arrival.” In another language this would be called a dative of purpose. This troubled me, because as Lindsey download the tragedy of macbeth online download drag me to hell dvd download the namesake online

said this morning, “There are few things less likely to bring about the kingdom than dancing on a mountain. How about feeding some homeless people or talking to someone about Jesus?”

But then I realized there were at least two other interpretations of the word “to”. It could be like a dative of instrument (“I am dancing on this mountain top because I get a good view from up here which enables me to behold Your kingdom as it spreads on earth”) or like an ablative of attendant circumstances (“To see your Kingdom come causes me to dance on this mountain top”).

I suspect it’s the latter.

So now I can sing that song.

For the 1% of you who have been similarly puzzled, you’re welcome.

For the 80% of you wondering if I made up the words dative and ablative, check out Wikipedia’s list of grammatical cases.

Ellipses… Make Me Nervous

Chris Tilling helpfully points out download little giant movie

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that ellipses can mangle meaning. Consider:

“As for yourself, you shall … come back here … smoking … pot”
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Ellipses can clarify as well as mislead, of course. But an abundance of them makes me nervous. Always ask yourself, “What’s hiding behind those three little dots?”

Even The Opera?

Even the opera is getting in on the multi-site movement

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If you don’t know what I’m referring to, the multi-site movement pathology dvdrip download is a trend among churches to use technology to meet in multiple locations at once.

And now the opera is doing it too.

So what do opera and the church have in common that make them both ideal for a multi-site experience?

The Evolution of Faith

Dr. Collins, a geneticist who strongly believes in Christ, lectured on “God and the Genome” earlier this week. As a geneticist, he strongly believes in evolution. Watching the Christians on campus respond to his presentation has been fascinating.

A few thoughts:

1) I really wish Christians on all sides of this debate would realize that others are doing the best that they can with the knowledge that they have. As they update their knowledge, they update their views. For the most part, people on all sides really do love God and truth. In Philippians 1:18 Paul makes the point that he even gives thanks for false teachers: “But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.” In like manner, learn to rejoice in those who differ from you on this issue.

2) On the Bible side of things, I wish more Christians knew just how many different options there are for interpreting Genesis 1 – google for “Framework Interpretation”, “Gap Theory”, “Day-Age View”, and “Theistic Evolution” to get started. In the end you’ll likely conclude that some of the options are fairly implausible, but they are all worth considering. For the record, I’m fond of the Framework Interpretation. The idea that Genesis 1 might not be a chronology of creation isn’t some sort of knee-jerk reaction to Darwinian ideas. Way back in the 4th century Augustine was looking at the text and saying, “Something complex is going on here.” For a good summary of Augustine’s perspective, read The Contemporary Relevance of Augustine.

3) On the science side of things, I wish more Christians were open to the idea that scientists have good reasons for the things that they say. There is no vast anti-Bible conspiracy. Scientists are looking at reams of data and trying to synthesize it reasonably. That doesn’t imply that every single claim science makes is proven true in the long run, but it does mean that we should take scientists very seriously when they tell us there is overwhelming evidence that the earth is billions of years old and when we discover that there has been consensus within the scientific community about this for a while now. If you’d like to do a little more digging on the science side, these three websites are pretty good places to start: SciBel

is a fun little website with engaging articles, the Faraday Institute

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has some short but stimulating papers on essential topics, and the American Scientific Affiliation has a huge collection of articles from a variety of perspectives.

I’ll wind this down by quoting from an email I sent to my students last night.

1) There are two sources of data for Christians – the Word and the world.
2) Facts from the two realms don’t contradict one another, but the interpretations we use to arrange those facts often do.
3) We’ve almost always got more interpretative options than we realize (this is true of both sources of data).

And while I’m talking about science and faith, I’d like to recommend an article about Galileo’s dispute with the church. The full story is something you’ve likely not heard before: The Myth of Galileo download diamond dogs dvd .

When Copies Are Free, What is Valuable?

Kevin Kelly, an influential thinker about all things digital, just posted an essay called Better than Free.

It’s quite good.

The gist is that technology is making copies easier and easier to create. In fact, copies of most things are so cheap that they’re essentially free.

In his words:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable

…

Well, what can’t be copied?

There are a number of qualities that can’t be copied. Consider “trust.” Trust cannot be copied. You can’t purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you’ll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.

Kelly identifies 8 similar difficult-to-copy qualities which add value to products and services:

1. Immediacy: getting it now (as it is produced or created)
2. Personalization: getting it made just for you
3. Interpretation: having it explained in a way that makes sense to you
4. Authenticity: knowing it’s the real deal or a copy of the real deal (as opposed to a song being done by a cover band or something)
5. Accessibility: it’s convenient to experience
6. Embodiment: it’s something you can experience on a uniquely intense level (you can shake the hand of the athlete who just scored the game-winning point, etc)
7. Patronage: you believe that by consuming it you’re enabling more of it (whatever it is you value) to be produced
8. Findability: it gets on your radar somehow

Kelly is mostly speaking about business in his essay, but it occurs to me that this is a pretty good checklist for ministry.

A sea of ministry copies is floating around your community. There’s Christian radio (carrying copies of some the best worship music and preaching to be found), there’s Christian television (carrying copies), there are Christian books and magazines (carrying copies of wise people’s opinions and Bible interpretations), and there are blogs that give everyone the opportunity to interact with any number of other esteemed Christian leaders. On top of that, there’s the multi-site church movement which at its heart is about copying ministry.

And this is to say nothing of the ministry clones that abound in every community. You know the ones I speak of. They are the Starbucks of churches, the McDonald’s of ministry. Each of them looks and feels the same no matter what community they nominally inhabit. They could care less whether they are in El Paso or Austin. They will treat Boston and Springfield, MO alike.

In this copy-laden context, what true value does your ministry offer?

There are certainly other things we need to consider than Kelly’s list. Some of them are of exceeding importance, such as whether we’re proclaiming the gospel clearly and faithfully.

But his list still nags at me. It seems to me to be a helpful way to examine ourselves from a purely pragmatic perspective.

I think ministries do well by these standards. For example, most ministries I know are strong at

1. Immediacy: people are there while we preach it – live. Our worship team is performing – live. Our prayers are spontaneous. People are operating in the gifts of the Spirit – live and without rehearsal.
2. Personalization: people are meeting with mentors who are showing them how to understand the Bible given their particular situation in life (although they’re not usually called mentors – they’re usually called youth sponsors, sunday school teachers, next-door neighbors, friends, co-workers, or something else that’s not very trendy to be callled)
3. Interpretation: people are not only given a Bible, they’re given a whole learning environment with it – sermons, Bible studies, Sunday School, seminars, conferences, Christian media, websites
4. Authenticity: it’s become cliche to knock around the established church for being inauthentic, but I just don’t see it. Most people love their pastor for a reason. Notable examples aside, most ministers aren’t hypocrites and are serving up the goods of a life lived in humilty before God.
5. Patronage: giving in the offering pays the salary of the pastoral team and allows the ministries of the church to operate. Giving in offerings allows missionaries to take the gospel around the world.

I think a lot of ministries could use work on the other parts of the list, however.

1. Accessibility: we too often make ministry inconvenient for the people we say we’re trying to reach. Our service times are funky. Our dress code is off-putting. Our lingo is difficult to decode.
2. Embodiment: too many churches seem obsessed with making church as bland and palatable as possible. This is especially true of my Pentecostal comrades: we’ve become embarrassed about our spirituality. To them, I can only quote Curt Harlow: don’t tone it down, sincere it up. Make coming to church significantly more lively and rewarding than watching a church service broadcast on a big screen tv at home with surround-sound.
3. Findability: not nearly as many people know about your ministry as you think. Existing is not enough to produce awareness.

So to my ministerial friends, I pose this simple question: in a world of copies, what makes your ministry valuable? Is it something that can’t be copied out from under you?

The things I find myself obsessing over are all too often the things that are the most copyable. Did my sermon sound like one of Rick Warren’s/John Ortberg’s/John Piper’s/etc? Does my worship team sound like they just rolled off the Passion Tour/IHOP Prayer Room/etc?

What I should be asking is: if Rick Warren set up on my campus, would I still be adding value to students’ lives? If Dave Crowder decided to lead worship for another ministry on my campus, would I still be adding value to students’ lives?

What’s not copyable about what I’m doing?

Anyway, just some off-the-cuff thoughts inspired by his essay. Read the article ladykillers the download free .

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