Category: Featured

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LISTEN LIVE AT 1:00 PM ET

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TALK TO PAUL ON-AIR: 313.272.5600

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Michigan Reformation Conference

Paul will be speaking at the 16th Annual Michigan Reformation Conference in Flint, Michigan on Saturday, October 26th (10am – 4pm). More information and free registration.

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Wolves Among the Elders

The pastors are charged with caring for God’s flock and guarding it against doctrinal error and moral danger, but who guards the pastors against the wolves who are ever ready to creep in among them to destroy and scatter the sheep?

Today Paul will examine the Scriptures which tell us how to identify the wolves among us, as well as how to set the proper boundaries to protect the eldership of your church from men who hide evil intentions behind a spiritual demeanor.

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October is Pastor Appreciation Month

• CT: Pastors Don’t Do It For The Money, But Having Enough to Retire Would Be Nice
• THOM RAINER: How NOT to compensate your pastor
• 50 Ways to Bless Your Pastor

Many American Christians love their pastors – but are totally unaware of the financial pressures they face.

• 90 percent of pastors feel financial pressure.      
• 50 percent make less than $50,000 per year while serving their churches 50-60, or more, hours per week.      
• Nearly 60 percent of pastors do not receive retirement or healthcare benefits from their churches. 
• 3 out of 10 pastors have student loan debt averaging $36,000.

An earlier NAE survey by found that half of pastors have salary/housing packages under $50,000. When it comes to benefits, most receive no family health insurance (59%) and no pension or retirement funds (62%).

A 2016 study of clergy compensation similarly found that Protestant clergy income (including salary and housing allowances) amounts to just over $46,000 annually on average.

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LISTEN LIVE AT 1:00 PM ET

Respond and Engage!
TALK TO PAUL ON-AIR: 313.272.5600

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Do Babies Go to Heaven When They Die?

The expected answer to this question is, “Well, of course!” The actual answer may be more nuanced – and certainly more biblical. Today on the program we will consider what the Bible says about the death of infants and young children, and the various positions taken by theologians and pastors throughout church history.

Today is the 33rd birthday of Paul’s stillborn son, Justin Paul, who was born on September 30, 1986.

JOHN PIPER: Why do you believe infants who die go to heaven?

ALBERT MOHLER: The Salvation of the ‘Little Ones’

SAM STORMS: Do All Infants Go to Heaven?

JOHN MACARTHUR: Do babies and others incapable of professing faith in Christ automatically go to heaven?

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CT: Tithing Over Text Is Now a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry

Many congregations are now eyeing new technology as mobile payments become mainstream and paper checks fade from regular use.  Though most churchgoers still give the old-fashioned way, by cash or check in the offering plate, 15 percent now pay through their church’s website, app, or text, according to a 2018 LifeWay Research survey.

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GUEST: Dr. Russell Moore

Russell Moore is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. The ERLC is the moral and public policy entity of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. Prior to his election in 2013, Moore served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics. He currently serves as visiting professor of ethics at Southern, Southeastern, and New Orleans Baptist seminaries.

TOPIC: Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches

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LISTEN LIVE AT 1:00 PM ET

Respond and Engage!
TALK TO PAUL ON-AIR: 313.272.5600

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20 YEARS AGO TODAY. . .
FREEP: When Tiger Stadium closed, Detroit lost a piece of its soul

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THE ATLANTIC: Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why?

. . . in the early 1990s, the historical tether between American identity and faith snapped. Religious non-affiliation in the U.S. started to rise—and rise, and rise. By the early 2000s, the share of Americans who said they didn’t associate with any established religion (also known as “nones”) had doubled. By the 2010s, this grab bag of atheists, agnostics, and spiritual dabblers had tripled in size.

• . . . religion is more than a theism. It is a bundle: a theory of the world, a community, a social identity, a means of finding peace and purpose, and a weekly routine. Those, like me, who have largely rejected this package deal, often find themselves shopping à la carte for meaning, community, and routine to fill a faith-shaped void. Their politics is a religion. Their work is a religion. Their spin class is a church. And not looking at their phone for several consecutive hours is a Sabbath.

CT: Another Look at the ‘Least Religious Generation’

American twentysomethings have their frustrations with the church, but they are far more faith-friendly than commonly supposed.

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CP: Olympics scientists can’t agree on new regulations for trans athletes competing in women’s sports

• According to the sources, scientists who opposed the proposal cited recent findings from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden that suggests testosterone reduction in trans-identified athletes plays little role in reducing overall muscle strength. 

• The study’s findings show that the physical advantages of being a biological male still persist, despite going through the process of a “transition,” The Guardian adds.  The study’s findings show that the physical advantages of being a biological male still persist, despite going through the process of a “transition,” The Guardian adds. 

• Three girls who run high school track in Connecticut filed a complaint with the federal government earlier this year over a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference policy allowing boys who identify as transgender to compete in girls’ high school sports. The girls missed the cut to qualify for the New England regionals — an event attended by college scouts — after two biological male participants finished first and second in a qualifying event. 

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RNS: Growing the religious left by confessing our sins against nature to plants

• Since its heyday in mid-20th-century America, progressive Christianity’s force has gradually been eroded as mainline Protestant churches have gone into decline. A third of all Democrats call themselves religiously unaffiliated — compared with just 13% of Republicans. Meanwhile, alternative, more explicitly progressive spiritual practices, such as contemporary witchcraft, are attracting those disillusioned with what they see as the sexism or entrenched racism of Christianity.

• While challenging the secular world with their Christianity, progressives also criticize what they see as insufficiently enlightened elements of Christian tradition, no matter how deeply ingrained. Writing on gender and sexuality in her latest book, Bolz-Weber said St. Augustine, the fourth-century author of a strict sexual ethic, “took a dump and the Church encased it in amber.”

• For Union’s progressives, a world in which plants, animals and human beings live in harmony is held up as a corrective to a world spoiled by the original sins of structural inequality and conquest. In this view, the same ethos of violence underpinning patriarchy, racism, capitalist exploitation and colonialism also underpins human exploitation of the natural world.

• By contrast, conservative Christians tend to celebrate the idea of dominion expounded in the Old Testament Book of Genesis, in which God gave control over Earth to humans. At a 2012 energy summit, Catholic politician Rick Santorum dismissed concerns about climate change, arguing, “We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit, not for the Earth’s benefit.”

On Wednesday’s program Paul talked at length about why the music that is popular on Christian radio may not be what we should be singing in church on Sunday morning. Hear the full audio in two parts below:

CT: Why Chris Tomlin Still Dominates Both Radio and Sunday Morning

• Chris Tomlin was hailed by CNN as the most-sung artist in history, “with upwards of 30 million believers singing his songs each Sunday.”

• “By singing radio chart-toppers, congregations miss out on theological heft.”

• “Thematically, the songs tend to stay in the realm of praise and adoration without venturing too far into more complex themes like confession, doubt, and suffering.”

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Below is the full audio in four segments of Paul’s conversation with Paul Washer, Pastor, Missionary, and Evangelist with HeartCry Missionary Society.

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