Author: Chris Boyd

From rescues to legal reform, a faithful minority changed the country’s criminal landscape.

Sek Saroeun first read the Bible at a Phnom Penh bar where young girls were illegally sold for sex. Hamburgers were $1.00, draft beers were $1.50, and bigger bills could get you a companion for the night.

The Buddhist law student worked as a DJ at Martini Pub and had recently begun serving as an undercover informant for the Christian human rights group International Justice Mission (IJM). He scanned the room to scope out suspects as Michael Jackson boomed over the speakers. He cracked open a loaned copy of the Bible—a curiosity introduced to him through IJM—and began to make his way through it in the DJ booth.

Sek took part in the organization’s earliest sex trafficking investigations in Cambodia. The Southeast Asian country had turned into a cheap, shabby hotbed for sex tourism in the decades after its notorious genocide and resulting civil unrest. In 2003, IJM launched the first large-scale attempt to fix the Khmer kingdom’s public justice system that allowed pimps and pedophiles to go free.

Excited, disgusted, and afraid of being found out during his capital city spying, Sek repeated Romans 12:12 to himself: Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Over time, “fear led to longing; longing led to transformation that is unimaginable,” he told colleagues at an IJM conference a decade later, explaining how he became a Christian and the group’s top lawyer in Cambodia.

“God didn’t just change me,” said Sek. “He also changed a family, a community, a nation.”

Between 2004 and 2015, Sek and his team watched the prevalence of underage girls in busy brothels, roadside massage parlors, and neon-lit karaoke bars steadily drop as they partnered …

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Even when it falters, the new female-led film brings freshness to the superhero flick.

It took Hollywood 76 years to make a big screen version of Wonder Woman. Multiple directors tried and failed, partly because Wonder Woman is a difficult character to bring to life and partly because of fear of something new. “The [superhero] genre became synonymous with young men, and so I think there was a concern that they wouldn’t be as interested in a female lead, and it’s taken years for that to sort itself out,” director Patty Jenkins told Cinemablend.

Now, she’s finally here—and in theaters today.

Although the film’s release is groundbreaking, the story itself is still informed by a male-led genre. Wonder Woman is for fans of Captain America, because that’s what this film is, essentially: Captain America in female form. The story is light and idealistic and takes place in the past—World War I, in this case. The good guys are rewarded and the bad guys have simple motives. Like Captain America’s alter ego Steve Rogers, Wonder Woman’s Diana—played by Gal Gadot—is a hero who believes in black and white but is thrust into a world of grey. She defines herself more by her ideals than her invulnerable powers. And she meets another true believer (Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor) who, though a mere mortal, fights the same fight for similar reasons.

The simple plot is made more interesting by “pretty” fight scenes (Diana looks like an Herbal Essences ad in the middle of a battlefield), by the funny moments of Diana’s confusion about the “real world,” and by Diana Prince herself (never actually referred to as Wonder Woman), who manages to be both stately and emotive, powerful and innocent.

Although the film follows a somewhat traditional …

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Most Read Posts from January 1 to May 31 (Plus Church Signs!)

10. Searching for Gorsuch: For Many Evangelicals “It’s the Supreme Court, Stupid”

9. Exposing the Truth about Honor and Shame

8. Marriage, Divorce, and the Church: What do the stats say, and can marriage be happy?

7. What is the Gospel? A Look at 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

6. The Resurrection of Gavin Stone: My Review

5. Differences in the Gospels, A Closer Look

4. What Does it Mean to Have an Abundant Life? Some Thoughts on Prosperity

3. Hank Hanegraaff’s Switch to Eastern Orthodoxy, Why People Make Such Changes, and Four Ways Evangelicals Might Respond

2. Facts Are Our Friends: Why Sharing Fake News Makes Us Look Stupid and Harms Our Witness

1. Dear Fellow Christians: It’s Time to Speak Up for Refugees

Thanks to friends of the blog for this week’s church signs. As always, you can tweet your church signs to @EdStetzer (and/or @stetzerblog).

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I was sentenced to life for a murder I didn’t commit. But God didn’t forget me.

It happened in a blur. One minute we were enjoying a night out, shooting pool. The next thing I knew, we were running from the law—wanted for murder.

I’d always looked up to my out-of-town cousin, Bobby. I was thrilled when he invited me to come along that night. The Marine Room was well known in my circle of friends as a place that didn’t card minors. At 17, a high school sophomore, I was confident they’d serve me.

Alcohol abuse was prevalent in my rural Pennsylvania home. My biological dad drank himself to death. My mom couldn’t tell me not to drink, since she did—excessively—every day. She did try to keep me home that night. “It’s too late,” she said, when we started out the door at 11 p.m. I begged Bobby to talk Mom into it. He did. We were off, along with my stepbrother Sid.

A few games of pool and several drinks in, Bobby told us he was going to rob the place. While surprised at his sudden intentions, the alcohol seemed to dull any impulse for protest. Sid and I would leave—as locals, we’d be recognized—and Bobby would commit the robbery alone.

We waited outside. It was taking too long. After several minutes, we poked our heads in the door—Bobby had brutally murdered the bar owner. He shouted, “Don’t just stand there! Help me find the money!” Before long, we were on the run.

I followed Bobby to New York City. We visited drug dens and stayed in roach-infested motel rooms. But I couldn’t escape the reality of what had happened. I decided to return to Pennsylvania and turn myself in. Bobby said, “Tell them the truth, Gene. It was all me.”

I told the detectives everything I knew—and as I did, I realized …

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With 100 massacred in five months, leaving vengeance to the Lord is getting harder for Copts.

They couldn’t even wash their dead.

Thirty Coptic Christians were gunned down by ISIS, ambushed in a church bus on a weekend outing to a popular monastery in the Egyptian desert. Their families gathered to receive their loved ones in a local hospital, but were met with a mixture of ill-equipped facilities and overwhelmed staff. They even had to fetch their own water.

As if another reason was necessary, Coptic anger turned the funeral march into a protest.

“With our souls and blood we will redeem you, oh Cross!” they shouted. Some seemed to take aim at Islam. “There is no god but God,” they chanted, before changing the second half of the Muslim creed, “and the Messiah, he is God.”

Other chants took no aim at all, thrashing wildly in anger. “We will avenge them, or die like them.”

Many observers say such anger plays right into the hands of ISIS, which is keen to turn Egypt against itself.

Six weeks earlier, after twin suicide bombings on Palm Sunday, Bishop Boula of the Coptic Orthodox diocese of Tanta found himself in a similar situation. Hospitals did not have enough refrigeration units to keep the 25 bodies of those martyred at St. George Church. Crowds were gathering, and anger was surging.

Quickly, he made the decision to bury them together in the church crypt reserved for bishops. Honoring the dead with their leaders of ages past, he then marshaled the youth to provide order and security for the semi-spontaneous funeral service.

“It cooled the fire of all the people,” he later recounted on satellite TV. St. George was renamed to include “the righteous martyrs of Tanta,” with a shrine erected outside the crypt.

It was perhaps the most practical of Coptic …

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Draft broadens exemptions to controversial Obamacare mandate. But Little Sisters will still sue.

The Trump administration appears to be preparing to follow through on the president’s recent promise to relieve religious employers fighting the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate.

A leaked draft reveals plans for a new regulation to allow more companies and organizations to stop covering certain treatments—including birth control pills, emergency contraception, and sterilization—on religious and moral grounds.

The 125-page federal proposal was obtained by Vox, which reports that the document, dated May 23, is under review by the President’s Office of Management and Budget. The regulation would go into effect as soon as it is signed.

“Expanding the exemption removes religious and moral obstacles that entities and certain individuals may face who otherwise wish to participate in the healthcare market,” the draft rule states.

Obamacare initially provided an exemption for churches and other houses of worship, and Hobby Lobby won some private corporations the right to decline coverage for religious reasons in a 2014 Supreme Court case. The new regulation would apply more broadly to “any kind of employer,” including Christian colleges and religious orders, some of whom have been battling the mandate in court for years. Last year, the Supreme Court sent their cases back for more review.

The drafted regulation essentially spells out the case that contraception mandate opponents had been making all along. Officials previously saw the requirement as serving a compelling government interest, according to the new rule, but they now recognize the mandate as “impos(ing) a substantial burden on the exercise of religion” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“The …

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The case for Christians investing in the profession only 1 in 5 Americans trust.

Behind every Asia Bibi—the Pakistani Christian mother of five still on death row after seven years over a false blasphemy charge—are the near-invisible lawyers who defend persecuted believers, pastors, and churches around the globe.

Only 1 in 5 American Christians think lawyers are highly ethical or contribute a lot to the well-being of society, according to surveys by Gallup and the Pew Research Center. But human rights lawyers overseas face death threats, arrest, detention without trial, beatings, and torture.

Over the past 25 years, 30,000 Christian legal advocates and judges in 156 nations have organized into national networks through the efforts of Advocates International (AI), based near Washington, DC. These lawyers—who work together across countries to release imprisoned pastors or harassed missionaries—are a vital part of the body of Christ that easily escapes notice, says president Brent McBurney.

“Our work helps the gospel,” he said. “If you don’t have lawyers who are following Christ to fight to keep the doors open for the gospel, then the doors close and no missionaries can go in.”

Such advocacy has gained high recognition in political circles. “In the more repressive countries, these lawyers are really heroic figures,” said David Saperstein, who served under the Obama administration as US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. “They often face harassment from authorities and persecution.

“They make a huge difference, and they work within a system often slanted against human rights and religious freedom,” he said. “Yet with perseverance and creativity, they may prevail in a way that makes a real difference.” …

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Participating in the “high holy day” of American civil religion is beneficial for Christians, so long as we do so thoughtfully.

This Memorial Day I’ll make what’s become an annual pilgrimage, to a place made sacred by the struggles of people like my cousin Mike. Nestled in between the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Fort Snelling National Cemetery is the final resting place for more than 220,000 American military veterans and their spouses. Most of them died at a ripe old age, but a few of the headstones bear birth and death dates that are far closer than they ought to be. One of those belongs to Mike, a Navy corpsman traumatized by his experience of the Iraq War. He died in 2014 at the age of 33, leaving behind a wife and three young children.

Some of the visitors who had preceded me last year to Mike’s graveside left behind tokens of remembrance. Flowers and a small American flag rested peacefully in the grass. Two of his comrades-in-arms had placed quarters on the headstone.

Nothing remained of my visit but fallen tears, fleeting evidence of the complicated mix of emotions I felt: grief at Mike’s suffering and death, pride for his courage and sacrifice, dismay at humanity’s propensity for violence, anger at the circumstances that led to his death, and uncertainty about how I should participate in the rituals of Memorial Day.

More of the hurt will have healed when I visit this year, but the other emotions have already started to bubble up. So as a Christian, as a historian, and as someone who loved and was loved by a fallen veteran, let me share what I’ve been contemplating as we approach Memorial Day.

We need reminders to remember.

In a sense, every day is a memorial day for Christians, heirs of Moses’ exhortation to the assembly of Israel: “Remember the days of old; consider the generations …

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Measure outcomes, not activities.

Read Church Planting Metrics: Measure What’s Important, Part One (The Problem of Measurement Inversion; Defining and Measuring “Healthy Church”; Is Your Organization Suffering from Measurement Inversion?).

Define the Object of Measurement (i.e., Church)

As mentioned above, the end goal for church planters should be a biblically healthy church. The target “biblically healthy church,” however, is too vague to be observed and quantified. The design team needs to take the target and deconstruct it into sub-targets and observable indicators.

Sub-targets are the components that characterize biblically healthy churches. They don’t describe church planting activities, but rather results of those activities. The list of sub-targets, when taken together, should be an accurate description of a healthy church without going beyond the biblical definition of church. The design team prepares a draft list of sub-targets, which they revise and rewrite as they receive input from leaders and practitioners. To keep the list of sub-targets manageable, the final list should be as short as possible (e.g., seven or fewer sub-targets).

The following questions can serve as a guide for the design team as they define sub-targets:

1. Is the sub-target a description of an outcome (rather than an activity)?
2. Is the sub-target an essential and irreducible component of a healthy church?
3. Taken together, do the identified sub-targets comprise an adequate description of a healthy church, or are other components still missing?
4. Does any sub-target go beyond what is biblical (i.e., do they reflect the organization’s traditions or cultural idiosyncrasies)?

One can think of sub-targets as a success checklist; when the condition is achieved, …

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Gallup finds record-high liberalism on 10 of 19 issues. Yet moderates and liberals are growing more concerned.

Ask Americans about their personal views on moral issues, and they are more likely than ever to hold a liberal position. Ask them about the country’s moral values, and they’re becoming more and more pessimistic.

The church today finds itself in a precarious position, as an ethical shift pushes public opinion in favor of stances that Christians have traditionally sided against. Meanwhile, Americans from all political and theological stripes have their own reasons to be concerned over moral decline.

In a recent poll, Gallup found a widening embrace for more than a dozen moral issues, including record-high acceptance for gay relationships, divorce, pornography, polygamy, and physician-assisted suicide.

Of the 19 issues queried about, Americans have become more liberal on 13 of them (with 10 hitting record highs) and stayed consistent on 6—most notably abortion, which 43 percent of Americans and 34 percent of Protestants deem morally acceptable.

Americans have not shifted more conservative on any of the 19 moral issues measured.

“There was a time that basic Christian morality was at least something people were afraid to violate—at least in an answer on a public survey,” said Dan Darling, vice president of communications for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, in response. “I am not so sure this is reflective of a moral slide, but of greater honesty.”

In May, both Gallup and LifeWay Research released polls showing about 4 in 5 Americans are worried about the moral state of the country. This year, 77 percent say the country’s values are getting worse, the highest level since Gallup started tracking this topic 16 years ago.

Historically, …

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