Note from the editor: With this article we are pleased as punch to introduce to you the writing of Pastor Steve Sanchez. He is a good friend of mine and is a gifted writer. –Jon Speed ——————————————————————————————————————- THE WORST THANKSGIVING SERVICE I ever saw advertised was from a church in Dripping Springs, TX that had...
Greetings, Mr. Sheen. You don’t know me, and you probably have never heard of our blog site here, but if I could have a few minutes of your time, I’d appreciate it. I have followed your career’on and off’since your early days working with Oliver Stone. I have a vivid memory of being deeply moved...
Can Gospel Spam do politics? Oh, why not’ The Republican Party has apparently lost their minds. Donald Trump appears to be walking away with the front runner status. Donald Trump. The Donald. I just wrote this paragraph and I’m not writing script for Saturday Night Live. Here are some facts: Fact #1: Donald Trump, the...
It’s not often that I can say that Christian filmmakers have actually done a service to the Church rather than a disservice. I’m pleased to say that the Kendrick Brothers have done so. In their newest movie, War Room, they have shown the Christian film industry what Christian film CAN do’glorify God with good writing,...
One of my vivid movie-going memories comes from June 1993 when I saw Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park on opening night. 22 years ago, nobody had ever seen a computer-generated dinosaur, much less a whole mess of them. They were vivid and life-like. They convincingly interacted with human actors. They even seamlessly melded with full-scale animatronic...
Anyone who has read my reviews of Christian films knows that generally, I’m not a fan. The writing is usually very bad, the acting is often even worse, and they usually look (and sound) like they were shot in a church gymnasium. They are often sappy, unrealistic, and so obviously evangelistic that they shouldn’t really...
If anyone ever writes the history of open-air preaching in the 21st century, they will be writing about the influence of Ray Comfort and his television show, The Way of the Master. Many of the leaders in the present day open-air preaching sub-culture learned about open-air by watching that television program and by attending either...
The Hunger Games. Mad Max: Fury Road. Left Behind. Wait, Left Behind? What’s a Christian work of fiction doing among those secular entertainments? Well, they all have one overriding theme: Pessimism. In The Hunger Games the world ends and afterward we all end up hunting and killing each other. In Mad Max: Fury Road the...
The Erie Canal and Evangelicalism Most students of church history and sound theology have opinions on what has brought about the current spiritual malaise in evangelicalism. I once heard a fellow speaker at an evangelism conference state that the modern church has not recovered from the 19th century as a whole. I don’t think I...
Writer/Director Joss Whedon has said in an interview that making Avengers: Age of Ultron almost killed him. From the director of one of the most expensive and most popular comic book films of all time, that’s saying something. Exactly how does one top the immense popularity and critical acclaim of The Avengers? Whedon may have...
