Author: Jon Gauger

I have spent the last 24 hours immersed in the religion of Islam.  And no surprise—we've been in Istanbul, Turkey.  You literally see the religion of Mohammed from the window of your airplane.  Minarets crowned with golden moons poke high into the sky.  And from that vantage point, it's almost staggering to ponder how many of these mosques they're really are.   To walk the streets of Istanbul is to swim in a crowded black sea, made black by the long robes of submissive Muslim women.  So thoroughly restrictive are these garments, that those requiring glasses wear them on the…

Cue the music: Pulsating rhythm in a minor key Cue the announcer: Serious…impassioned.  Now the script:   Their numbers are legion. Their plight…beyond pathetic. Yet to many, they are all but invisible: lost people.  People living their lives on a trajectory toward the flames of Hell. The horror of what awaits them—apart from God's intervention—ought to grip us and cause us to fall on our knees begging the Almighty to spare them. Instead…the names of these people rarely make our prayer lists…our prayer meetings… our prayer chains.   That is why I make the bold, if not uncomfortable claim, that for…

If there's such a thing as a list of endangered prayer species, revival must surely be on it. Time was when folks actually talked about revival—what it looks like, feels like.  What they’d heard from others who's seen at least a glimpse of it.  We honestly prayed for revival.  Even expected revival to actually happen.    Seems like 20 or 30 years ago, revival was a much hotter subject.  Not today. Now I'm not here to suggest absolutely nobody cares about revival any more.  But interest in the subject definitely seems to have waned.  Nancy DeMoss of “Revive Our Hearts Ministries”…

This week I met a real shepherd in a real field near the real Bible town of Bethlehem. But I must admit the experience was off-putting—even a bit disappointing. Climbing the hillside (camera, tripod, audio recorder in hand), I expected to peer into the face of a weather beaten wrinkled old soul.  I envisioned my shepherd wearing thread bare robes hanging off his frame as his deep furrowed brow expressed concern for wandering sheep in the field. But instead of a wrinkled old man, my shepherd was middle aged—good looking, to boot.   And while he wore a sort of robe,…

The back cover of a new book on prayer caught my eye.  The question is asked, “Does Prayer Work?”  The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable it made me.  “Does prayer work?”  The question seems problematic on several fronts.   First, it seems to reduce praying to an exercise for which there is an objective measurement, as if we can assign a scholastic grading scale to our praying:  This prayer gets a “C”…but this one gets an “A”–presumably because we got exactly what we asked for.    Second, asking if prayer “works” implies that prayer itself possesses power. …

A working gun…created by a 3D printer. By now, of course, it's old news.    Eight months ago, Cody Wilson–a 25 year old University of Texas law student–set out on a mission: to make the world's first workable hand gun using only a 3D printer—a device that creates solid objects by printing layers and layers of special plastic. Turns out, Wilson succeeded in what one columnist calls the newest “Shot heard 'round the world.”    An article in Forbes points out there isn't a single shred of metal in the whole thing…except for the nail that fires the bullets.  The…

Time out for some buzzkilll.  As in, I'd like to kill a buzz word…or at least reduce its heavy usage.  Call me a skeptic or cynic if you will, but I strongly reject the stampede toward bizz babble.  You know—expressions like…. “Paradigm shift” “Tee it up” “Over the Wall” “grabbing the low hanging fruit” or… “get together and blue sky” “getting the right people in the right seats on the bus.” Now some of those are older expressions, for sure.  But one I've been seeing a lot of lately is “reach out.”  America is now practically daily overdosing on “reach…

If you've never played Jenga, you ought to give it a shot. This challenging game starts you off with a tower of wooden planks.  Each layer is made up of three planks that lay right against each other.   So it's a loose—but solid—tower to start with.  Plenty strong.   Everybody takes turns removing one of the three planks that make up a layer…and placing it on top of the tower—to make it grow taller. You quickly learn that if pulled out slowly and carefully, the tower can stand on a layer of just two…or even one plank.  The net effect,…

Are we sure we're doing church right? Let me cut to the chase.  I'm uncomfortable with the way we've divvied up the typical church service.  In an average 75 minute service, we American evangelicals typically do 5 minutes of announcements, at least 20 minutes of singing, 30-40 or more minutes of preaching.  Throw in the offering, a greeting time and benediction… and that leaves about 5 minutes for a pastoral prayer and two minutes for a closing payer.  Meaning we spend about as much time on announcements as we do on prayer. Does that strike you as out of whack? …

As I write this, the nation’s third largest city is under siege.  Or, perhaps more accurately, under sieve.  To use the adjective, “rainy” is to describe the sun as merely warm. Schools are closed. Streets are clogged.  And announcers on radio and television beg us to “Please stay home!”  But crises large and small have a way of yielding defining snapshots.  I saw one the other day. As gallon-sized drops of rain blasted the army of downtown commuters, we besieged soldiers bolted the last steps of our maneuvers toward the train station portico. Safely under the cover of stone and…