Jason Thacker's Blog, page 5

Leading Your Church in a Digital Age

People may spend five to six hours a week hearing from God’s Word, worshiping our triune God with the church, or in community with fellow believers. Compared to those five to six hours, their phones and devices are with them almost twenty-four hours a day and easily seven days a week.

These tools are one of the most effective discipleship tools in our digital age—even if they’re primarily being used to form us into people fixated on ourselves rather than into people who look more like Christ....

Why the (mis)labeling of pregnancy resource centers on Yelp needs to be corrected

Yelp announced last week that, in light of the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Whole Woman’s Health case at the U.S. Supreme Court and the continued push by many in society for greater access to abortion services, they would begin to recategorize crisis pregnancy centers (also known as pregnancy resource centers) and other faith-based clinics on their platforms to distinguish them from abortion clinics. They also have placed user warnings on these listings, indicating that crisis pregnancy centers “ty...

The Centrality of Ethics in Christian Discipleship

A quick look at church history shows that when doctrinal beliefs are compromised, it leads to countless dangers and a watering down of Christian truth in hopes of accommodating more popular and culturally acceptable beliefs. Thankfully, many have sought to bolster the teaching and preaching of God’s Word throughout the years and to inculcate a love of theology in our churches, seminaries, and on the mission field. Theology matters, but is simply having the right beliefs really enough to sustain ...

What is the goal of the Christian ethic?

Over the summer, I was reading Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice: Rights and Wrongs and was struck by something he said about the moral vision of Scripture. Often when we teach ethics in a Christian setting, we talk about how God created us as his image bearers and how the Christian ethic is rooted in how God has spoken to us through his revelation — both in nature and in Scripture. Most of the time three major philosophical systems are presented for how we might structure ethics, namely deontolog...

How should we view privacy in a post-Roe world?

In the weeks following the historic Dobbs decision, a good bit of misinformation has been propagated concerning what many pro-life laws across the nation actually do in protecting the life of the preborn and caring for vulnerable women in crisis. Along with this misinformation about the devastation of ectopic pregnancies and lamentable instances where the physical life of the mother is at risk, there has also been a torrent of speculative musings about the dystopian society we will now inhabit i...

Why Roe is about more than just abortion

In the hours following the historic Dobbs decision, which recognized that the states have the right to make laws regulating the practice of elective abortion, moral panic ensued. Almost immediately, pro-choice pundits took to social media and television news decrying the decision by the nation’s highest court and began to sew panic throughout our communities, claiming that the right to abortion represents much more than simply a woman’s ability to choose to end the life of the preborn baby withi...

Following Jesus in a Digital Age

On August 30th, my new book Following Jesus in a Digital Age will be released with B&H Publishing. It is available for pre-order now at most major retailers. I am really grateful for the entire team at B&H, including my editor Ashley Gorman and my publisher Devin Maddox who first encouraged me to write this book given the growing concerns about the role of technology in our lives and questions about how Christians might think through these ethical issues through the lens of biblical wisdom.

O...

Five books for your summer reading list

Today is officially the first day of summer, even if it has been blazing hot in the South for the better part of two weeks. With grading done, papers (nearly) done, and a number of major conferences wrapped up, I am officially shifting into summer mode and looking forward to digging into some of my planned summer reading. I realize that for many of us we still have a number of responsibilities, but hopefully you can slow down a bit and take a break over the next few months. As you plan out your ...

Who is My Neighbor?

One of the blessings of the digital age is that we can connect with and find information regarding places all around the world, almost instantaneously. We can learn about cultures, customs, and the beauty of God’s created order with a few short swipes on our phones or devices. Alongside these wonders, we can also learn about natural disasters, wars, crimes, and a host of other things as they happen. While there are many dangerous and deleterious effects to this level of information overload, Chr...

Why a truncated vision of religious freedom is dangerous to the common good

One of the most respected evangelical intellectuals of the 20th century, Carl F.H. Henry, wrote, “If religious freedom is advocated only for pragmatic reasons, it can and will be sacrificed to expediency.” The cause of religious freedom is central to the Christian faith — especially in the Baptist tradition — because it recognizes the freedom of all people to act upon their deeply held beliefs in every aspect of public life. In a day when religious freedom can be invoked to bolster spurious clai...