Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel

by Russell D. Moore

Years ago, when I was serving as a preaching pastor in a church, I was approached by an eleven-year-old in our congregation who wanted to introduce me to his friend, Jared. Jared was on his soccer team, and had never been to church before. After a few minutes of talking, Jared told me that he needed prayer, that his dad had left, and he didn’t know what his family was going to do. He wondered if I might pray that God would “put my mom and dad back together.” I prayed with him, and he turned to go back to his seat. He was wearing a shirt celebrating the inauguration of a President who was unpopular with most of the people in my mostly white, blue-collar congregation. As I watched this young man walk down his first-ever church aisle, to hear the gospel perhaps for the first time, a middle-aged man walked past him and huffed, “We need to get you a better shirt.”