Tommy Mann

Today, January 25 th , 2013, marks the fifth anniversary of the day I was hired at Philippi Baptist Church . I wanted to take a quick minute to reflect back over how my life has changed in these few short years. For starters, I’m obviously older and about 65 pounds heavier than that skinny kid who arrived here on his 23 rd birthday. I’ve become more country, buying my first camo, gun, chainsaw, goat, truck, and “building,” and frequently burning our trash in the fire pit. My family has grown by over 1,000 as the people of Philippi have welcomed us into their large home and hearts. They have fed us (usually too much, with an emphasis on dessert), loved us, prayed for us, and trusted our leadership with their most precious members—their children. My biological family has also increased. I moved here with Alicia; today it is Alicia and Reagan. That is amazing considering the stark reality that having children was thought to be unlikely. While here my wif

I have been a big Big Daddy Weave fan for several years, and their latest CD only reinforces my opinion of this group. The CD is called Love Come to Life, and there is a wonderful track I want to write about called If You Died Tonight. While the entire CD is praiseworthy I want to focus on this song for highlighting what is becoming a lost and criticized practice. I remember when the church used to focus on evangelism, when seeing lost souls pulled from the fire was of chief concern. But not anymore. Churches like ours that still bring up the reality of hell and invite people to consider their own eternal destiny are laughed off as old fashioned. Churches like ours that stand in the boldness of the book of Acts are made to feel intrusive, in-your-face, and annoying. But Big Daddy Weave calls their listeners to remember that the person you are in a conversation with today could actually die tonight. If they do, did you give them the opportunity to put their

(Originally written 7/22/11) I recently wrote about the show Secret Life , and now I have decided to write about the show Family Guy. I am frequently asked about the content of this show, so I wanted to share a little bit about what I know. This show was actually cancelled in 2002 because of its crude, offensive content. Sadly, popular demand brought the show back. High DVD sales and ratings of reruns led to a rebirth of the show, which is ranked #1 among 12-34 year old viewers. The show follows the life of the family guy, Peter Griffin. Among the other characters are the talking family dog and the incredibly inappropriate baby Stewie. This show routinely mocks God and Jesus, frequently depicting them hanging out in bars to meet girls, even trying to impress them with their deity powers. One episode charted Meg’s (Peter’s daughter) conversion to Christianity. This episode showed Christians to be ignorant, which was evidenced by the church book burning of the mythica

(originally written 1/13/12) Satan has waged a war against the family, and his artillery of choice has been the media. By making fathers look like buffoons and husbands looking incompetent, the subtle message is made clear: children can talk back and disrespect because they are always right, and the woman has to run the home because her husband can’t possibly make a right decision. Shows like The Simpsons and Everybody Loves Raymond are guilty of this. Then there are the shows that promote the single life over the married life (I know that being is ok; that is not the point). Shows like How I Met Your Mother show guys who sleep with different women every night (Barney once celebrated the fact that he slept with his 1,000 th woman); the reality is people like this are miserable and would have more STD’s then there are names for. The next big theme for TV was the divorced character; the idea here is that everyone gets divorced and we should all just a

We all are familiar with the Nazi’s Holocaust against the Jews during World War II, but do we know about the Holocaust that is going on in our own back yard? In Ray Comfort’s book Hitler, God, and the Bible[1]  he traces the life of Germany’s most notorious Fuhrer, which culminated in his slaughter of 6 million Jews. Hitler convinced the German populace that Jews were not human (thanks to Darwin, Germans believed that they were at the top of evolution and Jews were at the bottom as sub-human), and therefore it was ok to kill them. The most startling part of the Holocaust was that these concentration camps were right in the back yard of many German citizens. After the Allied powers defeated the Third Reich they forced the German citizens to walk through these gas chambers to see what they permitted through their support of Hitler. Video footage showed people smiling and laughing on their way in, but stone-faced and silent on their way out. Their eyes were opene

“The demand that it should be made impossible for defective people to continue to propagate defective offspring is a demand that is based on most reasonable grounds, and its proper fulfillment is the most humane task that mankind has to face.” That detestable comment was made by none other than the Fuhrer himself, Adolf Hitler. He believed and taught that “defective” people produce defective children, and that it was the duty of the stronger Aryan race to see to it that “defective” people stopped reproducing. Hitler also said, “Every crossing between two breeds which are not quite equal results in a…biologically lower order of being…Such mating contradicts the will of Nature towards the selective improvements of life in general.” Will of Nature? Selective improvements? If this sounds like Darwinian evolution, there is a reason for that: it is. While no legitimate person would dare support the above remarks made by Hitler, millions of people adhere to (an