Tommy Mann

The popular Christian group Casting Crowns has recently released a song titled Broken Together. I really like the song, but at the same time it leaves me a little disappointed. I am a big Casting Crowns fan, although they do have a tendency to come across as pretty negative from time to time. Broken Together is a beautiful song, both vocally and musically. The song is written to husbands and wives who entered marriage expecting a fairy tale, only to find out that their partner isn’t as perfect as the one in the chick flick. The chorus says, “Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete. Could we just be broken together? If you could bring your shattered dreams and I’ll bring mine Could healing still be spoken and save us? The only way to last forever is broken together.” I agree with the song’s premise that marriage isn’t always a fairy tale because it unites two imperfect people, so imperfection remains the result. We need to be honest about our own shortco...

Michael Gungor made headlines this week when he stated that he does not take the Bible literally. This revelation came after his Dove Award-winning (and Grammy-nominated) band Gungor had a show cancelled for that same reason. In an effort to explain himself, Gungor apologized if any fans were duped into thinking their Christian band had Christian beliefs. Taking a page out of the Emergent Church playbook, Gungor said, “We have always tried to be upfront about our wrestling with doubts and questions of faith.” That’s fine. Many people wrestle, and it often takes years for a person to really understand what they believe. But Gungor goes a step beyond mere wrestling with doubt. He stated, “NO REASONABLE PERSON takes the entire Bible completely literally (emphasis in original).” Well, Mr. Gungor, I am one of those reasonable people you say do not exist. In the same post Gungor makes clear that they are not young earth creationists (meaning they believe in Darwinian e...

           I’ve been very critical of the emerging church in some of these blogs, and some have accused me of not actually knowing what that movement is all about. For that reason I decided to write a review of the writings of some of these emergent leaders.      I have previously written about men like  Tony Campolo ,  Rob Bell , and  Mark Driscoll  so they won't be focused on in this post.       I have read, among other texts, Dan Merchant’s Lord Save Us From Your Followers, Dan Kimball’s The Emerging Church, Brad J. Kallenberg’s Live to Tell—Evangelism for a Postmodern Age, Erwin McManus’ The Barbarian Way and Wide Awake, and Donald Miller’s books Blue Like Jazz, To Own a Dragon, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and The Open Table.         My two favorites were books written by multiple authors (a community of them, perhaps). These books are An E...

“What is truth?” Pilate asked sarcastically. Jesus was on trial, and He explained to Pilate that He had come to “bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth hears my voice (John 8:37).” Pilate laughed off Jesus as if to say, “Can you really know the truth?” That same attitude has become the rhetorical question of many of the new churches today. Churches are billing themselves as “church for people who don’t like church” or places where “we don’t have it figured out.” The traditional churches that read and believe the Bible have come under fire for being arrogant knowers of theology, while these newer emerging churches boast of not knowing what the Bible is really all about. Sound doctrine has been replaced with fluidity, black and white issues are now in color, truth is not knowable, the Gospel is a mystery, and the commands of Scripture take a backseat to each person’s story. I will be the first to admit that the emerging church has rightly criticiz...