Tommy Mann

In case you were wondering… When I was living in the dorm of my Bible college there were a handful of guys that loved to stay up late debating the nitty-gritty matters of the Bible. These people would spend hours yelling at each other over the necessities, like whether or not Adam had a bellybutton ( of course not !). And they loved to be the one to come up with the most controversial new idea, then adopt that into their theology. I am not one of those people. It doesn’t matter if Adam had a bellybutton or not ( he didn’t !); I don’t want to spend all my time trying to convince a Christian about some unimportant biblical trivia question. Instead, I want to try to convince the lost to give their lives to Christ. Furthermore, I want to teach Christians about the things that do matter. As the pastor of students at our church I have an obligation to teach our students, but this teaching should not be confined to just Sunday and Wednesday. If I have the opportunity to teach about...

Aside from Tommy, Legalist might just be what I’ve been called most recently. The tricky thing about legalism is that it is easy to accuse someone of being a legalist, and it is hard to prove that you are not one. So with my work cut out for me, let me try to explain why I am not a legalist. A legalist is a person who emphasizes the outward appearance over the inward appearance. For example, a legalist might have a rule that you always attend church on Sunday, but once at church, he may never pay attention. To a legalist, the matters of the heart don’t matter as long as you look right on the outside. One of the obvious problems with legalism is that the legalist soon begins to demand that everyone else look and act just like he does, even though a lot of what he does is not biblical. There are no moderate legalists; they are all extreme, and they all think they are better than everybody. To the observer, there is a very fine line between a legalist and person who is simply tryin...

One of my favorite parts of what I do is going into the schools. We have a Bible study called First Priority that meets at the high school, and at our three junior highs at Lockhart, Sims, and Jonesville. There are hundreds 6th-8th graders that pack out Sims every Wednesday morning, and some days it can be difficult to keep the crowd quiet. I’ll be the first to admit that the majority of these students are not there because of their love for Jesus or their desire to hear the message, but we always believe that we are helping to make a difference. Last Wednesday, due to other circumstances, I was the only pastor at Sims. The room quickly got out of control, and I was even mocked by a few students. In my frustration I later told my wife that I wasn’t going back to Sims. That night at church a lady handed me a hand written note from one of her students who goes to Sims. The note was very simple, thanking me for visiting each week and teaching her the Bible. Aside from making me cr...

You’re probably surprised that it took me this long to do it, but I am finally going to blog about one of my favorite people, Tim Tebow. There is a lot of controversy surrounding the 30 second commercial that Tebow will appear in with his mother, Pam, during the Super Bowl. The ad is sponsored by Focus on the Family (who did not put any money into the project). Naturally, many women’s groups have been upset about the ad, which is a little funny since it has not aired, and only a select group has seen it. There has been no transcript released, except that CBS has said the words “abortion” and “pro-life” do not appear in the ad. Every fan of abortion pretends that they view their sacred right as a necessary evil, claiming that they want to limit the number of abortions (while making it cheaper, easier, faster, and available to minors without parental consent—you know, all the things that will limit the number of abortions). They want the undecided segment of America to think they on...

(Like my blog about the peace symbol, this blog was written as a default response to all the parents, students, and other people who are asking my opinion of To Save a Life.) By now you have probably heard of the movie To Save a Life, which opened nation-wide in theaters on January 22nd. The movie deals with so many issues that teens face today, like suicide, cutting, drinking, drugs, premarital sex, teen pregnancy, and abortion. At first glance this movie looks like an awesome resource that we should recommend for our teens, parents, youth pastors, and youth workers. But a closer look at the movie reveals a few disturbing things. For starters, according to pluggedin.com, there are 2 uses of the “A” word, 5 uses of hell (used as a curse word), and once the “D” word is used. There are other crude terms used to describe a girl, and crude terms for referring to sexual activity. There is also a bedroom scene that shows a girl removing a boy’s shirt, then afterwards the girl putting he...

American churches have become obsessed with church growth and church growth techniques, which certainly sounds like a good thing. Obviously we should want our churches to grow, because, in theory, this means we are reaching more people for Christ. In many cases these techniques are filling buildings, but are they really reaching people for Christ? A church in our area runs TV commercials that say things like, “What if church was a literacy program for homeless children…would you come?” Wow. To me this sounds like an insecure kid at school saying, “If I give you my pudding, will you be my friend?” Now Al Gore, esteemed founder of the fraudulent man-made Global Warming hysteria, is on a campaign to have pastors “go green” and give special attention to saving the planet. As one pastor who is gung-ho about the idea put it, this is a great way for us to offer something that people are interested in (by the way, why does no one cry “Separation of Church and State” when a career politician...

The peace symbol has re-emerged into our culture, but this time around it is not being used in the same way that the anti-war crowd last used it. Today we see the peace symbol primarily on clothes and jewelry marketed towards junior high girls. It has become a fashion symbol instead of a peace symbol. But was it always a symbol of peace? If a person were to do a basic study on the origin of the peace symbol, most people would conclude that the symbol was birthed for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 by the British artist Gerald Holtom. However, Holtom was an anti-Christian artist who was fully aware that the symbol was not original to him. Most people believe the peace symbol to be a harmless relic from decades ago, or at worst, simply a symbol of world peace. Unfortunately, the symbol means much more that. The “peace symbol” can be found etched into the gravestones of Hitler’s SS officers and it was engraved into the shields of the Saracens in A.D. 711, used to symbo...