The Danger of the Aesop’s Fables Bible
I was pretty much born in Sunday School with a Bible in hand. My dad has been a senior pastor since 1998, and before that, he was ministering in youth and assistant pastoring roles at various congregations. As…
Teenagers and adults are regularly being catechized by our culture—and very often we falsely synthesize the broader culture’s convictions with our faith in Christ. In this series, Rooted writers examine “half truths” our teenagers may be tempted to…

I was pretty much born in Sunday School with a Bible in hand. My dad has been a senior pastor since 1998, and before that, he was ministering in youth and assistant pastoring roles at various congregations. As…
Over a decade ago, Christian Smith published a groundbreaking study about the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers. The researchers coined the terminology, moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD), which became a buzzword in youth ministry circles for several…
Several years ago I walked around a shopping mall with a student who was weighing the cost of whether he would walk with Christ as a disciple or go the way of the world. He had a new,…
1.) Please describe the context in which you minister (geographically, ethnically, socio-economically, etc.) I serve in the American South in a suburban context in Birmingham, AL. My students are almost entirely white and upper-middle class to affluent. Attending…
This is our final post in our series on the cultural trend coined “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. Check out the rest of the posts in the series. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) has become the “de facto dominant religion…
Avoidance. We’re all pretty good at it, and we’ve got plenty of excuses in our toolbox which allow us to live in our own realities for a while. But the God of Scripture is merciful; He breaks in…