Defend is our annual apologetics conference. This year we had the chance to sit down with a few of our speakers and talk with them on the podcast. Here are a few things I learned: 1. Quantum mechanics is small (but not too small for God). Dr. Neil Shenvi explained that weird...
Have you ever known you’d like something before you tried it? What about feeling a longing for a group of people you’ve never met? This is a feeling I’ve known well. For as long as I can remember, the people of a certain Southeast Asian country—one I’ve left unnamed due to their...
"So he caught a body?" I understood that the teenager across the table had just compared Cain and Abel to a murder on the streets, but I had no clue how to respond. "Sure.” I laughed nervously. “That's one way of thinking about it." Our church's Bible study at the local gym had...
A simple definition of Christian apologetics is a reasoned defense for the validity of Christianity’s claims, such as the resurrection of Christ, reliability of Scripture or objective morality. Many apologetics students like me began with a hope to be better equipped to defend Christianity. But I learned when I began my...
In 2015, the year I graduated from seminary, I set out to understand how I could survive with less sleep. My goal: two hours a night. If you don't know me, I'm a productivity person. I like to get things done. But even more than getting things done, I like to...
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary often hosts pilgrimages to Israel. I’ve been blessed to go to Israel and see the land of the Bible for myself on two occasions. Many people asked me when I got back, “How was the trip?” or “What did you see?” The truth is these questions are...
There seems to be some confusion about the terms “racial reconciliation” and “diversity.” Namely, I hear these used interchangeably, but the two are quite different. Diversity can be achieved by sharing space with one another. For example, the 18th century churches in the South could be described as diverse because slaves...
I was barely 20 years old when I accepted my first call to serve as a youth pastor at a small Southern Baptist church in Mississippi. To say I was naïve at this point in my ministry would be a remarkable understatement. I had no idea what I was doing,...
