I will be joining Albert Mohler and Ryan Anderson to speak at the Family and Cultural Renewal Conference on the campus of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It is a short, two-hour event but will be packed with content. The event is free, but it does require registration. Please come join us for this important gathering. Here is the information you need to register and attend: Date: Tuesday, September 16 Time: 6:30-8:30pm Place: Heritage Hall, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Address: 2825 Lexington Road, Louisville, KY 40280 Registration: The Family and Cultural Renewal Conference This event is sponsored jointly by CBMW, the Commonwealth Policy Center, and Southern Seminary.
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The Truth Will Make You Free — John 8:31-38
I’ve been preaching through the Gospel of John at my Church and delivered a message on John 8:31-38 on Sunday. The title consists of Jesus’ watershed statement in v. 32: “The Truth Will Make You Free.” You can listen to the entire message at the Spotify Podcast or Apple Podcast linked below.
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Discussing Deconstruction and Jen Hatmaker
In my last post, I linked to my recent column in WORLD magazine about Jen Hatmaker’s revealing interview with The New York Times. We discussed her interview and ministry further on this week’s episode of the CBMW Podcast (see below). The World and Everything in It also ran an audio version of the article. You can find it here or listen below. https://www4.wng.org/Denny-Burk-The-fall-of-Jen-Hatmaker.mp3
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The Deconstruction of Jen Hatmaker
Over the weekend, Jen Hatmaker appeared in an interview with The New York Times about her forthcoming memoir titled Awake (Simon & Schuster, 2025). In it, she reveals that she no longer goes to any church at all. She’s divorced and says she’s dating a guy and going through a “sexual renaissance.” She’s learning to focus for the first time on what she wants in the bedroom. The whole conversation is immodest, ugly, and sad. It is as complete and thorough an apostasy as I have ever seen. [Read the rest of this column at here at WORLD magazine.]
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Dear Mr. President, about going to heaven… (an open letter to President Trump)
Dear Mr. President, I saw your remarks about heaven on Fox & Friends from Tuesday morning, and I can’t tell you how happy I am to have heard them. It is a rare thing for a world leader to reflect so openly about his own mortality and about what waits on the other side. Even in polite conversation, most people don’t want to “go there,” much less in front of millions of viewers. But you did go there, and there are millions of us who are grateful that you did. Sadly, the human condition is such that people are often reluctant to think about what you brought up on Tuesday morning. Aren’t there happier…
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Should Women Serve as “Shepherds”? – CBMW Podcast
As I mentioned earlier this week, some churches are appointing female “shepherds” in an effort to get around the biblical prohibition on female “pastors.” On this episode of The CBMW Podcast, we discuss what the Bible says about gender, the office of pastor, and why it matters. [Watch below on YouTube, or listen below on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.]
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Is a Female “Shepherd” Different from a Female “Pastor”?
I have a read a couple reports over the last week or so about a Southern Baptist Church in Texas that has seven female pastors (Fielder Church in Arlington). According to one report, each of these female pastors is listed on the church’s website as a “shepherd.” Indeed, now all the church’s pastors are listed as shepherds, including the senior pastor. These reports have raised eyebrows across the convention because the Baptist Faith & Message says that pastors must be men as qualified by Scripture. According to one report, Fielder Church was referred to the credentials committee of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC), and the committee decided not…
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Why I Do Not Favor the Moniker “Biblical Patriarchy”
Complementarian doctrine doesn’t require adherents to adopt a certain label for their view. It’s far more important for people to accept and affirm the Bible’s teaching on manhood and womanhood than for them to embrace any specific moniker for it. Having said that, there is great value in being precise and clear when thinking about and communicating Christian doctrine. For that reason, I still prefer and recommend the use of the term “complementarianism” to label our position over “biblical patriarchy.” I have made a positive case for “complementarianism” elsewhere. In this essay, I want to respond to some of the critiques in Doug Ponder’s thoughtful essay weighing the relative merits…
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The Innermost Meaning of the Cross is Penal Substitution
“Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him… But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will…
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The Light of the World — John 8:12-30
John 8:12, “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” This is the second of seven of Jesus’ famous “I am” sayings. The first one was in chapter 6, where he says, “I am the bread of life.” And now he’s revealing himself as the “light of the world”—meaning, he’s the light that illuminates the world. Light shines. It illuminates. It reveals. It helps you to see things that you otherwise would be unable to see. When Jesus says that he is the light, he is the great revealer of…
