Sports Idolatry
With March Madness now being over for about a week, it’s a good time to think about the place sports holds in our lives. Some recent data from the Pew Research Center offers five facts about Americans and sports. First,…
Read More
The Stanley Quencher Craze
Depending on how old you are, you remember the specific have-to-have-it faddish items that you needed if you desired to fit in with your peers. For those who are baby-boomers, it was yo’s-yo’s, clackers, mini-skirts and bell-bottomed jeans. There’s a…
Read More
The Dangers of Material Property
Those of us who live here in North America have been deeply blessed in terms of material provisions and wealth. Relative to the rest of the world’s population, we are incredibly rich. Jesus warned about the dangers of money and…
Read More
Parent Prompt: The Foolishness of Idols
CPYU Parent Prompts are a regularly released resource to spark biblically-centered conversations with your kids about the issues they face in today’s youth culture. The great Reformer John Calvin famously said that the human heart is a round-the-clock 24/7 “idol…
Read More
Who or What Can Save Our Kids
All this week we’re looking at the Apostle Paul’s New Testament letters and some trustworthy statements that we must know, embrace, and communicate to our kids. These are life-giving truths that must be completely accepted and believed. In First Timothy…
Read More
Youth Sports and Sunday Mornings
One of our Research Fellows here at CPYU, Dr. Jason Engle, wrote one of our CPYU Parent Prompts on youth sports and church participation. Jason tells us that for families with young athletes, the pressure to participate in travel and…
Read More
Youth Sports as Idols
I recently had a roundtable conversation with a group of local church youth workers. We were chatting about the role that youth sports has taken in our current cultural setting. As parents, we want our kids to be able to…
Read More
Sports as Idol
I recently read a fascinating and helpful perspective on the place sports should and should not hold in our lives written by Robert Cunningham for ByFaith magazine. Cunningham says that all of us have been made with religious impulses and…
Read More
Youth Sports Spending
Pastor Tim Keller defines an idol as anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. It’s anything you seek to give you what only God can give. One way to discover our own personal counterfeit gods is to…
Read More
Idol Distractions
There have always been distractions in the world that grab our attention, taking it away from keeping our eyes on the author and perfector of our faith, Jesus Christ. We need to not only be aware that these distractions exist,…
Read More
He Had a Phone in His Pocket!
Last month, Pittsburgh Pirates’ second basemen Rodolfo Castro slid into third base. What’s the big deal with that? After all, major league baseball players slide into bases during every game. This slide caught the attention of everyone for the simple…
Read More