I want to live long enough to be a burden to my children.

It seems like only yesterday when President Obama stood in front of an electrified audience at the 2012 Democratic National Convention just days before the deadly September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, reminding supporters, "al Qaeda is on the path to defeat and Osama bin Laden is dead."

The question didn't surprise me, but I wasn't ready with an answer. I was a young church consultant, and the church's leadership team had several questions. The one for which I had no answer at the time was, "What characteristics have you seen in churches that seemed to be dying, but that experienced growth after a consultation?" After many more years of consulting, here is my answer today.

My recent blogpost on pastors' salaries drew a lot of attention. There are indeed some heated emotions on both sides of the issue. Much of the concern expressed about the pay of ministers seems to focus on those cases of real indulgence and abuse. But it's those cases that get the most attention and, sadly, hurt the vast majority of ministers who are faithful stewards of God's money.

In yet another bad decision, an education administrator asked me to give a high school commencement speech. The principal must know I write a column but he obviously hasn't read it very often.

Now, I'm not interested in questioning Collins's courage. It's likely that this announcement wasn't easy for him. I do think it's worth noting, however, how many pundits and other public figures were tripping over each other to shower him with encouragement, support, and praise. When you get a call from the President of the United States to congratulate you on the step you've just taken, it's a safe guess you really didn't have much to fear in taking it.

These events of late prove, without question, that the normalization of homosexual behavior in the culture and the legalization of same-sex marriage will inevitably usher in a flood of religious persecutions for Christians who dare say homosexuality is a sin. Touting as they have that gay rights are about civil rights, the LGBT community deceives the public into believing every born-again, God fearing, Bible-believing, follower of Jesus Christ is worse than a prejudiced Archie Bunker type idiot.

To say that abortion is controversial is an understatement. Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade , which legalized abortion in the U.S., the abortion question has continued to divide non-Christians and Christians—and even Christians within their own circles.

A joint statement from the Sothern Baptist's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission North American Missions Board has been issued on religious freedom on the military.

Thanks to a renewed interest in the works of Ayn Rand and high-profile figures like John Stossel, Glenn Beck, and Rand Paul, libertarianism is enjoying a moment in the political sun. And just like America's two major parties, libertarians can often be blind to faulty logic and flaws within their own ideology.