Preaching with Results Ugandan church leaders have preached three pornographic magazines out of business. According to published reports, three magazines that featured nudity and other sexual content have gone out of business since pastors started preaching against pornography two months ago. Clergymen had attempted to meet with the magazines' publishers earlier but were told to preach to their own people and leave the magazines alone. In response, they urged their church members not to buy the magazines, and the magazines' sales dropped dramatically. One publisher became a Christian and apologized for corrupting young people.

"I can tell you from personal experience that I've never met a happy porn star." —Ex-porn star Traci Lords, describing how abuse and an unstable home life led her into the "adult entertainment" business as a 15-year-old. Source: Dateline NBC (7-11-03); found in Citizen magazine (October 2003), p. 15

I was reminded how much our ministry matters as I reflected on two very different events at Stanford: the Veritas Forum and a campus Playboy shoot. The two played out like a real-life version of truth or dare. First, truth. We were delighted to co-sponsor the Veritas Forum at Stanford. We brought in leading Christian intellectuals such as Dallas Willard, Gary Habermas, and Michael Behe to engage students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ. It was incredible! The highlight for me was observing Christian philosopher Dallas Willard debate Richard Rorty (one of the the most influential philosophers in America today). The whole week was a powerful reminder that the Christian faith is reasonable and worthy of careful investigation. But we went from truth to dare as Playboy came to town and students disrobed to pose for the magazine's annual college issue. The Stanford Daily urged readers to participate, saying that prejudice against pornography "is an unfortunate product of our society, and one that ought to be addressed." The editorial went on to make the case that Playboy was a high-class, upstanding literary magazine. The difference between the two events was inadvertently summed up a senior named Erica. When asked by a local paper about some consequences of her decision to pose, she said, "I guess I hadn't thought it out too thoroughly." And so we'll keep sponsoring events like the Veritas Forum, we'll keep hosting Bible studies in the dorms, and we'll keep talking about things like the reliability of the Bible, because today's students desperately need to be challenged to think.

<img src="http://glenandpaula.com/quotes/uploads/1118099183straying-sheep.gif" width="643" height="561" /> When Sheep Go Astray