Why Joshua Harris Kissed His Megachurch Goodbye
Pastor and author compares his life to Benjamin Button: ‘I have lived a sort of backwards life.’
At 40 years old, Joshua Harris has already pastored a megachurch for a decade and authored six books, including the bestselling I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Now, he wants to go to college.
“I have lived a sort of backwards life. Without meaning to, I have experienced life out of the normal order and sequence of events,” Harris told attendees at Covenant Life Church (CLC) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on Sunday, January 25. “I haven’t completed any post-graduate study. I don’t even have an undergraduate degree. In fact, I have never attended a formal school full-time in my life.” [Full statement]
Harris, who was homeschooled, has enrolled at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the fall of 2015. His last day as CLC senior pastor will be in April. He leaves with his church’s blessing.
Harris began his “crazy, backwards life” in high school when he began publishing his own magazine geared toward fellow homeschoolers. He broke onto the national scene in 1997, at the age of 21, when he published I Kissed Dating Goodbye. The book became a runaway hit. Shortly thereafter, Harris connected with C. J. Mahaney, the founder of CLC and Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM).
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Mahaney stepped down as CLC’s senior pastor in 2004, and a 29-year-old Harris took over the 3000-member congregation “with no formal theological training and no formal training in organizational leadership.”
In 2011, Harris resigned from SGM’s board, just weeks after Mahaney took a leave of absence as president of SGM in order to address “various expressions of pride.” (Mahaney returned after six months, and later left SGM leadership in 2013.) In Harris’s first …
Why Joshua Harris Kissed His Megachurch Goodbye
Pastor and author compares his life to Benjamin Button: ‘I have lived a sort of backwards life.’
At 40 years old, Joshua Harris has already pastored a megachurch for a decade and authored six books, including the bestselling I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Now, he wants to go to college.
“I have lived a sort of backwards life. Without meaning to, I have experienced life out of the normal order and sequence of events,” Harris told attendees at Covenant Life Church (CLC) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on Sunday, January 25. “I haven’t completed any post-graduate study. I don’t even have an undergraduate degree. In fact, I have never attended a formal school full-time in my life.” [Full statement]
Harris, who was homeschooled, has enrolled at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the fall of 2015. His last day as CLC senior pastor will be in April. He leaves with his church’s blessing.
Harris began his “crazy, backwards life” in high school when he began publishing his own magazine geared toward fellow homeschoolers. He broke onto the national scene in 1997, at the age of 21, when he published I Kissed Dating Goodbye. The book became a runaway hit. Shortly thereafter, Harris connected with C. J. Mahaney, the founder of CLC and Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM).
…
Mahaney stepped down as CLC’s senior pastor in 2004, and a 29-year-old Harris took over the 3000-member congregation “with no formal theological training and no formal training in organizational leadership.”
In 2011, Harris resigned from SGM’s board, just weeks after Mahaney took a leave of absence as president of SGM in order to address “various expressions of pride.” (Mahaney returned after six months, and later left SGM leadership in 2013.) In Harris’s first …
Canadian Justice: You Can’t Block Lawyers over Their Alma Mater Banning Gay Sex
‘This decision isn’t about whether LGBT equality rights are more or less important than the religious freedoms of evangelical Christians.’
A Nova Scotian law society cannot deny future graduates of Canada’s first Christian law school the right to practice because of the college’s position on sexuality, a provincial Supreme Court justice ruled on Wednesday.
“This decision is important not only to [Trinity Western University’s] effort to launch a School of Law but also, we believe it sets an extremely valuable precedent in protection of freedoms for all religious communities and people of faith in Canada,” Trinity Western University (TWU) spokesperson Guy Saffold said in a statement.
Last spring, the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (NSBS) offered TWU law graduates recognition—but only if the school struck its rules against “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”
In his decision, Justice Jamie Campbell wrote that asking TWU to change its community covenant was akin to the NSBS dictating what professors be offered tenure or setting admissions policies:
This decision isn’t about whether LGBT equality rights are more or less important that the religious freedoms of Evangelical Christians. It’s not a value judgment in that sense at all. It is first about whether the NSBS had the authority to do what it did. It is also about whether, even if it had that authority, the NSBS reasonably considered the implications of its actions on the religious freedoms of TWU and its students in a way that was consistent with Canadian legal values of inclusiveness, pluralism, and the respect for the rule of law.
Campbell noted that while the views of many Canadians toward LGBT people have undergone a “decisive shift,” those whose perspectives have …
Canadian Justice: You Can’t Block Lawyers over Their Alma Mater Banning Gay Sex
‘This decision isn’t about whether LGBT equality rights are more or less important than the religious freedoms of evangelical Christians.’
A Nova Scotian law society cannot deny future graduates of Canada’s first Christian law school the right to practice because of the college’s position on sexuality, a provincial Supreme Court justice ruled on Wednesday.
“This decision is important not only to [Trinity Western University’s] effort to launch a School of Law but also, we believe it sets an extremely valuable precedent in protection of freedoms for all religious communities and people of faith in Canada,” Trinity Western University (TWU) spokesperson Guy Saffold said in a statement.
Last spring, the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (NSBS) offered TWU law graduates recognition—but only if the school struck its rules against “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”
In his decision, Justice Jamie Campbell wrote that asking TWU to change its community covenant was akin to the NSBS dictating what professors be offered tenure or setting admissions policies:
This decision isn’t about whether LGBT equality rights are more or less important that the religious freedoms of Evangelical Christians. It’s not a value judgment in that sense at all. It is first about whether the NSBS had the authority to do what it did. It is also about whether, even if it had that authority, the NSBS reasonably considered the implications of its actions on the religious freedoms of TWU and its students in a way that was consistent with Canadian legal values of inclusiveness, pluralism, and the respect for the rule of law.
Campbell noted that while the views of many Canadians toward LGBT people have undergone a “decisive shift,” those whose perspectives have …
Canadian Justice: You Can’t Block Lawyers Over Their Alma Mater Banning Gay Sex
“This decision isn’t about whether LGBT equality rights are more or less important that the religious freedoms of Evangelical Christians”
A Nova Scotian law society cannot deny future graduates of Canada’s first Christian law school the right to practice because of the college’s position on sexuality, a provincial Supreme Court justice ruled on Wednesday.
“This decision is important not only to [Trinity Western University’s] effort to launch a School of Law but also, we believe it sets an extremely valuable precedent in protection of freedoms for all religious communities and people of faith in Canada,” Trinity Western University (TWU) spokesperson Guy Saffold said in a statement.
Last spring, the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (NSBS) offered TWU law graduates recognition—but only if the school struck its rules against “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”
In his decision, Justice Jamie Campbell wrote that asking TWU to change its community covenant was akin to the NSBS dictating what professors be offered tenure or setting admissions policies:
This decision isn’t about whether LGBT equality rights are more or less important that the religious freedoms of Evangelical Christians. It’s not a value judgment in that sense at all. It is first about whether the NSBS had the authority to do what it did. It is also about whether, even if it had that authority, the NSBS reasonably considered the implications of its actions on the religious freedoms of TWU and its students in a way that was consistent with Canadian legal values of inclusiveness, pluralism, and the respect for the rule of law.
Campbell noted that while the views of many Canadians toward LGBT people have undergone a “decisive shift,” those whose perspectives have …
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