Author: admin

In the newest episode of The Natasha Crain Podcast, I have the honor of talking with someone who I think is one of the best, if not the best, Christian models of navigating this tough culture with grace AND truth. Dr. Sean McDowell is a gifted communicator with a passion for equipping the church, and especially young people, to make the case for the Christian faith.

Sean has a Ph.D. in Apologetics and Worldview Studies from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He’s currently an Associate Professor in the Christian Apologetics program at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, and he still teaches one high school Bible class, which helps give him exceptional insight into the prevailing culture. Sean is the author, co-author, or editor of over twenty books, including Evidence that Demands a Verdict (with his dad, Josh McDowell). He also has an exceptional YouTube channel which I highly recommend subscribing to.

In today’s show, we go deep into the question of how we can better balance grace and truth in our interactions with a hostile culture–and also in our interactions with fellow believers. Listen in your favorite podcast player or in your browser here!

As a reminder, Alisa Childers, Frank Turek, and I will be doing our next Unshaken Conference on May 6th at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California, and tickets are on sale now! If you’re anywhere in the area, you are not going to want to miss this. We will equip and encourage you to stand firm in your faith in this challenging culture. We’ll be in Tucson, Arizona, on September 23rd and Nashville on November 4th. Those tickets will be on sale next month.

Continue reading

Cultural Marxism. Equity. Socialism. DEI. CRT. Anti-Racism. Collective Guilt. Christians can no longer stay silent about the divide between the Bible’s truth and the world’s lies. In today’s episode of The Natasha Crain Podcast, I talk with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor emeritus of The Moody Church, where he served as senior pastor for 36 years. Dr. Lutzer clearly explains the most prevalent lies today and walks through the reasons we should have the courage to proclaim truth. You can read about these subjects and more in his newest book, No Reason to Hide. It’s a book I highly recommend and had the privilege of endorsing.

A few other things I want to be sure you’re aware of today:

• We just announced the fourth location for the Unshaken Conference with Alisa Childers, Frank Turek and me. We’ll be in Tucson, Arizona, on September 23, at Calvary Tucson. Those tickets, as well as the tickets for Nashville (November 4), will be on sale next month. In the meantime, tickets are on sale now for our Southern California Unshaken Conference, which will be held May 6 at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. Go to unshakenconference.com for more information and to get your tickets! If you’re in one of these areas, you are not going to want to miss this event designed to equip and encourage you to stand firm in this challenging culture.

• Don’t forget to check out and subscribe to my Unshaken Faith Podcast with Alisa Childers! Every Wednesday, we’re dropping short (15-20 minute) episodes on issues of cultural importance for Christians. Our last three episodes, for example, have been on how to discern a church website, calling out false teachers, and dealing with criticism of your beliefs.

• Alisa Childers and I had the opportunity to host Frank Turek’s “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” radio show last week. We tackled the prevalent idea that what you do is more important than what you believe–a common idea especially among progressive Christians. It’s available in podcast form here.

It’s been a while, but a NEW episode of The Natasha Crain Podcast is now available!

Today I’m answering several different claims that are popularly leveled against Christians in the course of cultural discussions. On the surface, they sound like very different kinds of claims, but underlying them all is a common theme…that if you hold confidently to a certain viewpoint, it means you’re arrogant.

In this episode, I walk you through how to respond to charges of moral arrogance (“Who are you to judge?”), epistemic arrogance (“Who are you to be so confident that you know what’s true better than others?”), and biblical arrogance (“Who are you to think your biblical interpretation is better than mine…or anyone else’s?”).

Jesus wants us to be humble, but we can misunderstand the nature of that humility and start to believe the world’s claims that we’re being arrogant about things that we’re not actually being arrogant about. If we aren’t clear on this subject, we can end up sinking into some kind of naively humble place that’s actually a lack of boldness rather than true humility.

As a reminder, my new weekly joint podcast with Alisa Childers (The Unshaken Faith Podcast) is in full swing! Every Wednesday, we post a new 15- to 20-minute episode looking at cultural issues from a biblical perspective. We’re 5 episodes in already:

1. American Girl and the Trans-ing of Kids
2. Does the “He Gets Us” Campaign “Get” Jesus?
3. TikTok and Toxic Theology
4. Is Jesus Woke?
5. How Churches Slide Into Progressivism

And finally, we JUST announced the location for our next Unshaken Conference (with Alisa, Frank Turek, and myself)! We’ll be at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills on May 6, and tickets are now on sale. We’ll be in Nashville on November 4 (tickets not yet on sale) and a location yet to be announced in September. I’ll be sharing more on those locations in the next few weeks!

I know that many people on my email list also follow me on social media and have seen this news, but I wanted to be sure that no one on my email list is out of the loop on some really exciting announcements I made last week!

My friend Alisa Childers and I did a livestream to announce two big projects we are launching together in 2023. If you want to watch the full replay, you can do so here. But for those who want to cut to the chase, here’s the big news, plus a bonus third announcement…

1. We’re launching a conference together! Tickets available now!

It’s called Unshaken, and we’ll be doing four dates/locations in 2023. There’s a battle raging in culture, and we want to address it head-on. Our goal is to encourage Christians to be emboldened and encouraged to speak truth without fear, to love the way God loves, and to stand firm no matter the cost. We’re thrilled to announce that Frank Turek will be joining us for this year’s tour! In the livestream, we announced the first date and location: January 28th in Dayton, Ohio (yes, that’s next month!). We’ll be announcing other dates/locations in coming weeks, but there will be two in the winter/spring and two in the fall. Click here to learn more about the conference, see the schedule, and purchase tickets for Dayton! Note there are a limited number of VIP tickets available, which will get you premium seating, a catered lunch, and a meet and greet with the speakers. Alisa and I are so excited about this conference and hope to see you at one of the locations!

2. We’re launching a podcast together!

We also announced that we are launching a short-form (15-minute) weekly podcast together called Unshaken Faith! Yes, we’ll still both have our personal podcasts, but this one will be a collaboration for us to address current events and cultural chaos together in a bite-size way. With the same heart behind it as the Unshaken Conference, we want to equip Christians to stand firm in a chaotic culture. It will launch in early January, but it’s already up on most podcast players with a quick (5-minute) trailer! If you’re a podcast listener, would you take a minute and go subscribe now? (Here’s a link if you’re on Apple Podcasts.) We’re so grateful for everyone who has already subscribed and left ratings…you’ve given it a lot of momentum, and it’s currently the number 5 Christian podcast in the U.S.!

3. You can get a signed copy of Faithfully Different with a year-end donation to Stand to Reason!

I know there are a lot of organizations and ministries asking for donations before the end of the year, but I want to highlight one that I think is doing especially great work in the area of equipping Christians to stand firm in today’s culture: Stand to Reason (STR).

STR produces a WEALTH of resources available for free online. (The very popular Red Pen Logic with Mr. B is part of STR, for example!) They also have a team of some of the best speakers you’ll ever hear, they produce a youth apologetics conference that’s unmatched (the Reality Conference), and they recently launched STR Outposts, which is a program to equip local communities of Christians with answers to questions about Christianity. I know the individuals at STR and can say that I think the world of them personally as well. It’s a remarkable group.

All that to say, they are a wonderful ministry to support. For those interested, they are currently sending signed copies of my book, Faithfully Different, as a thank you for year-end gifts! If you’ve been meaning to get a copy of the book, this is a perfect opportunity to do so while supporting an important ministry. And if you already have a copy, this is an excellent chance to get a signed one to give as a Christmas gift! Click here to make your donation and get the book.

Hey everyone! I just wanted to let you know that I’m the guest on today’s Focus on the Family radio broadcast! We talk about defending your faith in a secular culture, based on my newest book, Faithfully Different: Regaining Biblical Clarity in a Secular Culture. (To be clear, for those who have seen or heard me on Focus on the Family before, this is a NEW episode that is airing for the first time today.)

Check it out on local radio, through your podcast player (search for Focus on the Family daily broadcast), or through the YouTube video here.

AND if you don’t already have a copy of Faithfully Different (or want another copy to give to a friend for Christmas), Focus on the Family will send you one in exchange for a donation of any amount today (just call 1-800-A-Family).

Enjoy the interview!

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is a popular and fast-growing new movement of Christians who emphasize signs and wonders and teach that God is giving new revelation through new apostles and prophets today. Some churches associated with those teachings have even become household names—you’ve probably heard of the widely influential Bethel Church, for example. And if you haven’t heard of Bethel by name, you’ve almost certainly sung their songs (“Reckless Love,” anyone?).

But are NAR teachings consistent with the historic Christian faith? That’s the question my podcast guest today, Holly Pivec, seeks to answer in her new book, Counterfeit Kingdom: The Dangers of New Revelation, New Prophets, and New Age Practices in the Church, which she co-authored with Biola professor Douglas Geivett.

Holly is a blogger, author, and speaker, as well as a pastor’s wife and homeschooling mom. She has a master’s degree in Christian apologetics from Biola University. She has coauthored three books about the New Apostolic Reformation and writes a popular blog, which you can read at hollypivec.com.

Listen below in your browser, or check it out on your podcast player. Search for The Natasha Crain Podcast and be sure to subscribe/set notifications to see new episodes as soon as they’re out!

Continue reading

In case you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a $100 million advertising campaign that launched this year across the United States and is aimed at helping rescue Jesus’s reputation from the “damage” done by His followers. It features a website, billboards in major cities, and ads that have been viewed 300 million times. “He Gets Us,” as the campaign is known, is funded by anonymous donors. If you haven’t seen the ads yet, you likely will soon.

Many Christians immediately have a problem with the idea that Jesus would in some way be “marketed.” As a former marketing executive and adjunct market research professor, I don’t necessarily think such a marketing campaign is inherently problematic. Marketing is simply the discipline of effectively getting a given message to a given audience. If your church has a website, you’re “marketing.” If you have a board in front of your church that announces the weekly sermon subject, you’re “marketing.” If you pass out tracts about Jesus, you’re “marketing.”

In other words, if donors are paying to tell the world about Jesus on a grand scale so that more people may come to a saving knowledge of Him, praise God.

But the message shared better be an accurate message about Jesus, lest you’re actually leading people away from Him in some way.

And therein lies the problem with He Gets Us. The Jesus of this campaign is nothing more than an inspiring human who relates to our problems and cares a whole lot about a culturally palatable version of social justice.

Since many people will be discussing the campaign in coming months, I want to highlight seven significant problems to watch out for and to share with friends who may be misled by what they see.

Continue reading

In today’s secular culture, there is a lot of popular-level wisdom passing as self-evident truth that we should all just accept—statements like live your truth; you are enough; authenticity is everything; God just wants you to be happy; you shouldn’t judge. These are claims about reality that sound good…but are they really good when we define good by the standard of God’s Word?

In my newest podcast episode, I’m welcoming back my friend Alisa Childers to talk about the lies we hear in culture and how secular wisdom so often fails. That’s the subject of her brand new book, Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed.

Listen below in your browser, or check it out on your podcast player. Search for The Natasha Crain Podcast and be sure to subscribe/set notifications to see new episodes as soon as they’re out!

If you have followed my content for any amount of time in the last year, you have heard me talk repeatedly about the jarring statistics related to the shrinking percent of Americans who have a biblical worldview (this was especially relevant background context for my newest book, Faithfully Different: Regaining Biblical Clarity in a Secular Culture). I’ve written and talked about a lot of different studies and numbers, but two of the most pertinent data points are these: 65% of Americans self-identify as Christians, but research on people’s actual beliefs and behavior shows that only about 6% have a biblical worldview. This huge gap has numerous implications for the church today. 

But how exactly do researchers define a biblical worldview? How do they get to that 6% estimate? And is it really a reliable picture of where we are as the church in America? In this episode, I get into all the details with the man behind the research: Dr. George Barna, who is the Director of Research for Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center.

Dr. Barna answers questions such as:

• How his team arrived at their set of 54 questions (across 8 belief and behavior categories) to measure the biblical worldview in America;
• Why behavioral questions are an important component of measuring worldview (and not only beliefs);
• Whether “secondary issues” such as denominational specifics and views on the age of the Earth/evolution are part of the biblical worldview definition used;
• How a representative sample is selected;
• What the parameters are for using survey answers to categorize people as having a biblical vs. other worldview;
• What we can do as the body of Christ to increase the percent of self-identified Christians who hold to a biblical worldview

Continue reading

There is a crisis of homelessness happening across the country, and many Christians wonder what can and should be done. This is an important question because not all attempts at helping the homeless are equally beneficial nor are they equally consistent with a biblical worldview. Homelessness is a complex issue, but in my latest podcast episode, I have a guest who is well qualified to help us think more biblically about it and better understand the nuances of the problem.

My guest, Bryan Crain, has been involved in homeless ministry for more than a decade and has a wealth of knowledge about and personal experience with the many issues involved in helping people get off the streets. He’s currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Orange County Rescue Mission, one of the largest Rescue Missions in the country. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because yes, he happens to be my husband!

There are three parts to this episode. In the first part, we discuss the Orange County Rescue Mission, where Bryan works, because it’s a great example of a faith-based program that is successfully helping people get off the streets. In the second part, we contrast that with secular homeless approaches such as “housing first” and “harm reduction” to see how worldview really does drive how we help people. And in the third part, Bryan answers a bunch of different questions that podcast listeners asked through my author Facebook page. While we couldn’t hit every question asked (over 130 people had one!), we talked about quite a few of wide interest, such as:

• What do you do to help a homeless person you see on the street or freeway? What should you/should you not give them? How do you help without enabling? What programs can you direct them to?
• What do we do about crime increases due to the homelessness crisis?
• How do we get local/state government to recognize the flaws in current secular approaches and start looking at alternatives?
• Are “tiny home” communities effective?
• Why does progressivism always seem to creep into Christian social services (whether related to homelessness or anything else)?
• How should pastors/churches handle requests from homeless people in order to help but not create dependence? What kinds of conversations should take place?
• How do you best help an addicted family member without enabling?

Continue reading