Stephen Altrogge's new book proclaims a message that will encourage and challenge athletes, fans and fathers with sons and daughters who love the games people play: Don't waste your sports! In Game Day for the Glory of God: A Guide for Athletes, Fans & Wannabes (Crossway), Altrogge exhorts believers to understand sports in light of 1 Corinthians 10:31: as God-given gifts that provide keen opportunities for growth in sanctification. Altrogge serves as a pastoral intern at Sovereign Grace Church of Indiana, Pennsylvania. He has written several worship songs for musical projects produced by Sovereign Grace Ministries. He enjoys both playing and watching sports and describes himself as a "borderline fanatical" follower of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The author begins by establishing the centrality of the pursuit of the glory of God in all of life, then seeks to show that sports are a God-given gift that may bring great joy to the particihepants when properly viewed in terms of biblical priorities. For example, Altrogge argues that athletes should view their talents and abilities as coming from God. He encourages them to establish a game-day priority of playing with all-out passion, but with a passion tempered by humility, self-control and dependence on God. 

He also deals with the difficult issue of winning and losing. Virtually every sporting event above the level of t-ball produces a winner and a loser. Both winning and losing are fraught with sinful temptations, Altrogge points out, including the temptation to believe that victory has been accomplished purely by human abilities, the temptation to desire the self-centered glory that comes with winning, the temptation to see winning as a vindication of our human talent and the temptation of prideful superiority that leads to self-worship. The remedy? A keen awareness of the pervasiveness of sinful pride and an acknowledgement of a deep need for the Gospel.

"The common thread of sinful pride runs through each of these temptations," Altrogge writes. "Pride causes us to believe that our athletic success comes from our own powers and abilities. Pride causes us to strive to maintain a certain image in hope of receiving praise from others. We must identify the sinful craving for worship that drives our desires for achievement, image, vindication, and superiority. Then we must crucify those desires through the application of humility."

When children play sports, Altrogge notes, they learn values and priorities that will stay with them throughout their entire lives. Sports provide a unique laboratory in which parents may instruct their children in godliness, he writes: "Our children won't learn to play sports in a God-glorifying manner apart from rigorous spiritual training." Even as they encourage their children to participate in sports, Altrogge writes that parents must:

• Help their children savor Christ. When Christ is seen as the ultimate treasure, sports and athletic heroes will not become idols.
• Help their children set godly priorities in direct contrast to the world's agenda for sports, which include self-deifying success, "win at all costs" victory and personal glory. Athletes should aim to win, Altrogge writes, but the priority in sports must be a deep humility that recognizes the ability to play and enjoy sports is a gift from God.
• Help their children see the big picture. "The first and highest priority in the life of our children should be their relationship with God," Altrogge writes. "This takes precedence above all else. Sports, though not inherently wrong in any way, can have a poisonous influence on our children's walk with the Lord." Sports, in terms of a time commitment, must not be allowed to splinter the family, he asserts.

The author concludes with a challenge:

"Let us resolve not to play sports passively but to take full advantage of the opportunities they provide. Before you step onto the playing field, ask God to help you play sports in a way that brings him glory. Ask him for conviction of sin and for the power to put that sin to death. Parents, you can help your children in this area as well. Don't simply drop them off and pick them up from practices and games. Don't think that your responsibility ends with attending games. Rather, before each practice or game take a few moments to help your children prepare their hearts."

On the first anniversary of the Gender Blog, we are amazed at the grace of our sovereign God who called us to serve at CBMW and sustained us all along the way. We understand from e-mails and personal conversations that some of what we have written has served to encourage believers and build up the church; for that we give God all the glory.

We also want to thank all of the regular readers of Gender Blog for utilizing the "feedback" link to pass along your incisive comments and challenging questions. It has been our privilege to serve you these past twelve months, and we are looking forward to hundreds more posts in the coming year.

What can you expect from Gender Blog? First, you can anticipate civil dialogue and Christian debate about gender issues in the church and home. We are committed to living our lives before the face of God and want to humbly consider others as more important than ourselves. All disagreements between believers must be viewed from the framework of being brothers and sisters in the family of God.

Second, you can expect that we will widely scan the news to inform you of recent developments in the gender debate. If the Lord tarries, we expect the culture will continue to warp and rebel against God's glorious design of manhood and womanhood. We hope to equip believers to think biblically about these issues and stand against this cultural tide.

Third, we hope you find encouragement and edification as you live your life as a man or woman. We will continue to develop practical series on fatherhood and motherhood, friendships and courtships, raising one's masculine sons and feminine daughters, and the importance of marriage reflecting the relationship of Christ to the Church.

Finally, we believe that God delighted in creating men and women equal and yet complementary and that he is glorified as we enjoy his creative design. For this reason, you can expect occasional posts about the foibles of manhood and womanhood just for fun.

If you want to join in this proclamation of the goodness of God's design, please pray for us and consider partnering with us financially online. If you disagree with us, we would especially appreciate your prayers and would love to receive feedback from you.

We pray God will richly bless you all through this coming year of Gender Blog.

Tomorrow marks a major milestone in the life of Gender Blog: the one year anniversary of serving the church with daily biblical commentary on the goodness of God's design of manhood and womanhood.  And as everyone knows in high-speed "Internet time," one whole year of blogging is a very long time indeed.  (It seems like seven years in real life, which is about 49 doggie years.)

It has been a speedy twelve months, and we look forward to celebrating a year of God's amazing grace to us.  We are also grateful for the growing support of tens of thousands of readers and are stunned that more than 2,000 of you have linked to Gender Blog in the last six months alone.  (For those of you who are geeky enough to track such things, that means the independent blog ranking service Technorati lists Gender Blog in the top 10,000 of more than 9 million worldwide.  For a blog narrowly focused on biblical gender fidelity to be in the top 99.9% of all blogs is almost miraculous.)

For those who may have recently joined us as readers, we wanted to provide the links to some of the more popular posts from this past year.   Even if you have already read some of them, these highlights are worth reading a second time and even sending to a friend. The most popular post this year conveyed Courtney Tarter's journey to embrace the gospel instead of other ideologies in "Confessions of a Recovering Feminist."   Jessica Connell penned a letter to her daughter Maranatha, and it turned out to be a blessing for thousands of readers in "Thoughts on Being a Wife and Mother: a Letter to My Daughter."

Gender Blog always seeks to provide biblical insight into current events such as the nomination of Sarah Palin, same-sex marriage in California, and female bishops in the Church of England.  We scan the news widely each day, so you can stay informed of lower visibility, but no less important developments in the culture.  Some of these include "Marriage Is at a Hundred Year Low," "Boston Clinic Offering Help for Transgender Children," "Gender-Pac Foments for a Gender Free Society," and "Marriage to Robots Is Inevitable?"

A continual goal of Gender Blog is to edify, educate, and encourage believers.  To this end, we ran several series including "Every Man's Call to Biblical Masculinity," "Olympic Competition and Manhood and Womanhood," "Eternal Subordination of the Son," and "Baseball, Biblical Masculinity, and Godly Character."

Just for fun, Gender Blog tries to include the lighter side of the gender debate, such as, "Hello Kitty, Goodbye Discipline Problems." In the future look for more posts on how gender is represented in art and media, and we started this year with a two-part review of the Narnian classic Prince Caspian.

Thank you for reading Gender Blog. We are grateful for the privilege of declaring His "glory among the nations; his marvelous works among all the peoples" (Psalm 96:3).

The staff of CBMW would like to welcome Dr. David Gushee to the dialogue on women's roles that has been invigorated recently by the nomination of Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate.  Dr. Gushee is the Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and challenges complementarians with many questions in the September 15, 2008 issue of USA Today.

While we are honored that Dr. Gushee considers CBMW "an influential advocacy group" on gender issues, we don't claim to represent the "evangelical voting base," or even all complementarians.  In fact, we would not consider ourselves "staunch advocates" of any political party, but we have thought deeply for decades about gender issues and the church. Our goal is to faithfully present the goodness of God's design of manhood and womanhood from a biblical perspective. Providentially, timeless truths from the Word of God provide clear answers to all of Dr. Gushee's questions.
 
From our perspective, neither these questions nor the recent political development has led to any change in the complementarian position, any shift in our understanding of the Bible, or any accommodation to the culture.  Nevertheless, for the benefit of those who are not regular Gender Blog readers, we have provided bold summaries of Dr. Gushee's questions and links to previous posts with biblical answers.

Is it your view that God can call a woman to serve as president of the United States?
On September 3, 2008 , Gender Blog affirmed:
The Bible calls women to specific roles in the church and home, but does not prohibit them from exercising leadership in secular political fields.  Therefore we must be careful to not go beyond the teaching of the Bible.  A president is not held to the same moral standards as an elder of a church.  While it is a blessing from God to have ethical or even Christian political leaders, the Bible places no such requirements on secular governments.  Even though the Bible reserves final authority in the church for men, this does not apply in the kingdom of this world.

Could a woman serve as president though she would be in authority over every male in the nation? 
On September 8, 2008 , Gender Blog distinguished between civil authority and spiritual authority with the following quote:
God's design for male headship in the home and the church does not require the exclusion of women from leadership in public life, where spiritual headship is not involved. Such extrapolation carries the biblical teaching about the role of women beyond the Bible's own application.

Do you believe that a woman (even if she serves as Vice President) is under the authority of her husband as head of the family?  Would this authority spill over into her public role?
This helpful question raises a complex issue requiring specific application of the principles expressed above.  Gender Blog is pleased to be part of this dialogue and plans to address this question in the near future.

Does this affect your view of women leadership in the church?
On September 5, 2008 , Gender Blog explained:
Even though a man is elected president of the most powerful country in the free world, he is not necessarily qualified to lead a small local church, according to the moral criteria for overseers in 1 Timothy 3.  We hold a high view of women and assert that women are capable of serving as president of the United States (and inevitably will).  It is not a question of ability, but a recognition that the Bible reserves for men the final teaching and ruling authority in the church.

Ultimately, Dr. Gushee's main point seems to be that "the nomination of Palin offers conservative Christian leaders the chance to rethink an archaic theological vision that wounds millions of devout Christian women and restricts the full exercise of their gifts."  In contrast, we would humbly assert that it is the abandonment of the ancient truths that has lead to the wounding of women and men, homes and churches, and God's very reputation as the good Creator of two sexes.

[This post originally appeared on The Henry Insitute.]

Recently I came across one of the saddest passages I've ever read. Writer Augusten Burroughs writes in his new book, The Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father, about growing up with his distant, neglectful father. One part, in particular, was so raw as to make me almost cringe as I read it.

Burroughs writes about how, as a seven year-old child, he realized that whenever he'd try to crawl in his father's lap, his dad would push him away. He writes that his father wouldn't even look at the boy as he stared straight ahead at the television screen. The little boy kept a scorecard on a clipboard of how many times his father refused to cuddle with him, and it was close to 100 percent of the times attempted.

Hungering for his father's presence, the boy took one of his father's shirts and a pair of pants from his parents' closet, stuffed the clothes with towels and pillows, and lathered it with his father's cologne.

At night, he would snuggle up against this father mannequin, pretending to be held and loved. He writes that one day his mother found the dummy, and simply returned the clothes to the closet, the pillows to the bed.

Burroughs concludes: "Over time, my father's scents faded from the pillows until there was nothing left of him at all."

Those of us who had good, present, involved fathers might simply see this as an extreme oddity. It's true there are very few people who've ever resorted to this kind of sad charade. But isn't it true that we see desperate father hunger all around us?

Burroughs' childhood, and those like it, are horrible precisely because there's more involved here than an emotional need for security (although that's obviously there). God has put in every human heart a gnawing need to look someone in the face and say, "Abba, Father." He's put in every human soul the need to hear the words, "You are my beloved child and in you I am well pleased."

My father always was there, and still is. Maybe that wasn't the case for you. Maybe your father left early on in your life. Or maybe he was there, but you remember his feet walking out the door each day for a life-sapping job, his feet propped up on the couch each night in front of some life-sapping television. Maybe you miss your Dad. Maybe you hate your Dad.

In any case, all of us have found ourselves snuggled up to a mannequin. We've constructed idols, covered in the scent of Deity, that give us an illusion of the protection of a Father God without his presence. Some of you may still be living that illusion.

Our adoption by Father God meets and exceeds all our earthly longings and expectations of parental joy and approval. The kind of affirmation and approval all of us seek, ultimately, is exactly what Jesus receives. As he comes up from the water of his baptism, a voice thunders from the skies, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11).

The Bible tells us we are mysteriously united to Jesus so that everything that is true of him, in terms of relation to his Father, is now true of us. Paul puts it this way, "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col 3:3). God sees us in Christ, and his opinion of us is exactly the same as his opinion of the Lord Jesus.

God doesn't just speak his acceptance of Jesus as his Son. He pours out over those baptismal waters his Holy Spirit. That same Spirit, the Bible tells us, hovers over us, marking us out with Jesus as the children of God. It's through that Spirit, the Scripture says, that we cry out "Abba! Father!" and he responds to us by recognizing us as his children.

Even as we rejoice in our acceptance by our Father, it's worth remembering today that there are untold millions who can't imagine it could be true.

There's probably an Augusten Burroughs in your neighborhood, on the bus next to you, in your church foyer. Point him or her to a new kind of Father, One who doesn't seat wolves at his table.