Some years ago I lived in Nashville, and like many creatives in Music City, I worked at a studio. One morning a sound engineer accidently keyed in the wrong code to the alarm system, triggering a very loud and embarrassing siren. I was able to shut the system down, and I assumed the police would soon be on their way to investigate. No problem, I\u2019ll just explain what happened and things will be fine.<\/p>\n
A few hours went by with no police showing up, so I figured they recognized it as a false alarm. By the end of the day I had forgotten all about the mishap. As the sun set, I began to shut down the studio and head to my men\u2019s Bible study. I cut the lights and started shoving studio equipment into my backpack. That\u2019s when I heard it\u2014the sound of voices in the front lobby. Suddenly, a flashlight pointed in my face. Two police officers were there, following up on a call that an alarm went off.<\/p>\n
\u201cOfficers,\u201d I said, \u201cthat alarm triggered hours ago.\u201d It looked bad. There I was in a dark room shoveling expensive gear into my backpack. Should I tell them that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The current cultural moment is tumultuous, and having honest conversation about polarizing topics is a difficult task for any church. But we must fight suspicion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[312,1376],"class_list":["post-24812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-leadership","tag-politics","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24812"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24814,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24812\/revisions\/24814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}